Seed dispersal by frugivores, particularly primates, plays an important role in structuring and maintaining tree diversity in tropical forests. However, little is known about the effect of frugivores on the diversity of saplings and large trees. We used detailed census data from the fully mapped 30‐ha Mo Singto forest dynamics plot in Thailand together with spatial point pattern analysis to find out if the local species richness of small (dbh <10 cm) and large (dbh ≥10 cm) trees in the neighbourhood of large trees of 52 focal species was larger or smaller than expected by an appropriate null model. We then used binary data (+ or 0) on the seed dispersal network at the Mo Singto plot to test the hypothesis that the major primate frugivores, rather than other arboreal frugivores, generated patterns of locally increased species richness around their preferred diet species (i.e. accumulator effects). More than half of the focal species showed accumulator effects with respect to species richness of small trees (<10 cm in diameter), but accumulator effects with respect to large trees were weak and not consistent with those of small trees. Primate‐dispersed focal species (but not hornbill‐ or other smaller bird‐dispersed species) showed significantly larger positive effect sizes than the remaining focal species. Synthesis. Our analysis suggests that primates—as major drivers of contagious seed dispersal—generate species‐rich seed rain around their preferred food‐tree species, which results in significantly larger local species richness of saplings. This is likely a consequence of heterospecific seed rain that reduces negative density dependence, and the presence of the accumulator pattern which persists at least until the large‐size stage. Hence, extirpation of primates may result in significant changes in the diversity and spatial structure of tropical forests.


This article builds on work in Science and Technology Studies and cognate disciplines concerning the institutionalization of public engagement and participation practices. It describes and analyses ethnographic qualitative research into one "organization of participation," the UK government–funded Sciencewise program. Sciencewise's interactions with broader political developments are explored, including the emergence of "open policy" as a key policy object in the UK context. The article considers what the new imaginary of openness means for institutionalized forms of public participation in science policymaking, asking whether this is illustrative of a "constitutional moment" in relations between society and science policymaking.


A force that is applied dynamically in a short period of time is called an impact force (shock wave). Due to the concentrated application of force on a small area in a fraction of a second, unique applications have emerged that other types of loadings are not capable of performing. Explosions, an impact of a hammer, impact of waves on a shore wall, or the collision of two automobiles are examples where impact waves occur. In this research the effects of impact on solid materials and the motion of stress waves due to the impact are studied and some of their industrial applications are described. The primary objective of this work is further development of some elastic and plastic impact wave methods, aiming to reduce the energy consumption of explosive welding (EXW) as well as the cost of NDT technologies. Many numerical simulations and a vast amount of experimental work were employed to reach this goal. The impact wave creates elastic deformations that move the particles of the body. In this research we focused on dimensional measurement by calculating the time of wave travel between the source of energy and a discontinuity in the part studied. The impact echo (IE) method can be used for determining the location and extent of all kinds of flaws, such as cracks, de-lamination, holes and de-bonding in concrete structures, columns and hollow cylinders with different cross-sections and materials. In the present study, simulation of the impact-echo method was carried out numerically using direct and indirect methods. In the direct method a steel ball directly impacts on the upper surface of a concrete plate-like structure, whereas in the indirect method the impact impulse transmits to the concrete plate via a steel bar, in order to adapt the method for situations where there is no access to the plate being measured. In each method a two-dimensional finite element analysis (in axisymmetric geometry) was performed for the thickness measurement of concrete plates using the LS-DYNA program. Numerical results are presented for different values of plate thickness and different projectile speeds for both the direct and the indirect method and the indirect results are validated by comparison with the results obtained by the direct method. The method was validated against experimental measurements. A high energy impact wave produces plastic deformations in metals. In this research explosive welding was studied as an application of high energy impact waves. A new method for joining different, non-compatible metals (Al and Cu-based materials) was introduced. This method may be extended for use in offshore applications. Many 3-D numerical simulations were performed using the ABAQUS explicit commercial software. The model was validated against experimental measurements. The outcome of this research work could be summarized as follows: a) Introducing an indirect IE method in NDT technology for thickness measurement in particularly inaccessible structures. b) Introducing a new, grooved method in EXW technology to join surfaces made of different materials, in particular Al-Cu joints. The results could be employed to reduce the energy consumption and cost associated with EXW and IE technologies. The methodology can be used in many other applications in all kinds of process industries.


We numerically study the two-dimensional, area preserving, web map. When the map is governed by ergodic behavior, it is, as expected, correctly described by Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics, based on the additive entropic functional S_{BG}[p(x)]=-k∫dxp(x)lnp(x). In contrast, possible ergodicity breakdown and transitory sticky dynamical behavior drag the map into the realm of generalized q statistics, based on the nonadditive entropic functional S_{q}[p(x)]=k1-∫dx[p(x)]^{q}/q-1 (q∈R;S_{1}=S_{BG}). We statistically describe the system (probability distribution of the sum of successive iterates, sensitivity to the initial condition, and entropy production per unit time) for typical values of the parameter that controls the ergodicity of the map. For small (large) values of the external parameter K, we observe q-Gaussian distributions with q=1.935⋯ (Gaussian distributions), like for the standard map. In contrast, for intermediate values of K, we observe a different scenario, due to the fractal structure of the trajectories embedded in the chaotic sea. Long-standing non-Gaussian distributions are characterized in terms of the kurtosis and the box-counting dimension of chaotic sea.


There are a variety of grand challenges for text extraction in scene videos by robots and users, e.g., heterogeneous background, varied text, nonuniform illumination, arbitrary motion and poor contrast. Most previous video text detection methods are investigated with local information, i.e., within individual frames, with limited performance. In this paper, we propose a unified tracking based text detection system by learning locally and globally, which uniformly integrates detection, tracking, recognition and their interactions. In this system, scene text is first detected locally in individual frames. Second, an optimal tracking trajectory is learned and linked globally with all detection, recognition and prediction information by dynamic programming. With the tracking trajectory, final detection and tracking results are simultaneously and immediately obtained. Moreover, our proposed techniques are extensively evaluated on several public scene video text databases, and are much better than the state-of-the-art methods.


Using an siRNA-based screen, we identified the transcriptional corepressor RIP140 as a negative regulator of insulin-responsive hexose uptake and oxidative metabolism in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Affymetrix GeneChip profiling revealed that RIP140 depletion upregulates the expression of clusters of genes in the pathways of glucose uptake, glycolysis, TCA cycle, fatty acid oxidation, mitochondrial biogenesis, and oxidative phosphorylation in these cells. Conversely, we show that reexpression of RIP140 in mouse embryonic fibroblasts derived from RIP140-null mice downregulates expression of many of these same genes. Consistent with these microarray data, RIP140 gene silencing in cultured adipocytes increased both conversion of [14C]glucose to CO2 and mitochondrial oxygen consumption. RIP140-null mice, previously reported to resist weight gain on a high-fat diet, are shown here to display enhanced glucose tolerance and enhanced responsiveness to insulin compared with matched wild-type mice upon high-fat feeding. Mechanistically, RIP140 was found to require the nuclear receptor ERRalpha to regulate hexose uptake and mitochondrial proteins SDHB and CoxVb, although it likely acts through other nuclear receptors as well. We conclude that RIP140 is a major suppressor of adipocyte oxidative metabolism and mitochondrial biogenesis, as well as a negative regulator of whole-body glucose tolerance and energy expenditure in mice.


The responsible development of nanotechnology has an impact across essentially all economic sectors, including advanced manufacturing. As core research areas of the recently released 2011 National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Research Strategy include a nanomaterials measurement infrastructure, as well as informatics and modeling, it has become evident that efforts must be established to develop consistency in materials characterization between different laboratories, and develop a means to catalogue the data with as much meaningful, consistent information as possible. In this context, the National Nanomanufacturing Network (NNN) hosted Nanoinformatics 2010 in order to bring together the key stakeholders from academic centers, government laboratories, and regulatory agencies to begin to lay the groundwork for a concerted national roadmap in Nanoinformatics. Nanoinformatics 2010 was designed to survey the landscape, generate a roadmap, and stimulate collaborative activities in the area of nanoinformatics. The primary outcome of this workshop was the Nanoinformatics 2020 Roadmap (released April 2011), which was jointly authored by leaders in the nanoinformatics community of practice. Responding to the call for roadmaps in the National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan, it is the first broad-based community effort to articulate the comprehensive needs and goals in nanoinformatics. The development and widespread adoption of advanced nanoinformatics capabilities that accelerate responsible research, development, and deployment of nanotechnology—driven by the expertise and momentum of the R&D community and enabled by the agencies that support it—is the ultimate goal of the Nanoinformatics 2020 Roadmap.

Also included: Carbon Nanotube-Polymer Multilayer Structures for Light Weight, Enhanced Shock Absorbing Materials, Responsible Development of Nanotechnology: Maximizing Results while Minimizing Risk, and Manufacturing Goes Viral


Most federation of gynecology and obstetrics stage II or higher locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC) patients are treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT); however, recurrence is high, and the prognosis is poor. In this observational retrospective study, data from LACC patients treated with CCRT alone or combined with modulated electrohyperthermia (mEHT) were collected from 2011 to 2018. Ninety-five LACC patients, including 53 (%) treated with CCRT alone and 42 (%) treated with CCRT + mEHT, were enrolled. The complete remission rate significantly increased with CCRT + mEHT compared with CCRT alone among LACC cases with lymph node metastasis (45% vs 71%, P = .0377). Additionally, at the last follow-up point, the no-evidence-of-disease rate significantly improved with CCRT + mEHT compared with CCRT (58% vs 82%, P = .0315). Disease-free survival increased in the CCRT + mEHT group with lymph node metastasis (P = .04). The addition of mEHT to CCRT led to a better therapeutic response in LACC with regional lymph node metastasis without severe complications.


We study a recent class of models which uses graph neural networks (GNNs) to improve forecasting in multivariate time series. The core assumption behind these models is that there is a latent graph between the time series (nodes) that governs the evolution of the multivariate time series. By parameterizing a graph in a differentiable way, the models aim to improve forecasting quality. We compare four recent models of this class on the forecasting task. Further, we perform ablations to study their behavior under changing conditions, e.g., when disabling the graph-learning modules and providing the ground-truth relations instead. Based on our findings, we propose novel ways of combining the existing architectures.


Social Desirability Bias (SDB) is the tendency in respondents to answer questions untruthfully in the hope of giving good impression to others. SDB occurs when the survey question is highly sensitive or personal, and responses cause sample statistics to systematically overestimate or underestimate corresponding population parameters. The Randomized Response Technique (RRT) is one of several methods to get around SDB in surveys involving sensitive questions in a face-to-face interview. We first review some of the well-established binary response RRT models including the two-parameter models such as the two-stage RRT model and the optional RRT model. Then, we examine an optional RRT model based on the unrelated question RRT as presented by Gupta, Tuck, Spears Gill, and Crowe (2013). Also, we show another optional RRT model based on the two-stage RRT. Next, we carry out efficiency comparisons between these models and show simulation results. While these two models are all based on the split-sample approach to estimate two unknown parameters of interest ( $\pi$ and $\omega$—the prevalence of sensitive characteristic and the sensitivity level of the underlying question respectively), the next two models utilize the two-question approach instead. One of them relies on the unrelated question RRT model. And the other relies on the two-stage optional RRT model. Again, efficiencies of estimators are compared and simulation results are provided. In the end, simulation results and figures are presented and some conclusions are made regarding which estimator performs better. It turns out that the two-stage optional indirect RRT model with two-question approach performs better than other binary optional RRT models.


Scholarship on custom and law has largely focused on the creation and enforcement of informal rules, demonstrating and in some cases endorsing the existence of "order without law." But creating and enforcing rules are only two of the three functions of governance, corresponding roughly with what in other contexts are called the legislative and executive branches. The third function— adjudication—has not played such a prominent role in the scholarly literature on informal governance. As one leading scholar puts it: "Custom has no constitution or judges." But if customs can be created and enforced by nonstate actors, why should scholars assume that formal (that is, noncustomary) courts are the only institutions that do or should adjudicate those customs? This Essay seeks to describe and emphasize the role of customary adjudication, the third branch of customary governance. In doing so, it has three main goals: first, to argue that customary governance can be understood in terms of the same three functions familiar to students of formal governance; second, to deliver a preliminary and tentative account of the third of these branches; and finally, to suggest that existing scholarship on custom and law has given comparatively little attention to the functions and forms of customary adjudication. If successful, those contributions should set the stage for future descriptive and normative work.


1. Sixteen triterpenoid compounds, related to glycyrrhetic acid, have each been tested for anti-pepsin, anti-pepsinogen, anti-trypsin and anti-chymotrypsin activity. Their actions are compared with the known inhibitory actions of the triterpenoid, carbenoxolone, which is clinically effective in the healing of chronic gastric ulceration in man. 2. One of these compounds, 3- O -lauroyl-11-oxo-18α-olean-12-en-30-oic acid is known to be clinically ineffective in the healing of human gastric ulceration, and is found to have no inhibitory action upon any of the enzymes tested. 3. Anti-pepsin activity is affected by the nature of the side chain in the C-3 position, by substitution in the C-30 position, and by cleaving the A-ring. Anti-pepsinogen activity is affected by substitution into the C-28 position and/or by loss of the 11-oxo group. 4. The results enable suggestions to be made for the synthesis of new anti-pepsin and potential anti-ulcer triterpenoid derivatives. 5. The homologous enzymes, human pepsin 3 and swine pepsin A, are each affected similarly by the sixteen compounds. The correlation between effects of the compounds on pairs of enzymes may thus be used as a measure of the structural similarity of the enzymes. The correlation coefficients are high among the individual pepsins and among the individual pepsinogens. 6. It is also suggested that those triterpenoids which have anti-trypsin and anti-chymotrypsin activity may have a potential value in diseases in which pancreatic enzymes are released.


The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an unprecedented global crisis. To limit the spread of the virus and the associated excess mortality, states and governing bodies have produced a series of regulations and recommendations from a health perspective. The funerary aspects of these directives have reconfigured not only the ways in which the process of dying can be accompanied, but also the management of dead bodies, impacting on the dying, their relatives and professionals in the sector. Since March 2020, the entire process of separation and farewell has been affected, giving rise to public debates about funeral restrictions and the implications for mourning. We carried out a study in France and Switzerland to measure the effects of this crisis, and in particular to explore whether it has involved a shift from a funerary approach to a strictly mortuary one. Have the practices that would normally be observed in non-pandemic times been irrevocably altered? Does this extend to all deaths? Has there been a switch to an exclusively technical handling? Are burial practices still respected? The results of the present study pertain to the 'first wave' of spring 2020 and focus on the practices of professionals working in the funeral sector.


2D nanopores can be used to electrophoretically drive DNA molecules, which can in turn be identified through measurable electronic current blockades. In this work, we use experimental data from molybdenum disulfide nanopores threading DNA nucleotides and propose a methodological approach to interpret DNA events. Specifically, the experimental ionic traces are used to train an unsupervised machine learning model for identifying distinct molecular events through the 2D nanopore. For the first time, we propose a clustering of experimental 2D nanopore data based on the ionic current blockade height and unrelated to the traditional dwell time for each DNA event. Within this approach, the blockade level information is implicitly included in the feature space analysis and does not need to be treated explicitly. We could show the higher efficiency of the blockade height over the traditional dwell time also in coping with sparse nanopore data sets. Our approach allows for a deep insight into characteristic molecular features in 2D nanopores and provides a feedback mechanism to tune these materials and interpret the measured signals. It has, thus, a high impact on the efficiency of 2D nanopore-based DNA sequencers.


ABSTRACT We report a codesign effort to envision a community water quality data platform with local stakeholders. We employed interviews, field observations, and hackathons through a 9-month study (ongoing). This codesign effort helps to distinguish our proposal of platform collectivism, in which local resources and stakeholders become more visible, accessible, and engaged with one another through the development and use of a community-based open data platform. In addition, we synthesize key insights for codesign. In our project, local stakeholders have an significant stake in the research and design work. They pose research questions, set goals, and establish parameters for collaboration with us.


We investigated dengue virus (DENV) and asymptomatic DENV infections in rural villages of Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia, during 2012 and 2013. We conducted perifocal investigations in and around households for 149 DENV index cases identified through hospital and village surveillance. We tested participants 0.5–30 years of age by using nonstructural 1 rapid tests and confirmed DENV infections using quantitative reverse transcription PCR or nonstructural 1–capture ELISA. We used multivariable Poisson regressions to explore links between participants' DENV infection status and household characteristics. Of 7,960 study participants, 346 (4.4%) were infected with DENV, among whom 302 (87.3%) were <15 years of age and 225 (65.0%) were <9 years of age. We identified 26 (7.5%) participants with strictly asymptomatic DENV infection at diagnosis and during follow-up. We linked symptomatic DENV infection status to familial relationships with index cases. During the 2-year study, we saw fewer asymptomatic DENV infections than expected based on the literature.


Although hydropower is a source of low-carbon energy, without careful consideration and management, dams have the potential to degrade river ecosystems and the goods and services they provide to society. Today, a broad range of hydropower interests and stakeholders are seeking approaches to hydropower development and operation that are more environmentally and socially sustainable. The Penobscot River Restoration Project ('the Project') illustrates that basin-scale approaches can provide a broader set of solutions for balancing energy and riverine environmental resources than can be achieved at the scale of individual projects. The Penobscot basin is the largest in Maine and historically supported culturally and economically significant populations of migratory fish. These migratory fish populations declined dramatically following the construction of a series of hydropower dams on the main stem river and major tributaries in the early 20th century. The Project, negotiated between a power company (PPL Corporation) and a coalition including the Penobscot Indian Nation, resource agencies, and nongovernmental conservation organizations, features the removal of two main stem dams on the lower Penobscot and improved fish passage at the dams that remain. Because of various capacity and/or operational changes, power production will be increased at the remaining dams and total hydropower energy production from the basin will be maintained or increase slightly. The Project is expected to expand considerably the proportion of the basin accessible to migratory fish and contribute to significant increases in fish populations. The Project illustrates that a basin-scale approach can potentially yield more comprehensive solutions for sustainable hydropower than can be achieved at the project scale, and we recommend that such large-scale planning processes can improve the sustainability of both regulatory licensing of existing dams as well as the planning of future dams in regions undergoing the expansion of water-management infrastructure.


Preset paper aims to recognize the most important factors in creating a smart city in the city of Ahvaz. For achieving this, all criteria, which play an important role in creating smart cities, were collected using different resources based on descriptive-analytical method. At the next stage, a survey of a number of 40 urban planning experts was accomplished in Ahvaz city, which is the case study of the research, to rank smart city criteria and sub-criteria in terms of importance using Fuzzy TOPSIS technique. The results showed that among six criteria, "smart government" with the score of 4 percent was ranked as the most important criterion and "smart environment" with the score of around 1.5 percent was recognized as the least important criterion in the regard of creating a smart city. Moreover, of the sub-criteria, "Stable economy and ability to transform", "Social and ethnic plurality", "Crisis management and ability to organize human resources", "local and regional accessibility", "Sustainable resource management", and "Individual Safety" were recognized as the most important factors in different aspects of making the city smart.


The evolution of many mountain landscapes is controlled by the incision of bedrock river channels. While the rate of incision is set by channel shape through its mediation of flow, the channel shape is itself set by the history of bedrock erosion. This feedback between channel geometry and incision determines the speed of landscape response to tectonic or climatic forcing. Here, a model for the dynamics of bedrock channel shape is derived from geometric arguments, a normal flow approximation for channel flow, and a threshold bed shear stress assumption for bedrock abrasion. The model dynamics describe the competing effects of channel widening, tilting, bending, and variable flow depth. Transient solutions suggest that channels may take ∼1–10 ky to adapt to changes in discharge, implying that channel disequilibrium is commonplace. If so, landscape evolution models will need to include bedrock channel dynamics if they are to probe the effects of climate change.


Abstract The First World War was a crisis for pan-Catholic ideology in Lebanon. The Maronite and other Catholic intellectuals and journalists most dyed by Westerners saw millions of them kill each other and deplete their states for the long term. Christianity and the Catholic Church had not enabled Christians to resolve disputes constructively. Could so weakened a France now sustain any role as a "protector" of Lebanon's Maronites and other Christians? The peril to the West during WWI, though, did make the Arab Catholic intellectuals turn a blind eye to the secularizing aspects that marginalized Christianity there, aspects which those intellectuals had assailed in peace-time. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire ended in acrimony the relations that the Maronites had built with the Turks, while leaving open friendship with Arab Muslims who had opposed the Turks. Introduction This study traces the impact of World War I on the evolution of metanarratives of history in that part of geographical Syria that became the Republic of Lebanon in 1920. Its focus will be the Lebanese populations that followed the "Catholic" versions of Christianity. Given our concern about the world War's effects for the long-term evolution of historical identity. Our study will heavily draw its communications sampling from clerical intellectuals of cultural distinction who were opinion leaders after World War I and whose writings are still read in Lebanon. We will analyze Lebanese images and assessments of World War I taken from the clerical intellectual journal al-Mashriq, edited by Fr. L-w*s Shaykh- (1859-1916), and the more popular but likewise Jesuit-founded al-Bash*r newspaper from 1919-1925. A nativist tradition has existed in Maronite discourses that has been the reverse of eager to imbibe Europe's patterns of Catholicism, or French or other Western languages, or the secularized ideologies or histories of France and other Western societies. But as publications founded by European Catholics, and inclusive in their Catholicism rather than just Maronite, al-Mashriq and al-Bash*r carried the maximum range of reactions to the European as well as Middle Eastern theatres of the Great War. The Ottoman Empire is a joint bygone history of Arabs (Muslim and Christian) and Turks. (The Muslims of the Indo-Pak sub-continent, like the Maronites ruled by a different religious group, built some links of their own to that Empire's struggle). As a global war, World War I and its aftermath further interwove the histories of the Middle East and those European states that had long been intent to expand into the Ottoman Empire. Our concern in writing on Maronite history and culture is, here again, to stress their deep cultural connections to Muslim Arabs as well as to Christian Westerners. Some "Lebanese" Catholics wanted a binary conflict between Christian and Muslim blocs, but can the dual personality of Lebanese Christians put them in just one camp now to be constructed? This study of Catholic reactions to World War I (1914-1918) should further the discussion of the problems and dysfunctions in the construction of such wide meta-communities as pan-Christianism (France-Maronites), multiethnic Ottomanism (Turks-Arabs-Maronites), pan-Islamism, and pan-Arabism (Maronites and Muslim Arabs). Some European states, notably Britain, France and Russia, had long been intent to expand into the Ottoman Empire. World War I and the behaviour of some Turkish officials in Mountain ("Jabal") Lebanon made the pan-Catholic affiliation of the Maronites and the Melkites to France and other European states stronger than ever before, for a time. Yet the identification by Lebanese Catholics with France and other Western states could snap at any time because those states had secular ideologies and lifestyles that ran against Christianity and the Church. Our concern here is if European states could again become Christian enough, and Catholicism itself again be made relevant enough as an ideology in international relations to keep the disparate Lebanese and European states together in a long-term symbiotic alliance. …


Introduction Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory condition of unconfirmed aetiology. Microscopic examination of inflamed biopsies is characterised by an acute and chronic inflammatory cell infiltrate. There is conflicting evidence from experimental studies on the relative roles of TNFα, IL-8 and cytokines released by Th1, Th2 and Th17 lymphocytes in UC. This may be further complicated by interindividual variation in cytokine release due to genetic polymorphism. However, current therapy in inflammatory bowel disease includes cytokine targeted interventions. The authors compared cytokine profiles of inflamed and non-inflamed mucosa in UC and age-sex matched controls. Methods Ethical approval was obtained. Patients were prospectively recruited from outpatients' clinics. Mucosal biopsies at flexible sigmoidoscopy (FS) were taken from active UC patients within inflamed (active) and endoscopically normal proximal mucosa (internal control), and age-sex matched (external) controls undergoing FS. Quantitative cytokine analysis for IL-4, TNFα, IL-17A, IL-8 and IFNγ were carried out using commercially available assays on tissue homogenates prepared with protease inhibitors, corrected for total protein. Statistical comparison was by Wilcoxon signed rank pair analysis for non-parametric data. Results 69 active UC patients (54 paired normal/inflamed mucosa) and 69 controls were compared. No biologically significant differences were noted between normal tissue from colitis patients and external control mucosa. Cytokine measurements in inflamed mucosa compared with uninflamed mucosa from the same patients demonstrated significant reductions in IL-4 (p<0.005), IFNγ (p<0.002) and IL-17A. (p<0.002), whereas IL-8 (p<0.0005) was significantly increased. Similarly, IFNγ was decreased (p<0.02) and IL-8 increased (p<0.0001) in inflamed mucosa compared with external control tissue; TNFα was not significantly different in inflamed compared with control mucosa. Conclusion This findings suggest that cytokine release within normal mucosa in UC patients is not significantly different from matched controls; however, in inflamed mucosa, cytokines released by Th1, Th2 and Th17 lymphocytes are reduced and TNFα is unchanged. In contrast, IL-8 (a potent neutrophil chemoattractant) is elevated. These findings suggest that the immunopathogenesis underlying the inflammatory response in UC may be reflective of an alternative to a Th1, Th2 and Th17 driven chronic inflammatory system and may involve an IL-8 mediated leukocytic infiltrate.


We propose Efficient Neural Architecture Search (ENAS), a faster and less expensive approach to automated model design than previous methods. In ENAS, a controller learns to discover neural network architectures by searching for an optimal path within a larger model. The controller is trained with policy gradient to select a path that maximizes the expected reward on the validation set. Meanwhile the model corresponding to the selected path is trained to minimize the cross entropy loss. On the Penn Treebank dataset, ENAS can discover a novel architecture thats achieves a test perplexity of 57.8, which is state-of-the-art among automatic model design methods on Penn Treebank. On the CIFAR-10 dataset, ENAS can design novel architectures that achieve a test error of 2.89%, close to the 2.65% achieved by standard NAS (Zoph et al., 2017). Most importantly, our experiments show that ENAS is more than 10x faster and 100x less resource-demanding than NAS.


Heterogeneity in AKT activity in cell populations depends on differences in phosphoinositide 3-kinase abundance. Even genetically identical cells can show differential expression or activation of particular proteins, differences blurred by techniques that assess protein abundance or activity in large populations of cells. Yuan et al. used multicolor flow cytometry to monitor activity of the protein kinase AKT in individual cells in populations of the MCF10A human breast cancer cell line and found that stimulation with epidermal growth factor (EGF) led to a bimodal response. About 30% of the cells showed AKT activation (assessed by phosphorylation on Ser473) in response to EGF, whereas AKT remained unphosphorylated in the other 70%. Although the bimodal distribution of phosphorylated AKT did not reflect differences in AKT abundance, experiments using a tagged form of the p110α catalytic subunit of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) revealed a bimodal distribution of p110α (mirrored by that of the endogenous p85α subunit) and showed that AKT activity correlated with PI3K abundance. Flow cytometry analysis revealed that, although population abundance of p110α was unchanged after EGF stimulation (as also seen by Western blot), there were dynamic changes in p110α abundance in those cells that contained phosphorylated AKT and a shift in the relative numbers of cells with low, medium, or high levels of p110α. Pharmacological analysis indicated that these changes in p110α abundance depended on a cycle of proteasomal degradation and resynthesis. Analyses of MCF10A cells expressing tagged forms of wild-type p110α or p110α with either of two oncogenic mutations showed a greater fraction of p110αhigh cells in the mutant populations, as well as increased AKT activity. Intriguingly, in clonal lines derived from either wild-type or mutant cells, the typical bimodal profile of p110α abundance and AKT activity was reversed, so that the majority of cells were p110αhigh (with phosphorylated AKT). Postulating that abundant p110α is crucial for colony formation, the authors determined that, following sequential passages, this distribution generally reverted toward the profile in which the majority of cells were p110αlow. Clonal populations derived from mutant cells reverted more slowly, and those that failed to revert showed phenotypes consistent with senescence. In exponentially growing populations, the p110αhigh population decreased with cell density and in cells with multiple contacts. These findings were echoed in BRCA-driven mouse mammary tumors, where cells on tumor edges were enriched for phosphorylated AKT. The authors conclude that heterogeneity in AKT activity in cell populations depends on PI3K abundance and propose that restriction of PI3K activity to a subpopulation of cells may be beneficial to the population as a whole. T. L. Yuan, G. Wulf, L. Burga, L. C. Cantley, Cell-to-cell variability in PI3K protein level regulates PI3K-AKT pathway activity in cell populations. Curr. Biol. 21, 173–183 (2011). [PubMed]


This thesis examines the dynamics of fertility in Eastern Africa with a particular focus on urban women. Urbanisation has long been closely associated with demographic transition and the reproductive behaviour of urban women is thought to provide insights about the future fertility transition at the national level. A mixed methods approach is used to explore birth intervals, family building strategies and women"s fertility intentions. The quantitative analysis uses Demographic and Health Survey data from Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, while the qualitative analysis uses data from focus group discussions that I conducted in two informal settlements of Nairobi, Kenya.
The analysis of birth intervals uses survival analysis to calculate interval-duration-specific fertility rates, median birth intervals and parity progression ratios. These are used to make inferences about fertility decision-making at the population level. Birth intervals are long and lengthening in all four countries, particularly among women who have used contraception and women with higher levels of education. Large differences exist in birth interval lengths between rural and urban women, even when the results are disaggregated by contraceptive use and educational status. Generally, lengthening birth intervals are being driven by increasing birth postponement and birth spacing, with postponement dominating among women with very long birth intervals. In Ethiopia, there is some evidence of parity-specific family size limitation.
The focus group discussions were analysed using a thematic approach. Urban living, particularly in the informal settlements, is characterised by high levels of social uncertainty, especially among new immigrants from rural areas. This is an important influence on women"s relationships, which are found to be highly unstable. Fertility intentions are found to be fluid and contingent upon a variety of different factors in women"s lives. As a result, women"s decisions about birth spacing and family size are less distinct than demographic theory often assumes.
In sum, this thesis contributes to the body of research suggesting that long birth intervals and postponement are both important features of the fertility transition in Sub-Saharan Africa. These phenomenon are related to each other: social uncertainty leads to fluid fertility intentions, which, in turn cause the widespread postponement of births and lengthening birth intervals.


Aluminum-phosphate–sulfate (APS) minerals, formed during early diagenesis in relation to acid meteoric waters, are the main host of Sr and S in the Early–Middle Triassic continental sandstones of the Iberian Ranges (east of the Iberian Peninsula). The sources of these elements and the effects of paleoenvironmetal changes on these sources and on the formation of APS minerals during Early–Middle Triassic times, were established on the basis of Sr and S isotopic analyses. The S and Sr data (d34S V-CDT = +11 to +14% and 87Sr/86Sr = 0.7099–0.7247, respectively) can be interpreted as resulting from mixing of different sources. Strontium was sourced from the dissolution of pre-existing minerals like K-feldspar and clay minerals inherited from the source areas, causing high radiogenic values. However, the isotopic signal must also be influenced by other sources, such as marine or volcanic aerosol that decreased the total 87Sr/86Sr ratios. Marine and volcanic aerosols were also sources of sulfur, but the d34S was lowered by dissolution of pre-existing sulfides, mainly pyrite. Pyrite dissolution and volcanic aerosols would also trigger the acid conditions required for the precipitation of APS minerals. APS minerals in the study area are found mainly in the Canizar Formation (Olenekian?–Aegian), which has the lowest 87Sr/86Sr ratios. The lower abundance of APS minerals in the Eslida Formation (Aegian–Pelsonian) may indicate change in the acidity of pore water towards more alkaline conditions, while the increased 87Sr/86Sr ratios imply decreased Sr input from volcanic activity and/or marine aerosol inputs during Anisian times. Therefore, the decrease in abundance of APS minerals from the Early to Middle Triassic and the variations in the sources of Sr and S are indicative of changes in paleoenvironmental conditions during the beginning of the Triassic Period. These changes from acid to more alkaline conditions are also coincident with the first appearance of carbonate paleosols, trace fossils, and plant fossils in the upper part of the Canizar Formation (and more in the overlying Eslida Formation) and mark the beginning of biotic recovery in this area. The presence of APS minerals in other European basins of the Western Tethys (such as the German Basin, the Paris Basin and the southeastern France and Sardinia basins) could thus also indicate that unfavorable environmental conditions caused delay in biotic recovery in those areas. In general, the presence of APS minerals may be used as an indicator of arid, acidic conditions unfavorable to biotic colonization.


This article analyzes the creation, evolution, and monetization of the Harlem Shake meme on YouTube to explore contemporary implementation of copyright and understanding of authorship in regard to monetization of works with distributed authorship. This article has three main findings: first, we highlight the collection of digital labor that comprises the "Harlem Shake" meme, its rise in popularity, and the subsequent rise in popularity of Baauer, the composer of the song which forms the backbone of the meme; second, we examine how YouTube's "new bargain" of Content ID, as a departure from the site's origins creates coercive control mechanisms, shedding new light on the concept of and debate over "digital sharecropping." Finally, we argue for a "Fair(er) use" system by exploring how memes might be understood outside of the contemporary copyright system, rethinking the rights of users engaged in collective production. The article is significant in that it challenges the current distribution of Content ID payments solely to copyright holders in an attempt to rethink a system that acknowledges the creative labor of memetic phenomena and collective authorship.


Proportional reduction is a common cartel practice in which cartel members reduce their output proportionately. We develop a method to quantify this reduction relative to a benchmark market equilibrium scenario and relate the reduction to the traditional conduct parameter. Our measure is continuous, allowing us to have an intuitive interpretation as the "degree of collusion" and nesting the earlier models in the existing literature. Furthermore, our methodology addresses Corts' (1999) critique by estimating time-varying degree of collusion from a short panel of firm-level observations, exploiting firms' ex post heterogeneity. We illustrate the method using the Joint Executive Committee railroad cartel data.


The paper is a response piece to Deborah Hensler and Damira Khatam's new article, Re-inventing Arbitration: How Expanding the Scope of Arbitration Is Re-Shaping Its Form and Blurring the Line Between Private and Public Adjudication. Their main argument regarding the public-private distinction is that the arbitral procedure has changed as a consequence of the substantive issues resolved in this particular ADR system. According to them the arbitral system, which was originally conceived for commercial purposes, has become another way of litigating public law, but without the accountability mechanisms attached to public courts. In this paper, I agree in large part with Hensler and Khatam's contention that we are facing a collapse of the public-private distinction, at least in the case of investment arbitration. However, my view is also that the trend to include public law oriented elements into the investment arbitral procedure misses a counterintuitive point: that the remedies of the investment arbitration regime are being interpreted by arbitrators as belonging to a private system of adjudication. Even with all the new transparency clauses and the so-called accountability mechanisms in the new bilateral investment treaties, arbitrators are construing the remedies available to them as if the system were purely private. They might interpret public law, but the consequences of violating public law remain closer to the consequences of breaching a purely private commercial contract. Can we still hold that arbitration has now become a public adjudicatory procedure if the parties can openly breach their obligations and pay for doing so? Can we sustain that such a public system is affecting state sovereignty if the governments can ultimately keep engaging in their unlawful conduct as long as they are willing to pay for it?


Submitted on 9-Nov-2017 Accepted by Editor on (after peer review): 29-Dec-2017 Withdrawn by authors (Senthil Rethinam): 28-Mar-2018 Manufacture of microbe resistant clothing's is the need of the hour especially in microbe sensitive environments like hospitals. Silicon nanoparticles (SNP) were prepared from xerogels synthesized from cotton pods. In the present study, a novel antibacterial fabric (AF)  was prepared using SNP, non-woven cotton fabrics  and polyethylene glygol (PEG). Different types of AF were prepared by incorporation of different concentration of the SNP. Among the AF, 3% exhibited significant antimicrobial activity. MTT (3-(4, 5-dimethylazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide) assay proved the biocompatibility of the SNP. The smooth surface morphologies of the AF were proved by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) spectrum of AF represented the characteristic bands of all the components, i.e., SNP, PEG and cotton fiber. A potential AF, which possesses microbe resistant clothing's  and  hence, they could be of promising use in medical cloths production.   Senthil Rethinam*1,2, Weslen Vedakumari Sathyaraj3, Rajalakshmi Ranganathan1, Berly Robert1, Gobi Nallathambi1 1Department of Textile Technology, Anna University, Chennai 600 025, Tamilnadu, India 2Biological Material Lab, Central Leather Research Institute, Chennai 600 020, Tamilnadu, India 3 Faculty of Allied Health Science, Chettinad Academy of Research & Education (CARE), Chennai 603 103, Tamilnadu, India *Corresponding author Tel.: +91 44 24420709 Fax: +91 44 24911589 E-mail address: email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com


Summary

1. Infectious diseases seriously threaten the populations of many endangered mammals, including African wild dogs Lycaon pictus. Extinction risks may be particularly high where the endangered host lives alongside a more abundant host species which can maintain infection with virulent pathogens. Domestic dogs Canis familiaris are often assumed to act as such 'reservoir hosts' for pathogens threatening wild dogs.

2. We present the first empirical study of contact within and between populations of sympatric wild dogs and domestic dogs. We studied the densities and movement patterns of both species in a Kenyan rangeland, using Global Positioning System-collars and conventional radiotelemetry.

3. Wild dogs lived at low population densities, and direct encounters between packs were rare. In contrast, domestic dogs lived at higher densities and encountered one another more frequently. These differences suggest that directly transmitted virulent pathogens would be more likely to persist within populations of domestic dogs than within wild dog populations. However, wild dog populations alone might maintain pathogens that are indirectly transmitted through vectors or environmental persistence.

4. The risk of contact between the two host species was limited by their behaviour: domestic dogs were associated with human settlements, which wild dogs avoided. Clustering of settlements, reflecting grazing traditions of local pastoralists, accentuated these patterns.

5. We predict that, in this landscape, spillover of directly transmitted pathogens from domestic dogs to wild dogs might be infrequent and rarely followed by onward transmission to other wild dog packs. This may explain the recent growth of the local wild dog population despite sporadic cases of rabies.

6. Synthesis and applications. In this study area, the behaviour of wild and domestic dogs, combined with local land use practices, appeared to limit interspecific disease transmission and hence promote the recovery of the African wild dog population. However, different patterns may occur elsewhere. Moreover, land use changes like those occurring in other African rangelands would undermine such conservation benefits.


The Internet provides an infrastructure for deploying and delivering business critical services either within a corporate Intranet as out sourced services or even end user services such as shops selling consumer products. For such services to be successful it is essential that they have a user focused management system to ensure that the end user experiences a reliable and secure service. This paper addresses issues associated with service level monitoring and diagnosis of a potentially complex web site and a tool is described that allows for the generation of service level events as well as periodic analysis. The service administrator needs to focus on the requirements and functioning of the service so that the effect on service provision of any changes or faults in the computer system are clear. A graphical representation of a service based on a hierarchical graph structure has been used so that the administrator can represent their model of the service, navigate through the service and have significant events mapped onto their service model. ,The graph hierarchy allows the service to be successively decomposed into a number of sub-services or user interactions until a desired level of granularity has been reached. The graph structure is then used to represent the links between various parts of a service. 'Policies' are associated to the graphical service components in order to describe contexts and constraints regarding the correct functioning of that part of the service. For examples policies may describe the system configuration necessary for a particular part of a service; or may describe perfonnance requirements; or even describe potential security violations. Policies are validated against data provided by an underlying information system within the management tool. This information system supports retrieval, and logging of system idformation and its association to a particular part of the service. An event notification mechanism allows the policy monitoring system to re-evaluate a particular policy when the information it depends on changes: failure to comply with a policy is detected and displayed on the service graph. In such a context, the service administrator can run a diagnosis script to fmd out details of the failure and the same mechanism can analyse system information, for example, performing security checks or deriving performance trends.


Background/Aims: Despite a sophisticated understanding of the hematopoietic developmental program at the transcriptional level, our understanding of the role of E3 ubiquitin ligases remains underdeveloped. The E3 ubiquitin ligase, GRAIL (RNF128), is expressed in the bone marrow, but its role is as yet undefined. In this study, we evaluate the effect of GRAIL expression during hematopoietic differentiation in vitro and in vivo. Methods: Retroviral transduction of hematopoietic multipotent progenitor cells was used for methylcellulose colony assays and bone marrow reconstitution. Results: Enforced expression of GRAIL in colony assays demonstrated skewing of hematopoietic lineage development toward granulocytic/monocytic cells. Bone marrow reconstitution experiments with progenitor cells expressing biologically varied levels of GRAIL demonstrated diminished erythropoiesis and megakaryopoiesis if GRAIL (endogenous or forced) is maintained throughout hematopoiesis. Conclusion: These data highlight a role for GRAIL during hematopoiesis and emphasize the importance of studying posttranslational effects to complement our current understanding of the transcriptional regulation of hematopoiesis.


Statutory interpretation dilemmas arise in all areas of law, where we often script them as scenes of conflict between a statute's literal text and its animating purpose. This article argues that, for an important class of disputes, this supposed discord between text and purpose is an illusion. In fact, lawyers are overlooking ambiguities of literal meaning that align well with statutory purpose. The form of ambiguity in question inheres not in individual words, but at the level of the sentence. What triggers a split in readings are verbs that linguists classify as "opaque," which are perfectly common in legal texts: intend, impersonate, endeavor, and regard are among them. In ordinary speech we resolve their dual readings unconsciously and without difficulty. In law, however, our failure to notice multiple readings of ambiguous language has left a trail of erroneous judicial determinations and doctrinal incoherence across a broad swath of law, from disability rights to white collar crime to identity fraud to genocide. Drawing on examples from these areas, this Article uses the tools of formal semantics to expose the ambiguity of opaque constructions and to make visible the family resemblance among the ways we misinterpret them. It then turns to the question of why lawyers misread and what we can do about it. The converging literatures of language development and the psychology of reasoning suggest an answer. When we analyze opaque sentences explicitly as statutory interpretation requires (as opposed to spontaneously in conversation), we may be particularly vulnerable to cognitive bias. Factors peculiar to law tend to amplify and propagate this bias instead of dampen and contain it, but they may also point the way toward more sophisticated legal reading.


This study investigates tonal targets in Daegu Korean. Through our analysis of F0 and alignment, especially focusing on the turning point, we identified the different features between the rise before the accent and the fall after the accent. In the contour before the accent, we identified the turning point from the low plateau to the rise, anchored to the end of the syllable immediately preceding the accented syllable. On the other hand, in the contour after the accent, the turning point was not clear and, even if it exists, it was delayed. These results are against the theory in previous literature that the accented syllable is associated with H*+L in this dialect.


Widening global inequalities make it difficult for parents in developing nations to provide for their children, and both mothers and fathers often find that migration in search of higher wages is their only hope. Their dreams are straightforward: with more money, they can improve their children's lives. But the reality of their experiences is often harsh, and structural barriers-particularly those rooted in immigration policies and gender inequities-prevent many from reaching their economic goals. Sacrificing Families offers a first-hand look at Salvadoran transnational families, how the parents fare in the United States, and the experiences of the children back home. It captures the tragedy of these families' daily living arrangements, but also delves deeper to expose the structural context that creates and sustains patterns of inequality in their well-being. What prevents these parents from migrating with their children? What are these families' experiences with long-term separation? And why do some ultimately fare better than others?As free trade agreements expand and nation-states open doors widely for products and profits while closing them tightly for refugees and migrants, these transnational families are not only becoming more common, but they are living through lengthier separations. Leisy Abrego gives voice to these immigrants and their families and documents the inequalities across their experiences.


Software-defined networking (SDN) renovates traditional networking systems by replacing a distributed, per-switch control plane with a (logically) centralized one. To design a scalable, highly available SDN control plane, it is inevitable to disseminate the network state to multiple instances horizontally by using measures like replication and partitioning. However, some recent studies reported that it is not sufficient to cover a large scale network in a purely horizontal manner. In this paper, we propose FRACTAL, a framework for recursive abstraction of SDN control-plane, to address this problem. In FRACTAL, a large network is divided into multiple small networks, each of which is abstracted as a single virtual switch. This "divide-and-abstract" process is recursively iterated until a divided network can be handled by a single controller. A virtual switch is controlled by the higher level controller over OpenFlow, so that FRACTAL can coexist with other SDN mechanisms.


Relationships between Business Planning and Reaching Forecasted Sales Objectives for New England Farmers by Kenny Warren Roberts MA, National University, 2012 BS, National University, 2011 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Management Walden University May 2016 Abstract Over the last 100 years, more than 3 million small farming operations have been replaced by large factory farms in America. This shift toward food production by conglomerations has led to severe environmental issues, food security hazards, and economic hardship in farming communities nationwide. This study investigated the extent to which a written business plan could help small farming operations meet their sales objectives and ultimately continue to operate; this study also examined the perceptions of farm owners regarding the ability of a business plan to affect sales objectives. The sample consisted of 71 Maine Farms for Future (FFF) recipients and 71 randomly selected New England farmers as identified by the Maine Department of Agriculture. The study used a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data were analyzed using a Mann-Whitney U test to determine the extent to which creating a business plan corresponds with the ability to meet sales objectives. Qualitative data were analyzed using inductive and open coding techniques to determine the extent to which farmers perceive business planning as having value. Quantitative data analysis showed the differences between the groups to be statistically significant and that a written business plan corresponded with farmers meeting sales objectives. The qualitative analysis showed that the majority of both groups identified business plans as having value due to its ability to affect sales objectives. These findings confirm resource-based theory as a valid predictor of why farmers write a business plan. This study may positively impact social change by providing small farming operations a way to increase sustainability and reduce the food security risks that are commonly caused by large factory farming practices.Over the last 100 years, more than 3 million small farming operations have been replaced by large factory farms in America. This shift toward food production by conglomerations has led to severe environmental issues, food security hazards, and economic hardship in farming communities nationwide. This study investigated the extent to which a written business plan could help small farming operations meet their sales objectives and ultimately continue to operate; this study also examined the perceptions of farm owners regarding the ability of a business plan to affect sales objectives. The sample consisted of 71 Maine Farms for Future (FFF) recipients and 71 randomly selected New England farmers as identified by the Maine Department of Agriculture. The study used a mixed methods approach. Quantitative data were analyzed using a Mann-Whitney U test to determine the extent to which creating a business plan corresponds with the ability to meet sales objectives. Qualitative data were analyzed using inductive and open coding techniques to determine the extent to which farmers perceive business planning as having value. Quantitative data analysis showed the differences between the groups to be statistically significant and that a written business plan corresponded with farmers meeting sales objectives. The qualitative analysis showed that the majority of both groups identified business plans as having value due to its ability to affect sales objectives. These findings confirm resource-based theory as a valid predictor of why farmers write a business plan. This study may positively impact social change by providing small farming operations a way to increase sustainability and reduce the food security risks that are commonly caused by large factory farming practices. Relationships between Business Planning and Reaching Forecasted Sales Objectives for New England Farmers by Kenny Warren Roberts MA, National University, 2012 BS, National University, 2011 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Management Walden University May 2016


A 1989 edition of Marxism Today, the journal derived from the Communist Party of Great Britain, headed a page with the slogan 'What will you wear to the revolution?'(1) This statement showed the impact of both Thatcherism and identity politics on British Marxism: New Times ruptured old beliefs. The crisis of the Left, inspired not only by neo-liberal politics but a female Prime Minister, produced radical reconceptualisations of the welfare state, Scottish and Welsh nationalism, gay and lesbian rights and the uneasy link between the labour and feminist movements. Unfortunately for the British Labour Party, if any person were to claim the adjectival description of revolutionary then it would be Margaret Thatcher. When mines closed, Body Shops opened. Nationalised industries made way for a share-holding citizenry. The Labour Party held caveats on social democratic rhetoric but was defending class allegiances that increasingly had popular support only in Scotland and the north-west of England. Once more, the Left had to be defensive, rather than innovative, in policy formations. The New Times project,(2) which was instigated in the pages of Marxism Today, aimed to decentre class-based unities in favour of feminist, gay, postcolonial and youth-based struggles. Evidently, the post-1968 generations had grown bored with questions of labour surplus and the late capitalist mode of production. It was left to Stuart Hall, co-founder of the New Times project (with Martin Jacques), to articulate the dilemma for progressives. A tiny bit of all of us is also somewhere inside the Thatcherite project. Of course, we're all one hundred per cent committed. But every now and then - Saturday mornings, perhaps, just before the demonstration - we go to Sainsbury's and we're just a tiny bit of a Thatcherite subject . . .(3) This paper builds on Hall's disclosure, questioning the role of clothes and bodily inscriptions within the formulation of post-Thatcherite feminism. Certainly, the Iron Lady instigated destructive changes to the status of British women.(4) What I am interested in considering is how understandings of radicalism and revolutionary actions were changed for young women and feminist researchers by the Thatcher years. Through Marxism Today, it seemed that the Left had finally erased the border between the trivial and the serious, the connection between clothes and change (or frocks and politics).(5) Recently, many of these identity affinities and cultural practices have been dismissed as cultural populism. My paper is written in response to Llewellyn Negrin's recent article in Arena Journal. She stated that a danger with the postmodern celebration of rebellion through fashion is that of substituting revolution in dress for real social change. In the postmodern era, rebellion has primarily taken the form of projecting a certain image through the clothes one wears, rather than engaging with the economic and political structures which produce social inequality.(6) This is a cheap shot at frocks (and postmodernism).(7) Fabrics are woven with meanings that allow space for play and camivalesque strategies. It is not simply 'clever clever' cultural studies to affirm the importance of style to politics. Thatcher's success was built in part on her high heels and carefully groomed hair as well as her policies. In constructing a new dreaming for a declining Britain, she represented the greatest change possible: a female Prime Minister who was 'the best man for the job.' The mistake made by Labour leaders before Tony Blair was precisely the same as that articulated by Negrin: an underestimation of style in the process and formulation of change. This project attempts to unravel the decade of power dressing, shoulder pads and filofaxes. Clothes are markers of gender and sexuality: fabric signifies (in)subordination. For the suffragettes, their fashions presented women's subservience and desire for change. …


New Orleans in 2011 finds itself facing many of the same problems New York City faced in 1961 when the founders of the Vera Institute of Justice launched the Manhattan Bail Project: Too many people are held in pretrial detention who could be released without risk to public safety; the reliance on bail results in disparate outcomes based on financial ability; and the unnecessary detention of thousands of defendants each year imposes excessive costs on the city government and taxpayers, as well as on those needlessly detained. Vera is now working with New Orleans stakeholders to develop a comprehensive pretrial services system. Following in the footsteps of the Manhattan Bail Project, the work will create a carefully conceived and locally sensitive pretrial services system, one that will result in a fairer and more efficient criminal justice system and a safer community.


We show here that transtensional rifting along the eastern boundary of the Sierra Nevada microplate (Walker Lane rift) began by ca. 12 Ma in the central Sierra Nevada (USA), within the ancestral Cascades arc, triggering voluminous high-K intermediate volcanism (Stanislaus Group). Flood andesite (i.e., unusually large-volume effusive eruptions of intermediate composition) lavas erupted from fault-controlled fissures within a series of grabens that we refer to as the Sierra Crest graben-vent system. This graben-vent system includes the following. 1. The north-northwest–south-southeast Sierra Crest graben proper consists of a single 28-km-long, 8–10-km-wide full graben that is along the modern Sierra Nevada crest between Sonora Pass and Ebbetts Pass (largely in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness). This contains fissure vents for the high-K intermediate lavas. 2. A series of north-northwest-south-southeast half-grabens on the western margin of the full graben, which progressively disrupted an ancient Nevadaplano paleochannel that contains the type section of Stanislaus Group (Red Peak–Bald Peak area). These Miocene half-grabens are as much as 15 km west of the modern Sierra Nevada crest, and vented high-K lavas from point sources. 3. Series of northeast-southwest grabens define a major transfer zone along the northeast side of the Sierra Crest graben. These extend as much as ∼30 km from the modern range crest down the modern Sierra Nevada range front, in a zone ∼30 km wide, and vented high-K lavas and tuffs of the Stanislaus Group from point sources. Range-front north-south and northeast-southwest faults to the south of that, along the southeast side of the Sierra Crest graben, did not vent volcanic rocks (although they ponded them); those will be described elsewhere. We present evidence for a dextral component of slip on the north-northwest–south-southeast normal faults, and a sinistral component of slip on the northeast-southwest normal faults. The onset of transtension immediately preceded the high-K volcanism (within the analytical error of 40 Ar/ 39 Ar dates), and triggered the deposition of a debris avalanche deposit with a preserved volume of ∼50 km 3 . The grabens are mainly filled with high-K lava flows, ponded to thicknesses of as much as 400 m; this effusive volcanism culminated in the development of the Little Walker caldera over a relatively small part of the field. Trachydacite outflow ignimbrites from the caldera also became ponded in the larger graben-vent complex, where they interfingered with high-K lavas vented there, and escaped the graben-vent complex on its west margin to flow westward down two paleochannels to the western foothills. The Sierra Crest graben-vent system is spectacularly well exposed at the perfect structural level for viewing the controls of synvolcanic faults on the siting and styles of feeders, vents, and graben fills under a transtensional strain regime in an arc volcanic field.


The threat of special education due process has set the tone for the way IEP meetings are conducted and IEP decisions are made. This threat has eroded relationships and trust between families and district personnel. This article reviews the background, history and current status of special education due process and offers suggestions to teachers about how their work can help restore the much needed trust that is the bedrock for all the primary relationships assisting students in need of special services.


"Where humanists saw themselves as distinct beings in an antagonistic relationship with their surroundings, posthumans regard their own being as embodied in an extended technological world."Synthetic creativity, organic computers, genetic modification, intelligent machines--such ideas are deeply challenging to many of our traditional assumptions about human uniqueness and superiority. But, ironically, it is our very capacity for technological invention that has secured us so dominant a position in the world which may lead ultimately to (as some have put it) 'The End of Man'. If we are really capable of creating entities that exceed our own skills and intellect then the consequences for humanity are almost inconceivable. Nevertheless, we must now face up to the possibility that attributes like intelligence and consciousness may be synthesised in non-human entities--perhaps within our lifetime. Would such entities have human-like emotions; would they have a sense of their own being?The Posthuman Condition argues that such questions are difficult to tackle given the concepts of human existence that we have inherited from humanism, many of which can no longer be sustained. New theories about nature and the operation of the universe arising from sophisticated computer modelling are starting to demonstrate the profound interconnections between all things in reality where previously we had seen only separations. This has implications for traditional views of the human condition, consciousness, the way we look at art, and for some of the oldest problems in philosophy.First published in the 1990s, this important text has been completely revised by the author with the addition of new sections and illustrations.For further information see: www.post-human.net


Abstract All of metaethical positions today can be replaced by a universal architecture of moral philosophy, all but one: moral realism. Here, I use the term "metaethics" to refer to any theory of ethics concerning the groundwork of ethics, on the one hand, and the inquiry of the use of philosophical words, concepts or methods on the other. In this article, I will present my hypothesis that in moral philosophy, we do not need any specialized metaethics at all. Metaethics as a discipline of philosophy is only required by the work of moral realists, who try to show us a realm of values and norms that exist (per se) naturally, non-naturally or supernaturally. How can they know? The effort of metaethical realists cannot be proven either in ontology or in the philosophy of language or in cognitive science or in any meta-science that works en plus to ethics, because even in every additional discipline, we have to accept the presupposition of a validity of judgments. So, let us try it the other way around; we have to find a way to found ethics by following its structures, and that means, based on David Velleman's concepts: a) We have to search for a ubiquitous point of ethical theory in its foundation – here, no kind of value or norm can be found that is not based on a universal formal structure of normativity. b) We have to start an empirical inquiry to collect norms and values in actual use. MFT, moral psychology and moral sociology are in charge here. The combination of such an abstract groundwork with mere empirical study has to be legitimized again. Hence, I am going to try to sum up the main ideas of such a project to show the relevance of a new architecture of moral philosophy today. There is a line of reasoning that addresses the possibility of a transcendental critique in practical philosophy; therefore, it has to look into the different notions of "intuition" in moral methods like it was used by Sidgwick (Rashdall, Green, Ross, Brentano, McTaggart) and Moore on the one hand and Brentano and Bergson on the other. In my view, there is a way to combine these perspectives using the two-level-model of Hare, Singer, Greene, where "intuition" is used to categorize habits and customs of the common sense morality in general while a critical reflection uses act-utilitarian calculus to provide a universal decision – in the sense of "concrete reason" – for any possible actor in a singular situation (Hegel, Peirce, Bloch etc.). The change between these levels may be explained by means of a pragmatistic kind of continuum of research with an ideal summum bonum in the long run and a concept of common sense morality as can be found in every group or society.


It is widely known that people become better at an activity if they perform this activity long and often. Yet, the question is whether being active in related areas like communicating online, writing blog articles or commenting on community forums have an impact on a person's ability to perform Web searches, is still unanswered. Web searching has become a key task conducted online; in this paper we present our findings on whether the user type, which categorises a person's online activities, has an impact on her or his search capabilities. We show (1) the characteristics of different user types when carrying out simple search tasks; (2) their characteristics when carrying out complex search tasks; and, (3) the significantly different user type characteristics between simple and complex search tasks. The results are based on an experiment with 56 ordinary Web users in a laboratory environment. The Search–Logger study framework was used to analyze and measure user behavior when carrying out a set of 12 predefined search tasks. Our findings include the fact that depending on task type (simple or complex) significant differences can be observed between users of different types.


ABSTRACT A synthesis of our current knowledge of erymoid lobsters is presented. The superfamily Erymoidea includes two families, Erymidae Van Straelen, 1925 and Enoploclytiidae Devillez, Charbonnier & Barriel, 2019, together encompassing 81 species within six genera. Our examination of the palaeobiodiversity of this group and its evolution has revealed some variations through the Mesozoic with three important peaks, at the boundaries of: 1) Lower-Middle Jurassic; 2) Middle-Upper Jurassic; and 3) Lower-Upper Cretaceous. Whereas the origin of the first peak remains poorly known, the two others coincide with major modifications of the environment: the development of the European Jurassic carbonate platforms and the development of the European Chalk Sea and the partial flooding of North America during the mid- and Late Cretaceous. In addition to a notable peak of diversity, the Cretaceous is an important time interval in the evolutionary history of erymoids because the Early Cretaceous represented a long period of relatively low diversity and during the Late Cretaceous a strong decline of erymoid faunas is observed in Europe. However, the erymoids had already attained a worldwide distribution during the Early Cretaceous with occurrences in all oceans of the time. The analysis of the palaeobiogeographic distribution of these lobsters suggests the presence of important migratory paths, which probably favoured their spread and faunal exchanges between different areas across the globe.


Abstract This article introduces tenets of Grounded Theory into a reception-oriented model for translation studies, in which the basis of comparison (tertium comparationis) between source and target texts is constructed from target audience expectancy norms. The model is primarily designed for projects where conformity to target audience norms plays a large role in the translation's acceptance. It is not restricted to Translation Studies, but can also be used in Interpreting Studies, as is demonstrated in an evaluation of signed interpretations on South African television news broadcasts. The basic steps of the model comprise the extraction and testing of expectancy norms, the development of a tertium comparationis (TC) using Grounded Theory principles, translation analysis in terms of the TC and evaluation in terms of target audience expectancy norms, and using iterative and mixed-methods triangulated research. Although the model primarily envisages a collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort, it can be also used by individual researchers. Similarly, although primarily intended for reception-oriented evaluation, its principles can be adapted for translation production or evaluation using other norm bases.


Several applications of a new method for flow pattern analysis called the Comparison of Flow Pattern Distributions (CFPD) are presented. This method allows the user to compare flow patterns of a supply area and distinguish consistent from inconsistent changes in them. The so-called consistent changes are mainly caused by modifications in the characteristics of the population. The so-called inconsistent changes are generally related to new large volume customers, new types of water use and/or changes in leakage. Detailed knowledge of the supply area allows quantitative statements to be made about leakage. The method presented here is simple, not computationally intensive, independent of any model assumptions and easily implemented. The automated application of this method on long time series, called CFPD block analysis, is applied on data from three different areas. These applications illustrate, respectively, the identification and pinpointing (in time) of a small leak, the independent quantification of concurrent different types of changes with opposite signs in a supply pattern, and the difficulties of interpretation in cases in which climate has an overwhelming influence on demand patterns. In each case, discriminative quantification and visualization by the CFPD method result in features and trends in complicated time series becoming apparent at a glance.


The objective of this work was to verify the sorption properties of granular filter materials (GEH, Bayoxide E33, CFH12) during the process of removing antimony from water. Pilot tests showed that the use of iron-based sorption materials could possibly decrease the antimony content in water to the values limited for drinking water. At an average concentration of antimony in raw water of 58.3 μg/L and the empty bed contact time 6.0 for GEH, 6.4 for Bayoxide E33 and 6.3 for CFH12, the value of bed volume 1,700 for GEH, 715 for Bayoxide E33 and 790 for CFH12 achieved at breakthrough concentration 5 μg Sb/L was determined. Considering the values of bed volume GEH was the most suitable adsorbent for the removal of antimony from water.


This thesis studies automated methods for analyzing hardness assumptions in generic group models, following ideas of symbolic cryptography. We define a broad class of generic and symbolic group models for different settings---symmetric or asymmetric (leveled) k-linear groups and prove ''computational soundness'' theorems for the symbolic models. Based on this result, we formulate a master theorem that relates the hardness of an assumption to solving problems in polynomial algebra. We systematically analyze these problems identifying different classes of assumptions and obtain decidability and undecidability results. Then, we develop automated procedures for verifying the conditions of our master theorems, and thus the validity of hardness assumptions in generic group models. The concrete outcome is an automated tool, the Generic Group Analyzer, which takes as input the statement of an assumption, and outputs either a proof of its generic hardness or shows an algebraic attack against the assumption. Structure-preserving signatures are signature schemes defined over bilinear groups in which messages, public keys and signatures are group elements, and the verification algorithm consists of evaluating ''pairing-product equations''. Recent work on structure-preserving signatures studies optimality of these schemes in terms of the number of group elements needed in the verification key and the signature, and the number of pairingproduct equations in the verification algorithm. While the size of keys and signatures is crucial for many applications, another aspect of performance is the time it takes to verify a signature. The most expensive operation during verification is the computation of pairings. However, the concrete number of pairings is not captured by the number of pairing-product equations considered in earlier work. We consider the question of what is the minimal number of pairing computations needed to verify structurepreserving signatures. We build an automated tool to search for structure-preserving signatures matching a template. Through exhaustive search we conjecture lower bounds for the number of pairings required in the Type~II setting and prove our conjecture to be true. Finally, our tool exhibits examples of structurepreserving signatures matching the lower bounds, which proves tightness of our bounds, as well as improves on previously known structure-preserving signature schemes. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Mathematics First Advisor Andre Scedrov


This study explores the period from 1956 to 1960, when Brazil officially relocated its political center from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia. It examines the complex process of defining national identity for Brazilian citizens in a frontier city, within the framework of conflicting racial, social, and gender roles and expectations. Methodologically, this work is based on an extensive research of Brasilia's public records, newspapers, and oral-history interviews with some of the men and women who lived and worked in Brasilia. Most of the primary sources used are found in Brasilia's Public Archives. Building on existing scholarship, this work expands into the field of gender studies and inequality, and illustrates the intricate ways that the frontier capital's social expectations intersected with pre-established gender roles to create a unique new context of identities. Within this setting, men and women from different racial, social, and regional backgrounds experienced the new urban space in often contrasting ways, with levels of equality, emancipation, and integration varying according to gender, race, and class. This study also argues for the continued existence of regional racism as a reality that complicated the rhetoric of modernization and the goal of shaping a progressive Brazilian national identity, as embodied in the construction of a new capital. It also uncovers the malleability of Brazilians' self-identification, and the importance of terminology in this process. In this sense, Brasilia's inhabitants during the 1950s described themselves as either candangos or pioneiros. This terminology lay at the heart of disputes over inequalities, since each term carried different social and racial values. Finally, this work explores the universe of gender


This paper attempts to quantitatively measure the various influences on mobile phone adoption at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Thailand. Based on an existing theoretical framework adoption is modeled by fitting a logit model to a large six country dataset. The study finds evidence for the importance of social influence in mobile adoption in two modes: one that exerts pressure on individuals to adopt; and another that helps generate benefits via social networks that are tied in with economic and business networks. The paper elaborates on the resulting social policy implications for using mobile telephone services to fight poverty at the BOP in these and similar countries.


Data-intensive Web-based information systems usually employ database systems to store the contents forming the basis for Web page construction. Generating Web pages on the fly, especially in peak times, can lead to severe performance problems. Thus, pre-generation of Web pages has been suggested to be ready for prime time, allowing to reliably deliver several hundred pre-generated pages per second. Maintaining the consistency of these Web pages with respect to changes within the database in an efficient way, however, represents a major challenge. This paper presents a novel approach for self maintaining Web pages that is, different to previous approaches, characterized by a simple (and thus, easy to maintain) database-to-Web page mapping and very low page regeneration costs. This is achieved by utilizing fragmentation techniques from distributed databases, by allocating parameterized fragments to Web page classes (rather than individual fragments to single Web pages), and using the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as an intermediate layer between the database and the final Web pages.


Objectives: Women's self-help groups (SHGs) are actively promoted to advance women's empowerment. SHGs are estimated to cover 112 million households in 2017; more than 90% are women. This article answers if membership in women's group is associated with better health and women's empowerment. Methods: Data on district level health and empowerment indicators were obtained from the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey 2015–16. Data on SHG activity, defined as concentration of SHG at district, was obtained from publicly available data. Twelve indicators were clubbed to measure four domains: maternal health, women's empowerment, child health, and health protection. Binary logistic regressions were computed with education and wealth as control in each model to analyze the change in 12 indicators with the presence of SHG. Results: Districts with higher concentration of SHG members were associated with higher odds of women delivering their babies in an institution (OR: 1.53), taking iron pills, sprinklers, or syrup (OR: 1.11), using family planning methods (OR: 1.03), having knowledge of ovulatory cycle (OR: 1.10), owning house or land (either alone or jointly) (OR: 1.18) and lower odds of women suffering from anemia (OR: 0.92). The odds improve when districts with higher concentration of SHG members were compared with those with lower concentration. Conclusion: Membership in women's group is associated with better health measures as well as asset ownership; higher the concentration of SHG, higher is the impact.


The objective of this study was to determine whether there was a correlation between children's oral hygiene and dietary habits, and whether this relationship changed through different age groups. Additionally, we analysed changes in dietary habits and oral hygiene index by age groups. A total of 102 children aged between 0 and 18 years participated in the study, with approximately the same ratio of female and male respondents. Children were divided into three groups according to age: preschool age children (0 to 6 years), young school-age children (7 to 10 years) and older school-age children (11 to 18 years). Two short questionnaires were prepared and participants could select only one answer to the question asked. The questionnaire on oral hygiene consisted of six questions, and the questionnaire on dietary habits of children of seven questions. In order to replace questioned parameters with one variable, we formed two variables, dietary habits (DH) and oral hygiene index (OHI). The score was calculated based on the responses from the questionnaire and children were classified into the group with either good or poor oral hygiene and in the group with either good or poor dietary habits. The results of this study showed a statistically significant difference in oral hygiene index among different age groups; it was highest in children of the youngest age (up to 6 years), and lower in children in the other two age groups. Analysis of age and dietary habits of children was related to the existence of statistically significant effects of age on dietary habits, with one becoming worse with age. No statistically significant correlation was found between the oral hygiene index and dietary habits of children. In addition, the correlation of oral hygiene and dietary habits was not connected with the age of children.


Purpose Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is largely incurable due to late diagnosis. Superior early detection biomarkers are critical to improving PDAC survival and risk stratification. Experimental Design Optimized meta-analysis of PDAC transcriptome datasets identified and validated key PDAC biomarkers. PDAC-specific expression of a 5-gene biomarker panel was measured by qRT-PCR in microdissected patient-derived FFPE tissues. Cell-based assays assessed impact of two of these biomarkers, TMPRSS4 and ECT2, on PDAC cells. Results A 5-gene PDAC classifier (TMPRSS4, AHNAK2, POSTN, ECT2, SERPINB5) achieved on average 95% sensitivity and 89% specificity in discriminating PDAC from non-tumor samples in four training sets and similar performance (sensitivity = 94%, specificity = 89.6%) in five independent validation datasets. This classifier accurately discriminated PDAC from chronic pancreatitis (AUC = 0.83), other cancers (AUC = 0.89), and non-tumor from PDAC precursors (AUC = 0.92) in three independent datasets. Importantly, the classifier distinguished PanIN from healthy pancreas in the PDX1-Cre;LSL-KrasG12D PDAC mouse model. Discriminatory expression of the PDAC classifier genes was confirmed in microdissected FFPE samples of PDAC and matched surrounding non-tumor pancreas or pancreatitis. Notably, knock-down of TMPRSS4 and ECT2 reduced PDAC soft agar growth and cell viability and TMPRSS4 knockdown also blocked PDAC migration and invasion. Conclusions This study identified and validated a highly accurate 5-gene PDAC classifier for discriminating PDAC and early precursor lesions from non-malignant tissue that may facilitate early diagnosis and risk stratification upon validation in prospective clinical trials. Cell-based experiments of two overexpressed proteins encoded by the panel, TMPRSS4 and ECT2, suggest a causal link to PDAC development and progression, confirming them as potential therapeutic targets.


We propose discrete Langevin proposal (DLP), a simple and scalable gradient-based proposal for sampling complex high-dimensional discrete distributions. In contrast to Gibbs sampling-based methods, DLP is able to update all coordinates in parallel in a single step and the magnitude of changes is controlled by a stepsize. This allows a cheap and efficient exploration in the space of high-dimensional and strongly correlated variables. We prove the efficiency of DLP by showing that the asymptotic bias of its stationary distribution is zero for log-quadratic distributions, and is small for distributions that are close to being log-quadratic. With DLP, we develop several variants of sampling algorithms, including unadjusted, Metropolis-adjusted, stochastic and preconditioned versions. DLP outperforms many popular alternatives on a wide variety of tasks, including Ising models, restricted Boltzmann machines, deep energy-based models, binary neural networks and language generation.


In the present study, local background concentrations of heavy metals were determined in soils which have been minimally influenced by human activities. The ground moraine landscape of the Inowroc3awska Plain is dominated by Phaeozems, which occur in numerous associations with Luvisols and Cambisols. Four profiles of Phaeozems, three profiles of Luvisols and two profiles of Cambisols had been researched earlier, especially their morphology, selected physicochemical properties, texture and mineralogical composition. Selected properties were also measured to determine their influence on the content and distribution of trace elements in soil profiles. For determination of the concentration of metals in the soil profiles, the following indices were used: distribution factor (DI), enrichment factor (EF) and transfer factor (TF). The total content of metals in the genetic horizons and the local geochemical background level of metals in soils were determined. With the knowledge of the natural content of elements in the parent material, assumed to be the geochemical background, a degree of contamination of surface soil horizons can be evaluated. The content of Zn, Cu, Ni, Pb, Cr, Mn (mg kg–1) and Fe and Ti (g kg–1), which was defined as the content of the local background, was: 40.6; 12.6; 14.3; 12.9; 5.5; 309.9 and 16.5; 1.4, respectively. The distribution of Ni, Cr, Cu, Mn and Fe in the soil profiles can be explained as the effect of pedogenic factors, although in the case of, a tendency towards accumulation of Zn and Pb in the humus horizons as a result of anthropogenic input was observed. The distribution of pedogenic Ni, Cu, Cr and Mn was influenced by specific adsorption of metals on Fe oxides. The results indicate that the metals were bound more strongly to iron oxides than to organic matter. Based on the results of geochemical studies on selected arable soils from the Iowroc3awska Plain, an integrated method was applied to assess the local background using an iterative 2s-technique (mean + 2 standard deviation). The relationships between trace elements and the conservative element such as Fe were


This article deals with the roles and functions of dialect, Dutch and French for Flemish upper class writers in the 19th century. It argues against the common opinion that the linguistic situation at that time in Flanders can be characterized by rigid dichotomies such as formal French versus informal dialectal/regional Dutch, and/or upper class French versus middle and lower class (dialectal) Dutch. Analyses of original upper class documents from various archives in the town of Bruges lead to the assertion that the actual choices between the available linguistic resources were to a considerable extent dependent on contextual and pragmatic considerations. Examples taken from town council records, high society correspondence and election propaganda will illustrate the close link between variety choice and the wish to include/exclude certain social groups in distinct communicative settings.


Reversible computing offers a possible solution for high performance computing and low power consumption. For hardware implementation of reversible logic, optical computers are emerging as one of the promising alternative. Recently, reversible logic gates and combinational circuits have been proposed in optical domain using Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) based Mach Zehnder interferometer (MZI) switches due to its significant advantages such as high speed, low power, fast switching and ease of fabrication. In this work, an optical reversible MNOT gate and all-optical realization of 4×4 Toffoli Gate have been proposed which is used in all-optical realization of optimized reversible combinational circuits. A general design approach to realize alloptical reversible circuits based on MZI switches has been proposed first time in the literature. Optimized all-optical reversible 2×1 multiplexer and full adder circuits have been designed using these proposed gates and design approach. All-optical reversible designs of 4×1 multiplexer, 1×4 De-multiplexer and 3to8 Decoder circuits have also been presented. We are extending this project for all optical reversible sequential circuits. Our results have shown significant improvements over existing designs in terms of MZI switches and optical delay.


This paper provides an array of empirical evidence bearing on potentially important changes in the dynamics of U.S. inflation. We examine the overall performance of Phillips curves relative to some well-known benchmarks, the efficiency with which the Federal Reserve's Greenbook forecasts of inflation use real activity information, and shifts in the key determinants of the reduced-form "triangle model" of inflation. We develop a structural model-based interpretation of observed reduced-form shifts and conduct a reduced-form assessment of the relationship between core and headline measures of inflation, centering on the persistent "pass-through" of relative price changes into core and headline inflation measures, and a parallel exercise that examines the pass-through of key relative price changes into wage and compensation measures.