AimThe first pathogenetic step in multiple myeloma is the emergence of a limited number of clonal plasma cells, clinically known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS). Patients with MGUS do not have symptoms or end-organ damage but they do have a 1% annual risk of progression to multiple myeloma or related malignant disorders. With progression of MGUS to multiple myeloma, complex genetic events occur in the neoplastic plasma cell. Karyotyping and fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) were shown to be of prognostic value in patients with multiple myeloma. 99mTc-sestamibi imaging reflects myeloma disease activity in bone marrow with very high sensitivity and specificity predicting disease evolution. This study was undertaken to evaluate the role of 99mTc-sestamibi imaging and cytogenetic analysis in prognosis prediction of MGUS and multiple myeloma. MethodsWe enrolled 30 consecutive patients with a confirmed diagnosis of multiple myeloma or MGUS. Bone marrow biopsy and biochemical staging according to the International Staging System (ISS) were performed in all cases. Karyotype analysis and FISH were performed in 11 of 12 patients with MGUS and in 17 of 18 patients with multiple myeloma having adequate metaphases. ResultsThe karyotype was abnormal in four of 11 MGUS and in six of 17 multiple myeloma. Abnormalities of chromosome 13 were present in one case of MGUS and in six cases of multiple myeloma whereas the involvement of immunoglobulin was observed in one case of multiple myeloma. An abnormal FISH panel was found in four MGUS and nine multiple myeloma patients. All patients with MGUS showed a normal MIBI scan (score 0). Among patients with multiple myeloma only three, all with ISS stage I, showed a normal scan while a positive scan was obtained in others (score range, 1–7). The MIBI uptake was strongly related to the bone marrow plasma cell infiltration and to cytogenetic abnormalities. Particularly, a MIBI uptake score above 5 identified patients with poor prognosis encompassing all stage III multiple myeloma and three of seven stage II multiple myeloma. On the other hand all stage I and II patients having a MIBI score less than 5 showed a good prognosis. ConclusionBoth cytogenetic analysis and a MIBI scan add no relevant prognostic information to the ISS in patients with stage I and III multiple myeloma. The MIBI scan was of prognostic value in stage II multiple myeloma patients. Additionally, MIBI imaging may be useful to guide bone marrow biopsy in order to obtain adequate samples for cytogenetic analysis.


Traditional marine governance can create inferior results. Management decisions customarily reflect fluctuating political priorities and formidable special-interest influence. Governments face distrust and conflicts of interest. Industries face fluctuating or confusing rules. Communities feel disenfranchised to affect change. The marine environment exhibits the impacts. While perceived harm to diverse values and priorities, disputed facts and legal questions create conflict, informed and empowered public engagement prepares governments to forge socially legitimate and environmentally acceptable decisions. Integrity, transparency and inclusiveness matter. This article examines positive contributions engaged communities can make to marine governance and relates it to social license. Social license suffers critique as vague and manufactured. Here its traditional understanding as extra-legal approval that communities give to resource choices is broadened to include a legally sanctioned power to deliberate—social license to engage. The starting hypothesis rests in the legal tradition designating oceans as public assets for which governments hold fiduciary duties of sustainable management benefiting current and future generations. The public trust doctrine houses this legal custom. A procedural due process right for engaged communities should stem from this public-asset classification and afford marine stakeholders standing to ensure management policy accords with doctrinal principles. The (free), prior, informed consent participation standard provides best practice for engaged decision-making. Building on theories from law, social, and political science, we suggest robust public deliberation provides marine use actors methods to earn and sustain their social license to operate, while governmental legitimacy is bolstered by assuring public engagement opportunities are available and protected with outcomes utilized.


What does it mean to say that Native peoples exist in the present?  In Beyond Settler Time Mark Rifkin investigates the dangers of seeking to include Indigenous peoples within settler temporal frameworks. Claims that Native peoples should be recognized as coeval with Euro-Americans, Rifkin argues, implicitly treat dominant non-native ideologies and institutions as the basis for defining time itself. How, though, can Native peoples be understood as dynamic and changing while also not assuming that they belong to a present inherently shared with non-natives? Drawing on physics, phenomenology, queer studies, and postcolonial theory, Rifkin develops the concept of "settler time" to address how Native peoples are both consigned to the past and inserted into the present in ways that normalize non-native histories, geographies, and expectations. Through analysis of various kinds of texts, including government documents, film, fiction, and autobiography, he explores how Native experiences of time exceed and defy such settler impositions. In underscoring the existence of multiple temporalities, Rifkin illustrates how time plays a crucial role in Indigenous peoples' expressions of sovereignty and struggles for self-determination.


A field study was conducted with Indian ironweed (Vernonia anthelmintica (L.) Willd.) at Experiment, Ga., to determine the effects of row width and within-row spacing on seed yield, plant height, and basal stem diameter. Row width and within-row spacing had no effect on seed yield or plant height. Row width had a highly significant effect on stem diameter. Plants grown at 20- and 41-cm within-row spacing did not differ in stem diameter, but stems of plants grown at 10-cm within-row spacing were smaller than those grown at 20- and 41-cm spacing.


Based in part on the results of a unique, comparative research project, the aim of this article is threefold: (1) to provide a comparative summary of racist extremism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE); (2) to compare the situation of racist extremism in CEE to that in Western Europe; and (3) to come to some further insights about racist extremism in the region. It concludes, in contrast to many of the alarming statements on the topic, that CEE is neither a hotbed of racist extremism nor a safe haven for racist extremists. In fact, if one compares the state of racist extremism in CEE to that in Western Europe, the differences seem less striking than is often assumed. Yet while the impact of racist extremism in CEE might not be as great as is often assumed, a lot remains to be done, particularly now that these countries are or will soon be members of the European Union.


The primary purpose of this thesis is to present a comprehensive analysis of occupant kinematics and spinal injuries, during road traffic accidents in Saudi Arabia from the points of view of statistical analysis, modeling of occupant kinematics, and biomechanics. An in-depth database containing information on 512 real world vehicle crashes was constructed. The study identifies the characteristics of the collisions and occupant spinal injuries in Saudi Arabia, and suggests measures to mitigate them. A logistic model has been presented which can be used to provide information about the crashes and spinal injuries. The model may serve as an initial prediction to establish the risk of spinal injury sustained by occupants at road crash, and a paramedic's protocol, as part of the emergency response, could be revised according to the developed model. State of the art techniques for accident reconstruction have been demonstrated as a tool to investigate the crashes, and the probable cause of crashes, and to make recommendations to prevent crashes and/or mitigate the severity of the accidents and resulting spinal injuries. Computational simulations of crashes provide a tool for understanding the dynamics of crashes and injuries, and are being used worldwide to study dynamics of crashes and efficacy of safety devices. The work conducted here has demonstrated how crashes can be simulated to estimate the injury parameters, and the likelihood of injuries on various parts of the body. While this study presents a detailed multi-dimensional study on road traffic crashes and spinal cord injuries therein, it remains a pilot study for Saudi Arabia. It demonstrates how this type of study can have far reaching consequences and the need to collect such data and carry out this kind of a study on a regular basis at the national level.


A dynamic proxy object is a typed proxy, created at runtime, conforming to a type specified by the application. Such an object can be used wherever an expression of the type it was created for is expected, yet reifies all invocations performed on it. This simple but powerful concept has been introduced into Java at version 1.3 (and has later also appeared in the .NET platform). A dynamic proxy is created for a set of interfaces as an instance of a class, generated automatically on the fly without support from the Java compiler or virtual machine, implementing those interfaces. Unfortunately, dynamic proxies are only available ``for interfaces''. The case of creating dynamic proxies for a set of types including a class type, due to the increased complexity, has not been considered, meaning that it is currently not possible to create a dynamic proxy mimicking an instance of a class. We present a pragmatic approach to supporting dynamic proxies ``for classes'', building on the existing solution to dynamic proxies for interfaces. We discuss the costs of such an extension, in terms of safety, security, and performance, and illustrate its usefulness through a novel abstraction for decoupled remote interaction, unifying (implicit future) remote method invocations and (type-based) publish/subscribe.


We have recently demonstrated that gastrin stimulates growth of mouse colon cancer (MC-26) in vivo by regulation of gastrin receptors (GR). In the present study, we have tested the effect of proglumide (PGL), a GR antagonist, on the trophic and GR-regulatory effects of gastrin on MC-26 tumors. Four groups of 12 mice each were inoculated with 5 X 10(4) MC-26 cells and given injections of either normal saline (control), pentagastrin (PG), PGL, or both PG + PGL for 21 days. At the end of the treatment period, body, tumor, fundic, and colon weights were noted and GR measured. Two types of specific gastrin-binding sites were found on tumor cell membranes of control mice, one with high binding affinity (Kd = less than 1.0 nM) and low capacity (GR), and the other with a very high capacity and a low affinity (Kd = greater than 0.1 microM) (type 2 gastrin-binding sites). Only the type 1 GR were observed on the fundic mucosal and colon membranes. PG treatment resulted in a significant weight increase of the tumors with an up-regulation of only type 1 GR. On the other hand, PG had no significant effect on fundic mucosal and colonic GR levels, but caused a significant increase in fundic mucosal weights. PGL completely inhibited both the trophic and GR up-regulatory effects of PG on tumors, but incompletely reduced the PG-stimulated fundic mucosal weight gain, indicating differential sensitivity of tumor and normal tissues to PGL. PGL, in the absence of PG, was slightly trophic for normal fundic mucosa, but had no effect on MC-26 tumors and normal colon. The one striking effect of PGL, in the presence of PG, was the significant lowering of the binding affinity of type 1 GR for gastrin on both the tumor and normal gastrointestinal tissues. This effect may be another mechanism by which PGL interferes with the actions of PG on MC-26 tumors and fundic mucosa of mice.


Continuousdecline in soil productivity is a major constraint to the improvement of livelihoods of smallholderfarmers of Kenya. In highlands, levels of soil nitrogen, phosphorus and sometimes potassiumare low and the situation is worsened by the methods of cultivation that results in nutrientmining rather than nutrient build up. Low soil fertility contributes to one of the greatest challenges currently facing Kenya; inadequate food production for the rapidly growing population. There is a need to seek for environmentally friendly and economically viable technologiesto assist in soil fertility improvement and hence high and sustainable crop yields. To thisend, a multidisciplinary research team of scientist and farmers implemented a participatory trialin Meru South district, one of the main maize growing areas of central Kenya. The trial was farmer-researcher managed with a general objective of offering small scale resource poor farmers withfeasible soil nutrient management techniques for combating soil nutrient depletion caused by continuous cropping without adequate additions of external soil fertility inputs. Preliminary resultsindicate that maize performance may be improved by combining fast decomposing plant biomass(e.g. Tithonia diversifolia) with half the recommended rate of nitrogen fertilizer.


The notion of "democracy" is a critical cultural and political referent for supporters and opponents of the recent invasion of Iraq. According to many analysts, the successful waging of war by a modern democratic state is contingent upon a tripartite consensus between the government, the media and public opinion. Democracy is pivotal in the formation of this consensus. In order to understand the status and authority of "democracy" we need to draw upon broader perspectives of the relationship between language and culture. The dialogue-dispute between Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger provides valuable insights into the ways in which language and media representation contribute to the formation of the preconditions of democratic consensus. Media representation is an unstable compound of images, information and cultural elements within a context of ongoing language wars. Democracy, as a highly contested discourse within these wars, needs to be re-defined and re-configured in order to restore its power and viability as a productive resource in the advance of contemporary cultural politics.


Several methods of low-frequency analysis are used to determine the source mechanism of the July 31, 1970, Great Colombia earthquake and to reexamine two controversial results previously obtained for this event. In a classic study of the earthquake, Dziewonski and Gilbert [1974] concluded (1) that low-frequency (f < 4 mHz) mode spectrum observations require an isotropic compression at the source of a magnitude similar to the deviatoric moment release and (2) that the isotropic component of moment release precedes the short-period onset of the earthquake by 80 s. The original data set collected by Dziewonski and Gilbert is used in a reanalysis of the Great Colombia earthquake, taking advantage of the theoretical and computational advances that have been made during the past 20 years in predicting normal mode spectra. In particular, the splitting and coupling of modes induced by rotation, ellipticity, and three-dimensional (3-D) mantle structure are considered. When splitting and coupling are taken into account in the analysis of the observed spectra, the isotropic component is reduced to an insignificant size, and the data are well explained by a purely deviatoric source which does not require the initiation of moment release before the short-period onset time of the earthquake. When the effects of splitting and coupling are ignored in the calculation, the results are instead similar to those of Dziewonski and Gilbert [1974]. Experiments with synthetic spectra generated for the deviatoric part of the moment tensor confirm that the distortion of the low-frequency end of the normal mode spectrum caused by splitting and coupling is incorrectly interpreted as an isotropic component when these effects are ignored in the inverse problem. The detailed effects of modeling errors of this kind on the retrieved source parameters will, in general, depend both on the source mechanism and the distribution of observing stations.


The recently established new role of civil society in development assistance issued through the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) can be seen in the MCC approach to development aid, especially its indicator-driven innovations in the general context of development assistance. Three types of civil society organization engagements are reviewed: indicator creation, in-country project design and implementation, and board membership and ongoing consultation. Finally, a conclusion about the degree of interaction and its effectiveness to date is made


Intrigue, provocation, and the birth of independence: the Estonian foreign delegation and Aleksander Keskula

This article is an account of the relations between two groups working in Scandinavia in 1918 in order to attain foreign recognition of Estonian independence. The first of these was the official Estonian foreign delegation, headed by Jaan Tonisson, which began its work in February 1918. The other group consisted for the most part of a single person: the emigre adventurer and self-styled politician Aleksander Keskula who had been involved in quasi-diplomatic activities as a representative of Estonians since the beginning of the war. Due to the nature of the available sources, I am focusing on the delegation's viewpoint on the events described.
I have tried to frame the basic difference between the delegation and Keskula with the help of the notions of proto-diplomacy and para-diplomacy, as they have been used by Ivo D. Duchacek and others. The identity of the delegation, a proto-diplomatic body, was that of a foreign representation of Estonian Maapaev (the first ever representative body of the Estonian people). The delegation members' mandates, however, were vague and of doubtful authority since Maapaev had been dissolved and Estonia had been occupied by German forces. This situation made it almost impossible to get up-to-date instructions from the nearly dysfunctional provisional government in Estonia. The members of the delegation, all inexperienced in diplomacy, were correspondingly prone to passivity and – if not – to missteps.
Keskula as a para-diplomat was on the outside unconcerned with legalities and thought that his experience alone made him superior to his amateur colleagues, lack of mandate notwithstanding. Unlike the official delegation, he was well-connected and highly competent in the political affairs of Stockholm, which he could and would use against the delegation.
The conflict between the delegation and Keskula grew out of personal animosities, as well as the basic incompatibility between their viewpoints: one proto- and the other para-diplomatic. It began with the total failure of negotiations between Keskula and Tonisson, and was cemented by the delegation's public declaration that Keskula had no right to act as a representative of Estonians.
Keskula's revenge was to spread rumors that some of the delegation members – particularly Jaan Tonisson and Mihkel Martna, who also happened to be his personal enemies – were German-friendly, if not outright German agents. This could be "proved" in several ways: certainly by referring to their contacts with German ministers in Stockholm and Copenhagen, but also by raising suspicions of past contacts with German authorities. The intrigue was mostly arranged through the Embassy of France in Stockholm where Keskula had good, long-term contacts with the minister Thiebaut and the "press attache" Andre Waltz, and where he presented himself as the leader of an alternative, left-wing anti-German movement in Estonia. The first provisional de facto French recognition of the Estonian constitutive assembly, although sent to Tonisson, had also been achieved at least partially thanks to Keskula.
Keskula's schemes had the effect of exacerbating already-existing personal and political animosities inside the delegation. The naturally domineering personality of Tonisson was one source of tension, another one was the orientation controversy between German-friendly and Ententefriendly members of the delegation. The main rift appeared between the members situated in Copenhagen (Tonisson, Martna, Karl Menning, and occasionally Eduard Virgo) and those in Stockholm (Ferdinand Kull and Gustav Suits). Kull in particular was apt to demand more decisive action against Germany and began to consider himself something of a counterbalance to the delegation's German-friendliness, which provoked him to act increasingly on his own volition and eventually caused his expulsion.
Any long-term effect of Keskula's activities on the obtainment of Estonian independence and the development of Estonian statehood was probably negligible. All the same, the story illustrates well the problems facing the first Estonian diplomats, and their inherent vulnerability to intrigue and provocation. On a more positive note, the need to resist Keskula's attacks also had the result of making the delegation tackle more decisively the delicate questions of its inner hierarchy, orientation vis a vis the belligerents and the overall course of action.

Keywords: History of Estonia, First World War, Aleksander Keskula, protodiplomacy.

Mart Kuldkepp (b. 1983), Ph.D. student, Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Tartu.
Correspondence: Mart Kuldkepp, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Tartu. Ulikooli 17, 51014, Tartu, Estonia. E-mail: email@example.com


Scarcity of good
 quality irrigation water is one of the crop limiting factors in
 Pakistan. Information on the relative tolerance of different crop
 genotypes is necessary for the successful management of salt
 affected land and water. To investigate the effect of saline and/or
 sodic waters on growth, ionic concentration and biochemical changes
 in sunflower, a series of solution culture and pot experiments were
 conducted.Initially, 10 sunflower genotypes were grown for 30 days
 in hydroponics using five levels of saline and/or sodic water;T1
 (control), T2 (EC 10.0 dS m-1), T3 (SAR 20.0 mmol L-1)1/2, T4 (RSC
 5.4 mmolc L-1), T5 (EC 10.0 dS m-1) + (SAR 20.0 mmol L-1)1/2 + (RSC
 5.4 mmolcL-1). On the basis of biomass accumulation and K+: Na+,
 ratio SF-187 and Hysun-33 emerged as salt tolerant and salt
 sensitive genotypes respectively. Subsequently, growth and yield
 response of these genotypes was evaluated in soil culture under
 various saline and/or sodic water treatments. Although, growth and
 yield of both genotypes decreased under saline and/or sodic water
 treatments but SF-187 produced a significantly (P .05) higher
 yield as compared to Hysun-33. In the next pot studies, Ca and Si
 were used @100 mg kg-1 soil to investigate their mitigating effect
 using same levels of saline and/or sodic water as above. Results
 revealed that calcium application partially offset the deleterious
 effects of saline and/or sodic waters and improved yield under RSC-water.
 However, Si significantly improved growth and yield of sunflower
 under saline and/or sodic water irrigation. The beneficial effects
 of Si were more pronounced in salt sensitive genotypes than in salt
 tolerant genotypes. Same sunflower genotypes when grown in solution
 culture, salinized with 100 mM NaCl revealed that 1 mM Si
 significantly enhanced activities of antioxidant enzymes as compared
 to 5 mM Ca. Finally, both sunflower genotypes were grown in pot
 culture and irrigated with saline sodic water.The results confirmed
 that Si alleviated salt stress and enhanced plant growth by
 stimulating activities of antioxidant enzymes and lowering lipid
 peroxidation in sunflower.Major mechanisms of Si mediated salt
 tolerance in sunflower include the maintenance of higher K+/Na+
 ratio, reduced membrane lipid peroxidation and enhanced
 antioxidative mechanism.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The passing of forty years since the tragic death of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. has prompted many Americans to look back at the late 1960s and take stock of where we are today. In 2001 the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) made the complexities of that collective reckoning the centerpiece of "The Long Civil Rights Movement: The South Since the 1960s" (LCRM), a study of the post-1960s South, emphasizing school desegregation, economic justice, gender equality, gay liberation, and other social justice struggles. As SOHP director Jacquelyn Dowd Hall argued at the inception of this project, public memory often distorts the history of the Civil Rights Movement by suggesting that it reached its resolution by the late 1960s. This version of the past not only obscures the Movement's more radical aims but also ignores an entire generation of activists who sought to protect and extend the legacies of the 1960s. Their stories are essential for reckoning with the region's past and shaping its future. (1) The LCRM project's fieldwork emphasizes the exciting potential for linking memories of the recent past with urgent questions of social justice in the present-day South. After conducting over one hundred oral histories of school desegregation in four main sites--Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Charlotte, North Carolina; Birmingham, Alabama; Louisville, Kentucky--the SOHP began in the summer of 2005 to explore the history of post-1960s economic justice activism. (2) At that time, project coordinators anticipated that their biggest challenge might be to convey the objectives of the project to a broad public audience. While school desegregation constitutes a readily remembered--if often misremembered--moment in southern history, economic justice activism in the post-1960s South comprises a less familiar and direct narrative, taking the form of many different movements with wide-ranging goals. Moreover, the economic story that often dominates popular renderings of recent southern history is the rise of the Sunbelt and regional prosperity. For multiple reasons, then, the SOHP research team wondered whether an oral history project centered on economic justice struggles would resonate with public memories of the post-1960s South. About two months into this research, however, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, and suddenly it seemed that the South's struggle for economic justice was no longer a forgotten story in need of recovery but rather the story of the moment. Yet the flurry of media attention presented new distortions of southern history, often suggesting that the poverty of New Orleans was an isolated tragedy rather than part of a larger regional pattern. Moreover, many media reports suggested that Hurricane Katrina awakened a nation that for more than a generation had failed to pay attention to issues of race and class. As historian Paul Ortiz recently argued, such claims ignored the fact that many social policies of the past thirty years were carefully "formulated more on the basis of enhancing the race and class privileges of the few rather than delivering the greatest good to the many." (3) As the work of the "Long Civil Rights Movement" initiative reveals, post-Katrina claims about America's inattention to matters of race and class also ignored the efforts of an entire generation of activists for economic justice. In 2006 SONY interviewers traveled to New Orleans and returned to earlier LCRM project sites in search of those activists. (4) Their stories collectively situate the social justice struggles of New Orleans in a broader chronological and regional narrative. In Birmingham, Charlotte, and Louisville, the SOHP team interviewed over seventy members of those communities representing a rich variety of southern economic justice activism: foot soldiers in the War on Poverty who extended their work beyond the 1960s; fair housing advocates; legal aid attorneys; environmental justice activists; residents of low-income neighborhoods undergoing urban "revitalization"; pioneering "firsts" who helped to desegregate the southern labor market; and union organizers in the South's new and old industrial sectors. …


Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) can induce persistent somatic, affective and cognitive symptoms, collectively known as post-concussion syndrome (PCS). It is debated whether this syndrome is due to biological or psychological factors. Standard structural imaging only detects lesions in a small proportion of those with mTBI, and these lesions are not associated with PCS in the acute ( 3 months) stage. However, microlesions and diffuse axonal injury (DAI) have been observed using novel imaging techniques such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). White matter damage examined in acute and post-acute/chronic mTBI has been correlated with cognitive and behavioural measures, as well as outcome from injury. Increased damage within the white matter tracts of the corpus callosum and thalamic radiations is observed in those with poorer outcome at 3 months, whereas grey matter damage is independent of outcome. This present study aims to investigate the relation of structural changes and long-term consequences in more detail by assessing the correlation between DTI-based indices and persistent PCS symptomatology. Structural changes were investigated in participants with chronic (>1 year) mTBI and persistent PCS (n¼10), participants with mTBI and no on-going PCS (n¼8) and non-head injured controls (n¼10). Fractional Anisotropy (FA) and cortical thickness were compared between groups to assess white matter integrity and focal damage respectively. In addition, the association between neural structure and level of PCS symptom report was evaluated. We hypothesised that long fibre white matter bundles, such as the corpus callosum, would be damaged in participants with chronic mTBI, with cortical thinning around these areas. Furthermore, we hypothesised that this damage would be related to the persistent PCS symptoms seen after mTBI. If PCS has a biological basis, then participants with mTBI and persistent PCS may have sustained greater damage to these areas at the time of injury than participants without ongoing symptoms. Preliminary analysis demonstrates a reduction in cortical thickness and white matter integrity in participants with chronic (>1 year) mTBI, independent of PCS, compared to controls. Diminished cortical thickness and white matter integrity were seen for cingulate cortex and corpus callosum. In addition, similar reductions were observed when comparing mTBI participants without PCS to those with PCS. This suggests that persistent PCS may have a biological element, with those reporting greater symptoms in the chronic state sustaining greater damage at the time of injury. Future research will investigate the correlation between the constituent symptoms of PCS (cognitive, affective, somatic) and structural damage in order to allow more definitive brain-behaviour associations.


This forum addresses conceptual, methodological, and professional issues that arise in the UX field's continuing effort to contribute robust information about users to product planning and design. --- David Siegel and Susan Dray, Editors


"Self Change: Social Psychological and Clinical Perspectives" examines cognitive and motivational factors affecting the intention to seek change, processes involved in the initiation and maintenance of change, the role of social networks as facilitators or inhibitors of change, and measurement and assessment of personal change. At any given moment millions of people are contemplating changing various aspects of themselves a general theory on volitional change is sorely needed. This book, which is of interest to social psychologists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists, to researchers and practitioners, is a significant contribution to a more thorough understanding of self change.


We review the theory of optical interferometers in which a light mirror is suspended to swing as a pendulum and can therefore respond to radiation-pressure forces. The basic principles are elaborated on by considering a two-mirror system, and optical bistability and mirror confinement are predicted. A three-mirror system is also described that is capable of producing a far higher level of mirror confinement. White- and ground-noise analyses are given.


The requirements for solid state micro- dosimetry particularly within the context of medical and space environments necessitate a tissue equivalent and radiation hard material, for which diamond is uniquely suited. An overview of the current status of diamond based microdosimetry is given. This overview will explore previous and current technologies developed by the Centre for Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP). The overview will analyse technologies in terms of their advantages and disadvantages within the context of microdosimetry. Using this as a basis, recommendations with respect to fabri- cation methodologies/techniques are provided in order to direct the course and progress of development so as to achieve true diamond based microdosimetry.


The research makes an original contribution to social psychology theory related to the success of academic women in higher education. The literature review reveals that there are differing views on the reasons for women failing to break through the glass ceiling in the higher education setting. Some authors concentrate on the environmental factors that are having an effect on women. Others concentrate on the effects of patriarchal organisational structures. Fewer commentators make reference to the notion of the female psyche. The existence of the glass ceiling phenomenon in the higher education setting is attributed to psychological, cultural, and technical factors. Little primary research has been conducted on the perceptions of female academics at the middle management level in the higher education setting, and much of the published work is anecdotal in nature. It is the aim of this research to give new insights into the perceptions of women at middle management level. The research makes no prior assumptions about the nature or categorisation of the mental constructions that emerge, but produces a more informed and sophisticated perceptual map. It investigates the respondents' perceptions of the glass ceiling phenomenon in relation to the features of their lifeworld. The research uses the essences of the lifeworld approach to analyse the views and feelings of the women participants. The perceptions that emerge from the research include the issue of a long term juggling act that the respondents have to achieve to be successful (Temporality). The women also demonstrate a ruthless pursuit for a voice in an increasingly difficult environment (Selfhood). The relationship of the women to other people in their lives is one of the most important findings in the research. The women always find that they have a series of bitter-sweet relationships with others and often feel guilt about missed opportunities (Sociality). The respondents also demonstrate that they feel that it is better to have suffered hardship to enable them and others to progress (Embodiment). One of the respondents graphically illustrates the development of academic women with reference to the metaphor - the relay race in time which emphasises the importance of influence and mentoring that the respondents think is important but often find difficult to achieve (Spatiality). The women often appear to have conflicting projects and address this issue with passion which often leads to conflict (Project). The language that the women use often portrays their disappointment with the emerging emphasis on management and administration rather than research and discovery (Discourse). The accounts do have some flashes of joy and celebration but overall they tend to epitomise feelings of sadness and regret. The thesis ends by suggesting that there are certain typologies for successful academic women based on their relationship to others or their inner psychological state. These are used to make some suggestions in relation to practical steps that could be taken to help women to achieve greater academic success. The new insights in the thesis will hopefully enable organisations to take positive steps to encourage more women into senior academic posts.


The past decade has witnessed a dramatic change in public attitudes and legal status for same-sex couples who wish to marry. These events demonstrate that the legal conception of the family is no longer limited to traditional marriage. They also raise the possibility that other relationships — cohabiting couples and their children, voluntary kin groups, multigenerational groups and polygamists — might gain legal recognition as families. This Article probes the challenges faced by aspiring families and the means by which they could attain their goal. It builds on the premise that the state remains committed to social welfare criteria for granting family status, recognizing as families only those categories of relationships that embody a long-term commitment to mutual care and interdependence, and, on that basis, function well to satisfy members' dependency needs. Groups aspiring to legal recognition as families must overcome substantial uncertainties as to whether they meet these criteria if they are to obtain the rights and obligations of legally recognized families. Uncertainty contributes to a lack of confidence in the durability and effectiveness of novel relationships on the part of the aspiring family members themselves, the larger social community and, ultimately, the state. We develop an informal model to illustrate the nature of these uncertainties, as well as the solutions to the possible obstacles they create. Using a hypothetical group consisting of two adult men and two adult women in a polyamorous relationship, we show how legal family status for novel groups can result from an evolutionary process for overcoming uncertainties that uses collaborative techniques to build trust and confidence. Collaborative processes have been shown in other settings to be effective mechanisms for creating trust incrementally and thus appear to offer a way forward in the evolution of other novel families. We show that the successful movement to achieve marriage rights for LBGT couples has roughly conformed to the collaborative processes we propose, and the absence of meaningful collaboration is one factor explaining the stasis that characterizes the status of unmarried cohabitants. This evidence supports the prediction that the future progress of other aspiring family groups toward attaining legal status may depend on how well they are able to engage the collaborative mechanisms that smooth the path from contract to status.


Curcumin is the active component of tumeric, and this polyphenolic compound has been extensively investigated as an anticancer drug that modulates multiple pathways and genes. In this study, 10 to 25 micromol/L curcumin inhibited 253JB-V and KU7 bladder cancer cell growth, and this was accompanied by induction of apoptosis and decreased expression of the proapoptotic protein survivin and the angiogenic proteins vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and VEGF receptor 1 (VEGFR1). Because expression of survivin, VEGF, and VEGFR1 are dependent on specificity protein (Sp) transcription factors, we also investigated the effects of curcumin on Sp protein expression as an underlying mechanism for the apoptotic and antiangiogenic activity of this compound. The results show that curcumin induced proteasome-dependent down-regulation of Sp1, Sp3, and Sp4 in 253JB-V and KU7 cells. Moreover, using RNA interference with small inhibitory RNAs for Sp1, Sp3, and Sp4, we observed that curcumin-dependent inhibition of nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kappaB)-dependent genes, such as bcl-2, survivin, and cyclin D1, was also due, in part, to loss of Sp proteins. Curcumin also decreased bladder tumor growth in athymic nude mice bearing KU7 cells as xenografts and this was accompanied by decreased Sp1, Sp3, and Sp4 protein levels in tumors. These results show for the first time that one of the underlying mechanisms of action of curcumin as a cancer chemotherapeutic agent is due, in part, to decreased expression of Sp transcription factors in bladder cancer cells.


Sea-urchin sperm were extracted with o.5 M KCl for 45 s at room temperature in the presence of Triton X-100, and then transferred to reactivating solution containing 1 mM ATP. The flagellar beat frequency of these KCl-extracted sperm (16 beats/s) was only about half that of control Triton-extracted sperm that had not been exposed to 0.5 M KCl (31 beats/s), although the form of their bending waves was not significantly altered. Examination by electron microscopy showed that the extraction with 0.5 M KCl removed the majority of the outer arms from the doublet tubules, leaving the inner arms apparently intact. By varying the duration of the KCl-extraction, it was shown that the rate of decrease in beat frequency paralleled the rate of disappearance of the arms. Prolonging the extraction time beyond 45 s at room temperature, or 4 min at o °C, had little further effect on beat frequency. ATPase measurements suggested that 6o-65% of the dynein in the original axonemes had been solubilized when the extraction with KCl was permitted to go to completion. These results indicate that the generation and propagation of flagellar bending waves of essentially typical form are not prevented by the removal of the outer row of dynein arms from the doublet tubules. In terms of the sliding filament model of flagellar bending, the results suggest that the rate of sliding between tubules under these conditions is proportional to the number of dynein arms present. The lack of significant change in wave form implies that the total amount of sliding that occurs during each bending cycle is not affected by the reduced number of dynein arms, but is regulated independently in some manner by the elastic forces generated by other structures in the bent axoneme.


This paper aimed at investigating
opportunities and challenges of women's participation in decision making as
little attention was given to opportunities and challenges of women's
participation in decision making at local level. There are few researches
on opportunities and challenges of
women's participation in decision making
at local level and more focus on opportunities and challenges of women's
participation in agricultural,
economical, educational and leadership. The purpose of the study is to explore
challenges that women face in their decision making and reflect on the
opportunities that are being undertaken by stake holders and local government.
A qualitative research method utilized in the study to get an in-depth
understanding of the phenomenon. The researcher used case study research design
which helps to deeply study a phenomenon. The researcher then employed thematic
analysis to come up with findings and discussion. Purposive and referral chain
sampling techniques have also been employed in the study. The finding of the
study is based on semi-structured-interviews and Focus Group Discussion (FGD).
Empirical data gathered through interviews and FGD in Debre Tabor City
Administration. The research findings indicated that women faced a number of
constraints to participate in the decision making at a local level. These
constraints were cultural beliefs, illiteracy and low level of education, economic
and financial problems, religion, nature, household activities, negative
perception of the society, men oppression and chauvinism, lack of confidence
and interest among women and weak bureaucracy. Within those challenges, there
were opportunities which enabled and designed to maintain women toward the
decision making participation. Those opportunities were international law and
convention, constitutional and different legal orientation, packages, programmes,
policies and initiatives, different governmental structure of women, education,
training and awareness, preparation of periodical meeting, economic empowerment
and the quota system. The study recommends the creation of an enabling environment
for women's decision making ability empowerment.


In this paper, parallel algorithms are developed for real-time dynamic simulation of a multiple manipulator system, cooperating to manipulate a large load. In an effort to achieve real-time computational rates on a general-purpose parallel system, temporal and spatial forms of parallelism are implemented to improve performance. Temporal parallelism is obtained with the use of parallel numerical integration methods. A speedup of 3.78 on four processors of a CRAY Y-MPS was achieved with a parallel four-point block predictor-corrector method for the simulation of a four manipulator system. To overcome a loss of efficiency because of a reduction in accuracy with the block integration methods, spatial parallelism is used in which the dynamics of each chain is computed simultaneously. With the same four manipulator system, this form of parallelism in conjunction with a serial integration method results in a speedup of 3.1 on four processors without the degradation in accuracy. In cases where there are more processors than chains, a new multipoint parallel integration method can still be advantageous despite the reduced accuracy. In this case, it is shown that greater effective speedups are achieved when both forms of parallelism are combined to generate more parallel tasks. >


Ethylene/1-pentene copolymers were prepared using a [(CO)5W= C(Me)OZr(Cp)2Cl] (1)/MAO catalyst system. 1-Pentene incorporation in the copolymer was monitored using 13C-NMR spectroscopic methods. The weight average molecular weights (Mw) of the copolymers were between 142,000 and 629,000 g/mol, with polydispersity indexes (PDIs) ranging from ≈ 2 to 90, as analyzed by size exclusion chromatography (SEC). Melting and crystallization temperatures, determined using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and crystallization analysis fractionation (CRYSTAF), decreased linearly as the amount of 1-pentene in the copolymer increased. SEC-FTIR revealed that the 1-pentene is predominantly incorporated in the low molecular weight fraction. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 42: 5121–5133, 2004


* The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the United Nations 2


Large-scale 3D point clouds have been actively used in many applications with the advent of capturing devices. In this paper, we propose a novel saliency detection algorithm for large-scale colored 3D point clouds which capture real-world scenes. We first voxelize an input point cloud, and then partition voxels into a supervoxel which corresponds to a clusters at the lowest level. We construct the supervoxel cluster hierarchy iteratively, where a high level cluster includes low level clusters which exhibit similar features to each other. We also estimate the saliency at each cluster by computing the distinctness of geometric and color features based on center-surround contrast. By averaging the multiscale saliency maps obtained at different levels of clusters, we obtain final saliency distribution. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm extracts globally and locally salient regions from large-scale colored 3D point clouds faithfully by employing the geometric and photometric features together.


In this article, I claim that Mary Wollstonecraft and Edmund Burke both conceive of the rights of man as a medium for individuals to care for and cultivate the self. Beginning with Michel Foucault's doubts that a concern with the care of the self can be found in modern political thought, I turn to Wollstonecraft and Burke in order to show that their debate turns precisely on the question of whether the rights of man enables or disables a care of the self. For Wollstonecraft, on the one hand, the rights of man provide women with a means to overcome a destructive set of virtues—such as beauty, chastity, and modesty—that leave them spiritually destitute and deeply unhappy. For Burke, on the other hand, such rights devastate the system of manners that had previously nurtured the self's relation to itself. Regardless of this disagreement, my key claim is that both thinkers conceive of the rights of man not just as a juridical construction but also as a comprehensive way of life. In this way, I extend Foucault's notion of the care of the self—along with his conception of ethics, conversion, and personal cultivation—to a foundational debate in the human rights tradition.


An integral expression is evaluated for the log-amplitude mean value of a gaussian or laser-like optical beam propagating along a horizontal path in a turbulent atmosphere. The mean-value integral expression has been taken from an analysis by Schmeltzer for a gaussian beam in the atmosphere. The expressions presented here for the log-amplitude mean value depend on the product of a strength factor, which is the log-amplitude variance for a point source, and a multiplying factor that depends on the source beam size. Numerical results for the beam-size-dependent factor are given for a wide range of beam sizes, wavelengths, and path lengths. Numerical results are also presented for the mean on-axis irradiance and mean beam size, for focused and collimated gaussian beams. These will find application in the design of systems for laser communication in the atmosphere. The data are obtained by combining our results for the log-amplitude mean with published data for the variance. The integral expression used here for the log-amplitude mean value is based on an assumption which restricts the range of validity of our results. The conditions necessary for its validity are discussed.


Experts may have domain-specific knowledge that is not included in a statistical model and that can improve forecasts. While one-step-ahead forecasts address the conditional mean of the variable, model-based forecasts for longer horizons have a tendency to convert to the unconditional mean of a time series variable. This suggests that added expertise could be most beneficial to forecast quality for immediate horizons (as very recent events are not in the model) and for further away horizons (as they may miss foreseen trends), and less so for intermediate horizons. Relying on a huge database concerning pharmaceutical sales forecasts for various products and adjusted by a range of experts, we examine and verify this and other conjectures. We also document that the forecast horizon that is the most important for supply chain management here entails the heaviest adjustment by the experts. Unfortunately, that additional adjustment harms forecast accuracy.


This research aims to study the mechanical properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes. In order to overcome the difficulties of spanning multi-scales from atomistic field to macroscopic space, the Cauchy-Born rule is applied to link the deformation of atom lattice vectors at the atomic level with the material deformation in a macro continuum level. Single-walled carbon nanotubes are modelled as Cosserat surfaces, and modified shell theory is adopted where a displacement field-independent rotation tensor is introduced, which describes the rotation of the inner structure of the surface, i.e. micro-rotation. Empirical interatomic potentials are applied so that stress fields and modulus fields can be computed by the derivations of potential forms from displacement fields and rotation fields. A finite element approach is implemented. Results of simulations for single-walled carbon nanotubes under stretching, bending, compression and torsion are presented. In addition, Young's modulus and Poisson ratio for graphite sheet and critical buckling strains for single-walled carbon nanotubes are predicted in this research.


The use of technology in learning environments should be targeted at improving the learning outcome of the process. Several technology enhanced techniques can be used for maximizing the learning gain of particular students when having access to learning resources. One of them is content adaptation. Adapting content is especially important when using limited devices such as mobile phones. Content can be adapted to restrictive network conditions, to limited terminal capabilities, to different user preferences and learning styles or to external elements in the learning and user contexts. This paper studies and analyzes the impact of modifying and therefore adapting the speed of reproduction of audio content in mobile phones on the learning gain of the user. The paper shows that the optimum speed for Spanish audio is around 206 words per minute. The impact of enhancing the audio reproduction by presenting an equivalent version in text displayed on the screen of the mobile phone is also studied. The paper concludes that this text is only important for students younger than 15. The paper analyzes data from 100 Spanish speaking users that are grouped according to different criteria, such as gender, age, or level of studies. The results are presented and discussed.


While women form an increasing proportion of the Australian labour market, their
experience of work is often reactive and characterised by 'drift'. To counteract this,
women are advised by an ever increasing number of researchers, consultants and lay
people to engage in long term planning and decision making, in sum, to both think and
act strategically. The opportunity to think strategically, however, may not necessarily
arise and may not necessarily result in the pursuit of particular strategies. The possibility
and opportunity for women to strategise is dependant on their domestic circumstances
both in their responsibilities and the degree of dependence. The way in which the two
intersect affects the possibility of women actively strategising. A typology of such
responses is developed showing that it is only under specific conditions that women will
be able to 'strategise'. Under other conditions their responses may by characterised as
'tactising', 'routinising' or 'feminising'.
This thesis therefore is specifically interested in the effects of domestic
dependancy and responsibility on women's strategising and how this, in turn, affects the
range and variety of strategies which they can pursue. In order to explore the proposed
link between women's domestic arrangements and strategising, the thesis reports results
from a study of a bureaucratic organisation, the Department of Community Services of
the Tasmanian Public Service. Recent reforms have made it a friendly work environment
for women such that, formally, they have the same opportunities as their male
counterparts. However women's opportunity to strategise will be affected by their
domestic circumstances.
The empirical findings from this study are broadly consistent with the theoretical
approach. Women with heavy domestic commitments, find it negatively affects the time
and energy available for work in the public sphere, and respond by 'routinising'. By
contrast, women relatively free of such responsibilities can devote time and effort to their
occupational lives. They are free to engage in a range of 'occupational "strategies"' in
order to be occupationally mobile and to advance their careers.


In this study the effects of feeding rosemary, oregano, saffron and α-tocopheryl acetate on hen performance and egg quality were investigated. One hundred-twenty Lohmann laying hens, 32 weeks old, were divided into five groups replicated four times with six hens per replicate. One group was given a basal diet and served as control (CON). The experimental diets given to the other four groups were based on the basal diet but contained an additional 200 mg α-tocopheryl acetate/kg (TOC), or rosemary at 5 g/kg diet (ROS), oregano at 5 g/kg diet (ORE) or saffron at 20 mg/kg diet (SAF). At the end of the feeding trial that lasted 56 days, hen performance and some egg quality characteristics were determined, whereas the oxidative stability of the refrigerated stored shell eggs and liquid yolks were also examined. Results showed no significant differences in egg production, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, egg weight and shape, yolk shape, Haugh units and shell thickness among treatments. However, yolk colour was significantly improved in the SAF group compared to all other groups. The extent of lipid oxidation in shell eggs differed among the dietary treatments, but did not change with storage time. In liquid yolk at pH 6.2, lipid oxidation was higher in the CON group compared to all other groups. The ORE group presented lower oxidation rate than the ROS group, but higher than the SAF group, which in turn exhibited higher oxidation rate than the TOC group. When liquid yolk was acidified to pH 4.2, the lipid oxidation profile remained unchanged but the rate was much more intense.


Portugal has a unitary system in which the central government transfers funds to lower government levels for their public functions. In 2007, Portugal introduced Ecological Fiscal Transfers (EFT), where municipalities receive transfers for hosting Protected Areas (PA). We study whether introducing EFT in Portugal incentivized municipalities to designate PA and has led to a decentralization of conservation decisions. We employ a Bayesian structural time series approach to estimate the effect of introducing EFT in comparison to a simulated counterfactual time series. Quantitative results show a significant increase in the ratio of municipal and national PA designations following Portugal's EFT introduction. The analysis furthermore places emphasis on the importance of relevant municipal conservation competencies and the role of local decision makers' motivations for PA designations. Results have important implications for conservation policy-making in terms of allocating budgets and competencies in multi-level governments.


Thermochemical processes such as gasification can decompose carbon feedstocks into gaseous (e.g., syngas), liquid (e.g., oil, tar), and solid (e.g., char) products. Gasification is generally performed in a partial-oxidation environment (e.g., CO2 and steam). In particular, steam gasification has attracted more attention for converting biomass into valuable H2-rich syngas. Biochar is the predominant by-product from biomass pyrolysis or gasification, which has high potential to be used for gas cleaning (e.g., tar removal). This paper reviewed the progress in tar cracking/reforming with biochar catalysts. Biochar can be used as a carbon catalyst or support with fair performance in tar removal. It is noteworthy that biochar catalysts can also be directly gasified to recover energy without the need for frequent regeneration after deactivation. Besides, an integrated strategy of catalytic biomass pyrolysis was proposed to promote the environmentally friendly application of biomass gasification in the future. In general, the high catalytic activity of biochar for tar reforming is attributed to its specific surface properties, amorphous carbon structure with active surface functional groups, and the properties of metal species (e.g., concentration, physicochemical state and dispersion) such as AAEMs in the biochar matrix. Particularly, K-loaded char is significant for tar decomposition in H2O or CO2.


Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the most frequent cause of death in children and young adults in the United States. Besides emergency neurosurgical procedures, there are few medical treatment options to improve recovery in people who have experienced a TBI. Management of patients who survive TBI is complicated by both central nervous system and peripheral systemic effects. The pathophysiology of systemic inflammation and coagulopathy following TBI has been attributed to trauma-induced endothelial cell dysfunction; however, there is little knowledge of the mechanisms by which trauma might impact the functions of the vascular endothelium at sites remote from the injury. The endothelium lining these small vessels normally produces nitric oxide (NO), arachidonic acid metabolites, and endothelial-dependent hyperpolarizing factors to relax the surrounding vascular smooth muscle. For this research study we investigated the effects of fluid-percussion-induced TBI on endothelial-dependent vasodilatory functions in a remote tissue bed (the mesenteric circulation) 24 hours after injury. We hypothesized that TBI causes changes in the mesenteric artery endothelium that result in a loss of endothelial-dependent vasodilation. We found that vasodilations induced by the muscarinic-receptor agonist, acetylcholine, are attenuated following TBI. While the endothelial-derived hyperpolarizing component of vasodilation was preserved, the NO component was severely impaired. Therefore, we tested whether the loss of NO component was due to a decrease in bioavailablity of the NO synthase (NOS) cofactor BH4, the NOS substrate L-arginine, or to changes in expression/activity of the enzyme arginase, which competes with NOS for L-arginine. We found that supplementation of L-arginine and inhibition of the enzyme arginase rescues endothelial-dependent vasodilations in TBI arteries. This study demonstrates that there are pathological systemic effects outside the point of injury following TBI leading to a dysfunctional endothelial vasodilatory pathway. These data provide insight into the pathophysiology of endothelial dysfunction after trauma and may lead to new potential targets for drug therapy.


This thesis used an action learning approach to achieve two aims. Firstly to develop the authors knowledge of research and research methods and secondly to design, deliver and evaluate interprofessional education (IPE). An undergraduate IPE module was designed using the Contact Theory and delivered, in February 1999, to final year students of midwifery, nursing, occupational therapy and radiography through a problem-based learning approach. This IPE experience was evaluated in two phases.

Phase one was a positivist/post-positivist evaluation and used a quasi-experimental approach. Questionnaires measured the role perception, subject and skills knowledge that one profession had regarding another profession and participants enthusiasm for IPE. Pre and post module group interviews with staff and students were also undertaken. Phase two was a 1-year follow up of students' perceptions of their experiences on the module and used an interpretivist approach. This interview data was analysed from a phenomenological perspective.

Phase one results demonstrated some statistically significant differences for some of the questionnaire items but little more than would be expected by chance. Interview and learning index data showed that students had learned about the subject knowledge of other professions with all students combined learning the most about subject knowledge for nurses. Midwifery was revealed as the profession that students had learned most about for skills knowledge. There was a statistically significant difference between professions' enthusiasm for IPE with radiography the least enthusiastic. Phase two uncovered several themes including factors that have a detrimental effect on interprofessional working (IPW), the positive effect of the module on practice and positive and negative views of IPE.

My personal leaning led me to a broader inquiring approach to research and developed my understanding of research paradigms. I gained knowledge and skills in qualitative research and improved my interviewing and analysis skills.

The future of multiprofessional education is positive at both faculty and NHS levels and I conclude that there is a need for diverse forms of IPE including its delivery in the clinical context. Future research in IPE outcomes should use the qualitative paradigm.


This study's aim is to examine how companies integrate their multiple CRM channels to enhance the relationships with the customers.A qualitative method was used and the collection of data was conducted from eleven interviews. The interviews were semi-structured with open-ended questions. The theory is written in three main themes; customer relationship management, channels of communication and multichannel integration. Empirical findings and the analysis also follows these themes. The study is ending with conclusions.What is affecting companies channel selection depends on what message companies want to send, but also whether if it is existing or new potential customers' that are targeted. The geographical factor also influences the channel selection. Channel decision further depends on the size of the companies, if it is business to business or business to consumer and what kind of product the company is selling. More complex products require more personal interactions. How to successfully implement a multichannel integration strongly depends on the quality of data, an organizational common interpretation of customer relationship management, integration of information from all departments and that the company has an easy, yet powerful system for the accessible data.This study helps to give an understanding of how the multichannel integration is done in a business to business company with complex products. The study can be applied on other companies using a multichannel integration. It can help managers to understand the importance of the multichannel integration, how to succeed and other important factors for a successful multichannel integration. It also contributes to an understanding of the critical factors of the multichannel integration. A framework with an alternative model of multichannel integration is presented. The study also presented that the process of multichannel integration is of great importance and emphasized by a leading company in the field of customer relationship management. This study therefore has succeeded in giving an easy, more powerful and greater picture of the multichannel integration, which is an important determined factor for building customer relationships. A figure (figure 10) is provided for other companies to use that are business to business with complex products.This study is a case study with a qualitative research approach, the studied company is a business to business company with complex products. The study is made from the company's perspective. Future research can be conducted by studying multichannel integration from the customers' perspective instead of the company's perspective. The study could have been conducted on more than one company to compare the results, or on a business to consumer company instead of a business to business company. Studies on multichannel integration can also be interesting regarding companies that are selling less complicated products. Finally, studies can be conducted regarding the "information overflow" from social media.


The power grid is interconnected in many ways; so that when disturbances occur in a small region, their effects can be seen across large areas causing major blackouts. In order to isolate the fault, measurements taken at different times throughout the blackout need to be collected and analyzed. With each measurement device having its own time source, time alignment can be a quite tedious and lengthy process. The need for a new time synchronized measurement device has arrived. The Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) is not only GPS time synchronized, but it also takes measurements as voltage and current phasors. PMUs are becoming an integral part in many power system applications from load flow analysis and state estimation to analyzing blackout causes. Phasor Data Concentrators (PDC) collect and process PMU data. As such, it is important that PMU and PDC communication is seamless. PDCs are set up at multiple utilities and power authorities and also need to be able to communicate and send data to one another seamlessly to encompass analysis of large measurement systems. If these devices are not working similarly when processing and sending/receiving data, unnecessary problems may arise. Therefore it is important that there is an expectation as to how they should work. However, what is expected from these devices is not entirely clear. For this reason, standards such as IEEE C37.118.2-2011 [5] have been proposed to help make operation as uniform as possible. Unfortunately, the standards for PDCs are lacking and tend to only set up communication protocols. To help normalize PDCs, these standards need to be expanded to include all PDC operations and give little room for discrepancy as to what a PDC should do in any given situation. Tests have been performed on PDCs not only to see how they match up to current standards but on how they act outside of the standards.


Extracted from text ... M
The new leadership
fellowship, not followership
16 Management Today June 2006
Judith Glaser is an executive and
organisational coach and CEO of
Benchmark Communications. She is the
author of the book, Creating WE, from
which this, the last in the series of
article, was taken.
Much of the literature on leadership portrays
great leaders as heroes, people who
have almost superhuman qualities. Not
surprisingly, what we have learned about
leadership has been based largely on the
military model. We're all familiar with
military stories and their themes of battles
won and lost, powerful leaders and blind
followers.
Leadership ..


We aimed to investigate the stage of breast cancer at first diagnosis and assess possible determinants of late-stage presentation. A consecutive series of women with newly diagnosed breast cancer at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital (CHBAH), Soweto, South Africa were analysed. We retrospectively reviewed electronic patient records. Data were extracted for: (i) stage and year at diagnosis; (ii) travel distance  (estimated straight-line distance from GPS-coded residential address to CHBAH); (iii) receptor subtypes; and (iv) age of patient. Generalised linear models were applied to estimate risk ratios for late- v. early-stage  disease. Of the patients (N=1 071) studied, the mean age was 55 years and 90% were black Africans. Patients who lived >20 km from the hospital (n=347; 61.8%) presented with late-stage disease (stage 3/4) compared with 50.2% who lived .20 km from the hospital (n=724; p=0.02). The  majority of patients (74%) >70 years of age who lived >20 km away presented with advanced breast cancer. However, in younger patients, age showed no clear association with stage at presentation. Travel distance was an important predictor of later-stage disease at diagnosis, which was more noticeable in elderly patients. Patients with more aggressive triple-negative and HER2+ tumours presented with later-stage disease.


Background: Biological synthesis of nanoparticles has emerged as a promising field of biotechnology. Various biological systems including fungi, yeasts, bacteria, and plants have been used for biosynthesis of nanoparticles. Silver nanoparticles have unique properties that make them ideal for various medical and industrial applications. Owing to high levels of organic reducing agents and ease of manipulation, plant extracts are widely used for biological generation of various types of metal nanoparticles. Objectives: The objective of the present study was to evaluate efficacy of Carum carvi extract in biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles and to investigate antifungal effects of the biosynthesized nanoparticles. Methods: Silver nanoparticles were synthesized by addition of silver nitrate solution into fresh extract of C. carvi. Characterization of the synthesized silver nanoparticles was performed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). Inhibitory effect of silver nanoparticles on Candida albicans growth was evaluated by serial microdilution method. Results: The results revealed the formation of spherical silver nanoparticles with an average size of 10 nm. Moreover, concentration of SNPs in a 25 mL sample containing both SNPs and plant extract biomass was 2.934 mg/L on average. Serial microdilution test showed that SNPs at the concentration of 50 g/mL can inhibit growth of the pathogen. Conclusions: The present study extends the existing literature about green synthesis of nanoparticles using plant tissues and extracts.


Infrastructure is about the long-term growth and prosperity of a nation, but Australia will get very little of this benefit if the cost of building it continues to rapidly escalate. Australia is becoming increasingly uncompetitive in design and delivery of major projects. This is an unacceptable situation, and a newly commissioned multistate inquiry by the SMART Infrastructure Facility will identify the key causes and make recommendations to help secure better value for taxpayers' money. Australian jurisdictions have experienced sharp rises in the cost of delivering mega-projects. In the pre-GFC mining construction boom period of the mid-2000s construction costs were 20-30% higher than previous levels. Infrastructure projects continue to get larger and, therefore, more risky, so relatively small percentage increases in design and construction costs translate into very large dollar costs. Certainly the preand post-GFC resources booms put upward pressure on scarce labour, equipment and raw materials but this does not appear to explain the full extent of the cost inflation. Put another way, some of the increases in the cost of large projects during the boom years has persisted and seems permanent. The Business Council of Australia is concerned about Australia's attractiveness to invest. Australia's hospitals are 62% more expensive to build, shopping centres 43% and schools 26% than OECD peers. Australia's onshore resource projects are 40% more expensive than the US Gulf Coast and offshore projects are 200% more expensive.


With advancements in Internet technologies, there is an increasing growth of applications that are web based. With smaller software development cycles and faster delivery, security has become an important issue. There are many types of security attacks that are made on Web applications and SQL injection attack is one type of an attack. Recently, studies have shown that more and more web applications are getting attacked by different types of SQL injection attacks. To effectively detect and prevent these attacks, a deeper understanding on the different types of SQL injection attacks, the nature of the attacker, and the mechanism used is very important. This paper discusses details that one would need to understand all about SQL injection attacks. This paper presents a detailed study of most recent SQL injection attacks on web applications, SQL injection prevention and detection mechanisms. The classification of different types of SQL injection attacks, prevention and detection mechanisms discussed in this paper highlights the need for future improvements in the detection and prevention mechanisms to secure web applications from SQL injection attacks.


This paper examines the survival rates of cooperatives. Traditional theories suggest that cooperatives are inefficient and consequently are prone to failure, but recent literature suggest they could be more resilient. Can cooperatives cope better? We found that French wine cooperatives survive longer than corporations. This result is robust to semi-parametric and parametric models, even when we control for mergers and acquisitions exits. The higher survival rate of wine cooperatives seems to be associated with an ability to shift the fluctuations of their environment to their members.


Above- and belowground communities have been investigated independently for long, but there is increasing evidence that both are intimately linked and depend on each other. Plants provide energy and nutrients for the belowground consumer community, both via litter and root exudates, thereby affecting soil biota. Simultaneous investigations of both litter and root exudate based pathways are scarce and therefore, the relative importance of roots as compared to litter as food resource for soil organisms remains unknown. Soil organisms, in turn, contribute to ecosystem processes like litter decomposition and nitrogen cycling that are essential for nutrient supply of plants and primary production. Their individual effects may be facilitated or reduced by co-occurring species. The underlying mechanisms and the reasons for the variability of soil fauna interactions are little understood, but complementarity effects are likely to be related to dissimilarity of traits.
The present thesis focuses on litter- and root-derived resources for soil communities and analyzes feedbacks of detritivores to ecosystem processes and hence to plant nutrition.
In order to disentangle the relative importance of identity and diversity of root-derived as compared to litter-derived resources for soil microorganisms (Chapter 2) and mesofauna invertebrates (Chapter 3) a field experiment was performed in which aboveground litter and root species were manipulated independently. Saplings of four deciduous tree species, differing in litter quality and associated mycorrhizal fungi were planted in a full-factorial design in a 150 year old mountain oak forest. The response of soil microorganisms (Chapter 2) to variations in resources was measured by substrate-induced respiration (SIR) and phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analyses, while the response of mesofauna invertebrates (Chapter 3) was measured by changes in community composition and abundance of groups or species. Generally, neither soil microorganisms nor mesofauna invertebrates responded to the type of mycorrhizal fungi or root identity and diversity. In contrast, aboveground litter affected basal respiration and community composition of soil biota. However, there was no beneficial leaf litter mixture effect; rather soil microorganisms and mesofauna invertebrates responded to the quality and identity of litter, with the effects varying between microarthropod groups and species. Overall, the results point to a stand age dependent importance of aboveground and belowground resources for decomposer food webs of
forest ecosystems, with effects of litter quality and identity on mineralization processes and feedbacks to plants being most significant for young trees, i.e. during stand regeneration.
In Chapter 4 I investigated interactions between four detritivores species differing in body size or habitat association, i.e. two species of earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris, Aporrectodea caliginosa) and two species of collembolans (Heteromurus nitidus and Protaphorura armata). I tested if species with similar traits exert negative effects on their respective performance or their effects on ecosystem processes, i.e. leaf litter mass loss and 15N cycling. Litter-associated species had more pronounced effects on litter decomposition and N cycling, but their effects depended on the presence of other soil invertebrates. Detrimental but also facilitative interactions between soil animal species occurred, independent of trait similarity, indicating other factors than dissimilarity of traits to be important for complementarity effects of soil organisms. Interactions in part were mutually dissimilar with one species benefitting and the second being detrimentally affected in presence of the other. Furthermore, some effects needed more than two species to occur, suggesting that the identity of soil animal species and the composition of the soil animal community override the importance of diversity for ecosystem processes. This suggests that soil fauna interactions are complex and difficult to predict, with predictions of their effects requiring knowledge on the identity of soil animal species that interact.
Overall, the results of this thesis indicate aboveground and belowground communities to be intimately linked and to closely depend on each other. Effects of plants on decomposer systems of deciduous forests vary with tree species identity and thereby tree species may drive feedbacks of soil detritivores to plants. Combining our approaches with compound-specific stable isotope analysis, molecular gut content analysis and real time PCR ultimately may allow the understanding of trophic relationships in soil food webs. It also may help to predict the relevance of individual species and community composition on ecosystem processes and hence on aboveground - belowground interactions in forest ecosystems.


A primary goal of terrestrial photovoltaics is to reach grid cost parity. This is a difficult task, largely due to the seemingly inverse relationship between efficiency and cost. Multijunction III/V solar cells on an active Si substrate may break this relationship by providing high efficiency with much lower material cost than traditional concentrator solar cells. This paper employs device models in the analysis of short- and long-term performance goals and expectations for this material system. The modeling results presented here indicate that the III/V on active Si technology may be anticipated to achieve nearly 48% efficiency at 600 suns concentration in a long-term, high volume manufacturing regime and almost 39% in the short-term.


As CMOS processes continue to scale to smaller dimensions, the increased fT of the devices and smaller parasitic capacitance allow formore power efficient and faster digital circuits to be made. But at the same time, output impedance of transistors has gone down, as have the power supply voltages, and leakage currents have increased. These changes in the technology havemade analog design more difficult.More specifically, the design of a high gain op-amp, a fundamental analog building block, has becomemore difficult in scaled processes. In this work, to improve the performance considering the speed, accuracy and power consumption of the analog-digital interface, both system level optimization and circuit level technique are explored. At first, a generalized graphic model (GGM) is proposed to analyze the resolution of ADC for wireless receiver. This model could show the trade-off between ADC the RF front-end in the power level graph. As a result, the optimization between them becomes practical. Next, two kinds of open loop ADCs are designed and implemented for ultra-wide bandwidth (UWB) receiver and capacitive sensor interface respectively. There is no closed loop stage in the flash ADC, which ensures the fastest conversion speed. An intended spatial filter technique is adopted to attenuate the distortion coming from the interpolation network. The successive approximation (SAR) ADC based switched capacitor sensor interface digitizes the capacitance variation to binary code. A cascade binary weighted DAC is used to reduce the power consumption and area. The noise and distortion performance are optimized throughout the design.


Baja California is one of the best modern examples of a continental block, or terrane, that is translating hundreds of kilometers along a highly obliquely divergent plate. The central domain of Baja California is particularly appropriate as a modern analogue for terrane translation because it has a relatively simple late Neogene history and is a buoyant continental block that is likely to be preserved in any future accretion to the North American continent. In contrast, the deep, dense oceanic crust of the Gulf of California, where the main transform faults of the plate boundary lie, has little preservation potential. It is surprising that there is little strike-slip faulting in the central domain of Baja California, even though the plate boundary has a rift angle (angle between rift trend and azimuth of plate motion), alpha, of only 20°. Recent field data confirm modeling studies of oblique rifting and show that there is a predictable change in fault type, fault orientation, and extension direction with changing rift angle. That is, from secondary structures alone, one can predict the approximate obliquity of rifting and the orientation of the plate motion. With rift angles of 0°–20°, strike-slip faults at low angles to the rift trend will dominate the secondary structures; with rift angles from ∼ 20° to ∼ 35°, there are strike-slip faults subparallel to the rift trend and normal faults 20°–40° clockwise from the rift trend in dextral shear; above ∼ 35°, normal faults are dominant, and there are few or no strike-slip faults as secondary structures.


The main purpose of this Master's Thesis has been to analyze the systems for thermal energy supply at the ZEB Living Lab, at NTNU, Trondheim. The 102 m2 single-family house is designed and built in accordance with the Norwegian passive house standard, as a Zero Emission Building. Efficient utilization of on-site renewable heat sources, such as ground and solar heat, are thus essential means to reach this ambitious goal. The thermal energy supply system comprises a 3.2 kW ground-source heat pump unit, 4.2 m2 of south façade-mounted solar panels, a 400 l integrated water tank, including two 3.0 kW back-up heaters, and an hydronic heat distribution system. A combination of theoretical and experimental approaches have been applied in the analyze. Thermal energy and power demands from SIMIEN simulations, resulted in a heat pump power coverage factor of 54 %, at 0/35 °C. Energy coverage factors were 70 % and 85 %, with and without DHW heat supply. Corresponding SPF values were 2.56 and 3.52. Polysun simulations of the solar thermal system gave an annual solar fraction of 0.37, and a value of 0.6 for DHW heating during the summertime. Results and observations from measurements have revealed a potential for improvement of system operating strategies, performance, design and dimensioning. The heat pump system is designed for alternate operation between space and DHW heating, but is currently incapable of the latter. Direct-acting electricity is thus an important heat producer in the system. The solar thermal system is designed for combined space and DHW heating, but is operated too intermittently to provide significant heat input. Low-temperature solar heating is furthermore prioritized by the integrated water tank, which restricts the potential for high-temperature DHW heating during the summer. Field measurements have shown a significant electric power consumption for operation of pumps. The electric power input to the ground circuit pump, for instance, corresponded to 15 % of the power input to the heat pump compressor. This contributed to a 13.5 % reduction in the heat pump system COP. Replacement of the brine solution is one of the suggested measures to redeem this deficiency. In order to obtain the energy savings necessary to reach the ZEB goal, it is essential that the electric energy input to pumps and electric heaters is minimized. Meanwhile, the operating time for the heat pump unit and solar thermal system has to be extended. It is also essential that the measuring equipment is fully functional, so that the system energy performance can be documented.


This manual is a comprehensive collection of resources for tertiary teachers and students of English–Spanish translation in the Caribbean region. It consists principally of Caribbean source texts in a variety of discourses, each accompanied by a translation and a commentary. It fills a gap in the market for a resource text specifically designed for tertiary Caribbean students, teachers and practitioners interested in English–Spanish translation. The text contains practical translation exercises in tourism, commerce, law, culture and journalism. All source material originates within the Caribbean or deals with Caribbean subject matter. It also includes intra-lingual translation between vernacular and standard English to illustrate concepts of register and stylistics. Solutions to the exercises and other relevant material are on the accompanying website at http://www.caribbeantranslationmanual.com. The manual also features an introductory essay on translation in the Caribbean and an appendix with resources such as training centres, Web sites and agencies. To date there has been no descriptive account of translation activity in the Caribbean, despite the region's multilingual character and the relatively large existing corpus on Creole linguistics and related topics. It analyses the part played by translation in the region's functioning and in the construction of its identity. The appendix provides a practical aid to teachers, students and professionals in the translation field with a specific interest in the Caribbean region.


Military Retiree Survivor Comfort Act - Requires the United States to forgive any overpayment of military retired or retainer pay for any period after the death of the recipient through the last day of the month in which such death occurs, if such payment is electronically deposited to a joint account bearing the name of the decedent and the decedent's designated beneficiary. Provides a special effective date for the first annuity payment to a survivor under the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) when an overpayment is so forgiven.


This article offers an interdisciplinary account of gender in relation to ocean liner interior design. It outlines a case study of what the discipline of design history can bring to gender and maritime history. A historiography of the subject is followed by an analysis of the ways in which the spaces on board British ocean liners were conceived of, designed and used in terms of gender. Some spaces on board were designated as female only and other spaces understood to be male only – particularly the smoking room. The concluding part of the article considers the role of women designers within the patriarchal world of ship design and construction, by investigating the contributions of Elsie Mackay at P & O and the Zinkeisen sisters on the Queen Mary. Using primary sources, including visual evidence, the article considers a range of liners, from the Hindostan (1842) through to the Orontes (1929; refitted 1948). This bridges the gap between design history, gender and maritime history and adds to debates around gender and maritime history with a consideration of the overlooked area of design and its histories.


The paper introduces generalized demand densities as a new and effective way of conceptualizing and analyzing retail demand. The demand density is demonstrated to contain the same information as the demand curve conventionally used in economic studies of consumer demand, but the fact that it is a probability density sets bounds on its possible behavior, a feature that may be exploited to allow near-exhaustive testing of possible demand scenarios using candidate demand densities. Four such demand densities are examined in detail. The Household Income demand density is based on the assumption that a person's maximum acceptable price (MAP) for an item is proportional to his household after-tax income. The Double Power demand density allows the mode to be located anywhere in the range between zero and the highest MAP possessed by anyone in the target population. The two-parameter, Rectangular demand density, the simplest model that a retailer may employ, has the useful feature that it may be matched relatively easily to any unimodal demand density and hence may act as its approximate proxy. The Kinked demand density is derived from the kinked demand curve sometimes used as a relatively uncomplicated way of conceptualizing the effects of oligopoly. The central measures of each of these demand densities are derived: mean price, mode, median, optimal and, when appropriate, the mean of the matched Rectangular demand density. In a further result arising from the use of demand densities, it is shown that stable trading at the kink price will not occur if the demand curve is kinked and convex.


Although preventive measures were implemented worldwide, the number of cases of HIV infection still remains high. In addition, currently there is a large number of undiagnosed cases, which represent an important source of infection. It is important to identify the groups at risk and it is necessary that those individuals be aware of the risk of contracting the infection. Early diagnosis of infection is associated with better prognosis.


"Few organs are as charged as the human heart. Beyond its anatomical function, it represents immense personal significance and speaks to the age-old question at the core of human selfhood… "Who am I?" Advances in medical transplantation technologies raise urgent questions about bodily integrity, personal identity, and the relationship between recipients and their donors.

The Hybrid Bodies catalogue features essays and artworks from prominent artists, theorists and art historians, who address the Process of Incorporating a Transplanted Heart (PITH) research team's efforts within the multifaceted world of transplant medicine." -- Project's website.


Anatomy of the intracranial part of middle meningeal artery is important during ligation or embolization in epidural haematomas, and in surgical approach to the middle cranial fossa. It shows population variations, but reports from African populations are scanty. This study aimed at describing the variant anatomy of intracranial part of middle meningeal artery in a black Kenyan population. One hundred and sixty middle meningeal arteries and grooves from 80 cadaveric cranial cavities of adult black Kenyans obtained from the Department of Human Anatomy, University of Nairobi Kenya were studied. Measurements taken included length of main trunk, horizontal distance from the branching point to a perpendicular line through midpoint of the zygomatic arch, and a horizontal line from the branching point to a perpendicular line through the tip of the tragus. The branching point of all intracranial divisions was anterior to the tragus and in majority of cases (84.9%) posterior to the mid zygomatic line. The mean distance from the tip of tragus to the point of intracranial division was 30.6 mm, with 57.9% of the cases lying between 20 mm and 35 mm. The average vertical height of the artery from zygomatic point was 10.6 mm, with about two thirds (64.1%) between 3 mm and 22 mm. Majority (51.3%) of the intracranial trunks were between 5 mm and 13 mm long. There were 95.6% and 4.4% bifurcations and trifurcations respectively. The anterior division was deep to the pterion in 66.3%, posterior in 27.5% and anterior in 6.3% of cases. This study revealed that the termination point of the middle meningeal artery in the Kenyan population lies about 14 mm posterior to the mid zygomatic line and about 31 mm from a perpendicular line through the tip of the tragus. It displays variations in stem length, pattern of branching. Only two – thirds of anterior divisions lie deep to the pterion. Neurosurgeons should be aware of these variations during ligation or embolization of the artery and in enlarged middle cranial fossa approach. Keywords: Variations, Landmarks, Middle Meningeal artery, Intracranial, African


A new set of boundary-handling algorithms has been developed for discrete wavelet transforms in the ISO/IEC JPEG-2000 Still Image Coding Standard. Two polyphase component extrapolation policies are specfied: a constant extension policy and a symmetric extension policy. Neither policy requires any computations to generate the extrapolation. The constant extension policy is a low-complexity option that buffers just one sample from each end of the input being extrapolated. The symmetric extension policy has slightly higher memory and conditional-logic requirements but is mathematically equivalent to wholesample symmetric pre-extension when used with whole-sample symmetric filter banks. Both policies can be employed with arbitrary lifted filter banks, and both policies preserve resolution scalability and reversibility. These extension policies will appear in Annex H, "Transformation of images using arbitrary wavelet transformations," in Part 2 ("Extensions") of the JPEG-2000 standard.


Learning is fundamental to autonomous behaviour and from the point of view of Machine Learning, it is the ability of computers to learn without being programmed explicitly. Attaining such capability for learning domain models for Automated Planning (AP) engines is what triggered research into developing automated domain-learning systems. These systems can learn from training data. Until recent research it was believed that working in dynamically changing and unpredictable environments, it was not possible to construct action models a priori. After the research in the last decade, many systems have proved effective in engineering domain models by learning from plan traces. However, these systems require additional planner oriented information such as a partial domain model, initial, goal and/or intermediate states. Hence, a question arises - whether or not we can learn a dynamic domain model, which covers all domain behaviours from real-time action sequence traces only.

The research in this thesis extends an area of the most promising line of work that is connected to work presented in an REF Journal paper. This research aims to enhance the LOCM system and to extend the method of Learning Domain Models for AI Planning Engines via Plan Traces. This method was first published in ICAPS 2009 by Cresswell, McCluskey, and West (Cresswell, 2009). LOCM is unique in that it requires no prior knowledge of the target domain; however, it can produce a dynamic part of a domain model from training. Its main drawback is that it does not produce static knowledge of the domain, and its model lacks certain expressive features. A key aspect of research presented in this thesis is to enhance the technique with the capacity to generate static knowledge. A test and focus for this PhD is to make LOCM able to learn static relationships in a fully automatic way in addition to the dynamic relationships, which LOCM can already learn, using plan traces as input.

We present a novel system - The ASCoL (Automatic Static Constraints Learner) which provides a graphical interface for visual representation and exploits directed graph discovery and analysis technique. It has been designed to discover domain-specific static relations/constraints automatically in order to enhance planning domain models. The ASCoL method has wider applications. Combined with LOCM, ASCoL can be a useful tool to produce benchmark domains for automated planning engines. It is also useful as a debugging tool for improving existing domain models. We have evaluated ASCoL on fifteen different IPC domains and on different types of goal-oriented and random-walk plans as input training data and it has been shown to be effective.