While agglomerations along the Rhine are confronted with the uncertainties of an increasing flood risk due to climate change, different programs are claiming urban river front sites. Simultaneously, urban development, flood management, as well as navigation and environmental protection are negotiating the border between the river and the urban realm. This produces complex spatial constellations between the river system and the urban realm with a diverse set of interdependencies, where programs have to synergize while adapting to dynamic water levels. Based on an expanding area at risk and the reliance on flood levels to remain within an acceptable spectrum for adaptive measures to be effective, Urban Flood Integration (UFI) involves border negotiations between the river and the urban realm where adaptation and mitigation ideally synergize.

Instead of a scientific approach that reduces complexity in order to reach a verifiable question, a post-normal science approach is chosen as an evaluation and working method applied within this research. The working method relies on literature studies, semi-structured interviews and empirical research through repeated site visits. The general heterogeneity of the case studies regarding their planning structure, status and time scales, data availability and the willingness by the agencies involved to provide usable information shapes the formal research structure.

Part I serves as a narrative for the case study analysis and for the final conclusions and recommendations in Part II. It is made up of three chapters, where Urban Flood Integration is framed historically, theoretically and strategically within the specific geographic context of the navigable Rhine:

Anthropogenic transformations of the Rhine flood plains in the 19th and 20th century have turned formerly wide, often meandering or bifurcating river beds into urbanized embankments along straight, channelled rivers. The perception of the river changed from being dynamic to being controllable. This produced the spatial backdrop for modernist and therefore sectoral developments based on a dialectical relationship between the urban realm and the (river) landscape. Yet, as conversions of former harbours are turning sites outside the flood defence into inner city living quarters, as retention polders are positioned in flood plains with enough damage potential to threaten regional economies, and flood mitigating measures are more viable/effective on site in the middle of the city than in a rural area, site specific negotiations between simultaneous programmatic claims are producing new urban typologies/ecologies that in turn demand and rely on a new methodological approach. Within this research design is considered not only a spatial, but also a strategic tool capable of not only linking different programs, but also different disciplines.

Flood Risk Management along the Rhine today combines river expanding measures and adaptive strategies with the existing defensive system to cope with the risk increase as a consequence of previous interventions and developments and fluctuations in water levels due to climate change. Differences in landscapes and urgencies and differences in planning cultures between the Upper and Lower Rhine and the Delta have also led to different strategic approaches. Within this research the innovative capacity of the adaptive and anticipatory water-based approach in the Netherlands provides lessons to be learned specifically regarding spatial quality as a strategic component of water-related projects.

In Part II, the investigation of two Dutch and two German urbanized water front developments along different river segments of the Rhine according to their synergetic potential, but also regarding the temporal and spatial interdependencies between the river system as a whole, the regional context as well as the actual water front as the project site, aims to examine the following questions: Between adaptive and mitigative strategies, what is the spectrum of spatial constellations between urban development and flood management within the constraints set by navigation and a (partial) restoration of the dynamic river landscape? How are temporal and spatial interdependencies shaping these projects? Relational diagrams show the reciprocations between urban development and river dynamics of each investigated case study and the respective agencies and processes involved. The case study analysis serves as a basis for recommendations for the architectural and programmatic scope of flood-resilient projects dealing with expansive flood management strategies and respectively a strategic design approach addressing multiple scales and programs. Embedded in an exemplary atlas of the respective typology along the different Rhine segments, the four case studies from south to north are:

• Karlsruhe Rappenwört, a steered retention polder along the meandering Upper Rhine

• Mainz Zollhafen, a port conversion with flood adaptive housing along the bifurcating Upper Rhine

• Nijmegen Lent, a bypass and urban extension based on a dike set back along the Waal

• Dordrecht Stadswerven, an urban development outside the dikes in the Delta

In summary, differences in landscape, threat and political structures have produced different planning cultures in Germany and the Netherlands in terms of flood management. Both Dutch and German mitigation measures remain path dependent on the defensive system. Yet, whereas the Dutch approach to flood mitigation is holistic in an extended ecological sense and specifically includes spatial quality, in Germany, planning flood-related issues remains part of a sectoral approach where spatial quality is not initially included, bit remains an additional layer towards the end of the project. Confronted with a strong ecological lobby, the focus is to restore the former alluvial forest in niches. Of the six programs defined in the ICPR Atlas, forestry seems the only one capable of taking on river dynamics and transforming accordingly over time. All other programs (settlements, industries, traffic infrastructure, and to some degree agriculture, specifically when ecological flooding is taken into account) remain reliant on defensive measures, and in case of their failure, infrastructural support and adaptation measures. They are, however, not included in a design strategy that explores potentialities.

In the light of long-term strategies and programs, the Dutch approach offers a more iterative planning practice that is capable of evolving with the experience gained. Dutch experience and corresponding policy adaptation has further shown that a more permissive planning approach to allow additional programs within Room for the River measures can raise local acceptance and thus reduce negative effects. In Germany, water management agencies avoid projects that could become precedence cases and thus enable repetition. This restrictive approach is a hindrance on the way to larger-scale strategies that rely on pilot projects as testing grounds. The Dutch approach seems to aim for incentives and actually provides them, as the trade-off in the Nijmegen case shows. Moving from a restrictive to a responsive planning approach that includes incentives produces a breeding ground and should always be a central component of any strategy. One of the main findings of this research is, specifically in Germany, the limited availability of information, as well as lacking visualization layers of ongoing programs and projects (which may be an additional indication of the lacking involvement of designers in German spatial flood risk management projects). This research contributes to a broader understanding by providing an atlas of selected flood-adaptation and flood-mitigation typologies along the Rhine between Basel and Rotterdam.

Directly adressing the design practice, this research proposes to move from a spatial to a strategic design approach by:

-involving architects, landscape architects, urban designers from the initial stage to enable their engagement also in the strategic design of a project;

-enabling design to become part of a systemic approach that aims for capacity building and therefore includes ecological, economic and cultural conditions through a transdisciplinary approach;

-making the invisible layers visible: Visualize systems/expert information to make them accessible and to enable communication between disciplines;

-hosting design competitions in cooperation with local stakeholders bringing people and ideas together to trigger emergence;

-applying back-casting strategies to move beyond existing conceptions: design may thus becomes "telescopic" and allow a challenge of existing givens, the visualization of concepts again playing a central role.

Two follow-up research projects are proposed:

-Development of Design Guidelines for a river segments approach: Evaluation of ongoing or recent mitigation and adaptation projects, but also other river-related developments (e.g. navigation) in an academic research project to define potential emergent capacities between systemic and qualitative elements. In collaboration with the practice, smaller scale pilots as part of existing mitigation programs on a river segment scale could aim to substantiate the findings.

-Cost-Benefit-Analysis Spatial Quality: To substantiate the qualitatively developed argument towards Urban Flood Integration (UFI), a cost-benefit analysis of a transdisciplinary layer that is comparable to the measures defined by the Dutch Quality Team for the German Room for the River, which focus today on ecological rejuvenation vs. spatial quality as a secondary aim.

The final outcome of the following multiple case-study investigation and the typological atlas provided is seen to be valuable for a number of different organizations, such as governmental and educational institutions dealing with the geospecific context and spatia


The theory of electron cooling of ions and positrons is reviewed. Formulas describing the retarding force of ions in an electron beam with an 'oblate' velocity distribution, which is typical for electron cooling, are considered for arbitrary intensities of a magnetic field. Considered for positrons are the cases of intermediate and strong magnetic fields, which are of the greatest practical interest. The friction force and the components of the positron velocity diffusion tensor are calculated. Also discussed is the relaxation of positrons in their electron cooling in positron storage rings and their transition to the stationary distribution. The stationary velocity distribution function for positrons is shown to practically coincide in this case with that for electrons. The feasibility of lowering the transverse electron temperature is analyzed, which is required for decreasing the positron spread in momentum.


Night-time light imagery stands unique amongst remote sensing data sources as it offers a uniquely 'human' view of the Earth's surface. The presence of lighting across the globe is almost entirely due to some form of human activity be it settlements, shipping fleets, gas flaring or fires associated with swidden agriculture. This extensively illustrated guide introduces users to the types of night-time light data available, its characteristics and limitations. It details the distinguishing features of the stable lights, radiance calibrated and time series Average DN datasets. The latter currently spans the period 1992-2003. The spatial and temporal characteristics of the datasets are presented using a range of techniques including temporal color composites. Preliminary analysis of this time series reveals considerable differences in brightness between data collected from different platforms. The second part of the guide examines how this interesting data source has been used and may be used to derive useful information about human presence and practice on Earth. Topics range from population and light pollution to economic activity, greenhouse gas emissions and using night-time lights to help with disaster management. Consideration is also given to the ecological ramifications of night-time lighting. With these elements set out, the final section explores other potential sources of night-time light data and how future systems may enhance our existing capabilities to understand the human environment through this the observation of lights at night.


ABSTRACT Basement membrane (BM) extracellular matrices are crucial for the coordination of different tissue layers. A matrix adhesion receptor that is important for BM function and stability in many mammalian tissues is the dystroglycan (DG) complex. This comprises the non-covalently-associated extracellular α-DG, that interacts with laminin in the BM, and the transmembrane β-DG, that interacts principally with dystrophin to connect to the actin cytoskeleton. Mutations in dystrophin, DG, or several enzymes that glycosylate α-DG underlie severe forms of human muscular dystrophy. Nonwithstanding the pathophysiological importance of the DG complex and its fundamental interest as a non-integrin system of cell-ECM adhesion, the evolution of DG and its interacting proteins is not understood. We analysed the phylogenetic distribution of DG, its proximal binding partners and key processing enzymes in extant metazoan and relevant outgroups. We identify that DG originated after the divergence of ctenophores from porifera and eumetazoa. The C-terminal half of the DG core protein is highly-conserved, yet the N-terminal region, that includes the laminin-binding region, has undergone major lineage-specific divergences. Phylogenetic analysis based on the C-terminal IG2_MAT_NU region identified three distinct clades corresponding to deuterostomes, arthropods, and mollusks/early-diverging metazoans. Whereas the glycosyltransferases that modify α-DG are also present in choanoflagellates, the DG-binding proteins dystrophin and laminin originated at the base of the metazoa, and DG-associated sarcoglycan is restricted to cnidarians and bilaterians. These findings implicate extensive functional diversification of DG within invertebrate lineages and identify the laminin-DG-dystrophin axis as a conserved adhesion system that evolved subsequent to integrin-ECM adhesion, likely to enhance the functional complexity of cell-BM interactions in early metazoans.


Bisphenol A (BPA), originally developed as a synthetic oestrogen, is nowadays extensively used in the production of polymeric plastics. Under harsh conditions, these plastics may release BPA, which then can leach into the environment. Detectable concentrations of BPA have been measured in most analysed samples of human serum, plasma, or urine, as well as in follicular fluid, foetal serum, and amniotic fluid. Here we summarize the evidence about adverse BPA effects on the genetic and epigenetic integrity of mammalian oocytes. We conclude that increasing evidence supports the notion that low BPA concentrations adversely affect the epigenome of mammalian female germ cells, with functional consequences on gene expression, chromosome dynamics in meiosis, and oocyte development. Specific time windows, during which profound chromatin remodelling occurs and maternal imprints are established or protected, appear particularly vulnerable to epigenetic deregulation by BPA. Transgenerational effects have been also observed in the offspring of BPA-treated rodents, although the epigenetic mechanisms of inheritance still need to be clarified. The relevance of these findings for human health protection still needs to be fully assessed, but they warrant further investigation in both experimental models and humans.


Classical Tibetan, with origins dating to the seventh century, is the language found in a huge corpus of surviving Tibetan, mostly Buddhist, texts; native Tibetans still employ this language today when writing on religious, medical, or historical subjects. This book aims to provide a rapid introduction to the main elements of Classical Tibetan, so that students may begin to access for themselves the vast amount of available material. While designed for guided study, the book will also be of use to those who tackle the language on their own. Steady study over approximately six months should result in an understanding of most grammatical features and allow the student to read the simpler prose texts


P F Strawson advocates a descriptive metaphysics. Contrary to Kant, he believes that metaphysics should be 'content to describe the actual structure of thought about the world', there is no need of postulating a world that lies beyond our grasp. We neither need to refute nor accept scepticism since we can ignore it with good reasons. Yet this paper argues that Strawson fails to provide us with good reasons. He fails to realise that one cannot do metaphysics by construing its claims as being merely descriptive of a conceptual scheme we find ourselves to possess without even purporting to establish the legitimacy of that scheme. The paper shows that it is possible to overcome this impasse if we endorse Kant's transcendental idealist position. The significance of Kant' position is that it not only allows us to describe our conceptual scheme but moreover that it acknowledges that the world may be (radically) otherwise without however instantiating the truth of scepticism


In the shallow water coastal area, visibility is comparatively restricted, yet marine mammals are still able to navigate, manoeuvre, and find food without any noticeable difficulties. Our work has focused particularly on grey whales (Eschrichtius robustus) due to their close association with the shallow water environment. One of their primary food sources is found in kelp beds, in a highly cluttered and acoustically active environment. Because the usefulness of vision is limited by the turbidity of the coastal submarine environment, it is logical to believe they rely heavily on their hearing. Unlike dolphins and porpoises, grey whales do not appear to use active echolocation techniques. We propose therefore that they are making use of the ambient noise for passive acoustic characterisation of their environment. We are investigating what sounds are available to these animals in their feeding grounds and what types of visualisation techniques they might be employing. During the summer of 2006, ambient noise recordings were collected in two bays along the central coast of British Columbia, Canada, where grey whales are known to feed. The array used was a fixed 2-hydrophone design, horizontally separated by a small distance, analogous to a set of ears, and was deployed from a kayak. The acoustic signals were recorded near the surface at a broadband frequency range of 20 Hz to 20 kHz where the water column depths ranged from 3 m to 30 m approximately, and in several distinct environments (deeper water, shallow water with kelp bed, shallow water with bare seabed, surf zone). This paper examines the data collected and develops hypotheses based on Synthetic Aperture and Acoustic Daylight Imaging techniques as possible mechanisms available to these whales to interpret the nearshore sound field.


Quite apart from conviction of crime, a psychopath under the South African Mental Health Act of 1 973, may be civilly committed and held until the danger he is presumed to present is past. This model follows similar legislation in other countries which is based on the assumption that a treatment approach to the repetitive offender is more enlightened and will produce better results for the protection of society and even for the offender than the traditional penal paradigm.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between financial consumer protection (FCP) and economic growth.,The authors use cross-country data on 114 countries surveyed in the World Bank Global Survey on FCP and Financial Literacy (2013) and endogenous treatment regressions for the estimation.,The results indicate that FCP enhances economic growth through fair treatment, responsible lending, enforcement and dispute resolution and recourse regulations. The authors find no evidence to suggest that disclosure and compliance monitoring regulations have an effect on economic growth.,This study provides rich insight into the important question faced by policy makers, as to which FCP regulatory mechanisms to put in place to enhance economic growth.,This study provides current, cross-country empirical evidence on the debate as to whether FCP enhances economic growth.


Advances in prostate cancer biology and diagnostics are dependent upon high-fidelity integration of clinical, histomorphologic, and molecular phenotypic findings. In this study, we compared fresh frozen, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE), and PAXgene-fixed paraffin-embedded (PFPE) tissue preparation methods in radical prostatectomy prostate tissue from 36 patients and performed a preliminary test of feasibility of using PFPE tissue in routine prostate surgical pathology diagnostic assessment. In addition to comparing histology, immunohistochemistry, and general measures of DNA and RNA integrity in each fixation method, we performed functional tests of DNA and RNA quality, including targeted Miseq RNA and DNA sequencing, and implemented methods to relate DNA and RNA yield and quality to quantified DNA and RNA picogram nuclear content in each tissue volume studied. Our results suggest that it is feasible to use PFPE tissue for routine robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy surgical pathology diagnostics and immunohistochemistry, with the benefit of significantly improvedDNA and RNA quality and RNA picogram yield per nucleus as compared with FFPE tissue. For fresh frozen, FFPE, and PFPE tissues, respectively, the average Genomic Quality Numbers were 7.9, 3.2, and 6.2, average RNA Quality Numbers were 8.7, 2.6, and 6.3, average DNA picogram yields per nucleus were 0.41, 0.69, and 0.78, and average RNA picogram yields per nucleus were 1.40, 0.94, and 2.24. These findings suggest that where DNA and/or RNA analysis of tissue is required, and when tissue size is small, PFPE may provide important advantages over FFPE. The results also suggest several interesting nuances including potential avenues to improve RNA quality in FFPE tissues and confirm recent suggestions that some DNA sequence artifacts associated with FFPE can be avoided.


In this paper, a non-data-aided maximum a posteriori (MAP) channel estimation technique for OFDM systems employing M-PSK modulation scheme is proposed. The technique requires a convenient representation of the discrete multipath fading channel based on the Karhunen-Loeve orthogonal expansion and estimates the complex channel parameters of each subcamen iteratively in frequency domain using the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm. Pilot symbols are employed to choose reliable initial values of the unknown channel parameters. An analytical expression is derived for the exact Cramer-Rao lower bound of the proposed MAP channel estimator. Moreover, robustness of estimator to changes in channel correlation and signal-to-noise ratio is also analyzed. The performance is presented in terns of the mean-square emr and the uncoded symbol error rate for a system employing QPSK signaling. Computer simulations demonstrate that the performance of OFDM systems using coherent demodulation based on our channel estimation can be significantly improved.


Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in social communication and interaction, repetitive and restrictive behavior, extensive clinical and etiologic heterogeneity. ASD underlying genetic basis, range from effects of single genes to that of multiple genes and chromosomal regions, hallmarking the multifactorial and complex etiology. While a genetic etiology is identifiable in about one quarter of the cases, in the remaining three quarters it remains elusive. A family with two males affected by ASD was studied to identify the genetic basis of ASD in the family. Two siblings, a brother and his sister, each had a male child with ASD through marriage to their respective unrelated spouses. The first family [F1] has one affected male child; the second [F2] has one affected male and one unaffected female children. The father of F1 and the mother of F2 are brother and sister. No aneuploidy or deletion/duplication defects were detected by Whole-Genome SNP CNV analyses. WGNGS for all members, comparative genome analyses and data mining are as follows: [Only exonic variants considered, prioritized according to increasing population frequency (0–1%), damaging effects according to mutation prediction models and will be presented in table format]. 1. The two ASD events are unrelated and due to individual de-novo variants. Trio analyses for identified 36 de novo variants in F1 and 32 in F2. Variants in KCNH1, ANKRD36C, FRG2C, LOC12989375 were in common 2. The two ASD events are due to heterozygous variants inherited from the related parents. In F1, 370 father-to-son heterozygous variants, in F2, 398 mother-to-son heterozygous variants identified with 132 in common. 3. The related parents are protected from the damaging effects of ASD predisposing variants transmitted to their respective children by protective variants that were not transmitted, hence ASD in their offspring. Analyses were for heterozygous variants shared among the related parents but not transmitted to their affected children. 4. The non-related parents contributed rare predisposing variants, which in synergy with the inherited variants from the related parents exceed a disease onset threshold in the affected offspring. For F1 mother-to-son heterozygous variant transmission; For F2 father-to-son heterozygous variant transmission examined. Complex comparative genome analyses are required to decipher the genetic basis of ASD in families with multiple affected individuals. WGNGS, analyzed for the exome data, is a powerful tool for studying the genetic causes of ASD producing superior results than exome data in which other enrichment technologies are used. WGNGS, even when analyzed only for the exome data, provides clues to novel ASD risk genes, that can be pursued clinically, bioinformatically and functionally.


Using operant conditioning, researchers at the University of Montana have developed a technique for training entire colonies of honeybees to actively seek out explosive devices. The problem with this method of detecting explosives is that bees are difficult to track due to their small size. In an experiment in 2003, it was shown that a pulsed laser system could be used to detect bees; unfortunately this pulsed laser lacked the ability to resolve wingbeat modulation in the backscattered light. This thesis describes the development of a monostatic, continuous-wave laser system capable of detecting modulation in backscattered light as a result of moving honeybee wings. Infrared light is generated by a laser diode and directed through a polarizing beam splitter and quarter-wave retardance plate which keeps the transmitted signal polarization perpendicular to that of the received signal. Using a photomultiplier tube as our detector, the backscattered light is converted into a current which is then sampled by an analog-todigital device and stored on a computer. This stored data can later be processed using a sliding-window discrete Fourier Transform to determine the power spectral density with respect to frequency and time. By observing the power spectral density at the frequencies where honeybees are known to flap their wings (200 Hz to 250 Hz), our system can differentiate between light reflected by a honeybee and light reflected by stationary or slow-moving objects such as foliage.


How does "what managers know" affect firm performance on international markets? This question is of considerable importance in the international economic literature. Answering it will be key for comprehending the way firms' varying performance on international markets is shaped by the human factor. This paper proposes managerial mobility as an integral part of such an answer. Catering products to an international customer base entails a learning process, which, to a large degree, stems from the experience of doing it. Therefore, different employers immensely contend for managers' highly valuable export experience. As managers can accept better and better positions from several offers, they may become highly mobile, thus having a notable impact on possibly multiple firms' internationalization. Exploiting a rich panel data set, the paper thoroughly tests this idea by discriminating between knowledge ascribable to managers' former job experience and that attributable to their personal background. The paper uses a novel identification strategy grounded in on-the-job search theory to correct estimates for the presence of self-selected mobility flows. A core finding of the paper is that the maximum return to expertise acquisition is realized for those managers with previous experience in commercializing differentiated products in specific markets.


Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases and is estimated to affect more than 32 million European Union (EU) citizens, which is nearly 10% of the total EU population. An additional 32 million EU citizens are not yet diagnosed or have pre-diabetes, and rates of diabetes are expected to further rise as the population ages. Annual costs of diabetes in 2010 were approximately €300 billion, and the European Parliament now considers diabetes an epidemic. Horizon 2020, the upcoming European Commission Research Framework Programme, will dictate how much funding is available for scientific research in Europe. EURADIA, the Alliance for European Diabetes Research, is working to ensure that Horizon 2020 will allocate sufficient funding to health research in light of the increasing economic consequences of chronic diseases such as diabetes.


When Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. was decided by the Supreme Court in late-May of this year, commentators - both legal and nonlegal - immediately recognized the obstacle that the decision poses for individuals suffering from discrimination in pay. Shortly after Ledbetter was decided, op-eds appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, all calling for overturning of the majority's decision and/or better access to pay information, and legislators scrambled to draft legislation providing that each paycheck could constitute an act of discrimination, thus extending the period within which an individual would be able to file her complaint. What these efforts to mitigate the immediate effects of Ledbetter miss, however, is that Ledbetter is part of a much deeper and more potentially devastating conceptual shift that is taking hold in employment discrimination law. This insular individualism - the belief that discrimination can be reduced to the action of an individual decisionmaker (or decisionmakers) isolated from the work environment and the employer - renders the narrow legislative attempts to overrule Ledbetter woefully incomplete. Without adequate challenge, the entrenchment of insular individualism that Ledbetter reflects is likely to have significant repercussions for the future of employment discrimination law. In this Essay, I seek to uncover the insular individualism in Ledbetter and to map some of its potential consequences for antidiscrimination law. I argue that Ledbetter - and the insular individualism that it reflects - is likely to lead to at least two significant changes in individual disparate treatment law: (1) a narrowing of the evidence plaintiffs alleging individual disparate treatment are permitted to use to make their case; and (2) a cutting back on employer vicarious liability, both by providing exceptions to employer liability for what are seen as errant or rogue discriminating employees, and, as in the area of sexual harassment, by requiring victims of discrimination to complain to their employers about discrimination early on, even when the discrimination is not yet legally actionable. Although these changes are on the immediate horizon (within the next year, the Court will hear arguments in a case raising the first opportunity for such a change, and other opportunities are likely to follow shortly), they are not inevitable. After mapping some of the likely effects of insular individualism, I propose several ways in which those who understand insular individualism can work to weaken its influence.


In 1994 we entered upon a fundamentally new and different constitutional order. It was different from the old order in theory, in substance and in process. The new order had to be implemented by politicians, by an executive, by judges and by lawyers who for the most part had absolutely no training or experience in working with a Constitution of the kind that was introduced at that point. Even now, for the most part it is only lawyers who are under 40 years of age who have had any systematic training in this field. Given those circumstances, it is one of the under-recognised miracles of the new Constitution that it worked at all, let alone that it has worked so well.


Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997, xiii, 466pp, $24.95 paperIt is hard to remember now, so faded is the memory of John George Diefenbaker (so clownish his place in the media-driven political consciousness), how large he loomed to those who toiled in political opposition in South Africa in the lamentable 'sixties. But when the National party's tame press demonized him at the beginning of the decade as a renegade and a turncoat, we knew that meant he must have done something very right.What that 'something' was, Linda Freeman has now called into question. What did we think he'd done? As we saw it then, Canada, in the personification of Diefenbaker, was the first of the Old Commonwealth (aka white Commonwealth) countries to side with the institution's new non-white majority on the crucial issue of apartheid. In South Africa, Sharpeville had come and gone, and the South African leaders were bent on pushing through parliament the series of cornerstone measures that underpinned apartheid and were ramming through a referendum aimed at declaring the country a republic. It was this last that gave the Commonwealth majority its excuse to engineer South Africa's expulsion, and, in the key vote, Diefenbaker went along with them. For this, he faced astonishment and occasional fury from his own civil service, his own caucus, and his own party, and intense irritation from the British, who regarded him, as they did his country, as a pipsqueak who had forgotten his proper loyalties. It was, as Linda Freeman says, a 'remarkable' event.We remember him fondly for it. The mere act of breaking racial solidarity on the crucial matter of South Africa gave comfort to all dissidents, black and white alike, within the apartheid laager. If Canada could do it, we reasoned, so could others. And in the contending visions of oppositionist South Africa - the racial inclusiveness of the African National Congress and the Black Power militancy of the Pan-Africanist Congress - small incremental gains took on a symbolic significance far beyond what was sensible. No wonder that when Nelson Mandela finally came to Canada as a free man, as a guest of that other unlikely revolutionary, Brian Mulroney, he was able to say, with bland sincerity, that Canada's 'support sustained us, gave us comfort even in our darkest days.'Now comes Linda Freeman to tell us, persuasively and very likely correctly, that the symbol was an empty one, that it was gounded not in principle or even in geopolitical calculation but in hypocrisy and self-doubt. The legend of Canadian trenchancy grew out of shadings and half-truths; buried in the forthright statements of principle were hidden acts that undercut the fine words. Canada's own self-image was insincere and self-deluded. Canada did less than almost all the Scandinavian countries, less than single states in the United States, to help South Africa's blacks win their freedom. Canadian business not only co-operated with apartheid, but actively worked to support it, underpinning the support with the loony notion that white South Africa somehow represented a bulwark of 'Western civilization' and anti-communism (nowhere seeing that they were in fact the enemies of both).All this is correct, no doubt. And yet ... it doesn't do to devalue the currency of symbolism. True enough, a reality of inaction and deviousness underlay Canada's fine political rhetoric. And yet for those of us who were there, the symbolism alone had its own reality. We believed Canada really had broken ranks. …


This paper examines the degree to which Americans are saving optimally for retirement. Our standard for assessing optimality comes from a life-cycle model that incorporates uncertain lifetimes, uninsurable earnings and medical expenses, progressive taxation, government transfers, and pension and social security benefit functions derived from rich household data. We solve every household''s decision problem from death to starting age and then use the decision rules in conjunction with earnings histories to make predictions about wealth in 1992. Ours is the first study to compare, household by household, wealth predictions that arise from a life-cycle model that incorporates earnings histories for a nationally representative sample. The results, based on data from the Health and Retirement Study, are striking we find that the model is capable of accounting for more than 80 percent of the 1992 cross-sectional variation in wealth. Fewer than 20 percent of households have less wealth than their optimal targets, and the wealth deficit of those who are undersaving is generally small.


Six ice cores from Kilimanjaro provide an ∼11.7-thousand-year record of Holocene climate and environmental variability for eastern equatorial Africa, including three periods of abrupt climate change: ∼8.3, ∼5.2, and ∼4 thousand years ago (ka). The latter is coincident with the "First Dark Age," the period of the greatest historically recorded drought in tropical Africa. Variable deposition of F– and Na+during the African Humid Period suggests rapidly fluctuating lake levels between ∼11.7 and 4 ka. Over the 20th century, the areal extent of Kilimanjaro's ice fields has decreased ∼80%, and if current climatological conditions persist, the remaining ice fields are likely to disappear between 2015 and 2020.


Large volcanic eruptions are an important driving factor of natural climate variability. A sound assessment of the role of volcanoes in the climate system in comparison to other forcing factors is therefore a prerequisite for understanding future and past climate variability. New advances in understanding volcanic climate effects have been achieved by using comprehensive climate and Earth system models. New insights have been gained over the last decade about volcanic impacts on atmospheric composition and dynamics, but most notably also about their impact on ocean dynamics, the hydrological and the carbon cycle and on marine and terrestrial biogeochemistry. An important achievement is the improved understanding of the volcanic imprint on decadal to multidecadal time scales. Climate model simulations of past eruptions are highly dependent not only on the quality of the model and of the volcanologcial input data but also on the treatment of the aerosol size distribution in chemistry and radiation calculations. Further knowledge has to be achieved about the relation between the initial climate state at the time of the eruption and the volcanic climatic impact. A challenging task for climate models is also the simulation of the Northern Hemisphere winter climate response after a large tropical eruption. Model intercomparison studies and cross validations of model simulations with observations are essential to better constrain the radiative forcing of large volcanic eruptions and their climate impact. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:545–564. doi: 10.1002/wcc.192


When tripeptides of type Axxt-Aib-Axx-OH were coupled with amino acid methyl esters by means of commonly used coupling reagents, the formation of 1,3-thiazol-5(4H)-imines and 1,3-oxazol-5(4H)-imines was observed. With the aim of understanding which structure elements are required for this reaction, several model peptides have been prepared according to our recently described methodology, a modification of the 'azirine/oxazolone method', followed by selective isomerization of the peptide thioamides. In addition, attempts to prepare peptides that contain more than one C=S group by the same methodology also led to the formation of 1,3-thiazol-5(4H)-imine-containing derivatives. An additional C=S group can be introduced into the peptide, when the 1,3-thiazol-5(4H)-imines were treated with H2S, although mixtures of epimers were obtained. The structures of an endothiohexapeptide, two 1,3-thiazol-5(4H)-ones, and two peptides containing a 1,3-thiazol- 5(4H)-imine moiety have been established by X-ray crystal-structure analysis.


Uncertainty estimation is essential to make neural networks trustworthy in real-world applications. Extensive research efforts have been made to quantify and reduce predictive uncertainty. However, most existing works are designed for unimodal data, whereas multi-view uncertainty estimation has not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, we propose a new multi-view classification framework for better uncertainty estimation and out-of-domain sample detection, where we associate each view with an uncertainty-aware classifier and combine the predictions of all the views in a principled way. The experimental results with real-world datasets demonstrate that our proposed approach is an accurate, reliable, and well-calibrated classifier, which predominantly outperforms the multi-view baselines tested in terms of expected calibration error, robustness to noise, and accuracy for the in-domain sample classification and the out-of-domain sample detection tasks.


Design and technology is recognised in many countries as a valuable subject in developing children's knowledge and skills about materials, as well as decision making through creative design processes. As such it makes a unique contribution to a child's general education and provides a foundation for future work with all forms of technology across professional and personal lives.

However in England and Wales, the countries where the subject was first conceived, following educational policy change and the subject's exclusion from the English Baccalaureate, design and technology is persistently required to justify its place within the curriculum (DATA 2011). Amid concerns that primary teachers are insufficiently trained to teach design and technology (DATA 2015) and set within the context of primary education and building upon findings from earlier research (Bell et al. 2016), which sought to establish the range of design and technology work currently being undertaken in primary schools, this paper presents next phase research findings.

Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) is the adopted method, and drawing upon empirically grounded data, this paper explores the attitudes and perceptions of primary school teachers.

Participants were encouraged to reflect upon their own experience, to establish if they believe they received sufficient subject specific training. Work then explores their perceptions, to determine if they perceive that their personal subject knowledge has a direct impact upon the breadth and quality of work undertaken. Emergent findings are discussed in relation to the value placed upon of design and technology, and findings suggest that curriculum delivery is compromised where teacher confidence is low.

Future work will seek to investigate teacher perceptions further, aiming to explore the correlation between teacher's personal subject knowledge and the quality and creativity of work undertaken in design and technology, with a particular focus upon how knowledge is constructed and understanding developed.


We present high-resolution Vp models of the Middle Aterno basin obtained by multi-scale non-linear controlled-source tomography.Seismic data have been collected along four dense wide-aperture profiles, that run SW-NE for a total length of ~6 km in the hangingwall of the Paganica-S. Demetrio Fault, source of the 6th April 2009 (Mw 6.3) L'Aquila normal-faulting earthquake. Seismic tomography expands the knowledge of the basin with high spatial resolution and depth penetration (>300 m), illuminating the Meso-Cenozoic substratum that corresponds to high-Vp regions (Vp>3500-4000 m/s).Low Vp (1500-2000 m/s) lacustrine sediments (Early Pleistocene in age) are imaged only in the SW sector of the basin, where they are up to 200 m thick and lie below coarse fluvial and alluvial fan deposits. The overall infill consists of Early Pleistocene to Holocene alluvial fan and fluvial sediments between the Paganica Fault and the Bazzano ridge, with Vp reaching 3000 m/s for the oldest conglomeratic bodies. The substratum has an articulated topography. The main depocenter, ~350 m deep, is in the SW sector of the basin south of the Bazzano ridge. Remarkably, this depocenter and the overlying thick lacustrine body match the area of maximum coseismic subsidence observed after the 2009 earthquake. In the Paganica area, Vp images unravel large steps in the substratum related to two unreported SW-dipping buried strands, synthetic to the Paganica Fault, with ~250 m associated total vertical throw. This finding has important implications on the long-term history of the Paganica-S. Demetrio Fault system, whose total vertical displacement has been previously underestimated. An additional ~250 m vertical offset along this complex Quaternary extensional structure should therefore be considered.


The Environment and Safeguards Group (ESG) of the IDB has examined how potential environmental and social risks of major Bank-supported road improvement investments in natural resource rich and socio-culturally diverse "frontier" regions have been identified and addressed in various parts of South and Central America. The present paper presents the findings and recommendations for selected ongoing and/or completed IDB-financed road and road related projects in Brazil. To the extent possible, the experience and lessons learned from all major parts of the project cycle -- design/preparation, up-front environmental assessment, implementation/supervision, and monitoring and evaluation -- are considered, as are the analysis and management of direct, indirect and cumulative environmental and social impacts.


A series of six diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) based conjugated polymers with a varying content of solubilizing perfluoroalkyl chains were synthesized. Based on a systematic investigation of the influence of the solvent on the photovoltaic performance, it is found that 1,6-diiodoperfluorohexane (IC6F12I) is an effective solvent additive to enhance the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of DPP polymers with perfluoroalkyl side chains. The polymers consist of thiazole-flanked DPP units that alternate along the main chain with varying ratios of thiophene (T) and perfluoroalkyl benzodithiophene (FBDT) units. The polymers possess high molecular weights, narrow band gaps and good crystalline properties. The DPP polymers were used as electron acceptors in bulk heterojunction solar cells with another DPP polymer as the electron donor. A solvent mixture of CHCl3 : 1-chloronaphthalene (1-CN) is found to provide the best PCE of 2.9% in non-fluorine based DPP polymer solar cells, but yields a low PCE of 0.52% for perfluoroalkyl-containing polymer solar cells. Perfluoroalkyl-containing polymer solar cells fabricated from CHCl3 with IC6F12I as the processing additive show a significantly improved PCE of 2.1%. The morphology analysis of the blend films reveals that IC6F12I as an additive improves the micro-phase separation between the polymer donor and acceptor, which results in enhanced charge generation.


With regard to the chronology of the rock art of the whole Saharan sub-continent, a very common opinion is that, starting from the VIIth millennium BP or even earlier, an older "Culture of the Hunters" had been replaced by groups of "Herders", and that this change appeared in rock art as a modification of styles, techniques and, above all, of the set of themes associated with the imaginative world of these two populations. A series of recent publications renews this proposal for the Fezzan province, by presenting "archaic Hunters" as existing before 8000 BP, or even as dating from the very Late Pleistocene. After analysing the methodology and the arguments adopted by its authors, this thesis will finally be confronted with, and largely contradicted by, new observations carried out on the two plateaux of the Libyan Messak, i.e. in one of the supposed 'homes' of the aforesaid "Hunters Culture".


Let $G$ be a regular graph of degree $d$ and let $A\subset V(G)$. Say that $A$ is $\eta$-closed if the average degree of the subgraph induced by $A$ is at least $\eta d$. This says that if we choose a random vertex $x\in A$ and a random neighbour $y$ of $x$, then the probability that $y\in A$ is at least $\eta$. The work of this paper was motivated by an attempt to obtain a qualitative description of closed subsets of the Cayley graph $\Gamma$ whose vertex set is $\mathbb F_2^{n_1}\otimes \dots \otimes \mathbb F_2^{n_d}$ with two vertices joined by an edge if their difference is of the form $u_1\otimes \cdots \otimes u_d$. For the matrix case (that is, when $d=2$), such a description was obtained by Khot, Minzer and Safra, a breakthrough that completed the proof of the 2-to-2 conjecture. In this paper, we formulate a conjecture for higher dimensions, and prove it in an important special case. Also, we identify a statement about $\eta$-closed sets in Cayley graphs on arbitrary finite Abelian groups that implies the conjecture and can be considered as a "highly asymmetric Balog-Szemeredi-Gowers theorem" when it holds. We conclude the paper by showing that this statement is not true for an arbitrary Cayley graph. It remains to decide whether the statement can be proved for the Cayley graph $\Gamma$.


Urbanisation is one of the most forceful social and economic trends currently affecting large cities in the developing world and is an important component of national economic development processes. This is despite the general decline of formal urban economies in both developed and developing countries. A mirror-image reflection of the urbanisation process is increasing urban poverty, clearly evident in large cities and metropolitan areas in South Africa. The urban poor, local government, and urban planners have responded to urbanisation and poverty in different ways. Informal settlement processes take place and consolidate themselves in a climate of isolation and continuous conflict with the rules of the established formal urban economy, with the informal sector providing a safety net for survival. With the barest minimum of resources people living in informal settlements have provided some sort of shelter for themselves in spite of successive and systematic governmental opposition. They have generated many income earning opportunities in the informal sector; and in some cases they have made and effort to supplement household food supplies through direct production within the city. The practice of urban agriculture is guided by the "logic for survival" and it may be equated to squatter housing and street trading in that they are all examples of innovative responses from the urban poor. In the recent past the general response of local government planning authorities in African cities has been the fomiulation and implementation of urban management programmes linked to poverty alleviation programmes. It is within this context that various government authorities have responded by repressing the survival strategies of the urban poor, · tolerating it if they lacked the capacity to control it, or encouraging it by having had enabling mechanisms in place to support such activities. r Generally, government authorities have used all of the above strategies simultaneously due to a relatively greater acceptance or tolerance of some informal activities in comparison to others. The practice of urban agriculture has been repressed in certain countries, while tolerated or promoted in others. For urban planners the connection between fQod and the land on which it is produced has become increasingly remote and abstract as an issue that directly concerns urban planning and wt::lfare. Food production and distribution is intricately linked to the global economic trade, and it will be difficult to change the terms of trade in an effort to produce subsistence food supplies. People living in urban areas are reliant on the cash purchase of food which in turn is linked to levels of affordability. However in the face of declining real incomes and reduced purchasing power, and as mentioned above, the poor an"d destitute have resorted to supplementing their household food supplies through direct production within the city. Food relief programmes are an added expense to government's already overburdened coffers. As such food security is a matter that urban planners and policy makers should consider from now on. Urban agriculture has an important role to play in feeding the ever growing urban popUlation, especially the urban poor. The planning of cities rarely considers the production of urban food supplies since the prevailing attitude is one that consigns food production to the rural areas, with the focus of the city on the pursuit of economic activities. There is an compelling urgency to defeat the ethical, ideological, psychological, attitudinal and practical obstacles to promoting urban agriculture since positive policies in support of urban agriculture are unlikely to emerge from this negative frame of mind.


George Washington was inaugurated as president in 1789 with one tooth in his mouth, a lower left bicuspid. The "Father of His Country" had sets of false teeth that were made of everything but wood, from elephant ivory and walrus tusk to the teeth of a fellow human. Darnton aargues that the Enlightenment had false teeth also - that it was not the "Father of the Modern World", responsible for all its advances and transgressions. In restoring the Enlightenment to a human scale, Darnton locates its real aims, ambitions and significance. So too with the French Revolution, another icon of the 18th century, approached here through the gossip, songs and broadsides that formed the political nervous system of Paris during the ancien regime. Figures that we think we know - Voltaire, Jefferson, Rousseau, Condorcet, even historians themselves emerge afresh in Darnton's hands, their vitality, if not their teeth intact.


Many potentially toxic trace metals and radionuclides are strongly adsorbed onto surfaces of mineral and organic compounds in soils and sediments, limiting their mobility in the environment. However, recent studies have shown that trace metals in soils, groundwater, rivers, and lakes can be carried by mobile colloidal particles. Understanding the release, transport, aggregation, and deposition of natural colloidal particles is therefore of utmost importance for developing quantitative models of contaminant transport and the biogeochemical cycling of trace metals.


We examine how decentralization affects four key aspects of state strength: (i) Authority over territory and conflict prevention, (ii) Policy autonomy and the ability to uphold the law, (iii) Responsive, accountable service provision, and (iv) Social learning. We provide specific reform paths that should lead to strengthening in each. Decentralizing below the level of social cleavages should drain secessionist pressure by peeling away moderate citizens from radical leaders. The regional specificity of elite interests is key. If regional elites have more to lose than gain from national schism, they will not invest in politicians and conflicts that promote secession. Strong accountability mechanisms and national safeguards of minority rights can align local leaders' incentives with citizens', so promoting power-sharing and discouraging local capture or oppression. "Fragmentation of authority" is a mistaken inference; what decentralization really does is transform politics from top-down to bottom-up, embracing many localities and their concerns. The state moves from a simpler, brittler command structure to one based on overlapping authority and complex complementarity, where government is more robust to failure in any of its parts. Well-designed reform, focusing on services with low economies of scale, with devolved taxation and bail-outs prohibited, should increase public accountability. Lastly, by allowing citizens to become political actors in their own right, the small scale of local politics should promote social learning-by-doing, so strengthening political legitimacy, state-building, and 'democratic suppleness' from the grass-roots upwards.


It has been posited that the 1975–1984 Krafla rifting episode in northern Iceland was responsible for a significant drop in the rate of earthquakes along the Húsavík‐Flatey Fault (HFF), a transform fault that had previously been the source of several magnitude 6–7 earthquakes. This compelling case of the existence of a stress shadow has never been studied in detail, and the implications of such a stress shadow remain an open question. According to rate‐state models, intense stress shadows cause tens of years of low seismicity rate followed by a faster recovery phase of rate increase. Here, we compare the long‐term predictions from a Coulomb stress model of the rifting episode with seismological observations from the SIL catalog (1995–2011) in northern Iceland. In the analyzed time frame, we find that the rift‐induced stress shadow coincides with the eastern half of the fault where the observed seismicity rates are found to be significantly lower than expected, given the historical earthquake activity there. We also find that the seismicity rates on the central part of the HFF increased significantly in the last 17 years, with the seismicity progressively recovering from west to east. Our observations confirm that rate‐state theory successfully describes the long‐term seismic rate variation during the reloading phase of a fault invested by a negative Coulomb stress. Coincident with this recovery, we find that the b‐value of the frequency‐magnitude distribution changed significantly over time. We conclude that the rift‐induced stress shadow not only decreased the seismic rate on the eastern part of the HFF but also temporarily modified how the system releases seismic energy, with more large magnitude events in proportion to small ones. This behavior is currently being overturned, as rift‐induced locking is now being compensated by tectonic forcing.


Introduction When was the last time you sat back and contemplated how effective your teaching is? When have you examined how to best teach bridge construction, C[O.sub.2] cars, or rocketry? What methods have you used to determine how students learn and apply their knowledge? Have you investigated the effectiveness of your newly implemented curriculum based on Standards for Technological Literacy? Pre-service and practicing teachers may or may not have engaged in this type of questioning or investigated what works best and why. For varying reasons, technology education, as an entire field, is lacking in these action-related, researchable areas. There has been ongoing dialogue about the need for sustained research in technology education for many years through articles presented in technology education professional journals and conference presentations (Benenson, 2001; Cajas, 2000; Foster, 1996; Haynie, 1998; Hoepfl, 1997; Lewis, 1999; Petrina, 1998; Zuga, 1994). However, this dialogue has predominately centered upon existing faculty members in technology teacher education institutions. There has been limited discussion in technology education regarding guided pre-service, classroom teacher, or the teaching of educational research for sustained technology education growth at the practitioner-based levels (Cajas, 2000). Why should practicing teachers care about research? Avison, Lau, Myers, and Nielsen (1999) believe that action research can provide and address solutions to real-life problems in the classroom by combining theory with practice. Action research, as stated by Calhoun (2002) "can change the social system in schools and other education organizations so that continual formal learning is both expected and supported" (p. 18). There is a gap, however, between what action research may provide the classroom teacher and what technology education researchers have discovered. Zuga (2000) noted that little research being conducted today is focused on improving technology classrooms. If little research is being conducted at the practitioner-based level, how can technology education develop and use best practices? Benenson (2001) discussed the idea that research in technology education must involve classroom teachers and university faculty--a bridge that may help fill the gap in technology education research between the two groups. More importantly, closing the gap between classroom teachers and university faculty may alleviate the frequent "in the dark" feeling, and answer the question of why practicing teachers should care about research. Action Research Defined Stephen Corey (1953) described action research as a process for practitioners to study and solve their own problems. A more formal definition and explanation of action research is: A continual disciplined inquiry conducted to inform and improve our practice as educators. Action research asks educators to study their practice and its context, explore the research base for ideas, compare what they find to their current practice, participate in training to support needed changes, and study the effects on themselves, their students, and colleagues (Calhoun, 2002, p.18). Regardless of the definition of action research you find, use, or implement, the key principles of action research involve strategies to improve teaching and learning. Sagor (2000) suggested that teachers should engage in action research to: (1) build the reflective practitioner; (2) make progress on school-wide priorities; and (3) build professional cultures (p. 7). Simply put, action research is a formal process of improvement, which requires discovering, analyzing, interpreting, and acting upon what is happening in the classroom and school. Steps in Action Research Like any type of research, there are general steps, procedures, or processes that one should follow. …


During percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) catheters and arteries are visualized by x-ray angiography (XA) sequences, using brief contrast injections to show the coronary arteries. If we could continue visualizing the coronary arteries after the contrast agent passed (thus in non-contrast XA frames), we could potentially lower contrast use, which is advantageous due to the toxicity of the contrast agent. This paper explores the possibility of such visualization in mono-plane XA acquisitions with a special focus on respiratory based coronary artery motion estimation. We use the patient specific coronary artery centerlines from pre-interventional 3D CTA images to project on the XA sequence for artery visualization. To achieve this, a framework for registering the 3D centerlines with the mono-plane 2D + time XA sequences is presented. During the registration the patient specific cardiac and respiratory motion is learned. We investigate several respiratory motion estimation strategies with respect to accuracy, plausibility and ease of use for motion prediction in XA frames with and without contrast. The investigated strategies include diaphragm motion based prediction, and respiratory motion extraction from the guiding catheter tip motion. We furthermore compare translational and rigid respiratory based heart motion. We validated the accuracy of the 2D/3D registration and the respiratory and cardiac motion estimations on XA sequences of 12 interventions. The diaphragm based motion model and the catheter tip derived motion achieved 1.58 mm and 1.83 mm median 2D accuracy, respectively. On a subset of four interventions we evaluated the artery visualization accuracy for non-contrast cases. Both diaphragm, and catheter tip based prediction performed similarly, with about half of the cases providing satisfactory accuracy (median error < 2 mm).


The purpose of this paper is to review the arguments and examine the case for the legitimacy of the European Union (EU) and its institutions. In terms of the scope of the paper the author sought to, examine the literature in this area, engage with current issues, and speak with practitioners. This paper was written in the months leading up to the 2009 elections to the European Parliament. A number of interviews were done including two Irish members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who were standing for re-election at the time. This was done to ground some of the ideas brought forward by the literature in the experience of those most directly involved. The paper goes on to look at some of the approaches to democratising the EU such as the way in which the EU has used information and communication technologies (ICT) to connect with the citizens of Europe. The author concludes that, while the EU does not conform to ideal models of legitimacy and accountability, it is evolving in that direction and a case can be made that the EU is at least as accountable as the nation states of which it is composed. It is also the view of the author that developments in social networking and virtual environments, offer states and politicians the opportunity to better engage with citizens and contribute to the speed of this evolution.


Sheds light on the realities of girls' health and wellbeing in developing countries, on the links between the health of girls and the prospects for their families, and on the specific actions that will improve health prospects for millions. This report describes the most prevalent and serious health problems adolescent girls face in developing countries, linking them to a combination of specific public-health risks and social determinants of health. It highlights the diverse ways in which governments and non-governmental organizations have sought—often successfully, albeit on small scale—to break vicious cycles of ill health. It also lays out an ambitious yet feasible agenda for governments, donors, the private sector, and civil society organizations—complete with estimates of indicative costs. [CGD].


Background: Through a previous project my goal was to research and understand cultural identity. Through that project I found I wanted to help as many people as I can and it became a goal to research the adolescent age group. Body: The purpose of this project was to review existing literature and come to a conclusion about proper warm-up components and techniques in adolescent sports and physical activity that help to lower the chance of injuries. The leading cause of injury in adolescents is sports, so the focus is to help decrease the amount of injuries in adolescent sports. Methods: Articles used in this review include those with both females and males participating in diverse sports, recreational and intermediate level sports, as well as physical education class level of activity. Results and Conclusion: A structured dynamic warm-up led by an adult is the most beneficial warm-up for preventing adolescent injuries. The warm-up should consist of stretching, strengthening, balance, sport-specific agility, and landing techniques. This will prepare the body for the specific sport or exercise. The literature on this topic is a good foundation but much more research focused on gender differences and different level of competition still needs to be completed. COMPONENTS OF A PROPER WARM-UP FOR ACTIVE ADOLESCENTS: A LITERATURE REVIEW 3


This article continues with the investigation of the dominion metaphor in Gen 1:28 that was published in OTE 23 (2). In the first section the author deals with alternative proposals to this metaphor, namely Earth as voice and the world as God's body. The former suggests an ecojustice hermeneutic as proposed by Norman Hahel and the latter suggests a feminist critique as proposed by Sallie McFague. In the second section the author turns to an investigation of the transformation of the dominion metaphor in the Christ Hymn, Col 1:15-20. In the Bible attempts at mediating between God's transcendence and his immanence were pursued along two different paths, either following a Gnostic or Hellenistic Jewish dualistic speculative framework followed by traditional scholarship (Kasemann, Lohse, Schweizer), or within a pantheistic, (panentheistic) monistic framework, Stoicism. Only recently with a different structural analysis leading to the affirmation of the unity of the text, has the second route been pursued (van Kooten, Pizzuto, Balabanski). The latter reveals the rich imagery of the hymn celebrating Christ's role in creation (image of God; firstborn of creation; creator and head of the cosmic body) and in redemption (head of the body, the Church; firstborn of the dead; reconciler of all things) become evident. Both parts of the hymn are kept in balance by the central metaphor linking creation and redemption (in Christ all things hold together), the perfect image for the interconnectedness of all things. The final evaluation points to the great opportunity offered by the Colossian hymn, not only for the search of the right metaphor but equally for formulating an ecotheology.


This model, complemented with knowledge that was elicited from several stakeholders within the building sector, helps to inspect the implication of common beliefs in the path of shaping possible futures toward a transition to near-zero energy buildings (nZEB's).

This model exemplifies actor interaction in the construction sector, according to information gathered from relevant actors in the Netherlands. It offers a simple frame to represent diverse interests, interdependencies and effects on the diffusion (number) of built sustainable houses.

We assume a grid-like city endowed with n x n cells, each of which can sustain either a near-zero energy (nZE) or a normal home. Each cell can have one of six potential states: (i) unused land, (ii) spotted / occupied by a project developer, (iii) under land sale permission request, (iv) under a construction permission request, (v) hosting a built nZE home (sold and on sale), or (vi) hosting a normal home (sold and on sale).


Over the past years, forgery paintings of famous artists have been sold as original. In order to spot the fake painting, the experts make the decision based on personal experience and with the help of examining some characteristics of the painting and painter. Applying the image processing methods to artwork can reduce the need of the expert and provide quick and reliable results to recognize the originality of the artwork. In this paper, the proposed method is able to identify the painter of artwork using image processing and data mining techniques. The method consists of two typical main stages, feature extraction, and classification. In the feature extraction, 11 statistical features are extracted from each image. These features have been selected in such a way that maximize the distinction of painters. In the second step, the painters are identified by hierarchical classification. In order to evaluate the performance of proposed method, it has applied to a collection of 348 paintings from eight Iranian artists. The method has been able to identify the artwork painter with the accuracy about 84.21%.


Grounding-zone wedges form where halts of decades to centuries during ice-sheet retreat across polar shelves allow sediment buildup at the grounding zone through delivery of deforming basal debris from fast-flowing ice streams. Thirty grounding-zone wedges were identified on two-dimensional seismic-reflection profiles across the continental shelves of NE and NW Greenland. Grounding-zone wedges close to the seafloor are probably of late Weichselian age; others are on paleoshelves, buried beneath thick prograding glacial sediments. Several Greenland-shelf grounding-zone wedges occur on topographic highs that provide stabilizing pinning points in relatively shallow water. Grounding-zone wedges are asymmetric in the ice-flow direction with steeper ice-distal sides. Typical grounding-zone wedges are approximately 5–20 km long and 50–100 m thick, with a lateral width of several tens of kilometers. Forty grounding-zone wedges from the Greenland, Norwegian, and Antarctica margins show considerable variability about these values. Grounding-zone wedge dimensions are controlled by sediment flux, the duration of halts in ice retreat, subice cavity shape, and ice-stream width. Low-angle ice-shelf cavity roofs immediately beyond the grounding-zone probably restrict vertical accommodation space, preventing formation of high-amplitude ridges. Grounding-zone wedges are mainly transparent or chaotic on seismic profiles, probably resulting from delivery of diamictic debris. Offlapping reflectors represent progradation into an ice-roofed cavity. Reflector truncations of grounding-zone wedge bases indicate erosion during initiation. Channels are present within some grounding-zone wedges; meltwater flow is under high pressure, and V-shaped incisions suggest high-energy flow. Channels are not ubiquitous within Greenland grounding-zone wedges and may represent nonsteady meltwater release, perhaps through lake drainage. Where ice-sheet mass loss is dominated by meltwater runoff, grounding-zone wedges probably contain more sorted sediment than those from Greenland. Simple models of grounding-zone wedge architecture are presented. Grounding-zone wedges indicate episodic rather than catastrophic ice-sheet retreat and are a mechanism for ice-shelf stabilization because wedge growth counteracts collapse induced by ice-sheet thinning and sea-level rise.


Dialect work is one of the actor's most challenging tasks. Need to know a Russian accent? Playing a German countess or a Midwestern farmhand? These and more accents - from Yiddish to French Canadian - are clearly explained in Evangeline Machlin's classic work. Now available in a book-and-CD format, Evangeline Machlin's Dialects for the Stage is based on a method of dialect acquisition she developed during her years working with students at Boston University's Division of Theatre. During her long career, Evangeline Machlin trained such actors as Steve McQueen, Lee Grant, Suzanne Pleshette, Joanne Woodward, and Faye Dunaway.


This paper explores the possibility of introducing 3D printed parts into commercial garment production. The research investigates the cost and time needed to create 3D printed components for garment construction at the sample stage and provides an example of garment construction techniques. This research is completed in order to investigate whether such manufacturing method would benefit the garment manufacturer and to define areas need to be improved for 3D printing that would possibly become an essential part of mass manufacture in the fashion industry. By completing the garment and analyzing the process it has been proved that it is possible to partially 3D-print garment that can serve several benefits.


During product development, most of the customer value, as well as the cost and the quality of a product are defined. This key role of development in industry has led to an intense search for better ways to develop products, software, services and systems. Two development methodologies that have received positive attention for their efficiency are Set-Based Concurrent Engineering and platform-based design.
This thesis presents the results of implementing the principles of Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) in platform-based design as a means to improve the industrial product development. The contribution is a better understanding of SBCE and new ways to use its principles to support development processes. The results are developed in collaboration with industry and demonstrate that SBCE gives positive effects on many aspects of product development performance and on the resulting products. Further, it clarifies that SBCE has a distinctive way to manage the design space that promotes a thorough understanding of the important design parameters before committing to a specific design.
Finally, this work presents a structured design process for managing the first phases of platform development. The studies in this thesis show that previous approaches in literature do not present methodological support for product architectures in the earliest stages of platform development. This work fills this void by introducing a new design methodology for modelling, assessing and narrowing down the architectural design space in the phases before embodiment. It allows exploration of more alternatives in the earliest phases of development, which ultimately may produce better designs.


Clothing is one of the basic needs of human beings and first produced by using handlooms. After industrial revolution power, loom and mill sector came into existence due to which the production of handloom fabric went down. Handloom sector is the second largest employer after Agriculture and provides direct and indirect employment to more than 43, 00,000 weavers and allied workers in India. This sector contributes nearly 15 percent of the cloth production in the country. The strength of this sector lies in its uniqueness, flexibility of production, openness to innovations, adaptability to the supplier's requirement and the wealth of its tradition (Ministry of Textiles, 2015). The study aimed to examine the influence of demographic variables like gender, age, educational qualification, occupation and annual income on customer satisfaction towards handloom products. Overall, the study concluded that product, retailer, gender, income and occupation of the customers' needs to be accounted while designing marketing strategy for APCO. The study has following limitations. Firstly, the study was conducted using cross-sectional and case study (APCO, Secunderabad) where single firm was chosen to study the customer satisfaction. Therefore, generalizability of the findings would be limited but in general these findings would be applicable to other similar countries like India or those developing countries which faces similar problem.


Background Checkpoints and mechanisms regulating the onset of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) remain largely elusive. Apart from B cells and auto-antibodies, Th17 cells were shown to critically contribute to disease development. Mice lacking IL-23, a cytokine controlling the pathogenicity of Th17 cells, are completely protected against arthritis. Yet, the exact role of the IL-23/Th17 axis during this autoantibody-driven disease remain incompletely understood. Material and methods IL23A-/- mice and mice receiving an IL23 blocking antibody were analysed during active and passive arthritis models including collagen-induced arthritis (CIA), the K/BxN arthritis model, collagen-antibody induced arthritis (CAIA) and K/BxN-serum transfer arthritis. Both clinical, histological and immunological parameters of arthritis were assessed. IgG glycosylation was analysed using the MALDI-TOF technique. IgG activity was determined by measuring the cytokine release of immune-complex-stimulated myeloid cells. To study the crosstalk between B cells and Th17 cells, co-culture experiments were performed. Results Here we report, that the IL-23/Th17 axis did not directly contribute to auto-antibody induced inflammation within inflamed joints, but controlled the glycosylation profile and inflammatory activity of auto-antibodies during the prodromal phase of disease. Th17 cells were found to accumulate in germinal centres auf secondary lymphatic organs prior to onset of experimental arthritis, where they suppressed the expression of β-glactoside α2,6-sialyltransferase 1 (St6gal1) in differentiating plasmablasts. The consecutive change in the immunoglobulin G (IgG) glycosylation profile provoked a shift towards a pro-inflammatory autoantibody repertoire and triggered the inflammatory phase of arthritis. Plasmablasts of RA patients similarly displayed a decreased St6gal1 activity, while IgG from these individuals showed corresponding changes in its glycosylation profile as well as an increased inflammatory activity, suggesting that related pathways might contribute to onset and progression of autoantibody-mediated diseases in humans. Conclusion Our current findings identify a novel IL-23/Th17-dependent checkpoint that controls autoantibody activity, unmasks a preexisting breach in humoral tolerance, and initiates the transition from a stage of asymptomatic autoimmunity into inflammatory autoimmune disease.


The objective of this study is to apply collaborative networks to understanding the development process of the Management Information System (MIS) journals' knowledge community. This research explores four phenomena: whether a co-author network depends on star collaborators, whether this network is a small world, the structural cohesion within the co-author network, and central scholars. We found that the MIS community has a small-world structure and high structural cohesion, so the MIS network is a dense cluster. Another finding was that a small number of researchers receive disproportionate recognition in MIS communities, indicating the presence of preferential attachment. This means that the MIS network contains clear star authors. Furthermore, we infer how a structural network affects knowledge diffusion and information diffusion. In addition, this study discusses changes in each journal's central scholars to observe patterns of publication for each journal published by a private for-profit organization or sponsored by academic societies.


In 1992, Bartholdi, Tovey, and Trick [1992] opened the study of control attacks on elections--attempts to improve the election outcome by such actions as adding/deleting candidates or voters. That work has led to many results on how algorithms can be used to find attacks on elections and how complexity-theoretic hardness results can be used as shields against attacks. However, all the work in this line has assumed that the attacker employs just a single type of attack. In this paper, we model and study the case in which the attacker launches a multipronged (i.e., multimode) attack. We do so to more realistically capture the richness of reallife settings. For example, an attacker might simultaneously try to suppress some voters, attract new voters into the election, and introduce a spoiler candidate. Our model provides a unified framework for such varied attacks, and by constructing polynomial-time multiprong attack algorithms we prove that for various election systems even such concerted, flexible attacks can be perfectly planned in deterministic polynomial time.


Employers of 50 or more workers are required to provide health insurance or pay a penalty. This requirement has been delayed until 2015 for employers with 100 and more workers and until 2016 for those with 50-99 workers. But there are reports of changes in employer labor practices, such as reducing the hours of part-time workers and concerns about increasing workforce above 50 workers. In this brief we argue that the employer mandate should simply be eliminated. We show that it would not reduce insurance coverage significantly, but it would eliminate the labor market distortions that have troubled employer groups and that could have negative effects on some workers. The penalties on employers do bring in some new revenues that would have to be replaced.


Chemical speciation of Maleic acid complexes of Pb(II) and Cd(II) in the presence of (0-50% v/v) Dimethyl sulfoxide-water mixtures has been studied pH-metrically at 303.0K and at an ionic strength of 0.16 molL-1. The models containing different number of species were refined by using the computer program MINIQUAD75. The number of species in the models is chosen based on exhaustive modeling. The predominant species detected are ML2, ML2H and ML3. The best fit chemical models were arrived at based on statistical parameters. The appropriateness of the models is ascertained by studying the effect of errors in concentrations of ingredients. The trend in variation of stability constants with change in the composition of medium is explained on the basis of electrostatic and non-electrostatic forces. Chemical speciation was discussed based on the distribution diagrams.


ABSTRACT The materiality of digital communication inflicts substantial environmental damage: the extraction of resources needed to produce digital devices; the toxicity of e-waste; and the rapidly increasing energy demands required to sustain data generated by digital communication. This damage, however, is paradoxically under-theorized in scholarship on environmental sustainability. Despite the existing critique of the "techno-fix" approach in sustainability studies, digitization – and digital communication in particular – continue to be celebrated as the tool for environmental sustainability; an approach we coin "digital solutionism." The article presents the first systematic review of the literature to map the implicit assumptions about the relationships between digital communications and environmental sustainability, in order to examine how digital solutionism manifests, and why it persists. We propose a concept matrix that identifies the key blind spots with regards to environmental damages of the digital, and call for a paradigmatic shift in environmental sustainability studies. An agenda for future research is put forward that advocates for the following: (1) a systematic account of material damages of devices, platforms and data systems adopted into sustainability research and practice, resulting in changes in both research framing and methodological foundations; (2) a reconceptualization and denaturalization of the digital itself as a promising solution; (3) a theoretical dialogue between sustainability studies and environmental communication. (4) an expansion of environmental communication as a field, from focusing on the communication aspect of environmental change to include the environmental footprint of communication itself.


- The utilization of power has turned into a smoldering issue in current VLSI design. Power consumption can be reduced by substituting some flip-flops with less multi-bit flip-flops. Multi-bit flip-flops are one of the strategies for reducing the clock power consumption. This project concentrates on reducing of clock force utilizing multi-bit flip-flops by clock synchronization. Diminishment of the clock power consumption with two single bit flip-flops are synchronized with single clock pulse. Uniting single bit flip-flops into one multi-bit flip-flop evades duplicate inverters, brings down the aggregate clock power utilization which lessens the total area. A mixture table is fabricated to acquire a multi-bit flip-flop which can store the flip-flops that can be consolidated. This task concentrates on D flip-flop which builds the loading of the clock signal. QCL adder is utilized as an application for multi-bit flip-flop. Highest '1' bit finding algorithm is utilized to discover the highest 1 bit from the yield of QCL adder. This calculation checks the yield of QCL adder in each one cycle.


This paper illustrates the design and testing of an upper-body exoskeleton for the assistance of individuals with load lifting and load carrying tasks, and the provided assistive force can well match with the force required by the human. First, the biomechanics of the human lumbar during the squat lifting of an object is described. Next, the modeling of the exoskeleton is introduced. Additionally, the hardware design of the exoskeleton is presented. The exoskeleton is mainly composed of a back-assist mechanism and an upper extremity labor-saving mechanism, which can assist the wearer's lumbar during the squat lifting of an object and assist the wearer's arms to carry an object during walking, respectively. Finally, experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed upper-body exoskeleton. The experimental results demonstrate that the exoskeleton has the potential to provide assistance for individuals with manual handling tasks. An average assistive force of 44.8 N can be provided for the wearer to lift a 10-kg object. During the squat lifting of the 10-kg object, reductions of 31.86% and 28.30% of the average muscle activities of the wearer's lumbar erector spinae and thoracic erector spinae are observed, respectively. In addition, a reduction of 23.78% of the average muscle activity of the wearer's biceps brachii is observed during walking while carrying the 10-kg object.


The human β-chemokine receptor CCR5 is an important cofactor for entry of human immunodeficiency virus-type 1 (HIV-1). The murine form of CCR5, despite its 82 percent identity to the human form, was not functional as an HIV-1 coreceptor. HIV-1 entry function could be reconstituted by fusion of various individual elements derived from the extracellular region of human CCR5 onto murine CCR5. Analysis of chimeras containing elements from human CCR5 and human CCR2B suggested that a complex structure rather than single contact sites is responsible for facilitation of viral entry. Further, certain chimeras lacking the domains necessary to signal in response to their natural chemokine ligands retained vigorous HIV-1 coreceptor activity.


Information on the most common types of citations, citing images, and creating tables and figures. "How-to" tips and practice exercises are also included. NOTE: Examples may not display hanging indents in PowerPoint.


Concurrent voice communications workload has been identified as a pivotal issue for desired reductions in the size of Navy watchstanding teams on future platforms. Without effective augmenting technologies, real increases in current per-person communications monitoring requirements will lead to unacceptable reductions in operator performance. A proposal to buffer voice communications and monitor them serially at synthetically increased rates of speech has recently been put forward as an alternative to concurrent monitoring. However, any decrements in listening performance associated with temporal scaling must be weighed against the costs of current practices. A comparative study reported here examines measures of auditory attention and comprehension in different multitalker contexts using long blocks of continuous speech. In four conditions, listeners respectively heard two and four concurrent talkers and four serial talkers (i.e., one at a time) speaking normally and 75% faster. With only a few exceptions, all pairwise differences between measures were significant. Performance in the faster serial condition was lower than in the normal serial condition, but was found to be greater than in either of the concurrent conditions by a substantial margin.


The role of mathematical modelling in predicting spread of an epidemic is of vital importance. The purpose of present study is to develop and apply a computational tool for predicting evolution of different epidemiological variables for COVID-19 in India. We propose a dynamic SIRD (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered-Dead) and SEIRD (Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered-Dead) model for this purpose. In the dynamic model, time dependent infection rate is assumed for estimating evolution of different variables of the model. Parameter estimation of the model is the first step of the analysis which is performed by least square optimization of priori data. In the second step of the analysis, simulation is carried out by using evaluated parameters for prediction of the outbreak. The computational model has been validated against real data for COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Time to reach peak, peak infected cases and total reported cases were compared with actual data and found to be in very good agreement. Next the model is applied for the case of India and various Indian states to predict different epidemiological parameters. Priori data was taken from the beginning of nation-wide lockdown on 24 March to 6 July. It was found that peak of the outbreak may reach in the month of August-September with maximum 4-5 lakhs active cases at peak. Total number of reported cases all over India would be in between three to five millions. State wise, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu and Delhi would be worst affected.


Hoteliers' efforts to improve the environmental sustainability of their operations would be promoted by having a consistent industry-wide measure for benchmarking current operations and tracking the effect of environmental sustainability initiatives. This type of measure can also assist external stakeholders, such as the hotel guests and regulatory entities, to gauge hotels' environmental sustainability efforts. This report presents the results of an exploratory study that develops such a measure, using resource consumption records of 984 U.S. hotels over a period of eight years. The measure is based on an analysis of resource consumption–related expenses found in these hotels' year-end operating statements, for electricity, water and sewer, maintenance other expenses, and laundry, linen, and supplies for both the rooms and for food and beverage services. Using a multivariate data analysis technique called exploratory factor analysis, the measure developed in the study consists of two parts: an operating factor that comprises large weights from electricity, water and sewer, and maintenance expenses, and a behavioral factor, which is largely driven by laundry, linen, and supplies for both rooms and F&B operations. In general, costs found in the operating factor are under management control, but the costs in the behavioral factor are subject to guests' activities. By normalizing the average of each of these two factors at zero, hotels that score above zero on each factor are spending more than other hotels, and those with a score below zero are more efficient than others. These factors can be compared according to various hotel characteristics, such as chain segment, the involvement of a third-party professional management company in the operating structure, location (both in terms of the degree of urbanization and climate zone), and whether the hotel offers F&B service. For instance, the above-average costs of providing F&B are clearly depicted in these measurements (as compared with limited-service operations).


The setting of Rand's dystopic classic Atlas Shrugged is a world in which people revolt against their governments and refuse to bow to attempts to regulate the economy. Rand borrowed the title for her 1957 paean to the philosophy of 'objectivism' from Greek mythology, and the name of the giant who bore the world on his shoulders. This article analyses the work of actors who carry the world in their broadcasts, rather than on their shoulders, and whose philosophy is a professional one of objectivity. It compares representations of crisis by broadcasters anchored in different parts of the global communicative sphere, with different financing solutions and relations to political power. The results show that not all global broadcasters are alike – or, for that matter, global in their narrative strategies. The differences between the four newsrooms' reporting suggest a need for critical reconsideration of generalising claims made in the scholarly literature about how crises are depicted in global media, and particularly those about 'homogenization' and which see global news in terms of infotainment.


A Novel Approach to Detect Congestive Heart Failure using Dispersion Entropy
Background: Congestive heart failure (CHF) being difficult to manage in clinical practice, has been the subject of intensive research.
Methods: A novel chaotic analysis which is a combination of graphical (second-order difference, SOD) plot and numerical (Dispersion entropy, DispEn) method to detect CHF is presented. Instead of central tendency measure which is commonly used together with SOD, DispEn, a quantifier adapted from nonlinear dynamics and deterministic chaos theory which has some advantages is used. DispEn quantifies degree of complex variability/chaos in a signal over time. This approach permits not only classification of HRV time series, but also assessment of cardiac sympathetic and parasympathetic activities. Hypothesizing that CHF patient will experience an altered cardiac rhythm, with changes in the magnitude of the beat-to-beat HR fluctuations and perturbations in the HR fluctuation dynamics, the HRV of CHF patients is compared with those of healthy subjects using DispEn and two other measures, an entropy related to parasympathetic and sympathetic activities, CDispEn13 and an entropy ratio associated with low-frequency to high-frequency ratio of the variations in the RR intervals, CDispEn13/CDispEn24.


A key challenge of adaptive interactive systems is to provide a positive user experience by extracting implicitly the users' unique characteristics through their interactions with the system, and dynamically adapting and personalizing the system's content presentation and functionality. Among the different dimensions of individual differences that could be considered, this work utilizes the cognitive styles of users as determinant factors for personalization. The overarching goal of this paper is to increase our understanding about the effect of cognitive styles of users on their navigation behavior and content representation preference. We propose a Web-based tool, utilizing Artificial Intelligence techniques, to implicitly capture and find any possible relations between the cognitive styles of users and their characteristics in navigation behavior and content representation preference by using their Web interaction data. The proposed tool has been evaluated with a user study revealing that cognitive styles of users have an effect on their navigation behavior and content representation preference. Research works like the reported one are useful for improving implicit and intelligent user modeling in engineering adaptive interactive systems.