Access control is used to provide regulated access to resources by principals. It is an important and foundational aspect of information security. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a popular and widely-used access control model, that, as prior work argues, is ideally suited for enterprise settings. In this dissertation, we address two problems in the context of RBAC. One is the User Authorization Query (UAQ) problem, which relates to sessions that a user creates to exercise permissions. UAQ's objective is the identification of a set of roles that a user needs to activate such that the session is authorized to all permissions that the user wants to exercise in that session. The roles that are activated must respect a set of Separation of Duty constraints. Such constraints restrict the roles that can be activated together in a session. UAQ is known to be intractable (NP-hard). In this dissertation, we give a precise formulation of UAQ as a joint-optimization problem, and analyze it. We examine the manner in which each input parameter contributes to its intractability. We then propose an approach to mitigate its intractability based on our observation that a corresponding decision version of the problem is in NP. We efficiently reduce UAQ to Boolean satisfiability in conjunctive normal form (CNF-SAT), a well-known NP-complete problem for which solvers exist that are efficient for large classes of instances. We also present results for UAQ posed as an approximation problem; our results suggest that efficient approximation is not promising for UAQ. We discuss an open-source implementation of our approach and a corresponding empirical assessment that we have conducted. The other problem we consider in this dissertation regards an efficient data structure for distributed access enforcement. Access enforcement is the process of validating an access request to a resource. Distributed access enforcement has become important with the proliferation of data, which requires access control systems to scale to tens of thousands of resources and permissions. Prior work has shown the effectiveness of a data structure called the Cascade Bloom Filter (CBF) for this problem. In this dissertation, we study the construction of instances of the CBF. We formulate the problem of finding an optimal instance of a CBF, where optimality refers to the number of false positives incurred and the number of hash functions used. We prove that this problem is NP-hard, and a meaningful decision version is in NP. We then propose an approach to mitigate the intractability of the problem by reducing it to CNF-SAT, that allows us to use a SAT solver for instances that arise in practice. We discuss an open-source implementation of our approach and an empirical assessment based on it.


Insect immune proteins evolve more rapidly than nonimmune proteins. Based largely on genetic studies in Drosophila species, this elevated rate appears to be due to adaptive evolution in only a small subset of immune proteins. The genetic signature of adaptive evolution is apparently a response by the host to interference or evasion of the immune system by pathogens, which are usually unknown. In contrast, many insect immune proteins appear to be constrained not to change because they interact with conserved molecular targets in a pathogen's cell wall or plasma membrane. Adaptive immune protein evolution may be attributable to a sustained arms race between host and pathogen or to rapid environmental change that exposes insects to new pathogen suites. Evidence of a correlation between the strength of selection and functional divergence in antimicrobial peptides provides confirmation that the inferred genetic signatures of adaptive evolution reflect a response to pathogen selective pressure.

Key Concepts:

A small set of immune proteins in Drosophila evolve much more rapidly than other proteins.

Insect antiviral proteins of the RNA interference system are among the top 3% of rapidly evolving proteins in Drosophila.

There is surprisingly little evidence of adaptive evolution in Drosophila antimicrobial peptides.

Many receptors and effectors of the insect immune system appear to be evolutionary constrained due to their interaction with conserved target molecules.

Pathogens target certain vulnerable immune proteins for suppression and positive selection in these proteins appears to reflect a counter response to this suppression.

The selective pressure imposed by pathogens appears to be greater for social than nonsocial insects.

Rapid changes in the types of pathogen that hosts encounter as well as long-term co-evolutionary arms races may drive adaptive immune protein evolution.

Positive selection appears to drive the functional divergence of antimicrobial peptides in termites and other animals.

Keywords:

innate immunity;
positive selection;
balancing selection;
purifying selection;
adaptive evolution;
arms race;
co-evolution


The last decade has seen dramatic changes in the environment facing the
fishing industries of Western Europe. This study looks at Britain and
France and compares the response of government and industry to those
changes between 1975 and 1983. It argues in the opening chapter that
that response can be best understood in terms of the nature of the
general relations which link state and society in the two countries.
Thus France can be characterised as a state-led society, which has
generated protectionist forms of economic policy and a 'dirigiste'
style of policy making, where the institutions of the state seek
actively to determine the way in which an economic sector develops. By
contrast, Britain can be seen as a society-led state, in which a
liberal conception of economic policy has been matched by a more
consensual style of policy-making, where the agents within a sector are
left to develop their own individual responses to change. Chapters two
to four consider in turn the impact of political and economic change
upon the structure of the two industries, the transformation of the
international framework of negotiation within which the two governments
dealt with the issue and the development of the institutional links
between government and the fishing interest. The chapters that follow
(five to eight) are organised around four perspectives on the relations
between an interest group and government. These are entitled
interventionist, mediatory, direct-action and self-help and each
stresses a different aspect of the behaviour of state institutions and
a societal interest. In all four chapters, the available evidence is
assessed in terms of what we might expect that behaviour to be, given
the extent of the change that overtook the industry and the political
and economic character of the two countries. The final chapter reviews
the distinction between a state-led society and a society-led state and
suggests two conclusions: firstly, that the pattern of relations
between industry and government retained its distinctive shape in the
two countries, despite severe pressures and secondly, that any
judgement of the relative success of the two states and their
respective industries in developing a response to change depends on
one's appreciation of the merits of two contrasting political and
economic philosophies.


The article focuses on the characteristics of depression from the cultural evolutionary perspective. The psychopathological depression is conceived as derived from the normal manifestations of depression, which have an adaptive role in grieving, failure and various losses. The significance of the inhibited withdrawal in depression is to allow collectedness, recovery and reorganisation for a person with an "existentially amputated" psyche. It is believed that the models proposed by the classical evolutionary theory – such as submission, energetic recovery etc. – must be completed with the interpretation of human psyche characteristics.


Abstract: Over the past decades, there have been a number of studies investigating the vocabulary strategies used by learners of Indo-European languages, especially English. However, studies of the strategies used by learners of non-Indo-European languages are rare. This classroom-based case study investigates the vocabulary learning strategies used by nine learners of Chinese as a foreign language and tests a taxonomy, based on Long's (1996) interaction hypothesis, for classifying strategies that may facilitate our understanding of strategies and their role within second language acquisition. Key words: Chinese as a foreign language, learning strategies, second language acquisition, vocabulary acquisition Language: Chinese Introduction Given the importance of learning lexical items to second language (L2) acquisition, a considerable body of literature has emerged on various types of vocabulary learning strategies (e.g., Atay & Ozbulgan, 2007; Avila & Sadoski, 1996; Clarke & Nation, 1980; Fan, 2000; Fowle, 2002; Kelly, 1990; Mondria & Mondria-De Vries, 1994; Shapiro & Waters, 2005; van Hell & Mahn, 1997) and on the strategies used by various groups of learners, such as Chinese students learning English (Fan, 2003; Gu & Johnson, 1996), Japanese students learning English (Schmitt, 1997), Canadian students learning French (Harley & Hart, 2000), Spanish-speaking students learning English (Jimenez Catalan, 2003; Rodriguez & Sadoski, 2000), and Australian students learning Italian (Lawson & Hogben, 1996). A number of these studies have drawn upon Oxford's (1990) commonly used taxonomy of language learning strategies. Oxford divided the domain of language learning strategies (which she defined as conscious "operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information . . . ; specific actions taken by the learners to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to a new situation" [p. 8]) into six categories. The first, metacognitive, involves reflecting on the learning process (such as planning and self-evaluation). These are to be distinguished from cognitive strategies, which involve manipulating or transforming learning materials-such as note taking, analysis, and translation. Memory strategies are those used to commit that material to memory (e.g., flash cards). Social strategies involve interacting with another individual, while compensation strategies are methods for overcoming limitations in the L2 (such as using gestures when interacting with a speaker of the target language). Finally, affective strategies entail monitoring "your emotional temperature" (Oxford, 1990, p. 17). While heavily influenced by Oxford's work, some vocabulary strategy researchers have demarcated the language strategy domain in a slightly different manner. Schmitt (1997), for example, classified strategies as either discovery strategies (strategies used to determine the meaning of a word) or consolidation strategies (strategies used to keep the meaning of the word in memory). Using this taxonomy, Schmitt found that using a bilingual dictionary, guessing from context, and asking classmates for help were the most common discovery strategies, while verbal repetition, written repetition, and studying the spelling of the word were the most frequent consolidation strategies. This bipartite taxonomy also was employed by Harley and Hart (2000), who found that the discovery strategies preferred by their French as a second language learners were social strategies (e.g., asking a friend for the meaning of a word) and inferring (e.g., guessing the meaning of a word from context). With respect to consolidation strategies, the majority of the learners in the study reported that rote learning of English-French word pairs was useful, while repeating words aloud was less helpful. …


Conditional generative models of high-dimensional images have many applications, but supervision signals from conditions to images can be expensive to acquire. This paper describes Diffusion-Decoding models with Contrastive representations (D2C), a paradigm for training unconditional variational autoencoders (VAEs) for few-shot conditional image generation. D2C uses a learned diffusion-based prior over the latent representations to improve generation and contrastive self-supervised learning to improve representation quality. D2C can adapt to novel generation tasks conditioned on labels or manipulation constraints, by learning from as few as 100 labeled examples. On conditional generation from new labels, D2C achieves superior performance over state-of-the-art VAEs and diffusion models. On conditional image manipulation, D2C generations are two orders of magnitude faster to produce over StyleGAN2 ones and are preferred by 50% - 60% of the human evaluators in a double-blind study.


This paper proposes an image watermarking algorithm that is robust to compression methods and noise addition. In the proposed method the wavelet transform of images is taken and watermarking is carried out in the wavelet domain. In order to accomplish low visibility of the watermark within the image and enable robustness against attacks, watermarking of block averages is utilized. Experimental results show that the proposed method is considerably more robust against corrupting effects such as JPEG compression, addition of noise, cropping and scaling.


There is a widely held paradigm that mangroves are critical for sustaining production in coastal fisheries through their role as important nursery areas for fisheries species. This paradigm frequently forms the basis for important management decisions on habitat conservation and restoration of mangroves and other coastal wetlands. This paper reviews the current status of the paradigm and synthesises the information on the processes underlying these potential links. In the past, the paradigm has been supported by studies identifying correlations between the areal and linear extent of mangroves and fisheries catch. This paper goes beyond the correlative approach to develop a new framework on which future evaluations can be based. First, the review identifies what type of marine animals are using mangroves and at what life stages. These species can be categorised as estuarine residents, marine-estuarine species and marine stragglers. The marine-estuarine category includes many commercial species that use mangrove habitats as nurseries. The second stage is to determine why these species are using mangroves as nurseries. The three main proposals are that mangroves provide a refuge from predators, high levels of nutrients and shelter from physical disturbances. The recognition of the important attributes of mangrove nurseries then allows an evaluation of how changes in mangroves will affect the associated fauna. Surprisingly few studies have addressed this question. Consequently, it is difficult to predict how changes in any of these mangrove attributes would affect the faunal communities within them and, ultimately, influence the fisheries associated with them. From the information available, it seems likely that reductions in mangrove habitat complexity would reduce the biodiversity and abundance of the associated fauna, and these changes have the potential to cause cascading effects at higher trophic levels with possible consequences for fisheries. Finally, there is a discussion of the data that are currently available on mangrove distribution and fisheries catch, the limitations of these data and how best to use the data to understand mangrove-fisheries links and, ultimately, to optimise habitat and fisheries management. Examples are drawn from two relatively data-rich regions, Moreton Bay (Australia) and Western Peninsular Malaysia, to illustrate the data needs and research requirements for investigating the mangrove-fisheries paradigm. Having reliable and accurate data at appropriate spatial and temporal scales is crucial for mangrove-fisheries investigations. Recommendations are made for improvements to data collection methods that would meet these important criteria. This review provides a framework on which to base future investigations of mangrove-fisheries links, based on an understanding of the underlying processes and the need for rigorous data collection. Without this information, the understanding of the relationship between mangroves and fisheries will remain limited. Future investigations of mangrove-fisheries links must take this into account in order to have a good ecological basis and to provide better information and understanding to both fisheries and conservation managers.


The concept of sustainable development is considered as a multidimensional. In general, we can conclude, that sustainable development brings together economic, environmental and social dimensions. Process of these different dimensions evaluation is very complicated, as well as results interpretation and creating of the conclusions formulation useful in the management of sustainability. The main aim of this paper is to present the possibilities of sustainable development evaluation in the conditions of the European Area countries. Keywords: Sustainable development, sustainability, management of sustainability, Human development index, EU countries


The general purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the
National Population and Family Development Board's (NPFDB) parenting module
among parents by examining the effects of individual differences (expressed
readiness for parenting change and perceptions of parenting self-efficacy) and
exposure to the module on parenting outcomes [parenting knowledge, attitudes,
practices, and skills (parenting KAPS)]. The Pre-test-Post-test Control Group Design
was used for evaluating the parenting module. The 80 respondents were randomly
assigned to the experimental and control group. Results of the study showed that
parenting KAPS improved significantly from before to after exposure for the
experimental group. Generally, it was found that the participants had high
perceptions of the module structure, usefulness and relevance of contents to their needs. Results suggested that individual differences was significantly correlated with
parenting knowledge (r=0.56, p<0.05) and parenting attitudes (r= 0.46, p<0.05).
However, there was no significant correlation between individual differences and
parenting practices and skills. Results obtained suggested that exposure to the
module was significantly and positively correlated with parenting knowledge
(r=0.57, p<0.05), parenting attitudes (r=0.56, p<0.05), parenting practices (r=0.34,
p<0.05) and parenting skills (r=0.26, p<0.05). There was a significant relationship
(r=0.32, p<0.05) between individual differences and general perceptions of the
module. )'he participants' exposure to the parenting module and individual
differences was found to have a direct effect on their parenting KAP. However, for
parenting skills there was no evidence to conclude that exposure to the module and
individual differences explained the variation in parenting skills. The study
concluded that the parenting module was effective in changing the parenting KAPS
of parents.


This exhibition introduces the concept of 'Yellowspace' as a metaphor for shared social public space within the city. These spaces are crucial for cities and urban life. However such shared services and spaces are at risk everywhere as they fragment and splinter for various economic, political, and social reasons.This exhibition presented research on Belfast and Manchester in addition to a number of successful social, environmental, and construction projects from other cities. The research specific to Manchester took the unusual number of thematic walks and trails in Manchester as a methodological starting point. A selection of walking trails was studied to learn about how Manchester represents itself. The city was then walked and studied with a focus on the non-represented areas encircling the city centre. From this a Yellow Trail was created, searching for the social potential of these spaces. These sites are presented with a short narrative inviting people to critically reflect on the potentials and deficits of each location as a Yellow Space, and were published in a "Yellow Press" for circulation through out the city.


While formal correctness checking methods have been deployed at scale in a number of important practical domains, we believe that such an experiment has yet to occur in the domain of high performance computing at the scale of a million CPU cores. This paper presents preliminary results from the Uintah Runtime Verification (URV) project that has been launched with this objective. Uintah is an asynchronous task-graph based problem-solving environment that has shown promising results on problems as diverse as fluid-structure interaction and turbulent combustion at well over 200K cores to date. Uintah has been tested on leading platforms such as Kraken, Keenland, and Titan consisting of multicore CPUs and GPUs, incorporates several innovative design features, and is following a roadmap for development well into the million core regime. The main results from the URV project to date are crystallized in two observations: (1) A diverse array of well-known ideas from lightweight formal methods and testing/observing HPC systems at scale have an excellent chance of succeeding. The real challenges are in finding out exactly which combinations of ideas to deploy, and where. (2) Large-scale problem solving environments for HPC must be designed such that they can be "crashed early" (at smaller scales of deployment) and "crashed often" (have effective ways of input generation and schedule perturbation that cause vulnerabilities to be attacked with higher probability). Furthermore, following each crash, one must "explain well" (given the extremely obscure ways in which an error finally manifests itself, we must develop ways to record information leading up to the crash in informative ways, to minimize offsite debugging burden). Our plans to achieve these goals and to measure our success are described. We also highlight some of the broadly applicable concepts and approaches.


In 2005 one of major Czech manufacturers of glass reinforced plastic pipes asked the Department of Sanitary and Ecological Engineering to develop a new type of combined sewer overflows (CSO) chamber that could become a part of their manufacturing programme. The main requirements were economy of production, easy and fast installation on the field and increased protection of receiving waters.

A simple object consisting of a pipe placed above another one was designed. The object begins with a stilling chamber formed by a conical expansion of the inlet pipe. It is separated from the overflow object itself by a downflow baffle designed to trap floating objects. The CSO chamber is equipped by a flow regulation device (e.g. vortex valve or throttle pipe) at the end. Excess water flows through a slit in the top of the bottom pipe into the upper pipe and from there to the receiving water.

More than 15 prototypes were already installed in the Czech and Slovak Republics and more than 20 are planned to be built in Europe. We hope this type of CSO CHAMBER will help to decrease the cost of construction of new sewers and reconstruction of old ones. Its higher efficiency of separation of suspended particles might also contribute to the improvement of the quality of receiving water bodies according to Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC.


This paper reviews recent advances in academic models of asset allocation for long-term investors, and explores their implications for the design of investment products that help investors save for retirement, particularly life-cycle funds and life-style (or balanced) funds. The paper argues that modern portfolio theory provides scientific foundation for the "risk-based" asset allocation strategies and the "age-based" asset allocation strategies that characterize life-style and life-cycle funds. Risk-based allocation strategies can be optimal in an environment where investors face real interest rate (or reinvestment risk), while human wealth considerations give rise to horizon effects in asset allocation. However, this theory also makes a number of suggestions about how life-style and life-cycle funds should be structured, and shows for which types of investors these funds are appropriate investment choices. Thus, modern portfolio theory provides only qualified support for these funds. Nevertheless, the paper argues that properly designed life-cycle funds are better default investment choices than money market funds in defined-contribution pension plans. The paper also argues for the creation of life-cycle funds that allow for heterogeneity in risk tolerance, and for the creation of life-cycle funds specific to defined-contribution plans that can better account for the correlation between human capital and stock returns. It also suggests that investors who expect to receive Social Security benefits and pension income after retirement should choose a target retirement date for their funds based on their life-expectancy, not their expected retirement date.


Welding apprentices
invest in their professional and technological education. The welding work, and
before that, the welding apprenticeship, exposes the apprentices to several
risk factors, such as a physical, chemical and physiological. Exposure to these
factors can trigger various health disorders and accidents. Among some of the health
disorders that may be triggered by welding activity are skin, lung and stomach
cancer, coronary heart disease, noise-induced hearing loss and work-related
musculoskeletal disorders. This paper is an integrative review of how studies
are developing with welding apprentices. Of 638 articles,
ten met the search criteria. The publications cover genetic, respiratory and
neuropsychological health disorders and improved welding techniques. It is
considered that the identification of a low number of publications on welding
apprentices constitutes a need for knowledge construction in the areas of
occupational and public health.


The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is more than a set of goals and targets: it is a comprehensive "plan of action" that countries are translating into relevant policies. While this plan recognizes a need for different national paths towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it also provides guidance for policymaking, establishing means of implementation and follow-up and review mechanisms that are indivisible from the SDGs. Moreover, analyzing the 2030 Agenda as a framework for policymaking reveals general principles that are both explicit and implicit in the UN's Transforming Our World document. After examining previous relevant UN and OECD frameworks; official 2030 Agenda documents; current international literature on the SDGs, and consulting key 2030 Agenda stakeholders in Peru, this paper identifies eight general principles for sustainable development policymaking in 2030 Agenda implementation that are relevant to all SDGs and sectors, and suggests areas for further research.


Using a Mixed Methods approach, this study investigated changes in levels of self-efficacy among elementary preservice teachers following a semester course on teaching elementary students' mathematics. Participants in this study included 347 preservice elementary teachers at a mid-size regional university who had just completed an elementary mathematics methods course. The data were collected from several semester groups. The instruments used were the Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument, interview data, and observation data collected during the clinical experience. The focus of this study was to compare the changes in teacher self-efficacy following a methods course that emphasized hands-on mathematics instruction with manipulatives by means of the 5E instructional format. The results of the paired-samples t-test indicated that there was a significant difference in the preservice elementary teachers' self-efficacy for teaching mathematics after engaging in the elementary methods course. Preservice teachers reported that their understanding of various instructional practices changed significantly from a "tell, show, and do" model to an approach utilizing interactive and engaging activities. They also reported that their attitude toward mathematics had improved significantly and that there had been a direct impact on their confidence for teaching mathematics as a result of the structure of the elementary math methods course.


The article provides an overview of the first decade of Czech politics, focusing especially on the election results, the successive governing coalitions headed first by the Civic Democratic Party and then by the Social Democrats, and on the role of Vaclav Havel as president. It also analyzes the rivalry between Havel and his successor, Vaclav Klaus. After examining the underlying issues that have produced weak governments in recent years and that account for the continuing influence of unreconstructed Communist Party, the essay assesses Czech prospects as a member of NATO and EU.


Passively compliant legs have been instrumental in the development of dynamically running legged robots. Having properly tuned leg springs is essential for stable, robust and energetically efficient running at high speeds. Recent simulation studies indicate that having variable stiffness legs, as animals do, can significantly improve the speed and stability of these robots in changing environmental conditions. However, to date, the mechanical complexities of designing usefully robust tunable passive compliance into legs has precluded their implementation on practical running robots. This paper describes a new design of a "structurally controlled variable stiffness" leg for a hexapedal running robot. This new leg improves on previous designs' performance and enables runtime modification of leg stiffness in a small, lightweight, and rugged package. Modeling and leg test experiments are presented that characterize the improvement in stiffness range, energy storage, and dynamic coupling properties of these legs. We conclude that this variable stiffness leg design is now ready for implementation and testing on a dynamical running robot.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


Little is known about the family firm as an economic entity except for the very few family firms that are public. Our paper describes a wide range of governance and finance characteristics in the population of all private and public family firms with limited liability. We find that the family firm is the dominating organizational form in the economy, and that family firms behave and perform differently than other firms.
We use proprietary data from Norway in 2000–2015 to describe main characteristics of family firms, which we define as firms where more than half the equity is owned by individuals related by blood or marriage. A firm is either an individual entity or a business group. Analyzing about 86,000 firms per year, we find that family firms account for 66% of all firms in the economy, 33% of employment, 22% of sales, and 13% of the assets.
We find that family firms have very concentrated ownership regardless of firm size, and that most firms have owners from the controlling family, only. The family's dominance at the shareholder meeting carries over to the CEO and to the board, which is unusually small.
The distribution of firm size is lognormal, growth is independent of size, and family firms are smaller and grow less than nonfamily firms do. Family firms are more labor intensive, and small family firms are particularly liquid, risky, and young. The financing and dividend policy is quite similar in family firms and nonfamily firms.
We find a performance premium for family firms. This premium exists for family firms vs. nonfamily firms as a whole, across firms with different size, across firms with and without minority owners, and across most industries.


Traditionally, minority shareholders are said not to have the right, or the standing, to initiate proceedings against the controllers of the company, because in the eyes of the law the minority shareholders are said not to be the appropriate persons to bring such proceedings, except in the situation of first, fraud on the minority shareholders, and second, controllers' illegal, or arguable, ultra virus act. Such an approach substantially deprives the minority shareholders' of opportunity to have their grievances heard by the courts in takeovers, defined as transactions of corporate control. In turn, the controllers are allowed to ignore the interests of the minority shareholders in such transactions. Therefore, the protection of the minority shareholders and the investors in the capital market fails to be incorporated in the English legal framework for corporate governance. Although statutes were passed in order to remedy inadequate protection of minority shareholders, the judicial interpretation of these statutes also limits the situations where minority shareholders are entitled to the initiation of the proceedings. The remedies available to the minority shareholders are limited to buy-out remedy with a conservative approach in share valuation. The court should broaden the scope of the remedy available to the minority shareholders, including both interim and final remedies. The minority shareholders weakness, both in financial and substantive terms, should be considered against the strength of the controllers in the company. The evidence, knowledge, and sources obtained in administrative investigations or independent inquiries should be made available to the minority shareholders, whereby public and private enforcement would be able to work in tandem against the abuses by the controllers in takeovers. Finally, the appraisal right which is more commonly exercised in the United States should be granted more extensively to the minority shareholders in takeovers where traditionally such a right is not available where the company's shares are traded on national exchanges. The English legal framework should incorporate such a right and allow a more extensive application of it in takeovers, especially in friendly mergers.


Abstract. The California Baseline Ozone Transport Study (CABOTS) was
conducted in the late spring and summer of 2016 to investigate the influence
of long-range transport and stratospheric intrusions on surface ozone
(O3) concentrations in California with emphasis on the San Joaquin
Valley (SJV), one of two extreme ozone non-attainment areas in the US.
One of the major objectives of CABOTS was to characterize the vertical
distribution of O3 and aerosols above the SJV to aid in the
identification of elevated transport layers and assess their surface
impacts. To this end, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL)
deployed the Tunable Optical Profiler for Aerosol and oZone (TOPAZ) mobile
lidar to the Visalia Municipal Airport (36.315∘ N,
119.392∘ E) in the central SJV between 27 May and 7 August 2016.
Here we compare the TOPAZ ozone retrievals with co-located in situ surface
measurements and nearby regulatory monitors and also with airborne in situ measurements
from the University of California at Davis–Scientific Aviation (SciAv)
Mooney and NASA Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) research aircraft.
Our analysis shows that the lidar and aircraft measurements agree, on
average to within 5 ppbv, the sum of their stated uncertainties of 3 and 2 ppbv, respectively.


Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a global health problem that presents as a spectrum of liver disease, reflecting an interplay between the virus and the host immune system. HBV genomes exist as episomal covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) or chromosomal integrants. The relative contribution of these genomes to the viral transcriptome in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is not well-understood. We developed a qPCR method to estimate the abundance of HBV cccDNA- and integrant-derived viral transcripts and applied this to a cohort of patients diagnosed with CHB in the HBe antigen negative phase of disease. We noted a variable pattern of HBV transcripts from both DNA templates, with preS1/S2 mRNAs predominating and a significant association between increasing age and the expression of integrant-derived mRNAs, but not with inflammatory status. In contrast, cccDNA-derived transcripts were associated with markers of liver inflammation. Analysis of the inflammatory hepatic transcriptome identified 24 genes significantly associated with cccDNA transcriptional activity. Our study uncovers an immune gene signature that associates with HBV cccDNA transcription and increases our understanding of viral persistence.


In this article, authors describe the work of Regional Asthma Management and Prevention (RAMP) in developing a comprehensive model for reducing the burden of asthma through the integration of clinical management and environmental protection. Over the past 15 years, RAMP grew a small legal settlement involving air pollution into a nationally recognized asthma program. RAMP collaborates, coordinates, shares resources, advocates, and promotes policy change to reduce inequities, strengthen asthma prevention efforts, and improve management for all communities. RAMP's 4 functions-provide technical assistance, serve as a clearinghouse, serve as a convener, and lead policy advocacy efforts-have provided an important structure for implementing a broad and comprehensive program aimed at reducing the burden of asthma. RAMP has demonstrated that asthma interventions must take place in numerous settings including clinical settings, homes, schools, child care, and outdoor environments and that, to reduce asthma disparities, organizations need to understand and address the environmental and social inequities that contribute to those disparities. RAMP has also seen firsthand the importance of community asthma coalitions in addressing the problem of asthma and the way that these coalitions benefit from the support of an organization like RAMP. RAMP has created a framework for reducing the burden of asthma that ties together the knowledge gained over 15 years and provides a model for other organizations.


We present a finite dimensional version of the logarithmic Sobolev inequality for heat kernel measures of non-negatively curved diffusion operators that contains and improves upon the Li-Yau parabolic inequality. This new inequality is of interest already in Euclidean space for the standard Gaussian measure. The result may also be seen as an extended version of the semigroup commutation properties under curvature conditions. It may be applied to reach optimal Euclidean logarithmic Sobolev inequalities in this setting. Exponential Laplace differential inequalities through the Herbst argument furthermore yield diameter bounds and dimensional estimates on the heat kernel volume of balls


The Doha multilateral round of trade negotiations sponsored by the WTO has been dragging on for over a decade, with no end in sight. In this short paper we assess empirically what determines the duration of trade negotiations, focusing on the span between the start of trade talks and their conclusion. We use data from 88 regional trade agreements between 1988 and 2009, and a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model. Four factors are robust determinants of the length of RTA negotiations. Negotiations are more protracted when there are more countries at the negotiation table, and when the countries are not from the same region. Negotiations between more open and richer countries are also finished more quickly.


Stereotactic radiosurgery
(SRS) and stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) have now been applied clinically for several decades. The accumulation of published technical and clinical studies currently available has offered insights into both the efficacy and special concerns associated with the delivery of the stereotactic approach to different disease sites. The last few years have witnessed significant advances in both delivery technology and planning approaches. Digital linacs equipped with high dose rate flattening-filter free (FFF) beams are particularly well suited to stereotactic applications. Modern image guidance provides a framework for managing uncertainties and optimizing margins. Knowledge-based approaches can automate many aspects of the treatment planning process. This session will provide an overview of these important technical considerations in SRS/SBRT, and discuss approaches to safe clinical implementation.
Learning Objectives:
1.
Understand commissioning and application of FFF beams in SRS and SBRT applications
2.
Understand how image guidance plays a role in the design of treatment margins and the management of uncertainties
3.
Understand the methodology and application of knowledge-based planning to SRS and SBRT
Kevin Moore: research funding, honoraria and travel support from Varian Medical Systems
Kristy Brock: licensing agreement with RaySearch Laboratories for deformable registration technology
Richard Popple: research funding and honoraria from Varian Medical Systems
Timothy Solberg: honoraria from BrainLAB, ownership of Global Radiosurgery Services


This article proposes the concept of basis behaviors as ubiquitous general building blocks for synthesizing artificial group behavior in multiagent systems and for analyzing group behavior in nature. We demonstrate the concept through examples implemented both in simulation and on a group of physical mobile robots. The basis behavior set we propose, consisting of avoidance, safe-wandering, following, aggregation, dispersion, and homing, is constructed from behaviors commonly observed in a variety of species in nature. The proposed behaviors are manifested spatially but have an effect on more abstract modes of interaction, including the exchange of information and cooperation. We demonstrate how basis behaviors can be combined into higher-level group behaviors commonly observed across species. The combination mechanisms we propose are useful for synthesizing a variety of new group behaviors, as well as for analyzing naturally occurring ones.


This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the temperature dependence of a Raman amplifier and the scaling of the Raman gain coefficient with wavelength, modal overlap, and material composition. The temperature dependence is derived by applying a quantum theoretical description, whereas the scaling of the Raman gain coefficient is derived using a classical electromagnetic model. We also present experimental verification of our theoretical findings.


This dissertation presents a data processing architecture for efficient data warehousing from historical data sources. The present work has three primary contributions. The first contribution is the development of a generalized process data warehousing (PDW) architecture that includes multilayer data processing steps to transform raw data streams into useful information that facilitates data-driven decision making. The second contribution is exploring the applicability of the proposed architecture to the case of sparse process data. We have tested the proposed approach in a medical monitoring system, which takes physiological data and predicts the clinical setting in which the data is most likely to be seen. We have performed a set of experiments with real clinical data (from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh) that demonstrate the high utility of the present approach. The third contribution is exploring the applicability of the proposed PDW architecture to the case of redundant process data. We have designed and developed a conflict-aware data fusion strategy for the efficient aggregation of historical data. We have elaborated a simulation-based study of the tradeoffs between the data fusion solutions and data accuracy, and have also evaluated the solutions to a large-scale integrated framework (Tycho data) that includes historical data from heterogeneous sources in different subject areas. Finally, we propose and have evaluated a state sequence recovery (SSR) framework, which integrates work from two previous studies, which are both sparse and redundant studies. Our experimental results are based on several algorithms that have been developed and tested in different simulation set-up scenarios under both normal and exponential data distributions.


In this study microgels have been used as novel drug carriers (i.e. a novel controlled drug delivery system) for either dermal or transdermal delivery. The experiments conducted in this project were, firstly, to investigate the uptake and release of model compounds with different physico-chemical properties (i.e. solubility and logKoct/w) to and from two colloidal gel systems. Secondly, the permeation of model compounds across a model skin membrane (silicone membrane), and human epidermis was investigated.

The first part of the project was to co-synthesise temperature-sensitive colloidal microgels particles based on a co-polymer of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (90%)-co-butyl acrylate (10%) (NIPAM/BA) (90/10)(w/w)%, in the presence of and in the absence of ibuprofen (IBU), methyl paraben (MP), and propyl paraben (PP), by a surfactant-free emulsion polymerisation (SFEP) in water. Physico-chemical properties of the microgels were determined using different techniques including photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR spectroscopy), and turbidimetric analysis (UV-vis). The uptake and release of the model compounds to and from colloidal microgel particles was controlled by the solubility and logKoct/w of the drugs. Their subsequent permeation across a model silicone membrane and human skin, were investigated over a range of temperatures (292 K – 313 K). The transport rate of IBU and, PP from poly(NIPAM) microgel is significantly reduced by two and one order of magnitude, respectively, compared with the transport rate of saturated solutions. A huge reduction in the flux indicates that the microgel retards permeation of the drug across both membranes, and hence the microgel can be considered as a permeation retarder. However, fluxes of MP from poly(NIPAM) microgel are equivalents to fluxes of saturated solutions of MP. There is a clear correlation between the solubility and logKoct/w value of the drugs and the flux value for the microgels, incorporating the drugs, across both types of membranes.

In the second part of the work, a co-polymer of poly(NIPAM) (85%) co-butyl acrylate (10%) co-methacrylic acid (5%) (NIPAM/BA/MAA) (85/10/5) microgel was synthesised and investigated as a potential pH and temperature sensitive transdermal delivery device. Three compounds having different logKoct/w and solubilities were incorporated into the microgel, namely: salicylamide (SA), methyl paraben and propyl paraben.


In The Professor (1845–– 46) Charlotte Brontee dwells on the paradox of a material human body containing immaterial essences, such as mind, self, and soul. The novel at once dramatizes and estranges the condition of human embodiment by portraying these ethereal inner qualities with images of enclosure in a rigid carapace. Paying particular attention to sensory experiences, The Professor presents the body as the vehicle through which the exterior world and human interiors come into contact. By construing interiority in material terms, Brontee emphasizes aspects of human experience ordinarily considered dirty and degrading, involving debased bodily functions, including masochistic sexuality. The novel invites a rethinking of prevailing approaches to masochism because it insists on the fleshy materiality of psychological entities (such as desire and conflict) that psychoanalysis usually treats as abstractions. For Brontee relations between people are embodied even before they are gendered; the male first-person narrative voice she adopts in this work affords her the opportunity to consider the strangeness of the idea of inhabiting any body at all. The novel's vaunted attention to surveillance is consequently better understood as bodily penetration than as subjective domination.


This paper uses an economic framework to investigate the depletion of heavy metal absorption capacity of soil. Specifically, the Hotelling model for the allocation of exhaustible resources across time is applied to Cadium deposition onto agricultural soil in the Rhine basin. The Hotelling model requires a knowledge of the resource as well as the demand function for the resource. The resource of absorption capacity is limited because above a certain Cd concentration in soil agriculture is not allowed; accumulation of Cd above this maximum acceptable soil concentration is not allowed. The demand function for absorption capacity corresponds to the cost function of avoiding deposition of heavy metals. According to the Hotelling model calculations, 0.2 DM should be spent to avoid the deposition of 1 kg Cd at a discount rate of 5% and 600 DM at 1 %. The optimal level of Cd control expenditure increases at the discount rate. The paper also presents a modified Hotelling model that takes the replenishment of the resource by removal of heavy metals from the soil (leaching and plant uptake) into account. Using a simple donor-controlled outflow model of Cd behavior in soil and a residence time of 1000 years, the optimal initial expenditure level for Cd control in the Rhine basin is determined to be 0.0006 DM/kg (3% discount rate). For the Katowice district, the optimal level is 20 DM/kg. A net input of Cd into the soil of the Rhine basin is allowed for 400 years in the Rhine basin and for 200 years in Katowice. This paper finds the modified Hotelling model to be a useful heuristic for understanding the time dimension of absorption capacity; specific recommendations cannot be derived, however, because they depend on tenuous inputs such as the cost curve for pollution control, the discount rate, and the maximum acceptable soil concentration.


Public understanding of humanitarian emergencies tends to focus on one story and one type of victim. Examples are manifold: amputees in Sierra Leone, victims of kidnapping in Colombia, or victims of chemical weapons in Syria. At times, the aid community, and the media in turn, seizes upon a particular injustice – landmines, female genital mutilation and child soldiers are examples from recent decades – and directs resources and attention its way. Similarly, thematic trends tend to dominate aid discourse, with funding proposals to donors replete with references to the framework du jour. In a related phenomenon highlighted by author and aid worker Fiona Terry, "[w]ords are commandeered to give a new gloss to familiar themes: 'capacity building' became 'empowerment', which has now become 'resilience'". In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the conflict has been largely defined by sexual violence, and raped women are its most prominent victims.


Sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock represent increasingly grave stages of the systemic inflammatory response to severe infection. Affected patients have a high mortality and morbidity, predominantly as a consequence of multiple organ failure. Cardiac dysfunction with impaired left-ventricular ejection fraction is a well-described manifestation of this syndrome and can be diagnosed in up to 60% of patients with septic shock. The three original articles of this cumulative habilitation describe the cardiac and haemodynamic alterations in septic patients. The review article summarises underlying mechanisms of sepsis-induced cardiac dysfunction. In study 1, B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal pro-BNP (NT-proBNP) levels were measured in 24 patients with severe sepsis or septic shock and 51 patients with acute heart failure. We showed, that in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock, BNP and NT-proBNP values were highly elevated and, despite significant haemodynamic differences, comparable with those found in acute heart failure patients. This supported previous studies, which attributed elevated BNP levels to sepsis-induced myocardial dysfunction. Twelve haemodyamic unstable patients, all monitored with a pulmonary artery catheter, were included in study 2. Despite significant differences in cardiac index and troponin T plasma level, BNP and NTproBNP levels did not differ significantly between the patients with sepsis and acute heart failure. Within patient, changes in BNP and NT-proBNP levels correlated significantly with changes in C-reactive protein values and leukocyte counts, but did not follow changes in pulmonary artery occlusion pressures. The results suggest that elevated levels of natriuretic peptides do not necessarily imply a low cardiac output state and/or elevated left ventricular filling pressures. In study 3 twelve patients with acute heart failure and nine patients with severe sepsis or septic shock had simultaneous haemodynamic measurements by the pulmonary artery catheter and the single indicator transpulmonary thermodilution (PiCCO) technique. The cardiac function index correlated with the left ventricular stroke work index, and a low cardiac function index identified cardiac dysfunction in patients with sepsis. As described in the review article, sepsis-related changes in circulating volume and vessel tone inevitably affect cardiac performance. Although the coronary circulation during sepsis is maintained or even increased, alterations in the microcirculation are likely. Mitochondrial dysfunction, another feature of sepsis-induced organ dysfunction, will also place the cardiomyocytes at risk of adenosine triphosphate depletion. However, clinical studies have demonstrated that myocardial cell death is rare and that cardiac function is fully reversible in survivors. Hence, functional rather than structural changes seem to be responsible for intrinsic myocardial depression during sepsis. The underlying mechanisms include down-regulation of betaadrenergic receptors, depressed post-receptor signaling pathways, impaired calcium liberation from the sarcoplasmic reticulum, and impaired electromechanical coupling at the myofibrillar level. Most, if not all, of these changes are regulated by cytokines and nitric oxide. Integrative studies are needed to distinguish the hierarchy of the various mechanisms underlying septic cardiac dysfunction. As many of these changes are related to severe inflammation and not to infection per se, a better understanding of septic myocardial dysfunction may be usefully extended to other systemic inflammatory conditions encountered in the critically ill. Myocardial depression may be arguably viewed as an adaptive event by reducing energy expenditure in a situation when energy generation is limited, thereby preventing activation of cell death pathways and potentially allowing full functional recovery. Analogies can be drawn to ischemia-induced hibernation, a wellrecognized phenomenon in patients with ischemic heart disease. In view of these adaptive and protective mechanisms, current treatment guidelines must be challenged and new algorithms proposed. Future studies are needed to test novel cardioprotective strategies (including the use of beta-blockers, levosimendan or ivabradine) in patients with severe sepsis and septic shock.


UK public policy makers have a growing interest in collaborative research, where academics work with public, private or third sector partners on a joint project which supports the partner's aims. This paper reports on the findings of five case studies, looking at how information is sourced, managed, used and shared within collaborative research projects. It finds that researchers within collaborative projects have similar information management issues as are known to exist within academia more broadly, but that the specific conditions which govern research collaborations mean that interventions to improve or support information management must be carefully tailored.


Abstract Reducing the burden of management of spent nuclear fuel is important to the future of nuclear energy. The impact of higher pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel burnup is examined in this paper from the perspective of its impact on spent-fuel radioactivity, decay heat, and plutonium content. The necessary fresh fuel enrichments to achieve high burnup in PWRs with the same three-batch operation scheme are first computed; then, characteristics of the spent fuel are determined. The increase in decay heat with burnup is found to be generally less than linear. Although each high-burnup fuel assembly would be hotter and more radioactive, the total decay heat to be removed or accommodated in storage is less for the same electricity production. If the time window before 150 yr after discharge can be excluded from impacting a repository, significant savings in its capacity can be realized with high-burnup fuel. The high-burnup fuel is more proliferation resistant because of reduced total plutonium production per kilowatt hour and because of higher content of less desirable plutonium isotopes, such as 238Pu. The fuel cycle cost can be slightly reduced by increasing burnup until it reaches a shallow minimum near 70 MWd/kg. Higher burnups would require one-time changes to the limits on enrichments that can be handled in most commercial fuel fabrication facilities. Changing the waste fee to base it on the amount of radioactivity in the spent fuel would enhance the economic benefit of high burnup.


This article addresses a methodological controversy regarding the question of whether couples should ideally be interviewed together or apart. It draws on three different studies in which joint couple interviews were used either as the sole source of data or in combination with individual interviews. The authors focus on the specifics and strengths of joint couple interviews, and they argue that interviewing couples together has several advantages, such as solving the ethical problems of anonymity and consent among interviewees, and results in the production of rich data, including observational data. Furthermore, the authors point to the practical advantages of conducting joint interviews with couples. In taking a relational view of the self and of what is produced in research interviews, the authors propose to apply the concept of family display, originally proposed by Janet Finch. It is argued that the researcher may be seen as one of many possible audiences for this type of family practice.


This essay provides a condensed summary of major findings in trends in maternal and paternal employment patterns. Key theoretical concepts (such as cultural approaches, welfare state approaches, preference theory, economic approaches, and life course theory) are briefly summarized. The increase in maternal employment rates in most European countries, and the extent to which this increase has been related to growth in part-time and marginal employment, are also discussed. In studying the dynamics of the employment behavior of mothers, empirical researchers have mainly looked at the amount of time it takes for women to return to work after childbirth. While these studies often capture only a snapshot of the life course—namely, the period between childbirth and labor market reentry—new approaches (so-called sequence analyses) that map the lifetime employment patterns of women have been developed. The analysis of the employment patterns of fathers is an emerging field of research as well. However, little is known so far about how fatherhood affects men's lifetime employment patterns, and how paternal employment varies in different cultural and social policy contexts.

Keywords:

employment;
labor market;
gender roles;
life course;
social policies;
fertility


This paper reports on how people express health concerns as they move around their homes and travel between their homes and workplaces, stores, gyms, restaurants, friends' homes, hotels and other locations. We gathered stories from focus groups and in-home interviews with people with a broad range of health needs, and from these discussions, support for mobility emerged as a key issue for making health maintenance routines easy and resilient in the face of disruptions. The things people carry with them and access at strategic places help them maintain their health routines in the face of stressful and unforeseen situations.


The reported role of social media in recent popular uprisings against Arab autocrats has fueled the notion of 'liberation technology', namely that information and communication technology (ICT) facilitates organization of antigovernment movements in autocracies. Less optimistic observers, on the other hand, contend that ICT is a tool of repression in the hands of autocrats, imposing further restrictions on political and social liberties. We investigate whether the liberation- or the repression-technology perspective can better explain empirically observed patterns. To this end, we analyze two outcomes. First, we look at which autocracies are more likely to adopt and expand the Internet. In line with the repression technology expectation, we find that regimes aiming to prevent any independent public sphere are more likely to introduce the Internet. Second, we study the effects of the Internet on changes towards democracy. This analysis reveals no effect of the Internet on political institutions. These findings provide moderate support for the 'repression technology' perspective, and suggest that the Internet has not – at least in its first two decades of existence – contributed to a global shift towards democracy.


Marjorie Castle's volume in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, Triggering Communism's Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland's Transition, discusses events in the late 1980s that induced the leaders of the Polish Communist party to open negotiations with senior opposition figures, including the head of the still-banned Solidarity trade union. Preliminary talks in 1988 led to agreement on the holding of Round Table talks, which formally began on 6 February 1989 and ended two months later, on 5 April 1989, with arrangements to hold partly free parliamentary elections in early June. Contrary to the expectations of both the regime and the opposition, those elections resulted in an overwhelming victory for Solidarity, starting a chain of events that led to the formation of the first non-Communist government in a Soviet-bloc country since 1948. Three distinguished experts on Poland comment on Castle's analysis of Poland's transition and offer their own assessments of the importance and legacy of the Round Table talks.


This paper addresses a data integration problem: given sev- eral mutually consistent datasets each of which measures a subset of the variables of interest, how can one construct a probabilistic model that fits the data and gives reasonable an-swers to questions which are under-determined by the data? Here we show how to obtain a Bayesian network model which represents the unique probability function that agrees with the probability distributions measured by the datasets and otherwise has maximum entropy. We provide a general algorithm, OBN-cDS, which offers substantial efficiency savings over the standard brute-force approach to determining the maximum entropy probability function. Furthermore, we develop modifications to the general algorithm which enable further efficiency savings but which are only applicable in particular situations. We show that there are circumstances in which one can obtain the model (i) directly from the data; (ii) by solving algebraic problems; and (iii) by solving relatively simple independent optimisation problems.


The oxide fraction of industrial zinc ash was characterized in terms of chemical and phase composition, leaching behavior in sulfuric acid solutions, and leaching thermal effect. The waste product contained about 68 percent zinc (Zn), 7 percent chlorine (Cl), 2 percent aluminum (Al) and less than 1 percent other metals, such as iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), calcium (Ca) and silicon (Si). It consisted mainly of zinc oxide contaminated with metallic zinc and zinc hydroxide chloride. The dissolution of metals from the zinc ash was determined for solid-to-liquid ratios ranging from 100 to 500 kg/m3, acid concentrations of 10 and 20 percent, and temperatures of 20 and 40 °C. The best result — 130 g/dm3 Zn(II) at 95 percent zinc recovery — was obtained at a solid-to-liquid ratio of 200 kg/m3, sulfuric acid concentration of 20 percent and initial temperature of 40 °C. The final solutions were contaminated mainly by Mn(II) and Fe(III) ions, but the presence of cadmium (Cd(II)) and lead (Pb(II)) ions enabled electrowinning of zinc of about 99 percent purity at high current efficiency of 85 to 99 percent. Leaching of the material was an exothermic process with reaction heat of about 520 kJ/kg.


At a time when liberal internationalism and institutions of multilateral cooperation are being dealt almost daily blows, this special issue revisits the notion and practice of middle power liberal internationalism. The introduction suggests that while liberal internationalism is far from dead, the challenges are serious and multiple. Reflecting on the seven essays contained in the volume, it argues that the biggest challenge for a future liberal internationalism is not to double-down on its normative virtues, but critically to reflect on how it can be retooled to respond to new challenges.


Many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have behavior repertoires that might be expected to have an impact on members of both the immediate and extended family. This article examines this impact, reviewing relevant literature related to stressors and supports for families of individuals with ASD. The focus of the article highlights research on stressors and supports in the following areas (a) stress in the marital subsystem, (b) stress in the parental subsystem, (c) stress in the sibling subsystem, (d) coping strategies used by families, and (e) informal and formal sources of support used by families. Implications and recommendations for future research and practice are discussed.


Children who are victims of maltreatment often suffer from a lack of physical, emotional and linguistic stimulation from their caregivers. This prolonged lack of stimulation has the potential to result in language delays that can have lasting negative effects on children including behavioral problems, psychiatric conditions, an increased risk for adult longterm health sequela, and criminality and violent behavior. Research suggests that children who live in low socio-economic homes have significantly less linguistic stimulation than children who live in moderate to high-income brackets. Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology is a device through which the language environment of the infant and mother can be captured and quantified. The mechanism records parental utterances (words spoken around the child); child vocalizations (including typical infant babble); conversational turns (verbal exchanges between parent and infant); and, time spent near televisions. SafeCare, an evidence-based family support program, aims to reduce child maltreatment by increasing bonding behaviors between parent and infant. Through implementation of the Parent-Infant Interaction module, parents are taught important bonding behaviors with their infants. What is yet to be evaluated is the quantifiable effect implementation of PII has on the language environment of families at-risk for maltreatment. The LENA device was utilized in this quasi-experimental research design to assess parental utterances pre-and postimplementation of SafeCare. Maternal utterances include adult word count, child vocalizations and conversational turns. Results from this exploratory research may have implications for future modifications to SafeCare, as well as to other family support programs aimed at child maltreatment prevention.


While much of the software that people depend on is written by professional software engineers, increasingly, important applications are being created by non-professional (end-user) programmers. Using tools such as spreadsheet environments and web authoring tools, these programmers are creating software that is being used to support significant activities and inform decisions. Such software needs to work dependably and increase user productivity, but evidence shows that it frequently does not. For example, studies have shown that a large percentage of the spreadsheets created by end-users contain faults, and data suggests that time spent maintaining web macros may actually impede their users' overall efforts. In recent years researchers have begun to address this problem, considering various approaches to adapting software engineering techniques to the realm of end-user programming. For example, researchers have sought ways to help end users test and debug spreadsheets, and to increase productivity in web macros by combining them with various software engineering devices. To make progress in this area, researchers are turning to empirical studies, in order to investigate new approaches, understand the factors that influence them, and better understand issues related to end user programmers themselves. In this talk I will present recent work being done in end-user software engineering, with a particular focus on the state of the art of empirical research in the area. I will show that there is a pressing need for further empirical work in this context, and that there are interesting questions that researchers from the ESEM community could help to answer. For example, how are end-users different from programmers, and how does that affect how we conduct the research? (Are there assumptions we make when doing studies with programmers that do not hold with end-users? What are the threats to validity when, say, we use CS students as subjects in end-user studies?) As another example, how are end-users different from each other and how does that affect study results? (The end-user community is much more diverse than the professional programmer community. What are the important context variables one needs to capture when studying them?) A concerted effort by the ESEM community on such issues could result in a substantial impact on society as a whole, and on the everyday lives of many people.


We consider a multi-class queueing system operating under the discriminatory processor-sharing (DPS) discipline. The DPS discipline provides a natural approach for modeling the flow-level performance of differentiated bandwidth-sharing mechanisms. Motivated by the extreme diversity in flow sizes observed in the Internet, we examine the system performance in an asymptotic regime where the flow dynamics of the various classes occur on separate time scales. Specifically, from the perspective of a given class, the arrival and service completions of some of the competing classes (called mice) evolve on an extremely fast time scale. In contrast, the flow dynamics of the remaining classes (referred to as elephants) occur on a comparatively slow time scale. Assuming a strict separation of time scales, we obtain simple explicit expressions for various performance measures of interest, such as the distribution of the numbers of flows, mean delays, and flow throughputs. In particular, the latter performance measures are insensitive, in the sense that they only depend on the service requirement distributions through their first moments. Numerical experiments show that the limiting results provide remarkably accurate approximations in certain cases.


We compared the performance of three heuristics with that of subjects on variants of a well-known combinatorial optimization task, the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP). The present task consisted of finding the shortest path through an array of points from one side of the array to the other. Like the standard TSP, the task is computationally intractable and, as with the standard TSP, people appear to be able to find good solutions with relative ease. The three heuristics used mechanisms that have been cited as potentially relevant in human performance in the standard task. These were: convex hull, nearest neighbor, and crossing avoidance. We compared heuristic and human performance in terms of lengths of paths, overlap between solutions, and number of crossings. Of the three heuristics, the convex hull appeared to result in the best overall fit with human solutions.


BERNARDI, GIACOMO (3 Jan. 1888-12 Aug. 1966) brought some of the greatest names in music to Cleveland in his career as impresario of more than 1,000 concerts. Born Jacob Moses Schwartzman in Bendery, Bessarabia, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1906 and soon found employment in a Cleveland clothing factory. His ambition was to become a singer, however, and he left on the recommendation of no less than Enrico Caruso to study voice in New York. He returned to Cleveland in 1913 as a featured singer in Robin Hood at the EUCLID AVENUE OPERA HOUSE, but his career was soon aborted by an unsuccessful sinus operation. He turned to booking concerts under his adopted name of G. Bernardi in 1919, taking over a function formerly performed by ADELLA PRENTISS HUGHES, founder of the CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA. When the Depression cramped the concert business, Bernardi concocted a patent sinus medicine with the aid of Cleveland pharmacist Henry Sherwood and marketed it under the name Benaris. Having been divorced from Bessie S. Bernardi c. 1925, Bernardi married Harriet Dragon in 1940 and resumed the promotion of concerts under the title of Cleveland Concert Assn. and later Cleveland Opera Assn. The list of performers appearing under his aegis, usually in PUBLIC AUDITORIUM or Music Hall, included Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jascha Heifetz, the Bolshoi Ballet, Artur Rubinstein, Marian Anderson, and the New York Philharmonic. Reflecting changing public tastes, he also began booking more popular acts in the 1960s. He was survived by his wife Harriet and 3 children: Victoria Schultz, Gloria, and Franklin. They continued the concert agency for several years, becoming inactive around 1971. Giacomo Bernardi Papers, WRHS.


SUMMARY We propose a multilevel preconditioning strategy for the iterative solution of large sparse linear systems arising from anite element discretization of the radiation diusion equations. In particular, these equa- tions are solved using a mixednite element scheme in order to make the discretization discontinuous, which is imposed by the application in which the diusion equation will be embedded. The essence of the preconditioner is to use a continuousnite element discretization of the original, elliptic diusion equation for preconditioning the discontinuous equations. We have found that this preconditioner is very eective and makes the iterative solution of the discontinuous diusion equations practical for large problems. This approach should be applicable to discontinuous discretizations of other elliptic equations. We show how our preconditioner is developed and applied to radiation diusion problems on unstructured, tetrahedral meshes and show numerical results that illustrate its eectiveness. Published in 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Skywood has been called a house that turns lifestyle into a work of art and one that offers a masterclass in architectures power to excite and inspire. As a structure, it reflects rigour and attention to detail, attributes that its creator, Graham Phillips, credits both to his time at Foster & Partners, and to his experiences of buildings he loves, from Mies van der Rohes Barcelona Pavilion and Luis Barragans house in Mexico City, to the serene composition of Japanese gardens. Skywood House garnered immediate acclaim from the architectural and popular press. It also became a favoured setting for television and film producers, who found in its pure form and exquisite geometries the perfect backdrop for an array of dramatic scenarios. Known as the Va Va Voom house for its appearance in the 2005 Renault Clio television advert featuring the football titan Thierry Henry, Skywood continues to attract a popular and critical audience. And Phillipss further projects, carried out as an independent architect, resonate with the same sense of precision and elegance.


The outcome of exposure to infectious microbes or their toxins is influenced by both microbial and host genes. Some host genes encode defense mechanisms, whereas others assist pathogen functions. Genomic analyses have associated host gene mutations with altered infectious disease susceptibility, but evidence for causality is limited. Here we demonstrate that human genetic variation affecting capillary morphogenesis gene 2 (CMG2), which encodes a host membrane protein exploited by anthrax toxin as a principal receptor, dramatically alters toxin sensitivity. Lymphoblastoid cells derived from a HapMap Project cohort of 234 persons of African, European, or Asian ancestry differed in sensitivity mediated by the protective antigen (PA) moiety of anthrax toxin by more than four orders of magnitude, with 99% of the cohort showing a 250-fold range of sensitivity. We find that relative sensitivity is an inherited trait that correlates strongly with CMG2 mRNA abundance in cells of each ethnic/geographical group and in the combined population pool (P = 4 × 10−11). The extent of CMG2 expression in transfected murine macrophages and human lymphoblastoid cells affected anthrax toxin binding, internalization, and sensitivity. A CMG2 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) occurring frequently in African and European populations independently altered toxin uptake, but was not statistically associated with altered sensitivity in HapMap cell populations. Our results reveal extensive human diversity in cell lethality dependent on PA-mediated toxin binding and uptake, and identify individual differences in CMG2 expression level as a determinant of this diversity. Testing of genomically characterized human cell populations may offer a broadly useful strategy for elucidating effects of genetic variation on infectious disease susceptibility.


Introduction Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that afflicts about 1% of the population (Strange 1992). Patients experience a variety of symptoms that have been divided into subgroups of positive symptoms (e.g., thought disorder, abnormal beliefs and experiences) and negative symptoms (e.g., deficiency of speech, loss of emotional response, reduced motor function). The etiology and pathophysiology of schizophrenia have been the focus of intensive research for decades. Convergent lines of evidence indicate that dysfunction of a specific area of the cerebral cortex — the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — represents one of the central features of the pathophysiology of schizophrenia (Bunney and Bunney 2000). A synthesis of results from in vivo imaging and postmortem studies (Lewis et al. 1999) also suggests that prefrontal cortex dysfunction may be related to abnormalities in the connectivity between neurons in this region that are likely to involve GABAergic interneurons (neurons that synthesize and release the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, γ-aminobutyric acid or GABA). The synthesis of GABA is catalyzed by the enzyme glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD). Molecular cloning studies have shown that in the adult brain, GAD exists in 2 isoforms, called GAD65 and GAD67, which are the products of 2 independently regulated genes. GAD65 and GAD67 are coexpressed in GABAergic neurons. Gene lesioning studies in mice (Condie et al. 1997, Kash et al. 1997) suggest that GAD67 is the major isoform and is responsible for the maintenance of basal GABA levels in cells, whereas GAD65 can be rapidly activated in times of high GABA demand.


The electric power utilities play a vital role in the generation, transmission and distribution of the electrical power to the end users. The power utilities generally face two major issues – firstly, power systems are expected to operate close to the maximum capacity, and secondly, there is a need for accurate monitoring and control of the power system network using the modern technological advances together with their associated configuration tools. These two issues are interconnected as better monitoring allows for better control of the power system. The development of the new standard-based power system technologies contribute to concept of building of a smarter grid. The challenge is that this process requires the development of new control and operation architectures and methods for data acquisition, data transfer, and control computation. These methods require data for the dynamic state of the entire power system in real-time, which allows for the introduction of synchrophasor-based monitoring and control of the power system. This paper describes the research work for integration of the newer existing power system technologies to build fully automated systems for the real-time solution of power system energy management problem, incorporating data measurement and acquisition, data transfer and distribution through a communication network, and data storage and retrieval in one complete system. The paper further details the developed methods, algorithms, procedures, software and hardware tools for implementation of a lab-scale prototype of the power system and the acquisition and transfer of the data to the control center in order to allow for the solution of the optimal power dispatch problem in real-time using real-time data. The developed prototype systems are tested for the fivebus power system model, and the system operation test results are presented. The model is developed within the RSCAD software environment and the output signals are fed to the software-based PMU. The data from the GTNET-PMU is transferred to the Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC) using the Ethernet. The developed data acquisition, data transfer, data retrieval and data storage system algorithms and software programs can be expanded for use in the power grid energy management system for the economic dispatch solution in regional or national control centers, smart grid applications, educational courses and postgraduate research at universities.


In the current network communication infrastructure, there is a tremendous growth in heterogeneous computer network and proliferation of network traffic which demands efficient and secure network monitoring and network management. Mostly SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) based client server architecture is used for network management which uses SNMP as a protocol to provide centralized approach of network management which is quite efficient in terms of performance. Foremost problems related to this architecture are heterogeneity in networks, limited amount of bandwidth, lack of resources, lack of fault tolerance capability and huge amount of traffic generated on central server which can degrade the performance of network. In this paper we proposed distributed and decentralized approach for the purpose of network monitoring and management which reduces the traffic around management station and alleviate processing load created by management protocol like SNMP. To facilitate distributed and decentralized monitoring, we proposed a secured multi-agent based architecture in which, we created different mobile agents for the purpose of getting network related information. Mobile agents retrieve network related information, which act as an input for network administrator. Network administrator uses this information to enhance the performance of network by managing network traffic and bandwidth utilization of network. Since security risk is the main drawback of mobile agent paradigm, so for this we have used ECC (Elliptical Curve Cryptography) which provides authentication as well as confidentiality to the monitoring process.


Like its predecessor, this book by the renowned physicist Sir Rudolf Peierls draws from many diverse fields of theoretical physics to present problems in which the answer differs from what our intuition had led us to expect. In some cases an apparently convincing approximation turns out to be misleading; in others a seemingly unmanageable problem turns out to have a simple answer. Peierls's intention, however, is not to treat theoretical physics as an unpredictable game in which such surprises happen at random. Instead he shows how in each case careful thought could have prepared us for the outcome. Peierls has chosen mainly problems from his own experience or that of his collaborators, often showing how classic problems can lend themselves to new insights. His book is aimed at both graduate students and their teachers. Praise for Surprises in Theoretical Physics: "A beautiful piece of stimulating scholarship and a delight to read. Physicists of all kinds will learn a great deal from it."--R. J. Blin-Stoyle, Contemporary Physics


Energy is a basic resource in digital transmission links. Physically, radio channels correspond to passive circuits and most of the transmitted energy is lost in the channel. Two alternative approaches are used for performance measurements in terms of energy. Either the average transmitted or received energy per bit is used, both usually normalized by the receiver noise spectral density. This leads to the average transmitted or received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per bit, respectively. However, the transmitted energy is the basic system resource. The average energy gain of a channel depends on the transmitted signal. For convenience, the transmitted SNR referred to the receiver is defined to be the product of the transmitted SNR and the representative energy gain, which is defined as the average energy gain of a signal that is uniformly distributed in all dimensions: time, frequency and space. An explicit relationship between the transmitted and received SNR's using the covariance concept is derived. Limitations of the use of different SNR definitions are summarized


Abstract: In Asia, ginseng is commonly included in herbals used for the treatment of sexual dysfunction. Recent studies in laboratory animals have shown that both Asian and American forms of ginseng enhance libido and copulatory performance. These effects of ginseng may not be due to changes in hormone secretion, but to direct effects of ginseng, or its ginsenoside components, on the central nervous system and gonadal tissues. Indeed, there is good evidence that ginsenosides can facilitate penile erection by directly inducing the vasodilatation and relaxation of penile corpus cavernosum. Moreover, the effects of ginseng on the corpus cavernosum appear to be mediated by the release and/or modification of release of nitric oxide from endothelial cells and perivascular nerves. Treatment with American ginseng also affects the central nervous system and has been shown to significantly alter the activity of hypothalamic catecholamines involved in the facilitation of copulatory behavior and hormone secretion. Recent findings that ginseng treatment decreased prolactin secretion also suggested a direct nitric oxide‐mediated effect of ginseng at the level of the anterior pituitary. Thus, animal studies lend growing support for the use of ginseng in the treatment of sexual dysfunction and provide increasing evidence for a role of nitric oxide in the mechanism of ginsenoside action.


OLS models are the predominant choice for poverty predictions in a variety of contexts such as proxy-means tests, poverty mapping or cross-survey impu- tations. This paper compares the performance of econometric and machine learning models in predicting poverty using alternative objective functions and stochastic dominance analysis based on coverage curves. It finds that the choice of an optimal model largely depends on the distribution of incomes and the poverty line. Comparing the performance of different econometric and machine learning models is therefore an important step in the process of opti- mizing poverty predictions and targeting ratios.


Abstract. Measurements of submicron aerosol composition, light scattering, and size distribution were made from 17 October to 15 November 2008 at the elevated Paposo site (25° 0.4' S, 70° 27.01' W, 690 m a.s.l.) on the Chilean coast as part of the VOCALS* Regional Experiment (REx). Based on the chemical composition measurements, a receptor modeling analysis using Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) was carried out, yielding four broad source categories of the aerosol mass, light scattering coefficient, and a proxy for cloud condensation nucleus (CCN) concentration at 0.4% supersaturation derived from the size distribution measurements assuming an observed soluble mass fraction of 0.53. The sources resolved were biomass burning, marine, an urban-biofuels mix and a somewhat ambiguous mix of smelter emissions and mineral dust. The urban-biofuels mix is the most dominant aerosol mass component (52%) followed by biomass burning (25%), smelter/soil dust (12%) and marine (9%) sources. The average (mean±std) submicron aerosol mass concentration, aerosol light scattering coefficient and proxy CCN concentration were, 8.77±5.40 μg m−3, 21.9±11.0 Mm−1 and 548±210 cm−3, respectively. Sulfate is the dominant identified submicron species constituting roughly 40% of the dry mass (3.64±2.30 μg m−3), although the indentified soluble species constitute only 53% of the mass. Much of the unidentified mass is likely organic in nature. The relative importance of each aerosol source category is different depending upon whether mass, light scattering, or CCN concentration is being considered, indicating that the mean size of aerosols associated with each source are different. Marine aerosols do not appear to contribute to more than 10% to either mass, light scattering, or CCN concentration at this site. Back trajectory cluster analysis proved consistent with the PMF source attribution. *VOCALS: VAMOS** Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study (VOCALS) **VAMOS: Variability of American Monsoon System


Inspired by the gas exfoliation of graphite oxide, a novel airflow sensor is demonstrated with an ultrathin (about 2 nm) reduced graphene oxide (RGO) film with tunable interlayer gaps. The airflow on/off reversibly switches the interlayer gaps of the RGO sheets, and thus changes the electrical conductivity of the RGO film. Remarkably, by virtue of the atomic-scale thickness of the sensing component, RGO sensors show high sensitivity, a wide detection range (tens of mm s−1 to several m s−1), and a low detection limit (26 mm s−1). Such performance is better than that of most of the traditional sensors and near to the capacity of some living beings.


Affine models describe the stylized time-series properties of the term structure of interest rates in a reasonable manner, they generalize relatively easily to higher dimensions, and a vast academic literature exists relating to their implementation. This combination of characteristics makes the affine class a natural introductory point for modelling interest rate dynamics. The author summarizes and synthesizes the theoretical and practical specifics relating to this analytically attractive class of models. This summary is accomplished in a self-contained manner with sufficient detail so that relatively few technical points will be left for the reader to ponder. As such, this paper represents a first step towards advancing the Bank of Canada's research agenda in this area, with a view to using these models to assist with practical debt and risk-management problems currently under study.


This paper updates the research progress in investigating the relationships between information technology (IT) investments and productivity in Australia. Based on the production function approach, two empirical tests using two different Australian datasets were performed. The first test focuses on productivity attributable to IT capital equipment at the aggregate level under the neoclassical economic theory. The second test focuses on the relationship between productivity gain and effectiveness of IT use at the firm level under the endogenous growth theory. The preliminary findings suggest that Australia has benefited from rapidly declining prices of IT equipment which has led to massive substitution of other types of capital inputs. There is also evidence to suggest that Australian firms have used IT effectively to improve productivity.


We present a system for animating an articulate figure using a physical skeleton, or armature, connected to a workstation. The skeleton is covered with sensors that monitor the orientations of the joints and send this information to the computer via custom-built hardware. The system is precise, fast, compact, and easy to use. It lets traditional stop-motion animators produce animation on a computer without requiring them to learn complex software. The working environment is very similar to the traditional environment but without the nuisances of lights, a camera, and delicate foam-latex skin. The resulting animation lacks the artifacts of stop-motion animation, the pops and jerkiness, and yet retains the intentional subtleties and hard stops that computer animation often lacks.


Given a Dedekind incomplete ordered field, a pair of convergent nets of gaps which are respectively increasing or decreasing to the same point is used to obtain a further equivalent criterion for Dedekind completeness of ordered fields: Every continuous one-to-one function defined on a closed bounded interval maps interior of that interval to the interior of the image. Next, it is shown that over all closed bounded intervals in any monotone incomplete ordered field, there are continuous not uniformly continuous unbounded functions whose ranges are not closed, and continuous 1-1 functions which map every interior point to an interior point (of the image) but are not open. These are achieved using appropriate nets cofinal in gaps or coinitial in their complements. In our third main theorem, an ordered field is constructed which has parametrically definable regular gaps but no $\emptyset$-definable divergent Cauchy functions (while we show that, in either of the two cases where parameters are or are not allowed, any definable divergent Cauchy function gives rise to a definable regular gap). Our proof for the mentioned independence result uses existence of infinite primes in the subring of the ordered field of generalized power series with rational exponents and real coefficients consisting of series with no infinitesimal terms, as recently established by D. Pitteloud.


The decrease of financial integration both at the global and European level reflects, to a certain extent, a market response to the crisis. It might, however, also be partly driven by policies such as capital flow management measures (CFMs). In addition, several other measures taken by central banks, regulators and governments in response to the crisis may have had less obvious negative side effects on financial integration. Against this backdrop, this paper explores broad definitions of financial protectionism in order to raise awareness of the fact that the range of policies which could negatively affect financial integration may be much wider than residency-based CFMs. At the same time, the paper acknowledges that these measures have mostly been taken for legitimate financial stability purposes and with no protectionist intentions. The paper considers five categories of policy measures which could contribute to financial fragmentation both at the global and at the EU level: currency-based measures directed towards banks, geographic ring fencing, some financial repression policies, crisis resolution policies with a national bias, and some financial sector taxes. JEL Classification: F36, F42, F62