The purpose of the study was to prepare a stable multiple emulsion containing a skin anti-aging agent and using paraffin oil. Vitamin C, was incorporated into the inner aqueous phase of water-in-oil-in-water (w/o/w) multiple emulsion at a concentration of 1%. Multiple emulsion was prepared by two step method. Stability studies were performed at different accelerated conditions, i.e. 8 o C (in refrigerator), 25 o C (in oven), 40 o C (in oven), and 40 o C at 75% RH (in stability cabin) for 28 days to predict the stability of formulations. Different parameters, namely pH, globule size, electrical conductivity and effect of centrifugation (simulating gravity) were determined during stability studies. Data obtained was evaluated statistically using ANOVA two way analyses and LSD tests. Multiple emulsion formulated was found to be stable at lower temperatures (i.e. 8 and 25 o C) for 28 days. No phase separation was observed in the samples during stability testing. It was found that there was no significant change (p > 0.05) in globule sizes in most of the samples kept at various conditions. Insignificant changes (p > 0.05) in both pH and conductivity values were determined for the samples kept at 8, 40, and 40 o C at 75% RH, throughout the study period. Further studies are needed to formulate more stable emulsions with other emulsifying agents. KEY WORDS : Multiple emulsion, Vitamin C, Stability Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2010 , 24(1), 1-10.


Want to learn Java?Then,Murach's Beginning Java with Eclipse is for you! Its goal is to ease the steep learning curve and it uses the Eclipse IDE to make you productive as quickly as possible. In fact, you'll grow from beginner to entry-level professional! Here's how:Section 1 guides you through the core concepts and coding you need to create simple object-oriented applications. By the end of this section, you'll be using Eclipse to code, test, and debug 3-tier Java applications that use classes from the java SE 8 API as well as your own classes.Then, sections 2, 3, and 4 let you build out your core Java and OOP skills. Here, you'll find chapters that expand on skills that were presented in section 1 or that teach you new skills. That includes working with features that are new in Java 8, like lambda expressions and the new date/time API.At that point, you'll have all the Java prerequisites you need to start learning web or Android programming. Or, you can go on to section 5 to start developing desktop applications for business with a Swing interface and a MySQL database.Along the way, the sample applications will show you how to apply your skills in the real world. And the chapter exercises will give you valuable hands-on experience programming (the solutions to these exercises are posted at our website, so you can check your work).


Legal education can learn important lessons from Gresham's Law. (That law is informally stated as "bad, or debased, money tends to drive good, or full value, money out of circulation.") When the intrinsic value of something can be separated from the nominal value, as is true with money and law degrees, some people will seek the benefits of the nominal value without "paying the cost" of the intrinsic value. A nominal value of the law degree is the ability to take the bar exam or be licensed; the intrinsic value is the education and skills expected of one who has the degree. In turn, such a separation of values can put pressure on "good" education to compete with debased education, since both carry the same nominal value for licensing. Accreditation can serve the purpose of ensuring that the nominal value of a law degree reflects true educational value and the accreditation Standards of the ABA should be directed toward that end. Because the ABA intentionally ties its accreditation to licensure, its touchstone should be the public interest served by licensure. The Standards can be justified only if they contribute to this interest in an effective and efficient way. The AALS membership process, on the other hand, has other goals and some of its membership requirements are legitimately directed to academic and faculty interests.


Biopolymers consist of three major classes, i.e., polynucleotides (DNA, RNA), polypeptides (proteins) and polysaccharides (sugar chains). It is widely accepted that polynucleotides and polypeptides play fundamental roles in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. But, sugar chains have been poorly studied in this process, and their biological/clinical significance remains largely unexplored. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a motoneuron-degenerative disease, the pathogenesis of which requires both cell autonomous and non-cell autonomous processes. Here, we investigated the role of keratan sulfate (KS), a sulfated long sugar chain of proteoglycan, in ALS pathogenesis. We employed ALS model SOD1G93A mice and GlcNAc6ST-1−/− mice, which are KS-deficient in the central nervous system. Unexpectedly, SOD1G93AGlcNAc6ST-1−/− mice exhibited a significantly shorter lifespan than SOD1G93A mice and an accelerated appearance of clinical symptoms (body weight loss and decreased rotarod performance). KS expression was induced exclusively in a subpopulation of microglia in SOD1G93A mice, and became detectable around motoneurons in the ventral horn during the early disease phase before body weight loss. During this phase, the expression of M2 microglia markers was transiently enhanced in SOD1G93A mice, while this enhancement was attenuated in SOD1G93AGlcNAc6ST-1−/− mice. Consistent with this, M2 microglia were markedly less during the early disease phase in SOD1G93AGlcNAc6ST-1−/− mice. Moreover, KS expression in microglia was also detected in some human ALS cases. This study suggests that KS plays an indispensable, suppressive role in the early phase pathogenesis of ALS and may represent a new target for therapeutic intervention.


435 Journal of Psychopathology 2014;20:435-441 Summary This paper offers an overview of a current direction of clinical and empirical research in schizophrenia, viz. the phenomenologically informed approach that regards the generative disturbance of schizophrenia as a specific disorder of the self. Empirical studies have recently documented that anomalous self-experiences (i.e. self-disorders) aggregate in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, but not in other mental disorders. What appears to underlie this aggregation of self-disorders is an instability of the first-person perspective, which threatens the most basic experience of being a subject of awareness and action. In this paper, we elicit the meaning of the phenomenological notion of "disordered self" in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, we offer rich clinical descriptions of self-disorders, and we provide a concise overview of results from contemporary empirical studies. Finally, we provide some suggestions for future research on self-disorders, their nosological and diagnostic implications, and consider their potential value in psychotherapy for schizophrenia.


Purpose. The purpose of this study was to conduct a formal program evaluation of the North American Division Evangelism Institute (NADEI). The goal of NADEI is to equip pastors and laity for ministry. It developed over 30 years, and has presented formal and informal educational programs during that time. This helped it emerge as an indispensable unit in the North American Division (NAD), Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary (SDATS), and Andrews University (AU). However, the programs of NADEI had not been evaluated. Method. This study followed an Evaluative Case Study Design to evaluate the formal and informal programs of NADEI. Formal programs dealt with the courses that NADEI offered through the Seminary at Andrews University. Informal programs dealt with programs offered to church members and pastors of the NAD. The research design allowed the study of treatments, subjects, and programs in their naturalistic state. The design enabled the evaluator to complete a holistic, in-depth assessment of the program, with its complexities and human interplay to show the different perspectives of NADEI. Data were collected via structured interviews, focus-group interviews, surveys, document analysis, and observation. Church members, church leaders, pastors, students, administrators, and NADEI personnel were included in the study. Interviews and conversations were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The data were analyzed using SPSS 17 and NVivo 8 software. Results. Results revealed that NADEI had one established and seven emerging informal programs. The established program, SEEDS Conference, started in 1996, has served to spearhead the church-planting movement in the NAD. There was total agreement among informants that the SEEDS Conference provided a spiritual atmosphere to nurture faith, practical church-planting techniques, and cutting-edge techniques for church planting. Three themes emerged related to the SEEDS Conferences: (a) learning: SEEDS Conferences provide opportunity to learn church-planting concepts and church-growth principles for laity of the Seventh-day Adventist Church; (b) inspiration: SEEDS Conferences provide inspiration to increase personal faith in God and His work on earth, and (c) action: SEEDS Conferences provide opportunity to develop lay leadership for action. The formal curriculum centers on specific Seminary courses to provide classroom as well as field practicum in the ministerial education. The NADEI courses have an overall higher mean than University and Seminary courses. Five themes emerged related to formal curriculum: perception, excellence in teaching, organization, ministerial experience, and assessment. The perception among the seminarians was that NADEI teachers have the expertise and excellence to show the practical dimension of theological education. Students viewed NADEI courses as more practical providing real-life situations. Seminarians emphasized that they received specialized ministerial training and gained deeper ministerial experience by taking NADEI courses. Conclusion. The existing structure of NADEI enables it to impart formal and informal ministerial education. NADEI courses are distinctly different from other seminary courses. NADEI professors provided excellent teaching in the classrooms as well as in the field. While the students of the Seminary evaluated the instruction of NADEI professors highly, they also indicated that the curriculum of NADEI courses requires development and redesign. NADEI would benefit by inviting a curriculum specialist to help revise the curriculum to meet the requirements of formal as well as informal ministerial education. A general lack of awareness exists regarding NADEI's informal programs in NAD. There is a need for training in conducting informal ministerial programs with strategic planning to marketing them in NAD.


This paper provides a new system model for delivering routine vaccination service in Uganda in low resource settings by incorporating the entire supporting infrastructure from vaccination suppliers to vaccination receivers. The model introduces ways of improving access, service quality as well as caretakers' motivation to complete their children's vaccination schedule. A system model design is provided together with graphical user interfaces for all agents in the new system. Vaccination service is not easily available and too often not reliable due to rural health facilities being far away and in poor condition with few health workers, and because of an unreliable vaccine supply system (MoH 2010b; USAID 2010). Outreaches are irregular and of ad-hoc character. System wise, a geographically more centralized outreach program in direct connection to district vaccine stores could circumvent unreliable vaccine distribution channels and strengthen vaccine availability and quality. Families experience low motivation and knowledge about vaccination dates for their children to complete immunization programs (Tugumisirize et al. 2002). Community Health Workers, coordinated with help of ICT, can be used to encourage families to complete vaccination and inform them on upcoming vaccination outreach sessions. Qualitative research methodology, with methods including structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, observations and literature studies, was chosen to analyze and evaluate the current Ugandan vaccination system. An agile-like product development process was used as a framework for finding and evaluating concepts underlying the artifacts design which represents the system (e.g., GUI). Outcomes of internal evaluations together with representatives of the client organization (ICT4MPOWER) indicate that the new system can increase access and service quality. We conclude that the new system can cure several present issues in vaccination service delivery. However, further studies are needed to appreciate practical feasibility of the new system, for example by considering cost and ICT infrastructure.


In the past decade, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of neurophysiological methods to better understand marketing phenomena among academics and practitioners. However, the value of these methods in predicting advertising success remains underresearched. Using a unique experimental protocol to assess responses to 30-second television ads, the authors capture many measures of advertising effectiveness across six commonly used methods (traditional self-reports, implicit measures, eye tracking, biometrics, electroencephalography, and functional magnetic resonance imaging). These measures have been shown to reliably tap into higher-level constructs commonly used in advertising research: attention, affect, memory, and desirability. Using time-series data on sales and gross rating points, the authors attempt to relate individual-level response to television ads in the lab to the ads' aggregate, market-level elasticities. The authors show that functional magnetic resonance imaging measures explain the most variance in advertising elasticities beyond the baseline traditional measures. Notably, activity in the ventral striatum is the strongest predictor of real-world, market-level response to advertising. The authors discuss the findings and their significant implications for theory, research, and practice.


In this study, the effects of different levels of hydrocolloids added to whole wheat flours on the bread properties were researched. With this aim, it was determined the effects of Guar gum (0,15-1,00%), LBG (0,15-1,00%), CMC (0,25-1,00%) and Karragenan (0,15-1,00%) on some physical and technological properties of the dough and bread, that were made from whole wheat flours which were obtained from Bezostaya and Ikizce wheat varieties and also bread staling. Additionally, the effects of usage of emulsifiers, DATEM (0,50-2,00%), besides of hydrocolloids on the dough and bread quality were investigated. According to the results, the bread properties were not improved significantly by hydrocolloids added singly. To eliminate this negativity, double and triple combinations were established by adding different levels of hydrocolloids and emulsifiers. In this combinations, especially stability and loaf volume were increased and bread staling was retarded. Generally, the best results were obtained with 0,50% CMC+1,00% DATEM and 0,45% LBG+0,50% CMC+1,00% DATEM combinations.


The information derived from remotely sensed data must be carefully used because there are many sources of error that potentially affect its quality. In this respect, an accurate full calibration process of any sensor is essential because it can minimise various uncertainties and errors that reduce the final quality of the products derived from remotely sensed data. This paper presents several calibration efforts performed on MERIS data and subsequently focuses on the smile effect as well as on the vicarious calibration corrections. The implications of these corrections are evaluated using a MERIS full resolution level 1b image that was acquired over The Netherlands. A thematic approach, based on regional land cover mapping using linear spectral unmixing, and a continuous approach, based on continuous variables (FAPAR, MTCI and NDVI), are used to quantify these implications. Even though MERIS has a very high radiometric quality, results point out that these radiometric effects are consistently present in the final MERIS products. We also conclude that MERIS, after including all potential corrections investigated here, does not exhibit significant (radiometric) deficiencies. However, from a strict point of view, all the proposed radiometric corrections should be applied to the data so that the retrieval of quantitative information can be done with the highest possible quality. The use of fully radiometrically corrected data will also facilitate multitemporal comparisons. Therefore, we finally conclude that a systematic application of all relevant calibration parameters will increase the long term comparability of MERIS measurements in such a way that more emphasis can be put on the retrieval of MERIS products.


Mutation has been recognized to be an effective software testing technique. It is based on the insertion of artificial faults in the system under test (SUT) by means of a set of mutation operators. Different operators can mutate each program statement in several ways, which may produce a huge number of mutants. This leads to very high costs for test case execution and result analysis. Several works have approached techniques for cost reduction in mutation testing, like n-order mutation where each mutant contains n artificial faults instead of one. There are two approaches to n-order mutation: increasing the effectiveness of mutation by searching for good n-order mutants, and decreasing the costs of mutation testing by reducing the mutants set through the combination of the first-order mutants into n-order mutants. This paper is focused on the second approach. However, this second use entails a risk: the possibility of leaving undiscovered faults in the SUT, which may distort the perception of the test suite quality. This paper describes an empirical study of different combination strategies to compose second-order mutants at system level as well as a cost-risk analysis of n-order mutation at system level.


Major and trace element data on Tertiary continental basalt flows from the Shalatein area, Red Sea coastal plain of Egypt, have been presented and used to obtain more information about their source region and the processes involved in their generation. The rocks are mainly alkali olivine basalt with MgO and Mg no. in the range of 9.8–5 wt % and 65–46, respectively. They display wide variations in incompatible element concentrations, particularly LREE, Zr, Nb, K, Y, Ba and Sr. There is no evidence of significant crustal contamination or a lithospheric mantle signature in these rocks. Normalized trace element patterns and diagnostic elemental ratios are very similar to those of modern ocean-island basalts (OIB) a feature which suggests that the mantle source region was the asthenosphere. Comparison with the different types of OIB indicates that the basalts may be derived from a high U/Pb (HIMU) source with slightly elevated K and Ba contents. The basalts show general trends of increasing incompatible elements (K2O, Nb, Y, Sr and Yb), and decreasing contents of compatible elements (Cr, Ni, Sc and Ca) with decreasing Mg no. Furthermore, TiO2, P2O5, LREE and Th define maxima at about Mg no.=56, suggesting late fractionation of Fe–Ti oxides and apatite. Although these variations are consistent with fractional crystallization processes, the wide variations in LREE contents and the incompatible trace element ratios Ce/Y (1.2–3.8), Zr/Nb (2.3–7.1) and Nb/Y (0.6–4) in the least fractionated samples (Mg no. > 56) suggest that fractional crystallization involving the observed phenocryst assemblage (olivine and clinopyroxene) cannot fully explain such compositional variations. Modelling of the mafic rocks (Mg no. > 56) using REE suggests varying degrees of partial melting of an enriched mantle source region in the garnet stability field. Partial melting is attributed to plume-related mantle upwelling beneath the Red Sea rift system.


The Bank defines Global Multisector Credit Operations (GMCs) as loans with sovereign guarantees granted to intermediary financial institutions or similar agencies to enable them to on-lend to sub-borrowers for the financing of multisector projects. This evaluation (RE-336) is based on a detailed analysis of the GMCs approved between 1990 and 2005. About two-thirds of the GMCs -representing 82% of the approved GMC funding- were reviewed in-depth and involved fieldwork in the respective countries. The remaining GMCs were desk-reviewed via Project Reports, Portfolio Performance Monitoring Reports, Credit Regulations, Project Completion Reports, and any other available document, e.g. ad hoc consultant studies OVE complemented the evaluation with surveys and interviews providing both Bank staff and clients with an opportunity to participate.


This paper describes a PDE-based method for dense depth extraction from multiple wide-baseline images. Emphasis lies on the usage of only a small amount of images. The integration of these multiple wide-baseline views is guided by the relative confidence that the system has in the matching to different views. This weighting is fine-grained in that it is determined for every pixel at every iteration. Reliable information spreads fast at the expense of less reliable data, both in terms of spatial communications within a view and in terms of information exchange between the views. Changes in intensity between images can be handled in a similar fine grained fashion.


This is an offer you can't refuse. It goes behind the scenes of Coppola's masterpiece. As special photographer on the sets and locations of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy, Steve Schapiro had the remarkable experience of witnessing legendary actors giving some of their most memorable performances. Schapiro immortalized Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton in photos that have since become iconic images, instantly recognizable and endlessly imitated. Gathered together in this book are Schapiro's finest photographs from all three Godfather films, lovingly reproduced from the original negatives. With contextual essays and interviews covering the trilogy in its entirety, this book contains over 400 color and black & white images. Schapiro's images take us behind the scenes of this epic and inimitable cinematic saga, revealing the director's working process, capturing the moods and personalities involved, and providing insight into the making of movie history.


The aeroacoustics of a recorder are explored using a direct numerical simulation based on the Navier-Stokes equations in three dimensions. The qualitative behavior is studied using spatial maps of the air pressure and velocity to give a detailed picture of jet dynamics and vortex shedding near the labium. In certain cases, subtle but perhaps important differences in the motion of the air jet near the edge of the channel as compared to the channel center are observed. These differences may be important when analyzing experimental visualizations of jet motion. The quantitative behavior is studied through analysis of the spectrum of the sound pressure outside the instrument. The effect of chamfers and of changes in the position of the labium relative to the channel on the tonal properties are explored and found to be especially important in the attack portion of the tone. Changes in the spectrum as a result of variations in the blowing speed are also investigated as well as the behavior of the spectrum when the dominant spectral component switches from the fundamental to the second harmonic mode of the resonator tube.


In this paper we propose the Merge framework, a general purpose programming model for heterogeneous multi-core systems. The Merge framework replaces current ad hoc approaches to parallel programming on heterogeneous platforms with a rigorous, library-based methodology that can automatically distribute computation across heterogeneous cores to achieve increased energy and performance efficiency. The Merge framework provides (1) a predicate dispatch-based library system for managing and invoking function variants for multiple architectures; (2) a high-level, library-oriented parallel language based on map-reduce; and (3) a compiler and runtime which implement the map-reduce language pattern by dynamically selecting the best available function implementations for a given input and machine configuration. Using a generic sequencer architecture interface for heterogeneous accelerators, the Merge framework can integrate function variants for specialized accelerators, offering the potential for to-the-metal performance for a wide range of heterogeneous architectures, all transparent to the user. The Merge framework has been prototyped on a heterogeneous platform consisting of an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and an 8-core 32-thread Intel Graphics and Media Accelerator X3000, and a homogeneous 32-way Unisys SMP system with Intel Xeon processors. We implemented a set of benchmarks using the Merge framework and enhanced the library with X3000 specific implementations, achieving speedups of 3.6x -- 8.5x using the X3000 and 5.2x -- 22x using the 32-way system relative to the straight C reference implementation on a single IA32 core.


Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) published numerous short stories, reviews, and other articles over the course of her long life, but she produced only one full-length novel, Ship of Fools, published in 1962 and adapted for a film released in 1965. Porter noted that it had taken her twenty years to complete the novel, but it had an even longer incubation, as part of "her external experiences and internal life over the course of sixty years" (Unrue, The Life 249, 257; see also Givner, A Life 206, 243-268, and 425-444, and Stout 199). (1) While many comparisons can be made between Porter's life and the novel, the anti-eugenics themes woven throughout Ship of Fools are linked not only to her steamship travel to Germany and experiences with proto-Nazism when she lived in Berlin in 1931, but also with her personal history of tuberculosis, from which she suffered for nearly three years starting in 1915 and which she feared through many episodes of other kinds of respiratory ailments. Because Porter herself sometimes made aristocracy-loving, even what now seem like racist statements, and perhaps because her work is often interpreted as "pessimistic," it can be a challenge to see the full extent of the humanitarianism of her vision. The otherwise baffling contradictions that she expressed about social issues, however, make more sense when seen through the lens of an experience of shameful chronic illness that resulted in a kind of "double consciousness" (Du Bois 3). Ship of Fools represents Porter's life-long attempt to sort out her--and her era's--beliefs about health, illness, ethnicity, genetics, and their relationships to morality. The novel demonstrates the ways in which common, seemingly banal assumptions and behaviors about health, not exclusive to the Nazis or even Nazi-era Germans, formed one of the underpinnings of the Holocaust. * * * It is common knowledge that Katherine Anne Porter spent some time in three different tuberculosis sanatoria in Texas from 1915 through 1917 and even that she went to Denver in 1918 in the company of another recovering tuberculosis patient so that both could live in the supposedly curative mountain air. Porter spent only a few days in a sanatorium in Denver, as tests showed that her tuberculosis was no longer active (Unrue, The Life 55-60), and it is uncertain whether she ever again suffered from active tuberculosis, (2) but until the advent of antibiotics in the 1940s, there was no definitive cure, and the active form of the illness could recur at any time. Tuberculosis in this period was ubiquitous and fearsome; it killed an estimated five million people in the U.S. alone between 1900 and 1950 (Dubos and Dubos 220). During the period of time when Porter immigrated to Western Europe and lived in Berlin, then Paris, Madrid, and Basel--August 1931 through January 1936-she suffered frequent bouts of bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses, which would continue throughout her life. In 1934, Porter spent time in a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, the town known as the "ultimate" place for tuberculosis treatment (Dubos and Dubos 176-177) and made famous as such in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Although her wealthy friends brought her there to recover from a failing marriage and a general run-down state (Unrue, The Life 152), she nonetheless had a diagnostic X-ray performed, which is in the collection at the University of Maryland along with one from her time in Mexico in 1931. She frequently suspected that her ill health might signal a return of tuberculosis (Unrue, The Life 139, 144, 152; Stout 64, 79). In spite of the duration of her active infection and the even longer period of worry that Porter had about tuberculosis, to a great extent she erased or downplayed it from later accounts of her life, as she did a number of unpleasant aspects of her childhood and young adulthood. Biographers and critics over the years have struggled to unravel and explain numerous inconsistencies in Porter's self-descriptions, between her accounts of her life and documented facts, and between her life and her autobiographical fiction. …


ABSTRACT In this research, gamma radiation has been used to graft styrene and acrylic acid monomers onto marble (M) and granite (G) powder, with irradiation doses 30, 10 kGy, respectively. The grafted marble and granite powders were used as filler of epoxy composites. They added to an epoxy resin at 20, 60, and 100 wt% and then cured at room temperature. Ultrasonic velocities and attenuation measurements in epoxy composites at 4 MHz in the 25–300°C temperature range in addition to Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis had been investigated. The ultrasonic compression wave velocity and the shear wave velocity measurements were performed using the pulse-echo technique, and then wecalculated elastic modulus, Young's modulus, longitudinal and shear moduli, and Poisson's ratio. In addition to attenuation at different temperatures of epoxy/granite composites, ultrasonic results indicated that the ultrasonic wave's velocities VL and Vs increased with the increase of (M, G) content and a linear relation was observed. Also, the attenuation of epoxy was stable and appeared to increase at temperature 385°C, while the addition M or G to epoxy composites increased the attenuation.


This report is the fourth in a series of briefs on a 2003 survey of volunteer management capacity among public charities in the United States. It introduces an organizational level measure of the challenges and advantages of mobilizing volunteers called net benefits. Challenges include recruiting, training, and supporting volunteers. Advantages include better or more service delivery, cost savings, and access to specialized skills. Survey results indicate that net benefits varies by investments in volunteer management and the extent and nature of volunteer involvement. The brief includes a worksheet that charities can use to calculate their own net benefits score and compare themselves to organizations with similar characteristics.


For an initial design or assessment of a reinforced concrete solid slab bridge, spreadsheet-based or hand calculations are typically used. The shear stress is compared to the shear capacity as prescribed by the code. The distributed loads result in a uniform shear stress at the support. Concentrated loads are less straightforward to take into account. It is known that transverse load redistribution occurs in slabs. To explore the topic of transverse load redistribution, experiments on elements subjected to a concentrated load close to the support were carried out. These elements had an increasing width, starting at 0.5 m and increasing with steps of 0.5 m up to 2.5 m, so that the effect of transverse load redistribution could be studied. The threshold effective width resulting from the experiments was then compared to load spreading methods, in order to give recommendations for the practical use with concentrated loads. It was found that the load spreading method as used in French practice is to be preferred. As compared to load spreading methods that were used previously, the French load spreading method results in smaller shear stresses at the support. This result allows for more economic designs and provides a better assessment tool.


This note describes the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)-nonce, an optional addition to ECN that protects against accidental or malicious concealment of marked packets from the TCP sender. It improves the robustness of congestion control by preventing receivers from exploiting ECN to gain an unfair share of network bandwidth. The ECN-nonce uses the two ECN-Capable Transport (ECT)codepoints in the ECN field of the IP header, and requires a flag in the TCP header. It is computationally efficient for both routers and hosts.


The performance, internal flow fields and fluid forces acted on the impellers and balance piston of three stages centrifugal pump at design and partload conditions are investigated by using URANS (Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes) CFD analysis.In this study, investigations were concentrated on the details of the flow fields in the sidewall gaps of the impellers and at the impeller exit/diffuser inlet with the rotor axial offsets, and its effects on the thrust forces acting on the impeller, especially at the partload condition.From the details of flow field predicted by CFD, the mechanisms of change of axial thrust forces with the rotor axial offsets are as follows. The overwrap between the impeller shroud wall and diffuser casing wall becomes smaller by the axial offsets at the opposite side of axial offset direction, this makes the flow to leak out easier from the impeller side into the side wall gaps there. As a result, the interaction between the swirl flow in the side wall gap and reverse flow from the diffuser become stronger. The strong inward flow in the front side wall gap induced by the diffuser reverse flow works as a swirl breaker weakening the swirl flow in the gap. The pressure distributions in the side wall gaps are affected by these changes of swirl flow in the gap and the axial thrust forces working on the rotor are changed.The predicted change of axial thrust forces with the rotor axial offsets show good agreement with the experimental values.Copyright © 2015 by JSME


Google's rollout of its Street View service in North America in 2007 provoked little concern about the privacy implications of private homes and individuals being easily viewed by potentially millions of persons. In contrast, Street View's reception in Europe, particularly in Germany, has been marked by episodes of both public outrage and government concern. These divergent reactions can be explained in part by differing conceptions of the right to privacy—with European concepts of privacy based generally on the notion that an individual's "dignity" should be protected—and the differing levels of protection afforded by those conceptions to aspects of a person's identity. This Note compares the legal protections afforded to individuals' privacy in the U.S. and in Germany. In particular, this Note looks at the concept of the right to an "inviolate personality" that pervades privacy protection in Germany. This Note argues that such a right can be found in U.S. privacy jurisprudence, and that this right protects persons against the actions of private as well as government agents. Lastly, this Note argues that privacy rights must be defined broadly in an era when Street View is expanding to cover not just public streets and alleys, but also the interiors of museums and even places of business.


During preschool history a large number important points of departures regarding children's learning and development have been brought to attention. In this paper we want to spread some light on two of them. One of these is children's own experiences and the other is an aesthetic dimension of learning. In this presentation we want describe this topic, to analyse and discuss it. In modern education children's experiences are considered to be a starting point for their learning and development. A difficulty then is that children arrive to pre-school with different experiences and expectations against which they relate new knowledge of their surrounding world (Pramling Samuelsson & Asplund Carlsson, 2003). Therefore, to take advantage of and make use of each child's knowledge seems to be a pedagogical consequence in the learning processes. The concept of aesthetics has often got a one-sided interpretation as a methodical support for learning and development about different contents (Pramling et al, 2008). Children have been viewed as creative individuals, who through their own will, actions and practices learn to develop into human beings. At present the Swedish curriculum points out the importance of, as it says: "Creating and communicating by means of different forms of expression…/" (Utbildningsdepartementet, 1998. s. 10). The tendency, thus, is to view aesthetic expressions as a method closely related to children's development and acquisition of knowledge. The purpose of this study is to find out how aesthetics can be seen as one dimension of children's experienced world. The research question is how children's experienced world appear in verbal communication and how will those experiences be used in a learning situation. The study took place in a pre-school setting with children 3-5 year of age. The data consist of video observations in situations where teachers and children work with science content or more specifically they investigated; "What is soil?" The data are analyzed qualitatively (see Sinclair (2001) and Hohr and Lorenzer (1975) in Austring (2006)). The outcome of the analysis shows that three categories of children's experienced world can be discerned, which we like Sinclair label: "Pathfinder", "Track-Taker" and "Floater" (Sinclair 2001). The outcome also shows that the children's use of their experiences is related to these three categories. When the children are dealing with the science content in focus another result points out that there are three different ways of acting present: empirical, aesthetic and discursive way. On a general level one conclusion is, that aesthetics is a natural part of children's experienced world and that it is of importance for children in their meaning making. Strong or weak aesthetics in a learning situation will be further discussed and problemized.


The subject of dangerous goods as it pertains to carriage by sea is of growing importance and concern because it impacts on safety as well as environmental issues. Both involve liability associated with maritime transportation and liability in respect of dangerous goods is a complex area of law both from an international as well as a domestic perspective. China is a rapidly emerging economic power and a major world player in shipping and seaborne trade including import and export of hazardous substances. Furthermore, China is undergoing remarkable reform and transformation in all respects, and legal regimes, especially in the maritime field, are in a state of evolution.
This thesis presents a two-fold area of concentration, that is, the international regime and the domestic Chinese law, looking at the safety as well as the environmental dimensions of international carriage of dangerous goods by sea. In order to carry out a comparative analysis of the international and Chinese legal regimes pertaining to the issues of contractual and tortious liability, a relatively detailed analytical examination of the international regime has been completed. Following this, the legal regime under Chinese law concerning the sea carriage of dangerous goods is critically evaluated in terms of the evolution of the domestic maritime law and the issues of application of international law and domestic law from the perspectives of regulatory law and civil liability. The discussion on the existing issues liability is centered on the principles of liability in tort and contract borne by private parties and state responsibility in respect of damage arising from the maritime transportation of dangerous goods.
Conclusions are drawn from the summaries of chapters highlighting the critical issues in light of the findings of the research; the appropriate recommendations and suggestions for improvements to the international regimes; and proposals for law reform in the form of new legislation or amendments to existing legislation with the aim of improving the domestic regime to bring it into closer alignment with international law on the carriage of dangerous goods by sea.


In this work, a laccase from Cerrena Unicolor (CuL) supplied by Fungal Bioproducts® was firstly applied in combination with VA in Eucalyptus globulus in order to compare its biobleaching effect with the well-known laccase from Trametes villosa supplied by Novozymes®. However, the main purpose of this work was to apply the CuL in presence of two different mediators like VA (as synthetic compound) or p-coumaric acid (PCA), acetosyringone (AS) or syringaldehide (SA) (as natural compounds). Each compound was applied alone or in combination with another one in order to find a possible biobleaching or functionalising boosting effect between them. Concerning the biobleaching effects, the highest delignification and brightness increase was produced with the VA applied alone. The natural mediators failed to increase delignification and contrary, they hindered the effect of VA due to possible interactions with the natural phenols and fibres. Concerning the grafting effects, the highest increase in kappa number and in colour properties was produced with the combination of PCA and AS. Finally, the best way of applying these mediators, together in one step (LAS+PCA), or in two steps with (LASwashing-LPCA) or without (LAS-LPCA) washing was evaluated


This paper constructs, for the five largest cities in the United States, user costs and rents for the same structure, in levels (i.e., measured in dollars). The levels formulation is a major advantage over indexes since one can answer questions like "Is it cheaper to rent or to own?" or "Are houses overvalued?" because such questions are essentially about the levels of rents and house prices and their fundamentals. These new measures are constructed using Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) Interview data from 1982 to 2002, along with house price appreciation forecasts from Verbrugge (2007a). Characteristics, current market value, and rental equivalence of owner-occupied housing are used in a regression framework to predict the rent associated with a structure with median characteristics in each city. The property value of this median house is used to construct a user cost estimate for this structure. We find that, for the median structure in each city, estimated user costs and rents diverge to a surprising degree, in keeping with the previously noted findings of Verbrugge (2007a). It is not always cheaper to own: user costs sometimes lie well above rents. Finally, the dynamics of the estimated price-to-rent ratio are generally similar to those found in conventional estimates based upon indexes, suggesting that the present study might be useful for scaling or normalizing other estimates.


This research paper describes the application of a didactic innovation project in Higher Education. We present the theoretical foundation of the project. Thanks to the evolution of the Web and the potential of image to disseminate and generate knowledge, visual materials have had an increasingly powerful projection in Education, especially for the development of new methods, media and didactic materials in Higher Education. As a result of researchers interested in it, Visual Literacy has emerged as an academic field developing research and didactic effectiveness of the image, and digital competences and academic literacy as instruments to be integrated into curriculum of higher education for its excellence. We analyse the didactic innovation project by presenting how we integrated a Visual and Academic Literacy competence-based program into a course at the Carlos III University of Madrid. We show its instructional design, didactic materials, pedagogical activities, planning and evaluation. Findings suggest the need for this type of programs for academic excellence in higher education.


Smart4Health project is a European project aiming to empower citizens with electronic health(care) record exchange, personal connected health services, and the ability of data donorship to the scientific community. The Smart4Health platform will enable citizens to manage, collect, store, access and share own health and healthcare data, at international level, through an easy-to-use, secure, constantly accessible and portable health data and services prototype within the EU and beyond. This shall also comprise self-quantified and citizen-generated data through IoT and wearables (e.g. smart watches, smart devices/textiles/shoes). Therefore, the citizen will not only be able to access data produced in the context of health systems, but become important contributor of health data more generally speaking. The information to be collected will feed the Smart4Health platform (4HealthPlatform – 4HP), enabling the Smart4Health user portal (4HealthNavigator – 4HN) services and applications to provide advanced personalised health services accessible whenever and wherever. In this paper we explore the work being developed for data integration coming from different smart devices aiming at enriching the citizen health and personal data as well as providing insight about citizen behaviour and support on how to modify/adapt postures and habits that may contribute for better health and wellbeing.


The current study proposes a flexible approach to studying informant discrepancies: Latent Difference Scores modeling (LDS). The LDS approach is demonstrated using an empirical example in which associations between mother–adolescent and father–adolescent discrepant parenting perceptions, and concurrent and later adolescent externalizing behaviors, were investigated. Early adolescents (N = 477, aged 12–15 years), mothers (N = 470), and fathers (N = 440) filled out questionnaires about mothers' and fathers' parenting. Results using the LDS approach are compared to results obtained by the 2 existing approaches for informant discrepancies: Observed Difference Scores modeling (ODS) and Polynomial Regression Analyses (PRA). Results from the LDS approach show that adolescents perceive their mothers' and fathers' parenting less favorably than mothers and fathers themselves, and that stronger mother–adolescent discrepancies are consistently related to stronger father–adolescent discrepancies. Parent–adolescent discrepancies were concurrently associated with more aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors, but not longitudinally. Results generalized across the 2 discrepancy approaches, but only very few significant associations were found in the PRA. Advantages and limitations of all 3 approaches to studying informant discrepancies are discussed.


Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are widely used in video games. Recently, AI planning methods have been applied to maintain plot consistency in the face of player's agency over the narrative. Combined with an automatically populated player model, such AI experience managers can dynamically create a consistent narrative tailored to a specific player. These tools help game narrative designers achieve narrative goals while affording players a choice. On the other hand, they increase the number of feasible plot branches making it more difficult for the author to ensure that each branch carries the player along a desired emotion arc. In this paper we discuss the problem and call for an extension of experience managers with player emotion models. When successful, interactive narrative can be then automatically produced to satisfy authorial goals not only in terms of specific events but also in terms of emotions evoked in the player.


INTRODUCTION Since their inception, the courts in the United States have been bestowed vast power, capable of affecting the lives of citizens across the country. (1) "American courts ... do not simply 'announce' the law; as much as any other set of institutions, they make policy." (2) Throughout this country's history, "the [courts have] become actively engaged in, among other things, the regulation of abortion, development of police procedures, ... and even the determination of the 2000 presidential election." (3) Sitting at the center of every conceivable public and private dispute, judges create precedent each and every day that is binding on the judiciary and citizens of future generations. Suffice it to say, members of the judiciary have an immense amount of power. As such, the nature of the judicial position requires judges to leave their political ideologies at the door and view each case through a lens of objectivity and fairness. The practice of adhering to objective reasoning is most important for judges who serve on the bench of a federal appellate court, as these courts provide guidance to lower courts and are often a court of last resort absent a grant of certiorari from the United States Supreme Court. With that in mind, there has been a notion that judges should think independently and base their decisions on what they objectively believe to be the correct result under the law. Despite this maxim, there is an ever-growing body of evidence that suggests a judge's ideology plays an important role in the judge's decision-making. For instance, the media, along with many scholars, have been grouping justices of the United States Supreme Court into "liberal" and "conservative" blocks when analyzing high profile cases in an effort to predict voting patterns and an eventual outcome. (4) Even the method by which some justices employ their clerks is indicative of the pervasiveness of ideological stances in the judicial arena. (5) Despite the flood of research devoted to the link between ideology and Supreme Court jurisprudence, judicial scholarship seems to be devoid of similar studies focused on circuit court judges. Accordingly, this study focuses on two judges currently sitting on the bench of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit: Judges Debra A. Livingston and Reena Raggi. The purpose of a high court study is "to discern possible jurisprudential, ideological, sociological, or other patterns and common threads in the court's ... decisions, as well as in the opinions and voting records of the court's individual members." (6) The main purpose of this particular high court study is to create a profile outlining the ideology and voting trends of Judges Debra A. Livingston and Reena Raggi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit through an analysis of the judges' decisions over the past five years. (7) This is accomplished through an examination of the nonunanimous opinions in which the judges participated over the past five years, with an exclusive focus on their dissenting opinions. The decision to use exclusively dissenting opinions in this study is because, unlike nonunanimous decisions, unanimous decisions "tell[] nothing of the conflicts around the judicial conference table, the alternative lines of argument developed, [and] the accommodations and the compromises which went into the final result." (8) Thus, a great deal of useful information can be gleaned from reviewing nonunanimous decisions of a court, as judges often convey their reasons for voting in a particular manner and their personal predilections for the matter at issue. Further, nonunanimous opinions "supply information about [judge's] attitudes and their values which is available in no other way." (8) Moreover, the dissent of a judge can be very important for a study like this. Although it holds no precedent and is completely useless as legal authority, (10) a dissent can prove particularly revealing because it is the mechanism by which the dissenter informs the majority that they reached the wrong result and the reasoning as to why; (11) it is the dissenter's only chance to make his or her views public, and perhaps undermine the court's majority in the process. …


Using electrodeless discharge tube sources, and a 1.5 m vacuum Ebert mounting spectrometer, the spectrum of manganese in the wavelength region 0.82 - 1.97 μm [microns or micrometres], and additional wavelengths of zirconium weak lines in spectral range of 0.8 - 2.7 μm have been measured.

The application of the equipment and instruments used are described. A general description of the Fabry-Perot interferometer as a calibrating system is given.

A description of the general method by which the electrodeless discharge tubes (EDT's) were manufactured is given. Some of the work has been concentrated on the preparation of the EDT's containing zirconium and manganese halides. Efforts were made on achieving new methods of preparing tubes containing less volatile elements such as manganese. This involved new design of material containers used inside the reaction line as well as some changes in the reaction system used in the preparation of the tube.

Investigations into the phenomenon of Zeeman effect are discussed, the results of which are then presented using zirconium electrodeless discharge tubes. In this investigation, Zeeman patterns were scanned using Fabry-Perot interferometer as a pressure-scanning spectrometer, and infrared Ebert mounting grating spectrometer as a monochromator. Values are given for 22 lines involving different multiplets.

218 manganese lines have been measured in the range 0.8 - 1.97 μm; of these, 84 have been identified by the transitions involving energy levels of neutral manganese atom. Vacuum wavenumbers of 181 additional zirconium lines in the spectral range 0.78 - 1.36 μm and 1.77 - 2.7 μm have been measured. These have been compared with the predicted spectral lines from neutral zirconium energy levels and transitions assigned to 79 lines. 22 lines were studied for Zeeman effect; the analysis of the results confirmed the level 15932.10 cm-1[to the power -1] listed in Mnl energy level list to be 3P1 and not b3P2. A new level, 15624.31 cm-1[to the power -1](b3P0) was also calculated and 5 new Lande g factors have been observed.


A new model to measure Total Factor Productivity free from the flaws which exist in previous models; appropriate data are used to test it. The model distinguishes between the contributions made to investment and growth by changes in technology and other non-technology variables. A key constituent of non-technology variables is the equity hurdle rate; since 2000 this has dramatically changed and thereby stifled investment and productivity. Reform of current management bonus arrangements is found to be essential to obviate the risk of economic stagnation.


Wave heights were measured for three classes of vessels operated by the Washington State Ferries system on Puget Sound, Washington. Variation of wave height with distance from the sailing line was determined for each vessel class over a range of speeds. Instrumentation and testing procedures used are described. Various wave measuring technologies are discussed, and it is concluded that the spar-buoy wave-staffs used were most appropriate for the measurements sought.


Membership inference determines, given a sample and trained parameters of a machine learning model, whether the sample was part of the training set. In this paper, we derive the optimal strategy for membership inference with a few assumptions on the distribution of the parameters. We show that optimal attacks only depend on the loss function, and thus black-box attacks are as good as white-box attacks. As the optimal strategy is not tractable, we provide approximations of it leading to several inference methods, and show that existing membership inference methods are coarser approximations of this optimal strategy. Our membership attacks outperform the state of the art in various settings, ranging from a simple logistic regression to more complex architectures and datasets, such as ResNet-101 and Imagenet.


Molecular dynamics simulation is performed to investigate the rapid boiling of nanofluid with the variation nanoparticle wettabilities above hydrophobic surface. Four fluids are selected: base fluid (fluid 1), nanofluid with nanoparticle wettability less than (fluid 2), equal tofluid 3) and greater than (fluid 4) surface wettability. It should be noted that nanoparticle is deposited on the surface in this paper. Results show that nanofluid responds rapid boiling faster than base fluid. For fluid 4, the efficiency in heat transfer is enhanced due to the improvement of surface wettability. While for fluid 2 and 3, the surface wettability is deteriorated by the depositional nanoparticle. The heat flux is strengthened, but argon temperature and evaporation number reduce, and thus fluid 2 and 3 are not beneficial for heat transfer.


High data rate requirement has necessitated the use of optical wireless links from satellite-to-ground that invariably pass through the inhomogeneous cloud layers. It has thus become necessary to accurately model the scattering channel and estimate attenuation suffered by the information bearing optical signal traversing the multiple scattering inhomogeneous clouds. This paper introduces the utilization of three dimensional radiative transfer equation RTE for prediction of attenuation in the optical signal traversing the cloud layers. The three dimensional radiative transfer equation explicitly handles the spatial complexity and multiple scattering effects of inhomogeneous clouds and provides accurate propagation channel estimation without invoking mathematical assumptions. Cloud droplets mainly composed of liquid water attenuates the beam of light through absorption and scattering in forward direction. Therefore, it is necessary to generate three dimensional cloud fields that exhibit realistic spatial distribution of the cloud structure. This statistically generated cloud field from experimental data is used as an input to three dimensional radiative transfer model to calculate transmitted irradiance at the bottom of cloud to predict attenuation in cumulus cloud scene. This paper employs the numerical solution of three dimensional radiative transfer equation using Monte Carlo simulation that uses stochastic methods to simulate physical processes of scattering and absorption within inhomogeneous cloud layers. The open source I3RC Monte Carlo code has been chosen to perform simulations at commonly employed optical wavelengths of 850 nm and 1550 nm. The 10 μm has been specifically analyzed to gain insight of wavelength dependence in optical propagation through clouds.


Reflection is essential in order to learn from problem solving. This thesis explores issues related to how reflective students are and how we can improve their capacity for reflection on problem solving. We investigate how students naturally reflect in their physics courses about problem solving and evaluate strategies that may teach them reflection as an integral component of problem-solving. Problem categorization based upon similarity of solution is a strategy to help them reflect about the deep features of the problems related to the physics principles involved. We find that there is a large overlap between the introductory and graduate students in their ability to categorize. Moreover, introductory students in the calculus-based courses performed better categorization than those in the algebra-based courses even though the categorization task is conceptual. Other investigations involved exploring if reflection could be taught as a skill on individual and group levels. Explicit self-diagnosis in recitation investigated how effectively students could diagnose their own errors on difficult problems, how much scaffolding was necessary for this purpose, and how effective transfer was to other problems employing similar principles. Difficulty in applying physical principles and difference between the self-diagnosed and transfer problems affected performance. We concluded that a sustained intervention is required to learn effective problem-solving strategies. Another study involving reflection on problem solving with peers suggests that those who reflected with peers drew more diagrams and had a larger gain from the midterm to final exam. Another study in quantum mechanics involved giving common problems in midterm and final exams and suggested that advanced students do not automatically reflect on their mistakes. Interviews revealed that even advanced students often focus mostly on exams rather than learning and building a robust knowledge structure. A survey was developed to further evaluate students' attitudes and approaches towards problem solving. The survey responses suggest that introductory students and even graduate students have different attitudes and approaches to problem solving on several important measures compared to physics faculty members. Furthermore, responses to individual survey questions suggest that expert and novice attitudes and approaches to problem solving may be more complex than naively considered.


We present a surprisingly new connection between two well-studied combinatorial classes: rooted connected chord diagrams on one hand, and rooted bridgeless combinatorial maps on the other hand. We describe a bijection between these two classes, which naturally extends to indecomposable diagrams and general rooted maps. As an application, this bijection provides a simplifying framework for some technical quantum field theory work realized by some of the authors. Most notably, an important but technical parameter naturally translates to vertices at the level of maps. We also give a combinatorial proof to a formula which previously resulted from a technical recurrence, and with similar ideas we prove a conjecture of Hihn. Independently, we revisit an equation due to Arquès and Béraud for the generating function counting rooted maps with respect to edges and vertices, giving a new bijective interpretation of this equation directly on indecomposable chord diagrams, which moreover can be specialized to connected diagrams and refined to incorporate the number of crossings. Finally, we explain how these results have a simple application to the combinatorics of lambda calculus, verifying the conjecture that a certain natural family of lambda terms is equinumerous with bridgeless maps.


Population aging problem becomes increasingly severe in the process of economic and social development in China. In this paper, urban people's death rates are estimated by age and gender respectively, then the women's birth rates are predicted using Grey- Models. Furthermore, Chinese urban population structure is predicted. From the results and analysis, it can be clearly seen that the population aging in China is becoming more and more severe under our current policies. That a sharply decline for the population of labor force would affect the development of Chinese economy.


The Cross River State Government in Nigeria is proposing to construct a "Cross River Superhighway" that would bisect critical remaining areas of tropical rainforest in south eastern Nigeria. We offer and evaluate two alternative routes to the superhighway that would be less damaging to forests, protected areas, and biological diversity. The first alternative we identified avoids intact forests entirely while seeking to benefit agriculture and existing settlements. The second alternative also avoids intact forests while incorporating existing paved and unpaved roads to limit construction costs. As currently proposed, the superhighway would be 260 km long, would intersect 115 km of intact forests or protected areas, and would cost an estimated ∼US$2.5 billion to construct. Alternative Routes 1 and 2 are only slightly longer (∼290 and ∼353 km, respectively) and have markedly lower estimated construction costs (∼US$0.92 billion). Furthermore, the alternative routes would have negligible impacts on forests and protected areas and would be better aligned to benefit local communities and agriculture. We argue that alternative routings such as those we examined here could markedly reduce the economic and environmental costs, and potentially increase the socioeconomic benefits, for the proposed Cross River Superhighway.


Temporal violations may often take place and deteriorate the overall QoS of scientific workflows. To handle temporal violations in an automatic and cost-effective fashion, we need to resolve the following issues: 1) how to define fine-grained recoverable temporal violations, 2) which light-weight effective exception handling strategies to be facilitated. This paper proposes an effective exception handling framework. Based on a probability based temporal consistency model, the probability range for recoverable temporal violations is divided into three levels of fine-grained temporal violations. Afterwards, three corresponding light-weight exception handling strategies including TDA (Time Deficit Allocation), ACOWR (Ant Colony Optimisation based two-stage Workflow local Rescheduling) and TDA+ACOWR (the combined strategy of TDA and ACOWR) are presented. The experimental results demonstrate the excellent performance of our framework in reducing both local and global temporal violations.


Numerous commentators have recently noted that the ancient art form of Greek tragedy has been undergoing something of a worldwide resurgence in popularity. This, they argue, can be attributed to the fact that contemporary societies are no less fertile a stage for tragedy than their ancient Greek antecedent. The objective of this article is to examine whether the resurgence of Greek tragedy possesses the potential to speak, metaphorically or otherwise, to political concerns today as the tragedies of Greece once did. In order to address this question, the article does two things. Firstly, it briefly outlines the political nature of tragic drama in ancient Athens, especially the connection between the political ascendency of tragedy and the rise of democracy. As illustrations of this claim, the article alludes to the political implications surrounding two notable Greek tragedies: Aeschylus' Suppliants and Sophocles' Antigone. Following this, it then makes the case for the political implications of tragic drama in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries. To do so, it returns to the examples of Suppliants and Antigone to show how Greek tragedy can still be read as a powerful form of political discourse.


The Korpela movement was a millenarian movement which emerged in Northern Sweden in the nineteen-thirties. The article explores the use of historical subject matter about the movement in newspaper journalism, literary writing, and in the branding of Toivo Korpela and the Korpela movement on the World Wide Web in the context of present-day marketing of attractions for visitors. The argument of this article is that the literary writings of Henning and Ernst Sjöström and Bengt Pohjanen respectively represent two conflicting ways of narrating the Swedish nation. The Sjöström brothers' novel Silverarken ['The silver ark'] represents a nationalist pedagogy in which the narrative of the nation exemplifies a teleology of progress. This mode of narrating is problemized by a double narrative movement which includes a "'timeless' discourse of irrationality" (Bhabha), exemplified in a number of Bengt Pohjanen's novels, which destabilizes and deconstructs the narration of the nation as a story about homogeneity and linear progress. This latter mode of narrating makes visible the split in the narration of the nation between the progressive, accumulative temporality of the modern Swedish welfare state and the performative subversion of an alternative logic which is also claimed to be representative.


The essence of the theory of minima naturalia is the contention that a physical body is not infinitely divisible qua that specific body. A drop of water cannot be divided again and again and still maintain its "wateriness". There are several statements in Aristotle's Physics which suggest such an interpretation, and the theory of minima naturalia is commonly considered to have originated in the thirteenth century as an interpretation of these statements. The present paper is a preliminary presentation of the role of Ibn Rushd in the evolution of the theory, hitherto neglected. His theory developed not only as an elaboration on the "suitable" statements of Aristotle, but mainly as an attempt to solve the difficulties raised by Aristotle's thesis (developed in Physics VI and VII) that body and motion are continuous, infinitely divisible entities and are associated qua such. According to Ibn Rushd's interpretation, body and motion are associated not qua being continuous but qua having indivisible minimal parts. It seems that Epicurus' and Ibn Rushd's theories of minima developed as responses to Physics VI and offer modifications of classical atomism and of classical Aristotelianism (respectively), which to a certain extent reduce the gap between these two systems.


This thesis presents the first insights into inshore dolphin distribution of the western Pilbara. The region is undergoing rapid coastal development, which has the potential to threaten Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) and Australian humpback dolphin (Sousa sahulensis) populations. Understanding the distribution of these species is essential for their conservation.

Species distribution models (SDMs) were developed using dolphin sightings data that were opportunistically collected during dugong aerial surveys. A geographical information system (GIS) was used to generate the training data, which consisted of the binomial presence-absence of dolphins, distances from mainland and islands, sea surface temperature (SST), ocean fronts and bathymetric derivatives. Preliminary models were developed using generalised additive model (GAM) and component-wise boosting techniques. Models could not be fit to the data using either technique. It was unclear whether this was a result of relatively few dolphin sightings across a large study area, pseudo-absences, weak environmental variables, or a combination of all of these factors. Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) software was subsequently used as an alternative modelling technique to model the presence of dolphins, along with automatically generated background data, in order to avoid problems associated with unreliable absence data.

Bottlenose and humpback dolphins were sympatric, with overlap in occurrence across the study area. Bottlenose dolphin presence was associated with the slope at the 20 m contour and waters around the Muiron Islands. This is likely to be a productive area that could be important for foraging. Humpback dolphin presence was associated with intertidal areas, including shallow coastal waters near the mainland and surrounding islands. The presence of numerous offshore islands would thus explain why humpback dolphins were recorded more than 50 km from the coastline.

MaxEnt models were limited in their predictive power. Dedicated aerial surveys for inshore dolphins, using standardised techniques, are required to obtain reliable species data. In addition to increasing the sample size available for modelling, greater certainty in group size and composition could allow count, calf and mixed species group data to be modelled. Adequate species conservation needs to incorporate various ecological processes that occur at different spatial and temporal scales. Guidance is provided for undertaking boat-based studies and biopsy sampling, gathering opportunistic sightings data, and undertaking satellite telemetry research in addition to dedicated aerial surveys.

Distribution modelling for inshore dolphins of northern WA is an intrinsically challenging research project, due to limited habitat data and the elusive nature of the subject species, particularly humpback dolphins. This research has obtained the first insights into the distribution of inshore dolphins in northern WA. Through lessons learnt, this research has paved the way for the development of future models to have a greater predictive ability, which will be useful for the conservation of threatened inshore dolphin species.


The present study compares the intonation of Spanish declarative utterances in lab speech and spontaneous speech. Most studies of Spanish intonation have used lab speech, collected in an experimental setting and often scripted. This allows the researcher to control many factors, but the results cannot be assumed to be representative of spontaneous speech. The present study takes the most characteristic traits of the intonation of declarative sentences in Spanish lab speech and examines whether the same traits exist in spontaneous speech. It is shown that there are notable differences between the intonation of Spanish declaratives in lab speech and spontaneous speech. While some of the differences are minor, others are quite significant. Differences of one degree or another exist in the areas of the presence of F0 rises through stressed syllables, F0 peak alignment, downstepping, final lowering and deaccenting.


The most widely held scholarly view argues that Early Biblical Hebrew (EBH) developed into Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH) during the sixth-fifth centuries BCE. It is claimed that on this basis scholars are able to date the composition of biblical books by analysis of their language. In contrast, we argue that EBH and LBH represent not successive chronological periods, but rather co-existing styles of Hebrew. This is demonstrated by the language of the Qumran Pesher-commentary on the biblical book of Habakkuk. Despite dating to the first century BCE and thus long after the period when LBH is said to dominate, Pesher Habakkuk is in EBH. It does not share the accumulation of LBH forms which characterises the core LBH books like Ezra, and exhibits a large number of cases where it prefers EBH linguistic forms against their LBH equivalents.


The works of the renowned Dr. Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan - considered the father of library science in India - cover certain facets of library and information science. These library science classics - reprinted by Ess Ess Publications - make Dr. S.R. Ranganathan's work available to the current generation of librarians. S. R. Ranganathan, considered by librarians all over the world to be the father of modern library science, proposed five laws of library science in the early 1930s. Most librarians worldwide accept them as the foundations of the philosophy of their work and service in the library. These laws are: Books are for use, Every reader his or her book, Every book its reader, Save the time of the reader, and The library is a growing organism. The Five Laws of Library Science are some of the most influential concepts in the field. Since they were published in 1931, these five laws "have remained a centerpiece of professional values..." (Rubin 2004). These basic theories of Library Science continue to directly impact the development of this discipline and the service of all libraries. [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]. The book has been reprinted over twenty-five times to meet the demand from libraries, students of library and information science and information professionals. In 2006 when DLIST (University of Arizona) placed a test version of the contents page and first chapter of the first edition of the book on the Internet, there were some 640 downloads in twenty-four hours. The 'five laws' are equally valid in the present digital / information age as they have been in the conventional library environment.


People have a fundamental need to belong that motivates them to seek out social interactions with close others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Leary and Baumeister's (2000) sociometer theory (SMT) poses that people who succeed in satisfying this need have higher self-esteem (SE). This prediction was tested across three hierarchical levels: intraindividual, interindividual, and international. Indicators of social interaction quantity, quality, and the interaction between quality and quantity were collected for relationships with friends, family members, and romantic partners. On the intraindividual level, relationship quality and the interaction between quantity and quality emerged as significant predictors of daily fluctuations in SE. Cross-lagged analyses indicated that this association is at least partly due to the effect of social inclusion on changes in SE. On an interindividual level, people who generally reported higher quality relationships also had higher levels of trait SE. On an international level, countries whose inhabitants regularly interact with friends were characterized by higher nationwide SE levels than countries without such practices, even when happiness, individualism, gross domestic product, and neuroticism were controlled.


The Economics of Information Technology is a concise and accessible review of some of the important economic factors affecting information technology industries. These industries are characterized by high fixed costs and low marginal costs of production, large switching costs for users, and strong network effects. These factors combine to produce some unique behavior. The book consists of two parts. In the first part, Professor Varian outlines the basic economics of these industries. In the second part, Professors Farrell and Shapiro describe the impact of these factors on competition policy. The clarity of the analysis and exposition makes this an ideal introduction for undergraduate and graduate students in economics, business strategy, law and related areas.


ABSTRACT Fusobacterium nucleatum is classified into five subspecies that inhabit the human oral cavity (F. nucleatum subsp. nucleatum, F. nucleatum subsp. polymorphum, F. nucleatum subsp. fusiforme, F. nucleatum subsp. vincentii, and F. nucleatum subsp. animalis) based on several phenotypic characteristics and DNA-DNA hybridization patterns. However, the methods for detecting or discriminating the clinical isolates of F. nucleatum at the subspecies levels are laborious, expensive, and time-consuming. Therefore, in this study, the nucleotide sequences of the RNA polymerase β-subunit gene (rpoB) and zinc protease gene were analyzed to discriminate the subspecies of F. nucleatum. The partial sequences of rpoB (approximately 2,419 bp), the zinc protease gene (878 bp), and 16S rRNA genes (approximately 1,500 bp) of the type strains of five subspecies, 28 clinical isolates of F. nucleatum, and 10 strains of F. periodonticum (as a control group) were determined and analyzed. The phylogenetic data showed that the rpoB and zinc protease gene sequences clearly delineated the subspecies of F. nucleatum and provided higher resolution than the 16S rRNA gene sequences in this respect. According to the phylogenetic analysis of rpoB and the zinc protease gene, F. nucleatum subsp. vincentii and F. nucleatum subsp. fusiforme might be classified into a single subspecies. Five clinical isolates could be delineated as a new subspecies of F. nucleatum. The results suggest that rpoB and the zinc protease gene are efficient targets for the discrimination and taxonomic analysis of the subspecies of F. nucleatum.


Tree-based models have proven to be an effective solution for web ranking as well as other problems in diverse domains. This paper focuses on optimizing the runtime performance of applying such models to make predictions, given an already-trained model. Although exceedingly simple conceptually, most implementations of tree-based models do not efficiently utilize modern superscalar processor architectures. By laying out data structures in memory in a more cache-conscious fashion, removing branches from the execution flow using a technique called predication, and micro-batching predictions using a technique called vectorization, we are able to better exploit modern processor architectures and significantly improve the speed of tree-based models over hard-coded if-else blocks. Our work contributes to the exploration of architecture-conscious runtime implementations of machine learning algorithms.


Motion is the strongest visual appeal to attention [2], yet it is rarely used in the visualization of large-scale quantitative information. Motion is complex; it can vary across numerous dimensions, each of which is potentially an information-bearing element in the visualization. Which dimensions are used and how the data is mapped onto them are the key questions in using motion effectively. In this paper we present two interfaces that use motion as the primary visual element for representing data. These interfaces, Seascape and Volcano, use periodic animation loops to represent key social interaction features in online discussions. We propose that motion may be particularly well suited for representing data about behavior and actions, creating visualizations that intuitively depict different levels and types of activity. In this paper we describe the interfaces we have built and present the results of preliminary user studies.


Abstract Morphodynamics of intertidal channels were monitored in order to understand their implication on the architecture of inclined heterolithic stratification (IHS) in the open-coast Yeochari macro tidal flat on southern Ganghwa Island in Gyeonggi Bay, west coast of Korea. The tidal flat is divisible into narrow salt marshes in the upper intertidal zone, a concave-up upper to middle intertidal zone with small tidal creeks, and a channelized lower intertidal zone. Channels in the lower intertidal zone are 200–600 m wide and 1–2.5 m deep at bankful stage. They are sinuous in planform and have well-defined point bars and cutbanks. IHS is exposed along the cutbanks. High-precision leveling of the tidal channel bank unveiled that a point bar in the lower intertidal zone migrated about 400 m in 39 months. Channel migration is pronounced during the summer rainy season, when the point bar migrated as fast as 40 m per month, which led to rapid sediment accumulation of as much as 40 cm per month. In contrast, channel migration rate during winter is notably reduced, down to less than 1 m per month. Point-bar geometry alternates between a concave-up profile in summertime and a convex-up profile during the remainder of the year. Enhanced ebb currents during the rainy season, due to increased runoff discharge caused by heavy precipitation, accelerated point-bar migration. Remarkable rill erosion induced by heavy precipitation especially during low tide led to the rapid accumulation of sediment at the lower part of the point bar and the channel base, creating concave-up point-bar geometry. During the remainder of the year, the point bar retains a convex-up profile by continued sedimentation with insignificant rill erosion. Wave activity, particularly during winter, seems to facilitate deposition in the upper part of the point bar by providing more sediment into the channel. The present study illuminates the fact that the stratigraphic architecture of IHS of intertidal origin is controlled largely by monsoonal weather and to a lesser degree by tidal process even in a macrotidal environment. Careful examination of IHS geometry may hint at the depositional setting in terms of tidal frame (intertidal versus subtidal) and climate regime (monsoonal versus non-monsoonal).


Nickel-zinc ferrite is a soft magnetic material having low magnetic coercivity and high resistivity values. The high electrical resistivity and excellent magnetic properties make this ferrite an automatic choice as a core material for power transformers in electronic and telecommunication applications in megahertz frequency regions .The properties of the Ni–Zn ferrite are very sensitive to the method of preparation, sintering temperature, sintering time and chemical composition . Most ferrites prepared via the conventional ceramic processing method have some drawbacks. Wet chemical methods are being pursued to overcome these drawbacks and to produce ultra-fine, homogeneous and reproducible ferrite powders using aqueous solutions of salts of constituent ions.
In this study, Ni0.8Zn0.2 Fe2O4 was prepared via both conventional ceramic and the
co-precipitation methods. The microstructure, magnetic and dielectric properties The permittivity in both the co-precipitation synthesis and the conventional synthesis increases with increasing sintering temperature. The dielectric constant and loss tangent of sample prepared via co- precipitation is much lower than the conventional due to the smaller grain size and higher porosity. The resistivities of samples prepared via co-precipittion were from 7.2x108 to 3.7x108 (Ωcm) and 4.3x106 to 8.2x105 (Ωcm) for samples prepared via conventional synthesis. In small grain microstructure the grain boundaries are more thus increase the resistivity. This resulted higher resistivity in co-precipitation than conventional methods.
The highest saturation magnetisation, Ms, values in samples synthesized by co- precipitation was 63 Ms(Am2kg-1) and 60 Ms(Am2kg-1) for the conventional counterpart which were sintered at 1300°C. The higher Ms in co-precipitation is probably due to better crystalline structure. The coercivity and remanence of samples prepared via co-precipitation are lower than those of the conventionally synthesized samples.
The initial permeability value lies between 4 and 17 for the co-precipitation and 14
to 24 for conventional synthesis. The widest frequency range is obtained at 700°C in
co-precipitation method due to the small grin size. The relative loss factor (RLF) also
studied and it was revealed that the RLF increased with sintering temperature. But It is thus concluded that it is the better of the two methods of preparation employed in this work for Nickel-Zinc Ferrite, Ni0.8 Zn0.2 Fe2 O4.


Making Crystals The initial transition from a disordered solution to the formation of nuclei that grow into crystals continues to be a puzzle. Recent experiments suggested the formation of stable ordered clusters that appear prior to the formation of the first nuclei. Wallace et al. (p. 885; see the Perspective by Myerson and Trout) used molecular dynamics to look at the potential structure and dynamics of these clusters and lattice gas simulations to explore the population dynamics of the cluster populations prior to nucleation. A liquid-liquid phase separation process was observed whereby one phase becomes more concentrated in ions and becomes the precursor for nuclei to form. The preordering seen during calcium carbonate crystallization may be due to a liquid-liquid separation process. [Also see Perspective by Myerson and Trout] Recent experimental observations of the onset of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) mineralization suggest the emergence of a population of clusters that are stable rather than unstable as predicted by classical nucleation theory. This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to probe the structure, dynamics, and energetics of hydrated CaCO3 clusters and lattice gas simulations to explore the behavior of cluster populations before nucleation. Our results predict formation of a dense liquid phase through liquid-liquid separation within the concentration range in which clusters are observed. Coalescence and solidification of nanoscale droplets results in formation of a solid phase, the structure of which is consistent with amorphous CaCO3. The presence of a liquid-liquid binodal enables a diverse set of experimental observations to be reconciled within the context of established phase-separation mechanisms.


I. INTRODUCTION When the Brigham Young University Law Review published the article Antecedents, Perspectives, and Projections of a Legal Project about Religious Liberty in Peru,1 we did not imagine that parliamentary discussions regarding the approval of this bill would be postponed for such a long time.2 This seemed unthinkable when considering the significance of the purpose of the regulation, which is to achieve the full exercise of religious freedom and other related fundamental freedoms. These proposals acknowledge the multicultural reality of Peru and the growing membership of religious organizations outside the Catholic Church. Many of these organizations currently constitute important factors in social development, particularly because of their commitment to participate in charitable activities that benefit the less fortunate sectors of the population. It is not the intention of the authors of this Article to ignore the importance that the Catholic Church has had and continues to have as a molding element of our society. Neither is it the authors' intention to diminish the Catholic Church's work for the benefit of the less fortunate, for that would be inaccurate. Simply put, we wish to reflect on the fact that the coexistence of the Catholic Church with other religious organizations - based on different principles and dogmas, yet with the same purposes as the former - demands that legislative efforts be aimed at establishing rules and regulations that would allow for the consolidation of secularism for a State proclaimed as such in the Political Constitution of Peru.3 This means guaranteeing the right of all persons, whether individually or collectively, to profess a religious belief, and guaranteeing equal treatment of the different religious organizations by applying the principle of equality before the law. Now, nearly eight years after embarking on the journey toward religious freedom, we warn that the road to promulgation of a new legal act is still beset by challenges. Indeed, on June 9, 2008, the Commission for the Constitution and Regulation of the Congress of the Republic of Peru debated the approval of the Draft Opinion for Proposition 1008/2006-CR, known as the Religious Freedom and Equality Act.4 This Draft Opinion recommended approving said bill, but with a substitute text.5 As far as the approval of this opinion is concerned, the commissioners' discussion basically centered on two aspects: The first deals with the definition of the concept of "religious entity," along with the requirements that a group of persons needs to meet to be considered an entity. The second aspect relates to the rules and regulations for tax exemptions for religious entities, which involves elucidating the first aspect of the discussion. In the end, the Commission did not approve the draft opinion. On July 8, 2008, Congressman Raul Castro Stagnaro of the National Unity Party presented the national Congress with Proposition 2560/2007-CR This bill proposes the promulgation of an act called the Religious Freedom Exercise Act.6 Thus far, the bill has been sent to the Commission for Constitution and Regulation of the Congress of the Republic for analysis and ruling. In our opinion, although this last legislative proposition was noteworthy, it actually turned out to be unnecessary. During the session on June 9, 2008, the Commission for Constitution and Regulation of the Congress of the Republic already determined the flaws that marred the Substitute Text for Proposition 1008/2006-CR. It would now be necessary to modify the parts of the bill that constituted the very grounds for terminating any further discussion of the matter. Thus, at present, the Commission for Constitution and Regulation of the Congress of the Republic of Peru has two bills pending analysis and ruling, both of which refer to the same topic the exercise of religious freedom and the treatment that the State must seek to grant religious entities - which will delay even further the promulgation of this important Act. …


This dissertation argues that the printed book—as a unit of meaning, a sculptural and visual object, and a consumer good—has been important to American poetry after modernism, and in particular to writers who directly engage the materiality of language in their poetry. In postwar poetry criticism, the "material text" is much discussed but often remains abstract: an emphasis on language as a medium tends to eclipse the literal sense in which texts are made of matter. This dissertation contends that in American poetry a self-consciousness about the materiality of language has been intimately related to experiments with the physical features of the book. It focuses on the work of four poets—Ezra Pound, Jack Spicer, Susan Howe, and Anne Carson— who exemplify this dual interest in materiality, and who, because they move beyond the isolated lyric toward book-length compositions, also implicate the conceptual force of "the book" in their poetry. The dissertation's first section, "Production," is situated in the small press printing revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. Its chapters on Pound and Spicer demonstrate how the material features of book-objects (including paper, binding, typography, and images) point to production and distribution contexts and, in so doing, to larger systems of literary and economic value that become an interpretive framework for reading the poetry these books contain. The second section, "Reproduction," turns to recent texts by Howe and Carson that exploit for aesthetic purposes the slippage between the reproducible visual features of the page and the non-transferrable material features of the book. As such, these texts challenge conventional definitions of textuality and highlight the visual and haptic potential of the printed book in the digital age. Together these sections suggest that the printed book has been, and continues to be, a key site for extending the available conditions of possibility for American poetry. URI http://hdl.handle.net/1773/26263 Collections English [336] DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015 DuraSpace Contact Us | Send Feedback Theme by The Book as Object and Concept in American Poetry after Modernism ResearchWorks Archive


Generalized arc consistency (GAC) is one of the most fundamental properties for reducing the search space when solving constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs). Consistencies stronger than GAC have also been shown useful, but the challenge is to develop efficient and simple filtering algorithms. Several CSP transformations are proposed recently so that the GAC algorithms can be applied on the transformed CSP to enforce stronger consistencies. Among them, the factor encoding (FE) is shown to be promising with respect to recent higher-order consistency algorithms. Nonetheless, one potential drawback of the FE is the fact that it enlarges the table relations as it increases constraint arity. We propose a variation of the FE that aims at reducing redundant columns in the constraints of the FE while still preserving full pairwise consistency. Experiments show that the new approach is competitive over a variety of random and structured benchmarks.


Since the mid-1990s, human rights groups, scholars, government agencies, and the media in the Russian Federation have documented a rising wave of individual and group acts of violence, destruction, or intimidation targeting ethnic and/or religious "others." In addition to massive brutality in Chechnya, Russia in recent years has witnessed skinhead riots and street raids by chain-and-rod wielding thugs; torchlight marches and attacks on mosques and synagogues; murders and beatings of foreign residents and diplomats; desecration of Jewish cemeteries; and intimidation of Chinese traders by whip-cracking Cossack gangs. In 2000, the Moscow Helsinki Group reported an average of 30 to 40 assaults a month by local gangs targeting darker-skinned individuals in Moscow alone. According to hate crime expert Aleksandr Tarasov, chair of the department of youth studies at the Phoenix Center for New Sociology and the Study of Practical Politics in Moscow, the number of skinheads in Russia grew from about 20,000 in 2001 to 50,000 in 2003, and it was projected to reach 80,000 by the end of 2005.


ABSTRACT Study on foliar anatomic structure of tropical plants are useful to study various aspects of plant life related to photosynthetic, productivity, carbon sequestration, adaptation to environmental stresses as the results of global climate change, etc. This study was conducted to investigate foliar anatomic structure of ten tropical woody plant species including Barringtonia asiatica, Dracontomelon dao, Heritiera littoralis, Diospyros discolor, Calophyllum inophyllum, Antidesma bunius, Schleichera oleosa, Syzygium cumini, Madhuca longifolia dan Adenanthera pavonina; also to discuss its implication to ecophysiological adaptation to tropical dry climate. The results showed that ten woody plant species studied had variation of adaptation pattern to dry tropical climate, exposure to high light intensity or open shade and photosynthesis activity. Plant species in Group II (Antidesma bunius, Madhuca longifolia and Adenanthera pavonina) has relatively higher adaptation compared to Group I (Diospyros discolor, Calophylum inophyllum, Dracontomelon dao, Schleichera oleosa, Heritiera littoralis, Baringtonia asiatica and Syzygium cumini). Some foliar anatomic structures including palisade shape and size, stomatal index, stomatal density, spongy mesophyll thickness, the ratio of P/T and P/S are important characters that can be used as indicator of changes in environmental factors; particularly the density of stomata as indicators of climate change in dry tropic area. Keywords: adaptation, dry climate, eco-physiology, foliar anatomy, woody plant


This paper reports monitoring fruits maturation using speckle technique. Performed measurements aim the assessing of biological inner fruit variation effect on the speckle image. We show that the speckle grain size is both affected by the glucose level inside the fruits and by the chlorophyll content. Moreover, the determination of circular polarization degree and circular grain size indicate that a Rayleigh diffusion regime gradually becomes predominant in fruits. Principal component analysis is used to highlight high correlation between results and strengthen the establishment of speckle as a novel non invasive method to monitor fruits ripening.