Previously, issues concerning the use and conservation of the natural resources were restricted to certain groups of individuals, normally those considered to be scientific experts. However with the emergence of sustainable development and the adoption of its principles therein, there has been increased community concern over environmental quality issues resulting in pressure for transparency in environmental decision-making processes. The result has been a dramatic expansion in the number of organisations at the local, national and global scales committed to environmental improvement. This in turn has let to dramatic changes in the role of the public in decisions relating to natural resource management. Participatory development is now acknowledged as critical in achieving sound environmental management. The initiation of community-based environmental decision-making has led to the formation of new and interesting partnerships. Environmentalists, communities, policy makers and business people have begun to work together in an attempt to find consensus concernIng environmental problems and related socio-economic inequalities. This has resulted in the development of new ways of integrating local and scientific knowledge systems. This thesis illustrates community-based environmental decision-making in the management of the use of the south coast of Durban. It outlines a partnership, through the formation of the Permit Advisory Panel (PAP), comprising industry (Sappi Saiccor), government, through its Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, environmental organisations, and the local people in the monitoring of the impacts of effluent produced by the industry and disposed of into the sea. The aim of this thesis is to develop an alternative methodology that will be acceptable to all stakeholders, for the collection and analysis of data in the monitoring of the Sappi Saiccor effluent. This was achieved through the following objectives: to develop a methodology for the collection and analysis of data, to assess the performance of the new pipeline in terms of reduced aesthetic impacts of the effluent, to assess the role of local knowledge in the monitoring process, and finally to assess the role of this study in the functioning of the PAP. This thesis attempts to integrate qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The subjective local data collected by the divers is analysed using statistical methods to assess the impacts of the effluent on marine water quality and the effect the new pipeline has had in reducing these impacts. Qualitative surveys such as questionnaires and interviews were administered to assess the role of local knowledge in the monitoring process and also to assess the role this study has had in the functioning of the PAP. The statistical analysis did not reveal any major improvement in underwater visibility since the pipeline was extended. There is a 6% and 4% improvement in the number of effluent days and visibility respectively. This however is due to some limitations inherent in the data collection process, and as a result the improvement brought about by the pipeline extension has been toned down. An effluent and visibility index is therefore recommended as an alternative method of data collection and analysis to reduce the level of inaccuracy. The role of local knowledge is perceived by many of the PAP members as vital in the monitoring process. This study was therefore thought of as an important step in validating this local knowledge such that it can be a reliable data source to be used in the monitoring process. It also played an important role in resolving the conflict between the PAP members. It is therefore recommended that the divers data should be continually used in the monitoring process, though the divers have to be more actively involved. The PAP is therefore tasked with liasing with the community members, especially the divers such that they can assume a more active and responsible role within the PAP. They should be involved in the development of the methods of data collection and analysis.


ABSTRACT This article argues that the study of religious translation can greatly benefit from a material turn, that attention needs to be paid to the carriers and forms of religious translations, and that such an approach can ultimately add different understandings of the translation process and alternative readings of religious texts. Drawing on theories of material culture, it proposes engagement with the material structures, practices and spaces that accompany translations. The article explores the modalities of engagement with the religious translation and the values and meanings that are associated with the object. It suggests a consideration not merely of the translated object, but also its related entanglements and sensory engagements, situating the text within its associated practices, assemblages and networks. It furthermore proposes an empirical engagement with the object and an exploration of the variations in form which exist in the possible afterlives of texts.


This study dealt with the determination of the effect of Malathion on the sperm morphology of mice. Male mice were treated intraperitoneally and orally with doses of 115 mg/kg and 460 mg/kg body weight. The former induced more sperm morphology abnormalities than the latter treatment. Abnormalities on the acrosomal/head morphology and incidence of headless sperms were analysed through smear preparation. The incidence of variant abnormal shapes of the acrosome was found to be dose dependent with almost 4-fold increase, whereas frequency of headless sperms was age dependent. The types of abnormalities were observed in the following order of decreasing incidence: amorphous> rhomboid> beak > balloon> distally branched > banana> funnel> sunflower > calyx branched > double headed. Changes in the head shape may be correlated to changes in the motility and penetrating capacity of the sperms, with balloon type as the most critical because of absence of hook which is vital for the entry of sperm to egg.


How did Byzantine culture understand its own objects we now call "art"? This enlightening publication proposes that they saw and experienced clay pilgrim tokens, relief stamps, and icons of saints as dynamic and fully active and alive in the world. The materials used and the sensory impressions they created were an integral part of the Byzantine God-saturated world. Gold was considered a living material and tokens from locations associated with a saint's physical life extended his or her presence into pilgrims' lives. This book attempts to overturn conventional art historical thought through a combination of material investigation, historical recovery, and hermeneutic clearing. Distinguished authors argue that categorizing these objects made for Medieval Greek Christians as art is incorrect, instead suggesting that they were rooted in a world with an animistic view of living things. Provocatively interweaving Byzantine material culture and art with analogs like Kongo nkondi figures and works by James Lee Byars, Donald Judd, and Yves Klein, this volume features the Menil Collection's superb holdings and fresh perspectives by a range of art historians.


The mobilities facilitated by copresent modalities of media have attracted increasing attention. Despite noting multimode mobilities, existing studies rarely specify in the digital context how physical, digital, or virtual mobility and the meanings created by the mobility can be two sides of one coin of mobility politics. This article depicts mobility practices of mainland-China-to–Hong Kong cross-border shoppers known as daigou. I adopt mediated corporeal mobilities to understand the apparatus of uneven mobilities—which refers to the broad emergent cluster of ways of performing and signifying corporeal mobilities in which the mobility of people, material artifacts, and data are themselves experienced and articulated through mobile technology. I argue that mediated corporeal mobilities anchor the unbalanced power relationship in daigou, which manifest in the differential performance of corporeal mobilities and hierarchical classification of people's corporeal mobilities.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of our work was to study the blood parameters and bone marrow morphological changes in rats exposed to increased amounts of heavy metal salts and the effect of vitamin E.

MATERIAL AND METHOD
Investigation of bone marrow structural features and blood parameters was performed in sexually mature Wistar male rats (n=84).

RESULTS
Exposure to increased amounts of heavy metal salts led to the inhibition of erythropoiesis and leukopoiesis, as well as a synchronized increase in the number of megakaryocytes which was clearly reflected in the blood: the number of erythrocytes, leukocytes and Hb decreased, and the number of platelets increased. These changes in the blood and bone marrow were less pronounced when vitamin E was used as an adjuster.

CONCLUSION
When increased amounts of HMS enter the rats` bodies, suppression of erythropoiesis and leukocytopoiesis occurs while thrombocytopoiesis increases. These changes depend on the period of intake of heavy metal salts. The adjustment of vitamin E reduces the severity of the cytotoxic effect of heavy metals and improves readaptation in the recovery period.


If the sovereigntists win another referendum in Quebec, the terms of Quebec's accession to sovereignty should be negotiated and ratified under the existing rules for amending the Canadian Constitution, despite some sovereigntists' objections that Quebec need not abide by the terms of the Constitution Act, 1982, which it has never ratified. Any other process, however, is likely to lead to more chaos and disruption than would otherwise occur.A sovereignty agreement could include constitutional changes that fall into some or all of five categories: constitutional amendments terminating the authority of existing federal and provincial institutions over the territory and people of Quebec; constitutional and statutory amendments to make remaining federal institutions workable in the short term; provisions, constitutional or otherwise, for any new links established between Quebec and Canada; new treaties, or a commitment to negotiate them, among Aboriginal peoples, Quebec, and Canada; and nonconstitutional items to be implemented by legislation, executive orders, or treaties.


Several computer tools addressing the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem are available today within the research community. However, these tools have low flexibility and are difficult to use for remote or casual users. This paper shows how to allow a remote access to various existing RWA tools using Web services. In this way, software components implementing routing and/or wavelength assignment are turned into Web services made available over the Internet and accessible through a simplified interface. This dispenses the user to perform a local implementation, allows better code reuse, and offers an easy way to confront results from distinct models. Moreover, making tools available on the Web increases their credibility and visibility. In our approach, a multilayer network description (MND) format is used to describe both input data and computed results. It offers common basic structure while guaranteeing a large extensibility, and thus makes possible the interaction between various tools. The viability of this approach is illustrated through an example of implementation.


Core Java has long been recognized as the leading, no-nonsense tutorial and reference for experienced programmers who want to write robust Java code for real-world applications. Now, Core Java, Volume IFundamentals, Tenth Edition, has been extensively updated to reflect the most eagerly awaited and innovative version of Java in years: Java SE 8. Rewritten and reorganized to illuminate new Java SE 8 features, idioms, and best practices, it contains hundreds of example programsall carefully crafted for easy understanding and practical applicability. Writing for serious programmers solving real-world problems, Cay Horstmann helps you achieve a deep understanding of the Java language and library. In this first volume of the two-volume work, Horstmann focuses on fundamental language concepts and the foundations of modern user interface programming. Youll find in-depth coverage of topics ranging from Java object-oriented programming to generics, collections, lambda expressions, Swing UI design, and the latest approaches to concurrency and functional programming. This guide will help you Leverage your existing programming knowledge to quickly master core Java syntax Understand how encapsulation, classes, and inheritance work in Java Master interfaces, inner classes, and lambda expressions for functional programming Improve program robustness with exception handling and effective debugging Write safer, more readable programs with generics and strong typing Use pre-built collections to collect multiple objects for later retrieval Master concurrent programming techniques from the ground up Build modern cross-platform GUIs with standard Swing components Deploy configurable applications and applets, and deliver them across the Internet Simplify concurrency and enhance performance with new functional techniques If youre an experienced programmer moving to Java SE 8, Core Java, Tenth Edition, will be your reliable, practical companionnow and for many years to come. Look for the companion volume, Core Java, Volume IIAdvanced Features, Tenth Edition (ISBN-13: 978-0-13-417729-8), for coverage of Java 8 streams, input and output, XML, databases, annotations, and other advanced topics. Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.


Abstract. We evaluate the quality of ClO profiles derived from the Superconducting Submillimeter-Wave Limb-Emission Sounder (SMILES) on the International Space Station (ISS). Version 2.1.5 of the level-2 product generated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) is the subject of this study. Based on sensitivity studies, the systematic error was estimated as 5–10 pptv at the pressure range of 80–20 hPa, 35 pptv at the ClO peak altitude (~ 4 hPa), and 5–10 pptv at pressures l 0.5 hPa for daytime mid-latitude conditions. For nighttime measurements, a systematic error of 8 pptv was estimated for the ClO peak altitude (~ 2 hPa). The SMILES NICT v2.1.5 ClO profiles agree with those derived from another level-2 processor developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) within the bias uncertainties, except for the nighttime measurements in the low and middle latitude regions where the SMILES NICT v2.1.5 profiles have a negative bias of ~ 30 pptv in the lower stratosphere. This bias is considered to be due to the use of a limited spectral bandwidth in the retrieval process of SMILES NICT v2.1.5, which makes it difficult to distinguish between the weak ClO signal and wing contributions of spectral features outside the bandwidth. In the middle and upper stratosphere outside the polar regions, no significant systematic bias was found for the SMILES NICT ClO profile with respect to data sets from other instruments such as the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS), the Odin Sub-Millimetre Radiometer (SMR), the Envisat Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), and the ground-based radiometer at Mauna Kea, which demonstrates the scientific usability of the SMILES ClO data including the diurnal variations. Inside the chlorine-activated polar vortex, the SMILES NICT v2.1.5 ClO profiles show larger volume mixing ratios by 0.4 ppbv (30%) at 50 hPa compared to those of the JAXA processed profiles. This discrepancy is also considered to be an effect of the limited spectral bandwidth in the retrieval processing. We also compared the SMILES NICT ClO profiles of chlorine-activated polar vortex conditions with those measured by the balloon-borne instruments: Terahertz and submillimeter Limb Sounder (TELIS) and the MIPAS-balloon instrument (MIPAS-B). In conclusion, the SMILES NICT v2.1.5 ClO data can be used at pressures l ~30 hPa for scientific analysis.


Increasingly doctoral candidates are attempting to complete a thesis by publication. This format varies between universities but there are common issues particularly in terms of progression, planning and timing. There are both advantages and difficulties involved in undertaking a thesis in this format. Our discussion of the supervisor/candidate partnership is framed within the requirements of a tight journal publishing agenda. Different universities have different requirements about the number of published papers to be included, the extent of candidate's contribution as sole or joint author, the framing of the research as a unified thesis, presentation, and examination. The decision to attempt a thesis by publication must be taken early and data collection may need to be completed early. Articles then need to be written, polished, submitted, reviewed, revised and, hopefully, accepted. The thesis by publication is a juggling act between maintaining coherence and focusing on publishable segments. It is also a dialogue between supervisor and candidate involving the resolution of sometimes conflicting demands. Employing Cognitive Apprenticeship theory we present a shared autophenomenography that chronicles our doctoral journey that led to a successful thesis by publication. The findings are discussed under thematic headings: Logistics, Cognitive Apprenticeship in Action, and Building Trust.


A literature review was conducted with the goal of identifying alternative low-cost corrosion-resistant steel reinforcement materials. The most promising alternate reinforcing materials seen to date that are less expensive than 300 series stainless steels include low-nickel austenitic stainless steels and a variety of ferritic or martensitic 12-15 weight percent chromium steels. Steels with 2.5-10 weight percent chromium may also be of interest because they offer a marginal gain in corrosion performance at a very low cost. Several steel types that should undergo further evaluation are 201LN, 216, Duracorr, Enduramet 32 and Enduramet 33, HSS2, Lapealloy, S41425, S41426, and S42300. Corrosion-resistant steels are alloyed to ensure the steel itself has sufficient corrosion protection qualities; therefore, it is sensitive to cost fluctuations in raw materials. Based on the last 7 years, bars with higher nickel and molybdenum contents are sensitive to the cost of these alloying elements, whereas bars with higher chromium contents have been only slightly sensitive to the raw material cost. The cost of alloying materials also reflects the cost of different types of stainless steels. Both martensitic and ferritic stainless steels demonstrated slight increases in the average surcharge over a 7-year period, whereas austenitic, duplex, and precipitation hardening stainless steels increased dramatically. The most promising test for determining chloride threshold (initiation) in the laboratory is the +100 mV vs. SCE (or +200 mV vs. SCE) potentiostatic hold. The Clˉ threshold can be established for the new rebar materials by conducting potentiostatic holds at +100 mV vs. SCE at various fixed Clˉ levels. This method can also be extended to mortar-covered bars immersed in a simulated pore water solution with a thin mortar layer thickness. Propagation tests can also be conducted by conducting either potentiostatic holds at selected potentials or galvanic coupling in a split cell. A propagation law and repassivation potential (i.e., a "no propagation threshold" threshold potential) can be established. Concerning field testing, the ASTM G109 method is recommended primarily for comparison to existing research data. This test can be used to assess Clˉ thresholds either by varying Clˉ levels in the mortar mix or core drilling/sampling. Initial recording of galvanic current indicates initiation, whereas spalling provides an engineering indication of propagation. The Florida Department of Transportation's tombstone method should also be considered as a variation of the ASTM G109 method in high-permeable/low-permeable concrete mixes in order to test candidate rebar in concrete. ASTM G109 and Florida Department of Transportation tombstone concrete specimens can be artificially cracked to accelerate the onset of corrosion. Finally, the mechanical properties for each steel will need to be determined. Data will need to be gathered on specimens that have been rolled to the final reinforcing steel dimensions, although some of the bars identified could potentially function in the same capacity as the MMFX-2. However, additional research is required for the higher strength steels for structurally critical areas.


In a rooted tree, protected nodes are neither leaves nor parents of any leaves. They have some practical motivations, e.g., in organizational schemes, security models and social-network models. Protected node profile measures the number of protected nodes with the same distance from the root in rooted trees. For no rooted tree, protected node profile has been investigated so far. Here, we present the asymptotic expectations, variances, covariance and limiting bivariate distribution of protected node profile and non-protected internal node profile in random tries, an important data structure on words in computer science. Also we investigate the fraction of these expectations asymptotically. These results are derived by the methods of analytic combinatorics such as generating functions, Mellin transform, Poissonization and depoissonization, saddle point method and singularity analysis.


Growing numbers of global manufacturers are not only adopting the modularity concept, but integrating design methodologies that explicitly focused on achieving a range of competitive advantages through the enhancement of product appearance and utilities designs. The rising interest in industrial design is also an interesting symptom of changes in the approach to new product development, hence, integrating industrial design in modular product design posed a new challenge. In meeting these challenges, a formal Industrial Design framework known as InDFM (Industrial Design Framework for Modular Product Design/Development) was developed to support the innovation of design in modular product development. Within the InDFM, a methodology is developed for modular product design realisation.
This research embarked with identifying the appropriate range of product as the focus of the investigation, followed by qualitative surveys on the design and development processes relevant to the selected product. The surveys were conducted in modular product companies within a range of industries related to the product, in the U.K., Belgium and Malaysia. Literatures reviews were also conducted on related domains across a range of application to understand the fundamentals of modularity and industrial design processes that are relevant to the domains. Data findings from these exercises were used to identify InDFM construction components, which were also vital to develop a technical standard for implementation of the InDFM. To evaluate its practicability, the InDFM was retrospectively applied in an existing modular product design process of a selected company. The evaluation focused on process compatibility of industrial design and modular design processes. Validation of the process compatibility emphasised the quality of integration at all stages of the design and development process.
In conclusion, industrial design applications in a highly technical process of modular product design provide a design-driven innovation to complement the engineering driven innovation in the process. The combinations were proven to enhance the visual, interactive, and the feasibility contents of a modular product apart from providing a broader perspective to the objective of product modularity. InDFM also provides design practitioners with systematic design methodology to integrate both processes, thus performed as a tool for innovation that facilitate the revision of object identity, break away from the existing design rules and generating new rules. Additionally, as InDFM is a flexible methodology, innovation of modular product design through industrial design is accessible to any product company, small scale or big organisation that would want to acquire an advanced interactive version of the InDFM in the future.


The essay studies the sorrowful present of two landmark monuments of the socialist era: the memorial "1300 Years Bulgaria" and the "Buzludzha Monument." Built to commemorate important events of Bulgarian history, today these significant historical masterpieces of architecture and art from the second half of the 20th century are abandoned and doomed to destruction. The need to rethink their historical role and to start a discourse on the threat of destruction of the cultural heritage of our country is brought to the front. I argue that it is necessary to inform and educate the community on the problems of protection and preservation of the national cultural values. By applying a semiotic analysis the essay aims to reveal the complex layers of meaning coded in the two monuments in order to establish criteria for aesthetic evaluation of the artistic qualities which are not subject to political bias and reflect the intransient values in architecture and art. The presented projects exemplifying the resurrection of the monuments for a new interactive life in the context of current conditions reveal how the contradictory symbolism of the past regime can be dealt with and how the knowledge of the historic and cultural past can be constructed.


Liquid water in a snowpack has been recognized for some time as a quantifiable variable of hydrologic significance. It is also important in the interpretation of snowpack microwave remote sensing data. One effective method for measuring the liquid water content of snow is freezing calorimetry. This technique is presented from theory through application including formulations for calculating the percent of liquid water in the snowpack. Silicone oil has been used successfully as the freezing agent. Consistent results can be obtained with the method, even when using newly-trained operators. Liquid water content data can be obtained approximately every 15 minutes when using two calorimeters and three operators. The freezing calorimetric approach was found to be accurate in determining the liquid water content of the snow to within ± 1.0-2.0 percent by weight.


Corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are prominent means for corporate strategy. In many M&As information systems (IS), integration is critical for achieving the intended goals. By integrating previous research on M&A and IS integration, we develop a six‐dimensional theoretical framework for IS integration in corporate M&As. The framework is used to describe and explain IS integration management in four M&As. Based on the four cases, the theoretical framework and the existing literature, an initial model (Dynamic System of IS Integration in M&A, DySIIM) describing and explaining how IS integration relates to the M&A process is developed. Through the combination of the DySIIM's dimensions, the dynamics of different parts of the M&A process are captured. The model can be used in further research to build cumulative knowledge about how to manage IS integration in M&A. The model can also be used by companies in their M&A since through the combination of dimensions, it shows the IS integration issues, decisions and actions that a company has to address in the process.


ABSTRACT This article applies a dialogical analysis to the change processes involved in moving from engagement with to disengagement from an armed militant group, as well as from radicalization to deradicalization. The findings underline the interplay between different push and pull factors at individual, organizational, and societal levels that played a role in the already mentioned processes in three periods of time—engagement with, life within, and disengagement from an armed organization. The dialogical framework conceptualizes the development trajectory as relationships between a variety of positions of the self (I-positions), which generate different personal meanings involved in processes of disengagement and deradicalization.


This comment examines recent and pending decisions from the United States Supreme Court on abortion issues through the lens of other constitutional rights, namely freedom of speech. For example, the recent Rust v. Sullivan opinion upheld a wholesale federal assault upon the notion of "choice" and "informed consent" by upholding DHHS's regulations which ban informative and informed discussions of the abortion option in Title X clinics. The result is a physician-patient relationship in Title X clinics that government requires to be half-truthful and inherently misleading. Moreover, the federal government itself was responsible for the creation of that trusting, dependent relationship, and the Title X regulations pervert that relationship at the expense of the woman who is effectively invited by the government to walk into the Title X clinic.Similarly, the next major abortion controversy to be decided by the Court may well face the same lack of perspective. Although Bray v. Alexandria Women's Clinic is about abortion protests, it is not being treated as a case about the law of abortion or the law of protests. The case will not be won or lost on the basis of the constitutional doctrines of privacy under the fourteenth amendment. Instead, the primary issue focuses not on the constitutional right to obtain an abortion but to engage in interstate travel. It would be a denial of reality for the Court to hold that criminal conduct aimed at preventing the exercise of abortion rights is not imbued with sufficient federal interest to warrant the invocation of section 1985(3). It seems unlikely that a majority of the Court will perceive that the case has profound implications for the right to abortion.


Flowering is a critical period in the life cycle of flowering plant species, resulting in an irreversible commitment of significant resources. Wheat is photoperiod sensitive, flowering only when daylength surpasses a critical length; however, photoperiod insensitivity (PI) has been selected by plant breeders for >40 years to enhance yield in certain environments. Control of flowering time has been greatly facilitated by the development of molecular markers for the Photoperiod-1 (Ppd-1) homeoloci, on the group 2 chromosomes. In the current study, an allelic series of BC2F4 lines in the winter wheat cultivars 'Robigus' and 'Alchemy' was developed to elucidate the influence on flowering of eight gene variants from the B- and D-genomes of bread wheat and the A-genome of durum wheat. Allele effects were tested in short, natural, and extended photoperiods in the field and controlled environments. Across genetic background and treatment, the D-genome PI allele, Ppd-D1a, had a more potent effect on reducing flowering time than Ppd-B1a. However, there was significant donor allele effect for both Ppd-D1a and Ppd-B1a, suggesting the presence of linked modifier genes and/or additional sources of latent sensitivity. Development of Ppd-A1a BC2F4 lines derived from synthetic hexaploid wheat provided an opportunity to compare directly the flowering time effect of the A-genome allele from durum with the B- and D-genome variants from bread wheat for the first time. Analyses indicated that the reducing effect of Ppd-A1a is comparable with that of Ppd-D1a, confirming it as a useful alternative source of PI.


The presence and degree of hepatic fibrosis is crucial in order to make therapeutic decisions and predict clinical outcomes. Currently, the place of liver biopsy as the standard of reference for assessing liver fibrosis has been challenged by the increasing awareness of a number of drawbacks related to its use (invasiveness, sampling error, inter-/intraobserver variability). In parallel with this, noninvasive assessment of liver fibrosis has experienced explosive growth in recent years and a wide spectrum of noninvasive methods ranging from serum assays to imaging techniques have been developed. Some are validated methods, such as the Fibrotest/ Fibrosure and transient elastography in Europe, and are gaining a growing role in routine clinical practice, especially in chronic hepatitis C. Large-scale validation is awaited in the setting of other chronic liver diseases. However, noninvasive tests used to detect significant fibrosis and cirrhosis, the two major clinical endpoints, are not yet at a level of performance suitable for routine diagnostic tests, and there is still no perfect surrogate or method able to completely replace an optimal liver biopsy. This article aims to review current noninvasive tests for the assessment of liver fibrosis and the perspectives for their rational use in clinical practice.


Four patients with purpura who manifested an unusual response to bruising were studied. This response was characterized by the development of an area of painful ecchymosis at the site of trauma followed by progressive erythema and edema. This unusual tissue response was seen only in women. The various features of the cases suggested an autosensitization by the patients to their own blood.

Special studies utilizing skin testing procedures indicated an abnormal tissue response of sensitivity to red blood cells. The factor responsible was present in the red cell stroma and was not associated with the hemoglobin.

The clinical manifestations and possible therapy are discussed.

This syndrome may represent another example of autosensitization such as has been speculated for lupus erythematosus, some forms of acquired hemolytic anemia and of thrombocytopenic purpura, and for an increasing number of disease states.


The JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) contains descriptions of collections of resources available to researchers, learners and teachers in the UK, along with technical service access details. This paper describes the data model and metadata description schema of IESR, and the services IESR provides to disseminate its records. There is a particular focus on the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) interface, including a possible use scenario. IESR's position within a wider information environment, its relationship to other initiatives, and future possible service registry directions are discussed.


This paper reports on the microfabrication and characterization of piezoelectric MEMS structures based on epitaxial Pb(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3 (PZT) thin films grown on silicon wafers. Membranes and cantilevers are realized using a sequence of microfabrication processes optimized for epitaxial oxide layers. Different issues related to the choice of materials and to the influence of the fabrication processes on the properties of the piezoelectric films are addressed. These epitaxial PZT transducers can generate relatively large deflections at low bias voltages in the static mode. Estimations of the piezoelectric coefficient d31 of the epitaxial PZT thin film (100 nm) yield 130 pm V−1. In the dynamic mode, the performance of the epitaxial PZT transducers in terms of the resonant frequency, modal shape and quality factor are examined. An epitaxial PZT/Si cantilever (1000 × 2500 × 40 µm3) resonating in air and in vacuum exhibits a deflection of several microns with quality factors of 169 and 284, respectively. For a 1500 µm diameter membrane, the quality factor is 50 at atmospheric pressure, and this rises to 323 at a pressure of 0.1 mbar. These results indicate the high potential of epitaxial piezoelectric MEMS, which can impact a variety of technological applications.


On the one hand, sport like any other activity in society is burdened with public taxes, and on the other hand, in comparison to similar activities, is tax-free and even publicly supported. This ambivalence of tax treatment of sport has repeatedly raised questions about the public financing of sport: To what extent are services provided by the public sector justified, and to what extent do sporting events trigger taxation? This volume, edited by Hans-Peter Büch, Wolfgang Maennig and Hans-Jürgen Schulke, attempts to answer selected questions on this problem from a scientific and sports-political point of view under the motto "Science meets Practice".


In this study, metastasizing serotonin-producing ileocaecal carcinoid tumours (MSPCs) were examined for biological characteristics that could be used to define clinically relevant subgroups within this patient population. Possible targets for new treatment options were also explored.It was found that MSPCs share several biological characteristics such as expression of serotonin, tachykinins (TKs), chromogranin A, islet autoantigen-2 and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF). TKs and serotonin were demonstrated in the same endocrine tumours in the gut and lung. IA-2 expression was shown to be up-regulated in MSPCs, possibly in connection with active hormone secretion. CTGF expression was high in tumour areas adjacent to extensive stroma expressing alpha-smooth muscle actin. This indicated myofibroblast differentiation, which may be associated with fibrosis-related complications prevalent in patients with MSPCs. When compared with other endocrine tumours, MSPCs behaved as a relatively homogeneous group, though within the MSPC population several subgroups could be defined. Patients with tumours displaying either a solid growth pattern and/or a Ki67 index ≥1% had a less favourable prognosis than those who did not. Another group of patients, who had increased plasma TK concentrations, were more likely to suffer from severe diarrhea. This information should be considered when discussing clinical treatment and when undertaking tumour biological studies. New treatment possibilities, such as drugs that specifically target TK receptors and antibodies to CTGF, are also discussed.In conclusion, MSPCs comprise a clinically relevant tumour group with similar biological features that are distinct from other endocrine tumours. Subgroups of patients within this patient category can be defined which may be relevant when establishing prognosis and when selecting future treatment modalities.


"I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades' curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs; but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamp post to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock. As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira's past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls..."


Abstract The SkyMapper 1.3 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory has now begun regular operations. Alongside the Southern Sky Survey, a comprehensive digital survey of the entire southern sky, SkyMapper will carry out a search for supernovae and other transients. The search strategy, covering a total footprint area of ~2 000 deg2 with a cadence of ⩽5 d, is optimised for discovery and follow-up of low-redshift type Ia supernovae to constrain cosmic expansion and peculiar velocities. We describe the search operations and infrastructure, including a parallelised software pipeline to discover variable objects in difference imaging; simulations of the performance of the survey over its lifetime; public access to discovered transients; and some first results from the Science Verification data.


Actin capping protein (CP) can be regulated by steric and allosteric mechanisms. The molecular mechanism of the allosteric regulation at a biophysical level includes linkage between the binding sites for three ligands: F-actin, Capping-Protein-Interacting (CPI) motifs, and V-1/myotrophin, based on biochemical functional studies and solvent accessibility experiments. Here, we investigated the mechanism of allosteric regulation at the atomic level using single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) and molecular dynamics (MD) to assess the conformational and structural dynamics of CP in response to linked-binding site ligands. In the absence of ligand, both single-molecule FRET and MD revealed two distinct conformations of CP in solution; previous crystallographic studies revealed only one. CPI-motif peptide association induced conformational changes within CP that propagate in one direction, while V-1 association induced conformational changes in the opposite direction. Comparing CPI-motif peptides from different proteins, we identified variations in CP conformations and dynamics that are specific to each CPI motif. MD simulations for CP alone and in complex with a CPI motif and V-1 reveal atomistic details of the conformational changes. Analysis of the interaction of CP with wildtype (wt) and chimeric CPI-motif peptides using single-molecule FRET, isothermal calorimetry (ITC) and MD simulation indicated that conformational and affinity differences are intrinsic to the C-terminal portion of the CPI-motif. We conclude that allosteric regulation of CP involves changes in conformation that disseminate across the protein to link distinct binding-site functions. Our results provide novel insights into the biophysical mechanism of the allosteric regulation of CP.


Limit-cycle dynamics embedded in neuronal spike-trains can form robust representations for encoding auditory spectral features. In this paper, we present speaker identification experiments based on limit-cycle statistics that were computed using spike-trains obtained from a spike-based silicon cochlea. The features included in this study were: (a) spike-rate; (b) inter-spike-interval distribution; and (c) inter-spike-velocity features, which were then used to design a speaker identification system based on a Gini-support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The results show a strong correlation between the information contained in the spike-rate/interval features and the spike-velocity/acceleration features indicating redundant encoding of auditory features which could be important for achieving noise-robustness in real-world recording conditions.


This study explores the state of infrastructure in the region's primary education schools, using the SERCE database, and analyzes the connection between school infrastructure conditions and language and mathematics tests results for third and sixth grade students. The results of the analysis indicate that school infrastructure and the access to basic services (electricity, water, sewerage and telephone) in the region's schools are highly deficient; there exists a large disparity between countries as well as between private urban, public urban and public rural schools; and there are large gaps between schools with children from high income families and schools with children from low income families. The analysis on the relationship between school infrastructure and academic results in the SERCE tests indicate that the highest factors most significantly associated with learning outcomes are: the presence of spaces that support teaching (libraries, science and computer labs); the connection to electric and telephone utilities; access to potable water, drainage and bathrooms. This indicates that countries in the region must strengthen investment geared towards improving school infrastructure in order to close the gaps that negatively affect rural areas, public sector schools, and schools with students from low income families. Likewise, public policies must prioritize infrastructure areas that have an impact on learning.


Abstract Exposure to estrogens throughout a woman's life, including the period of intrauterine development, is a risk factor for the development of breast cancer. The increased incidence of breast cancer noted during the last 50 years may have been caused, in part, by exposure of women to estrogen-mimicking chemicals that are released into the environment. Here, we investigated the effects of fetal exposure to one such chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), on development of the mammary gland. CD-1 mice were exposed in utero to low, presumably environmentally relevant doses of BPA (25 and 250 μg/kg body weight), and their mammary glands were assessed at 10 days, 1 mo, and 6 mo of age. Mammary glands of BPA-exposed mice showed differences in the rate of ductal migration into the stroma at 1 mo of age and a significant increase in the percentage of ducts, terminal ducts, terminal end buds, and alveolar buds at 6 mo of age. The percentage of cells that incorporated BrdU was significantly decreased within the epithelium at 10 days of age and increased within the stroma at 6 mo of age. These changes in histoarchitecture, coupled with an increased presence of secretory product within alveoli, resemble those of early pregnancy, and they suggest a disruption of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis and/or misexpression of developmental genes. The altered relationship in DNA synthesis between the epithelium and stroma and the increase in terminal ducts and terminal end buds are striking, because these changes are associated with carcinogenesis in both rodents and humans.


Anemia is a common clinical problem of children and is frequently first identified in the emergency department. Usually, the presentation is nonurgent, and a thorough work-up can be planned in consultation with a hematologist. However, some of the conditions warrant emergent attention and the emergency department physician needs to decide the diagnostic work-up and management before a hematologist sees the patient. This review summarizes the mechanisms of various types of anemias that can present in an emergency setting, and provides a brief overview of the diagnostic work-up and treatment strategies.


: We examine whether there has been a decline in the returns from Australian public investment in research on broadacre agriculture. Complementing a forthcoming paper by Mullen, we use alternative specifications for the regression equation, which employs the log of total factor productivity (TFP) as the dependent variable. The rate of return is computed on an annual basis rather than by using multi-year averages. In contrast to Mullen's earlier preliminary analysis, we have now found some evidence of a decline in the rate of return on public R&D investment, lending some support to recently voiced concerns on this matter.


It is well known that the implicit insurance provided by labor income taxes can reduce total saving. We show that this insurance can change the composition of saving as well, because the reduction in labor-income risk may affect the amount of financial risk that an individual chooses to bear. Given plausible restrictions on preferences, any change in taxes that reduces an individual's labor-income risk and does not make her worse off will lead her to invest more in risky assets. This effect can be quantitatively important for realistic changes in tax rates.


A wide range of biomedical applications require enhancement, detection, quantification and modelling of curvilinear structures in 2D and 3D images. Curvilinear structure enhancement is a crucial step for further analysis, but many of the enhancement approaches still suffer from contrast variations and noise. This can be addressed using a multiscale approach that produces a better quality enhancement for low contrast and noisy images compared with a single-scale approach in a wide range of biomedical images. Here, we propose the Multiscale Top-Hat Tensor (MTHT) approach, which combines multiscale morphological filtering with a local tensor representation of curvilinear structures in 2D and 3D images. The proposed approach is validated on synthetic and real data, and is also compared to the state-of-the-art approaches. Our results show that the proposed approach achieves high-quality curvilinear structure enhancement in synthetic examples and in a wide range of 2D and 3D images.


Subsampling a signal of interest can reduce costly data transfer, battery drain, radiation exposure and acquisition time in a wide range of problems. The recently proposed Deep Probabilistic Subsampling (DPS) method effectively integrates subsampling in an end-to-end deep learning model, but learns a static pattern for all datapoints. We generalize DPS to a sequential method that actively picks the next sample based on the information acquired so far; dubbed Active-DPS (A-DPS). We validate that A-DPS improves over DPS for MNIST classifcation at high subsampling rates. Moreover, we demonstrate strong performance in active acquisition Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) reconstruction, outperforming DPS and other deep learning methods.


The number of high voltage direct current (HVDC) links continue to increase over the years, most of them, for offshore applications or bulk power transmission over long distances. The present paper evaluates the possible development of a direct current (dc) grid in Europe given the present, and future, HVDC links. Eight potential cases for the interconnection between close links are suggested as starting scenario for a multiterminal network. The need of a dc-dc converter and its special requirements are evaluated in function of suggested interconnections. As an example, a case study is chosen to evaluate the behavior of an interconnection between line commutated converter (LCC) and voltage source converter (VSC) link using a front-to-front (F2F) isolated converter.


Traffic signal warrants set the minimum conditions under which a traffic signal installation may be appropriate. The four-hour volume signal warrant in the current Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) (FHWA 2009) is applied based on a set of critical vehicular volumes for different lane combinations of major and minor streets. This paper describes an effort to apply microscopic simulation to evaluate the critical volumes used in the four-hour warrant. The results show significant differences in average control delay for minor street traffic under different volume combinations, lane configurations, turning volume percentages, heavy vehicle percentages, and the number of major street lanes (four versus six lanes), most of which are not currently considered in the four-hour warrant. This finding provides some evidence of the need to possibly revise the critical design values of the current four-hour volume warrant.


VO2 nanobelts with metal–semiconductor properties were prepared through low temperature hydrothermal reaction and post annealing. X-Ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and UV-vis-NIR spectrophotometry were employed to investigate the evolution of structure, morphology and properties of the VO2 nanobelts. The results illustrate that the pure VO2 (B) nanobelts can be obtained by hydrothermal reaction. The shape of the nanobelts evolves with hydrothermal temperature, time and reactant concentration. With the increasing of hydrothermal temperature from 160 °C to 200 °C, the nanobelts become homogenous and regular. The regular nanobelts are also obtained by the decrease of V2O5 concentration. Samples prepared at 200 °C over 48 h have superior morphology and crystallinity. After annealing, VO2 (B) can be transformed into VO2 (M), which is dependent on the hydrothermal conditions. Samples prepared at 160 °C over 48 h and 180 °C over 48 h can be transformed into VO2 (M) at 450 °C over 2 h, while samples obtained at 200 °C over 48 h should be annealed at 500 °C for 2 h. The nanobelts are transformed into irregular nanostructures, nanorods and nanobelts at the hydrothermal temperatures of 160 °C, 180 °C and 200 °C, respectively. However, samples prepared at 200 °C over 48 h with a V2O5 concentration of 0.0125 M can keep the intact nanobelts after annealing. The DSC analysis proves that the VO2 (M) shows good phase transition behavior around 68 °C and the phase transition temperature can be reduced to 58 °C by 0.5 at% tungsten doping. After mixing the VO2 (M) with acrylic resin, the visible transmission of the VO2 composite coating on glass is up to 52.2% and the solar modulation at 2000 nm is up to 31.5%, which means that it is a good candidate for smart windows.


The authors present dynamic reencryption of return addresses to mitigate their leakage. The authors' method enforces programs to save return addresses as encrypted and renew the encryption states with fresh keys before or after vulnerable operations. When a function returns, it should restore the return address from its encryption using the most recent key not to cause a crash. Under the protection of their method, return addresses and keys may leak, but the disclosed bits become garbage because keys govern all return addresses through encryption, while changing before control-flow proceeds into a vulnerable region. As a result, it becomes probabilistically infeasible to build exploits for intercepting control-flow by using leaked return addresses or keys. They implemented the proposed method as an extension of the LLVM compiler that inserts reencryption code where necessary. They also have confirmed its effectiveness against information leak attacks carried out in the early stage of blind return-oriented programming (BROP). The performance overhead ranges below 11.6% for processor-intensive programs and 4.12% or less for web servers.


The present work reports on the preparation of thermoplastic starch (TPS) modified in situ with a diisocyanate derivative. Evidence of the condensation reaction between the hydroxyl groups of starch and glycerol with the isocyanate function (NCO) was confirmed by FTIR analysis. The evolution of the properties of the ensuing TPS, in term of mechanical properties, microstructure, and water sensitivity, was investigated using tensile mechanical, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and water uptake. The results showed that the addition of isocyanate did not affect the crystallinity of the TPS and slightly reduced the water uptake of the material. The evolution of the mechanical properties with ageing became less pronounced by the addition of the isocyanate as their amount exceeded 4 to 6wt%.


Present day technology for ASICs supports Networks-onChip designs which can have 100 million gates on a single chip. The latest FPGAs can support only about 10 million gates to accommodate all logic and the associated routings. In order to implement competitive Networks on Chip (NoC) architecture in FPGA's, the occupancy by the networks should be kept minimum. This ensures that the maximum area can be utilized by the logic while maintaining the performance of router networks. Reducing the area also reduces the power consumption. In this paper we report an implementation of a parallel router which can support five simultaneous routing requests. We introduce optimizations in XY routing and decoding logic thereby gaining in area and performance. The header overhead is 8 bits per packet and the packet size can vary between 16 and 128 bits.


The X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs), with nine to ten orders of magnitude improvement in peak brightness over the third-generation light sources, have demonstrated remarkable scientific capabilities. Despite the early success, X-ray FELs can still undergo dramatic transformations with accelerator and FEL R&D. In this paper, I will show examples of recent R&D efforts to increase X-ray coherence and brightness, to obtain better control of X-ray temporal and spectral properties, and to develop concepts for compact coherent sources.


Background Iatrogenic disease is an important cause of admission to hospitals in the Internal Medicine Unit. It is very important to evaluate the doses of the drugs indicated, renal and hepatic functions and possible interactions in order to avoid it. Purpose To evaluate the prevalence of admissions for iatrogenic illness in the Internal Medicine Unit and to determine which drugs were most frequently associated with adverse events. Material and methods Retrospective observational analysis in which we investigated patients diagnosed with iatrogenic conditions admitted to the Department of Internal Medicine during 2013. Data were collected related to the drug responsible for the adverse reaction, the severity and type, and also demographic data such as age and gender. Results 273 patients were admitted to the Internal Medicine Unit. 29 (10.62%) of these admissions were caused by a drug. The mean age was 80.1 ± 6.3 years (55% were male). Drugs implicated and adverse reactions were: 1 . Digitalis drugs (27.6%): bradycardia and heart failure. 2 . Oral anticoagulants (24.1%): 4 gastrointestinal bleeds and 3 soft tissue hematomas. 3 . Diuretics (13.8%): 3 hyponatremia and 1 renal failure. 4 . Corticosteroids (10.3%): severe hyperglycaemia. 5 . Neuroleptics (10.3%): 2 confusional syndrome and 1 hepatitis. 6 . Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories in 1 person (3.5%): renal failure. 7 . Insulin (3.5%): hypoglycaemia. 8 . Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (3.5%): renal failure. 9 . Spironolactone in 1 person (3.5%): hyperkalaemia. Two patients died (6.8% of iatrogenic patients) one by digitalis poisoning and another because of gastrointestinal bleeding. Conclusion Drug-induced illness is an important cause of admission to our hospital. Drugs with a narrow therapeutic index such as oral anticoagulants or digoxin are the main ones responsible. References and/or acknowledgements Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar No conflict of interest.


Banana production in Eastern Africa is threatened by the presence of a new devastating bacterial disease caused by Xanthomonas vasicola pv. musacearum (formerly Xanthomonas campestris pv. musacearum). The disease has been identified in Uganda, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. Disease symptoms include wilting and yellowing of leaves, excretion of a yellowish bacterial ooze, premature ripening of the bunch, rotting of fruit and internal yellow discoloration of the vascular bundles. Plants are infected either by insects through the inflorescence or by soil-borne bacterial inoculum through the lower parts of the plant. Short- and long-distance transmission of the disease mainly occurs via contaminated tools and insects, though other organisms such as birds may also be involved. Although no banana cultivar with resistance to the disease has been identified as yet, it appears that certain cultivars have mechanisms to 'escape' the disease. Management and control of the disease involve methods that reduce the inoculum's density and spread of the pathogen. Removal of the male bud (de-budding) has proven to be very effective in preventing the disease incidence since the male bud appears to be the primary infection site. The economic impact of banana Xanthomonas wilt is not fully understood but its impact on food security in the region is very significant. While germplasm screening for the disease is ongoing, efforts to genetically engineer resistance in some banana cultivars are also making good progress. This paper presents a review of the disease and management strategies that have been successful in curtailing its spread.


Turbine machinery has an extraordinary wide range of applications in the aviation, aerospace, automotive, energy and many other industries. The turbine blade is one of the most important parts of turbine machinery, and the characteristic parameters, pressure ratio of the engine and rotating speed of the turbine are all related to the shape and size of blades. Therefore, the profile measurement of turbine blade is an essential issue in the blade machining processing, however, it is difficult and particular to establish the profile measurement of turbine blade because of its complicated shapes and space angles of the blades, and the specific stringent environmental requirements need a more appropriate measurement method to the Turbine Blade profile measurement. This paper reviews the recent research and development on the Turbine Blade profile measurement methods, which mainly describes several common and advanced measurement methods, such as the traditional coordinate measuring machines, some optical measurement methods with the characteristics of non-contact like optical theodolite, three-dimensional photography, laser interferometry, as well as the laser triangulation method studied more recently and so on. Firstly, the measuring principles, the key technical issues and the applications in the Turbine Blade profile measurement of the methods which are mentioned above are described respectively in detail, and the characteristics of those methods are analyzed in this paper. Furthermore, the scope of application and limitations of those measurement methods are summed up. Finally, some views on the current research focus and perspective trend of the Turbine Blade profile measurement technology are presented.


This paper discusses the issues of implied trust in ethical hacking. Unlike many other long-established professions, such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants; ethical hacking is a relatively new profession. As a result, this profession does not currently have a uniformed or mandated code, nor does it require any form of licensing. Because ethical hackers could gain access to highly sensitive and confidential information and there is potential for misuse of such information, the need to ensure professionalism is maintained through ensuring competence and ethical behavior is critical.


Wildlife refuges are sites of dense aggregations of wintering waterfowl. Refuge managers are concerned about local water‐quality effects and the amount of birdborne nutrient load that might cause eutrophication in roosting ponds and(or) be exported to downstream systems. We initiated this research effort to test the hypothesis that daily feeding migrations by geese represented a significant source of nutrients to wetland systems at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in the middle Rio Grande River valley of New Mexico. We documented the role of geese in translocating nutrients through a combination of time budget and mass balance models for birds, bioassays of phytoplankton growth, and stable isotope methods that trace the source of nitrogen to food webs. Geese increased the nutrient loading rates in some wetland ponds by up to 40% for total nitrogen and 75% for total phosphorus. Bioassays revealed that nitrogen was consistently limiting to primary production by algae in the ponds. Chlorophyll levels increased in proportion to bird densities. Fish and crayfish from the ponds intensively used by birds had very low stable nitrogen signatures relative to those from the Rio Grande River. This result derived from the low 15N in alfalfa and corn, which were the primary forage for birds, and accumulated through food webs in proportion to bird use of individual ponds as roosting areas. In general, the wetland ponds functioned efficiently in retaining the birdborne, allochthonous nutrient load and only modest amounts of the total nitrogen or phosphorus were exported downstream.


In this thesis we consider recent developments in insurance and electricity financial products. In particular, we investigate the interplay between insurance and finance, and therein the problem of pricing catastrophe insurance options written on a loss index as well as electricity products.

Catastrophe insurance options are standardized exchange-traded financial securities based on an underlying index, e.g. a PCS index, that encompasses insurance losses due to natural catastrophes. The PCS index is provided by the Property Claim Services (PCS), a US independent industry authority which estimates catastrophic property damage. The advantages of the catastrophe options in comparison to other capital market insurance solutions are lower transaction costs relative to the re-insurance and minimal credit risk, because of the guarantee of the exchange.

The main results of the thesis are fairly realistic models for catastrophe loss indexes and electricity futures markets, where by employing Fourier transform techniques we are able to provide analytical pricing formulas for European type options traded in the markets.

 For the catastrophe loss index we specify a model, where the initial estimate of each catastrophe loss is re-estimated immediately by a positive martingale starting from the random time of loss occurrence. Significant advantage of this methodology is that it can be applied to loss distributions with heavy tails -- the appropriate tail behavior for catastrophe modeling. The case when the re-estimation factors are given by positive affine martingales is also discussed and a characterization of positive affine local martingales is provided.

For electricity futures markets we derive a model, where we can simultaneously model evolution of futures and spot prices. At the same time we have an explicit connection between electricity futures and spot price processes.
 Furthermore, an important achievement is that the spot price dynamics in this model becomes multi-dimensional Markovian. The Markovian structure is crucial for pricing of path dependent electricity options.


Interpolation is the process of learning an unknown polynomial f from some set of its evaluations. We consider the interpolation of a sparse polynomial, i.e., where f is comprised of a small, bounded number of terms. Sparse interpolation dates back to work in the late 18th century by the French mathematician Gaspard de Prony, and was revitalized in the 1980s due to advancements by Ben-Or and Tiwari, Blahut, and Zippel, amongst others. Sparse interpolation has applications to learning theory, signal processing, error-correcting codes, and symbolic computation. Closely related to sparse interpolation are two decision problems. Sparse polynomial identity testing is the problem of testing whether a sparse polynomial f is zero from its evaluations. Sparsity testing is the problem of testing whether f is in fact sparse. We present effective probabilistic algebraic algorithms for the interpolation and testing of sparse polynomials. These algorithms assume black-box evaluation access, whereby the algorithm may specify the evaluation points. We measure algorithmic costs with respect to the number and types of queries to a black-box oracle. Building on previous work by Garg–Schost and Giesbrecht–Roche, we present two methods for the interpolation of a sparse polynomial modelled by a straight-line program (SLP): a sequence of arithmetic instructions. We present probabilistic algorithms for the sparse interpolation of an SLP, with cost softly-linear in the sparsity of the interpolant: its number of nonzero terms. As an application of these techniques, we give a multiplication algorithm for sparse polynomials, with cost that is sensitive to the size of the output. Multivariate interpolation reduces to univariate interpolation by way of Kronecker substitution, which maps an n-variate polynomial f to a univariate image with degree exponential in n. We present an alternative method of randomized Kronecker substitutions, whereby one can more efficiently reconstruct a sparse interpolant f from multiple univariate images of considerably reduced degree. In error-correcting interpolation, we suppose that some bounded number of evaluations may be erroneous. We present an algorithm for error-correcting interpolation of polynomials that are sparse under the Chebyshev basis. In addition we give a method which reduces sparse Chebyshevbasis interpolation to monomial-basis interpolation. Lastly, we study the class of Boolean functions that admit a sparse Fourier representation. We give an analysis of Levin's Sparse Fourier Transform algorithm for such functions. Moreover, we give a new algorithm for testing whether a Boolean function is Fourier-sparse. This method reduces sparsity testing to homomorphism testing, which in turn may be solved by the Blum– Luby–Rubinfeld linearity test.


Interstellar medium clouds in the W28 region are emitting gamma-rays and it is likely that the W28 supernova remnant is responsible, making W28 a prime candidate for the study of cosmic-ray acceleration and diffusion. Understanding the influence of both supernova remnant shocks and cosmic rays on local molecular clouds can help to identify multi-wavelength signatures of probable cosmic-ray sources. To this goal, transitions of OH, SiO, NH3, HCO+ and CS have complemented CO in allowing a characterisation of the chemically rich environment surrounding W28. This remnant has been an ideal test-bed for techniques that will complement arcminute-scale studies of cosmic-ray source candidates with future GeV-PeV gamma-ray observations.


For over a century, the idea that African Americans are psychologically damaged has played an important role in discussions of race. In this provocative work, Daryl Michael Scott argues that damage imagery has been the product of liberals and conservatives, of racists and antiracists. While racial conservatives, often playing on white contempt for blacks, have sought to use findings of black pathology to justify exclusionary policies, racial liberals have used damage imagery primarily to promote policies of inclusion and rehabilitation. In advancing his argument, Scott challenges some long-held beliefs about the history of damage imagery. He rediscovers the liberal impulses behind Stanley Elkins's Sambo hypothesis and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Negro Family and exposes the damage imagery in the work of Ralph Ellison, the leading anti-pathologist. He also corrects the view that the Chicago School depicted blacks as pathological products of matriarchy. New Negro experts such as Charles Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier, he says, disdained sympathy-seeking and refrained from exploring individual pathology. Scott's reassessment of social science sheds new light on Brown v. Board of Education , revealing how experts reversed four decades of theory in order to represent segregation as inherently damaging to blacks. In this controversial work, Scott warns the Left of the dangers in their recent rediscovery of damage imagery in an age of conservative reform. |In reassessing the image of the damaged black psyche from 1880 to 1996, Scott argues that damage imagery has been the product of both liberals and conservatives, racists and antiracists. While racial conservatives, often playing on white contempt for blacks, have sought to use findings of black pathology to justify exclusionary policies, racial liberals have used damage imagery primarily to promote policies of inclusion and rehabilitation. Scott challenges long-held beliefs about the history of damage imagery, warning the Left of the dangers in their rediscovery of damage imagery in an age of conservative reform.


Abstract. A new version of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) has been discussed and is under further development in ISO/TC 211 on Geographic Information. One of the extending parts is where the model can accommodate complex and advanced marine properties and cadastral objects. Currently, the fundamentals part of this new version (LADM Edition II) has been examined by the committee, and a few elements need to be considered, especially for marine space georegulation. Based on the possibility of embedding LADM with marine cadastre as agreed by several researchers, the concept of marine cadastre data model within land administration context has been anticipated in many countries (e.g., Canada, Greece, Turkey, Australia, and Malaysia). Part of the research focused on constructing and developing the appropriate data models to manage marine spaces and resources most effectively. Several studies have attempted to establish a conceptual model for marine cadastre in Malaysia. However, there is still no acceptable marine data model. Thus, this paper proposed a marine data model for Malaysia based on the international standard, LADM. The approach, by definition, can be applied to the marine environment in terms of controlling and modelling a variety of rights, responsibilities, and restrictions. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) application was utilized to construct the conceptual and technical models via Enterprise Architect as part of the validation process. The data model was constructed within the marine's concept in Malaysia to meet international standards. The features of the data model were also discussed in the FIG workshop (9th LADM International Workshop 2021). The experiment on the data model also includes 3D visualization and simple query.


Yeasts are generally recognized as contaminants in the production of white-brined cheeses, such as Feta and Feta-type cheeses. The most predominant yeasts species are Debaryomyces hansenii, Geotrichum candidum, Kluyveromyces marxianus, Kluyveromyces lactis, Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, and Trichosporon spp. Although their spoilage potential varies at both species and strain levels, yeasts will, in case of excessive growth, present a microbiological hazard, effecting cheese quality. To evaluate the hazard and trace routes of contamination, the exact taxonomic classification of yeasts is required. Today, identification of dairy yeasts is mainly based on DNA sequencing, various genotyping techniques, and, to some extent, advanced phenotypic identification technologies. Even though these technologies are state of the art at the scientific level, they are only hardly implemented at the industrial level. Quality defects, caused by yeasts in white-brined cheese, are mainly linked to enzymatic activities and metabolism of fermentable carbohydrates, leading to production of metabolites (CO2, fatty acids, volatile compounds, amino acids, sulfur compounds, etc.) and resulting in off-flavors, texture softening, discoloration, and swelling of cheese packages. The proliferation of spoilage yeast depends on maturation and storage conditions at each specific dairy, product characteristics, nutrients availability, and interactions with the co-existing microorganisms. To prevent and control yeast contamination, different strategies based on the principles of HACCP and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) have been introduced in white-brined cheese production. These strategies include milk pasteurization, refrigeration, hygienic sanitation, air filtration, as well as aseptic and modified atmosphere packaging. Though a lot of research has been dedicated to yeasts in dairy products, the role of yeast contaminants, specifically in white-brined cheeses, is still insufficiently understood. This review aims to summarize the current knowledge on the identification of contaminant yeasts in white-brined cheeses, their occurrence and spoilage potential related to different varieties of white-brined cheeses, their interactions with other microorganisms, as well as guidelines used by dairies to prevent cheese contamination.


This paper summarizes the results of a continuing study at the hydraulic laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley on this subject, which is supported by the Coastal Engineering Research Center (CERC) and which has resulted over the years in the Theses of Huon ti (1954), M. Manohar (1955), G. Kalkanis (1957, 1963), M. M. Abou-Seida (1965), M. M. Das (1968) and is at this time being continued by T. C. Mac Donald. All these researchers have greatly contributed to the success of this work while the author was mostly responsible for the continuity of the study. The aim of the study was to see if it is possible to establish for the description and prediction of sediment transport by waves a general system of approach similar to that which the author published in 1950 under the title '.'The Bed-Load Function for Sediment Transport in Open Channel Flows". ( It was hoped at the time that many of the basic steps of such a description may at least be similar to those used for uni-directional flow. It became apparent that such similarities of approach were quite feasible; but another difficulty became apparent from the beginning. While in the uni-directional flow many details of the flow, such as velocity distributions, boundary layers and turbulence had been, studied and described previously, such knowledge was almost entirely lacking for wave motion. The first part of the study consisted entirely of hydraulic measurements and of their analysis. In order to determine the necessary scope of such hydraulic studies, the analogy with sediment transport in uni-directional flow was used. Some of the principles governing uni-directional flow transport are: 1. Sediment motion can be divided into bed-load motion or surface creep and suspension. 2. While moving as bed load, the particle weight is to a large part transmitted directly to the nonmoving bed, not to the flow. 3. The rate of bed-load motion is defined by the equilibrium exchange of sediment between the bed-load and the nonmoving bed. 4. This equilibrium gives a direct relationship between the sediment rate and the flow conditions near the bed, including the turbulence. 5. The flow condition near the bed can be predicted for a uni-directional boundary layer as a function of the bed shear and the bed roughness, only.


This item is part of: Boarin, P., Haarhoff, E., Manfredini,
M., Mohammadzadeh, M., Premier, A., (2021). Rethinking Sustainable Pacific Rim
Territories. Proceedings of the 2020 APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes Hub
PhD Symposium, Future Cities Research Hub, School of Architecture and Planning
of the University of Auckland. ISBN: 978-0-473-53616-9ABSTRACTKiribati is representative of a Pacific Island nation, which is both a Small Island Developing State and Least Developing Country with very real climate change challenges and weaknesses in asset management. Climate change adaptation and infrastructure development in this nation are already intricately linked. Despite this, Kiribati is still heavily hampered with the build neglect paradigm which impacts on both development and adaptation efforts. Furthermore, the parallels between climate change adaptation programmes or projects and infrastructure development has become increasingly hazy and given rise to a growing dependency on external funding. This paper aims to understand the role of asset management in this ongoing paradigm. Consideration is given on how asset management practices could be strengthened for effective adaptation to climate change in Kiribati, with specific examples from the water sector. Further understanding of how asset management works in this context is important including more support for its ongoing implementation and sustainable funding. The methodology employed for this research include, literature review, document analysis and interview with the Government of Kiribati Ministry staff.


The bovine corpus luteum (CL) grows very fast and regresses within a few days at luteolysis. Mechanisms controlling development and secretory function of the bovine CL may involve many factors that are produced both within and outside the CL. In the cow, luteolysis is initiated by uterine prostaglandin (PG)F2alpha released at the late luteal stage. It can also be induced by injection of exogenous PGF2alpha given at the mid luteal stage. Luteolysis consists of a phase of rapid decrease in progesterone (P4) production by the CL, followed by a phase of structural regression. Although uterine PGF2alpha is known to be the main luteolytic factor, its direct action on the CL is mediated by the products of accessory luteal cells: immune cells, endothelial cells, pericytes and fibroblasts. There are studies showing that beside endothelin-1, cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interferons) and nitric oxide play critical roles in functional and structural luteolysis in cattle by stimulating leukotrienes and PGF2alpha', decreasing P4 secretion and apoptosis induction. Because of luteal blood flow and P4 concentrations decrease in parallel during both spontaneous and PGF2alpha-induced luteolysis, a decrease in luteal blood flow resulting in hypoxia has been proposed as one of the main luteolytic mechanisms in the cow. Hypoxia inhibits P4 synthesis in luteal cells by inhibiting the steroidogenic enzymes and promotes apoptosis of luteal cells by increasing pro-apoptotic proteins. Although reduction of luteal blood flow and hypoxia contribute to the late events of luteolysis, little is known about the physiological relevance and the cause of the transient increase in luteal blood flow and reactive oxygen species during the initial step of luteolysis.


VOLUME I. Preface. A Bit of History. About The Java Series. Contributors to the API. About the Java Packages. References. Class Hierarchy Diagrams. Package java.lang. Classes. Class Boolean. Class Character. Class Class. Class ClassLoader. Class Compiler. Class Double. Class Float. Class Integer. Class Long. Class Math. Class Number. Class Object. Class Process. Class Runtime. Class SecurityManager. Class String. Class StringBuffer. Class System. Class Thread. Class ThreadGroup. Class Throwable. Interfaces. Interface Cloneable. Interface Runnable. Exceptions. Class ArithmeticException. Class ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException. Class ArrayStoreException. Class ClassCastException. Class ClassNotFoundException. Class CloneNotSupportedException. Class Exception. Class IllegalAccessException. Class IllegalArgumentException. Class IllegalMonitorStateException. Class IllegalThreadStateException. Class IndexOutOfBoundsException. Class InstantiationException. Class InterruptedException. Class NegativeArraySizeException. Class NoSuchMethodException. Class NullPointerException. Class NumberFormatException. Class RuntimeException. Class SecurityException. Class StringIndexOutOfBoundsException. Errors. Class AbstractMethodError. Class ClassCircularityError. Class ClassFormatError. Class Error. Class IllegalAccessError. Class IncompatibleClassChangeError. Class InstantiationError. Class InternalError. Class LinkageError. Class NoClassDefFoundError. Class NoSuchFieldError. Class NoSuchMethodError. Class OutOfMemoryError. Class StackOverflowError. Class ThreadDeath. Class UnknownError. Class UnsatisfiedLinkError. Class VerifyError. Class VirtualMachineError. Package java.io. Classes. Class BufferedInputStream. Class BufferedOutputStream. Class ByteArrayInputStream. Class ByteArrayOutputStream. Class DataInputStream. Class DataOutputStream. Class File. Class FileDescriptor. Class FileInputStream. Class FileOutputStream. Class FilterInputStream. Class FilterOutputStream. Class InputStream. Class LineNumberInputStream. Class OutputStream. Class PipedInputStream. Class PipedOutputStream. Class PrintStream. Class PushbackInputStream. Class RandomAccessFile. Class SequenceInputStream. Class StreamTokenizer. Class StringBufferInputStream. Interfaces. Interface DataInput. Interface DataOutput. Interface FilenameFilter. Exceptions. Class EOFException. Class FileNotFoundException. Class IOException. Class InterruptedIOException. Class UTFDataFormatException. Package java.util. Classes. Class BitSet. Class Date. Class Dictionary. Class Hashtable. Class Observable. Class Properties. Class Random. Class Stack. Class StringTokenizer. Class Vector. Interfaces. Interface Enumeration. Interface Observer. Exceptions. Class EmptyStackException. Class NoSuchElementException. Package java.net. Classes. Class ContentHandler. Class DatagramPacket. Class DatagramSocket. Class InetAddress. Class ServerSocket. Class Socket. Class SocketImpl. Class URL. Class URLConnection. Class URLEncoder. Class URLStreamHandler. Interfaces. Interface ContentHandlerFactory. Interface SocketImplFactory. Interface URLStreamHandlerFactory. Exceptions. Class MalformedURLException. Class ProtocolException. Class SocketException. Class UnknownHostException. Class UnknownServiceException. Index. VOLUME II. Preface. A Bit of History. About The Java Series. Contributors to the API. About the Java Packages. References. Class Hierarchy Diagrams. Package java.awt. Classes. Class BorderLayout. Class Button. Class Canvas. Class CardLayout. Class Checkbox. Class CheckboxGroup. Class CheckboxMenuItem. Class Choice. Class Color. Class Component. Class Container. Class Dialog. Class Dimension. Class Event. Class FileDialog. Class FlowLayout. Class Font. Class FontMetrics. Class Frame. Class Graphics. Class GridBagConstraints. Class GridBagLayout. Class GridLayout. Class Image. Class Insets. Class Label. Class List. Class MediaTracker. Class Menu. Class MenuBar. Class MenuComponent. Class MenuItem. Class Panel. Class Point. Class Polygon. Class Rectangle. Class Scrollbar. Class TextArea. Class TextComponent. Class TextField. Class Toolkit. Class Window. Interfaces. Interface LayoutManager. Interface MenuContainer. Exceptions. Class AWTException. Errors. Class AWTError. Package java.awt.image. Classes. Class ColorModel. Class CropImageFilter. Class DirectColorModel. Class FilteredImageSource. Class ImageFilter. Class IndexColorModel. Class MemoryImageSource. Class PixelGrabber. Class RGBImageFilter. Interfaces. Interface ImageConsumer. Interface ImageObserver. Interface ImageProducer. Package java.awt.peer. Interfaces. Interface ButtonPeer. Interface CanvasPeer. Interface CheckboxMenuItemPeer. Interface CheckboxPeer. Interface ChoicePeer. Interface ComponentPeer. Interface ContainerPeer. Interface DialogPeer. Interface FileDialogPeer. Interface FramePeer. Interface LabelPeer. Interface ListPeer. Interface MenuBarPeer. Interface MenuComponentPeer. Interface MenuItemPeer. Interface MenuPeer. Interface PanelPeer. Interface ScrollbarPeer. Interface TextAreaPeer. Interface TextComponentPeer. Interface TextFieldPeer. Interface WindowPeer. Package java.applet. Classes. Class Applet. Interfaces. Interface AppletContext. Interface AppletStub. Interface AudioClip. Index. 0201634597T04062001


I was very pleased to have been invited to guest-edit this special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, as part of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the institution of the first peer-reviewed journal in the world.

When Editor-in-Chief of Philosophical Transactions B, I prepared a special issue on Cerebral Cartography, published in 2005. It was to commemorate the centenary of the publication of three influential works on the brain, Alfred Campbell's Histological Studies of Cerebral Function [1], Paul Flechsig's Gehirnphysiologie und Willenstheorien [2] and, above all, Korbinian Brodmann's work on cortical cytoarchitectonics [3]. Cytoarchitectonics was, and continues to be, a controversial guide to the organization of the cerebral cortex. But, in spite of its many inadequacies and in spite of the many criticisms levelled at it, including criticisms of Brodmann's work, that paper and a subsequent book by Brodmann have had a lasting influence [4]. In the state of our imperfect knowledge, it has proved to be a more or less reliable anatomical guide, if not a functional one, for locating brain activity. In spite of its inadequacies, it is still used today by many, especially in the field of brain imaging. However imperfect a guide to the organization of the cerebral cortex cytoarchitectonics may be, its sheer longevity has proved its usefulness. Equally, Flechsig's myelogenetic studies, though not as widely quoted today as Brodmann's work, has had a recent renaissance with the increasing emphasis on developmental studies in health and in disease.

That issue of Philosophical Transactions B was, therefore, a look into the present through the past.

This issue is different in the sense that it looks largely at the future through the present. For that reason alone, it was a more difficult enterprise. How can anyone foresee what future conceptual and technical developments there will be and how they will change the nature of the answers that we seek, if not the questions themselves? How can anyone foretell whether an approach that is regarded as insignificant today, and therefore not covered in these pages, or not adequately covered, will not assume centre stage in the future. After all, as early as 1877, Pierre Paul Broca had proposed using thermometers attached to the scalp to detect differences in temperature to infer changes in cerebral blood flow (which we today accept as an index of brain activity) during mental activity [5,6]. The idea seemed outrageous then; it was widely suspected and denounced in an editorial published in The Lancet in 1880 as "a supposition which is quite inconceivable" [7]. The essential validity of this approach was taken up by Roy & Sherrington in 1890 [8] but, up to about the 1980s, nowhere was the issue seriously discussed again until the advent of brain imaging techniques.

I therefore invited all contributors, not to write scholarly articles but to speculate freely and in an informed way about the future of brain studies, as seen through the prism of their own work and techniques, restricting themselves to the next 25 years, beyond which all speculation becomes idle. The result is this collection of papers.

Rich societies are currently spending vast fortunes on brain studies, for which they expect some kind of return. It was therefore important to cover the aspirations of the three major brain initiatives—in the USA, Europe and Japan—by those who are leading them. I am aware that such initiatives have been controversial and have had their supporters and their detractors. All the more reason, therefore, to lay out, for neurobiologists worldwide, the details of these programmes from those who are leading them (Jorgenson et al. [9], Frackowiak & Markram [10] and Okano et al. [11]). Whether one approves of such large initiatives or not, they are destined to play leading roles in brain studies worldwide and these comprehensive articles will ensure that future debates about these initiatives will be well informed. It is unlikely that any of them will continue rigidly in their present form; new advances will almost certainly result in one aspect or another of these programmes changing course, or so one hopes. But what is presented here is the backbone of what those leading the initiatives think the neurobiological community can develop and achieve in the future in the light of present knowledge.

Within this overall initiative, there are specific areas that are likely to be of increasing importance in the future. Connectomics, dedicated to mapping at very high resolution the connections that underlie nervous activity, is covered here by one of the key players in it (Olaf Sporns [12]). Connectomics links, in a sense, the past with the present and the future; its emphasis is not simply charting in very intimate detail the connections in the brain but also in how these connections change with time. What the German anatomist Bernhard von Gudden wrote in 1886, 'Anatomy first and then physiology, but if physiology first then not without anatomy' remains true today, although the methods of addressing the question have changed beyond recognition.

There are, of course, new departures of looking at the brain. The advent of brain imaging techniques has led to an unprecedented explosion in studies of brain activity that underlies sensation, action and, perhaps above all, cognitive states in health and disease. Yet, in an important sense, these activities are departures from the on-going intrinsic activity of the brain which, itself, may not be the same at all times. It is, above all, highly organized and, as one of the founders of brain imaging techniques (Raichle) explains here [13], understanding the rules that govern that organization will be an important element in future brain studies.

Comparing the past and the future viewed through the present, it is significant to note that many of the core issues that exercised the attention of neurobiologists in the past, and continue to do so today, will also extend into the future. But the approach will be significantly different. It is, for example, highly interesting to note, in all the articles here, the important emphasis being put on studying the timing of activity in the brain and its role in one of the most elusive problems in brain studies—of the past, the present and future—namely, how activity in the different, specialized parts of the brain are integrated. The increasing sophistication of imaging techniques, and the rapid improvements in magneto-encephalography, means that brain activity can be studied in the microsecond and millisecond range and related to the location of brain areas, thus giving in unprecedented detail the dynamics of interactions between them. One of the pioneers of magneto-encephalography and her colleague (Hari and Parkkonen) address this here [14] as does (Zeki) [15] in his discussion of the asynchronous brain. The time factor is also critical in the papers by another pioneer of imaging studies, Karl Friston and his co-workers [16], which looks at brain activity computationally, emphasizing in particular attention and the ubiquitously important predictive coding, as well as in the paper by Gollo et al. [17], which looks at the synchronization of activity that is critical in mood and introspection. Finally, the overall and seemingly intractable problem of consciousness, never far in any profound thinking about the brain, is covered here by two central figures (Tononi and Koch) in the study of consciousness [18] in the context of Integrated Information Theory.

Intriguingly, what the papers collectively reveal is the continuity from the past to the future of the fundamental questions that we ask about the brain. The fact that, over 150 years since neurology and neurobiology began as a distinct discipline, the grand, overall, questions have remained much the same illustrates what an enormous challenge it is to study the brain. But the papers also reveal how these questions, and the methods used to address them, have been refined to unprecedented levels, giving us hope that the next 25 years will see as well an unprecedented sophistication in the answers we obtain.

Of course, there are important areas that we have not covered. This is due partly to limitations of space and partly to unforeseen circumstances which led some to withdraw their contributions. But, together, the articles here provide an inspiring and intriguing look into the future of brain studies from the perspective of the present. Not everyone will agree with all that has been written, which in itself is a healthy sign of the on-going debate within our field. But this glimpse into the future of brain studies will, I hope, inject important insights into that debate.


We present here the effect of a hydrogen anneal at 600degreesC for Schottky sensor devices based on n- and p-type 4H SiC. The devices have gate contacts of Ta/Pt, or TaSix/Pt. The catalytic metal gate dissociates hydrogen and thus promotes diffusion of hydrogen atoms into the SiC, where the atoms will trap or react with different impurities, defects or surface states. This will change parameters such as the carrier concentrations, the defect density of the material or the surface resistivity at the SiC/SiO2 interface. The current-voltage and the capacitance-voltage characteristics were measured before and after annealing in hydrogen and oxygen containing atmosphere, and the results show a reversible effect in the I-V characteristics.


Although OCR technology is now commonplace, character recognition errors are still a problem, in particular, in automated systems for information extraction from printed documents. This paper proposes a method for the automatic detection and correction of OCR errors in an information extraction system. Our algorithm uses domain-knowledge about possible misrecognition of characters to propose corrections; then it exploits knowledge about the type of the extracted information to perform syntactic and semantic checks in order to validate the proposed corrections. We assess our proposal on a real-world, highly challenging dataset composed of nearly 800 values extracted from approximately 100 commercial invoices and we obtained very good results.


The article shows the importance of the paternal metaphor and the function of the father in psychoanalysis, as well as some misunderstandings that can occur regarding this function in philosophy, namely Deleuze and Guattari's critique of the father as a normative function of castration. It focuses on Freud's and Lacan's conception of the Oedipus complex and underlines some crucial changes that Lacan introduced while reading Freud's work and while constantly returning in his teaching to his own previous conceptions. Finally, the article argues that it is not possible to ignore the function of the father and aspire to create a new sort of psychoanalytic practice by entirely avoiding the difficult and constitutive role of this function.


Factory Acceptance Testing should involve customer's experts and knowledge in defining, reading and validating tests, while keeping labor costs at moderate level. This involvement requires a testing approach, which hides implementation details and emphasizes domain terminology. Keyword driven testing is seen a viable test automation solution to reduce cost and enable customer involvement in acceptance testing. We propose an approach for adaptation of Keyword driven testing framework to IEC 61131-3 industrial process control applications. It utilizes importing of application elements, presented with PLCopen XML, and transforming them to proxy objects to be used as variables in test code, with domain specific names. Benefits include simplification of test and keyword specifications and hiding of implementation details from testers.