Objective: To assess the influence of point-of-sale (POS) cigarette displays on unplanned purchases. Methods: Intercept interviews were conducted with customers observed purchasing cigarettes from retail outlets featuring POS cigarette displays. Measures included intention to purchase cigarettes prior to entering the store, unprompted and prompted salience of POS tobacco displays, urge to buy cigarettes as a result of seeing the POS display, brand switching and support for a ban on POS cigarette displays. Results: In total, 206 daily smokers aged 18–76 years (90 male, 116 female) were interviewed. Unplanned cigarette purchases were made by 22% of participants. POS displays influenced nearly four times as many unplanned purchases as planned purchases (47% vs 12%, p<0.01). Brand switching was reported among 5% of participants, half of whom were influenced by POS displays. Four times as many smokers were supportive of a ban on POS tobacco displays than unsupportive (49% vs 12%), and 28% agreed that such a ban would make it easier to quit. Conclusions: POS tobacco displays act as a form of advertising even in the absence of advertising materials. They stimulate unplanned cigarette purchases, play an important role in brand selection and tempt smokers trying to quit. This justifies removing POS tobacco displays from line of sight—something that very few smokers in our sample would object to.


Utilizing the tactile sensory channel as a key sensory modality in a full body, cross media artistic installation presents unique challenges. In this paper we describe our experiences with the design and utilization of garments containing embedded sensors and vibrotactile actuators. We follow the garments from their conception through their use in a artistic installation experienced by over 300 visitors. In particular, we focus on the relationship between touch, hearing, and sight – both in the technological implementation as well as the artistic concep-


This paper quantifies the impact of health on labour force participation, using South Africa as a case study. This is important given the essential role the labour market plays in economic growth and the potential for poor health to adversely affect labour market outcomes. South Africa has experienced significant disease burden especially due to communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Moreover, conditions like obesity remain a public health concern. Furthermore, the country has witnessed declining labour force participation in recent years. These health and labour market outcomes, coupled with relatively scant literature on the impact of health on the labour market in South Africa, motivate this study. Data is sourced from the first and third waves of the National Income Dynamics Study, a nationally representative panel dataset of South African households and a rich source of health and socio-economic data. Endogenous treatment of self-assessed health in a contemporaneous setting suggests positive and significant impact of health on labour force participation. The hypothesis of exogeneity of self-assessed health in a labour force participation equation is however not rejected. Finally, positive and significant association between health and LFP persists even four years after health assessment.


In the field of model checking, abstraction refinement has proved to be an ex- tremely successful methodology for combating the state-space explosion problem. However, little practical progress has been made in the setting of probabilistic verification. In this pa- per we present a novel abstraction-refinement framework for Markov decision processes (MDPs), which are widely used for modelling and verifying systems that exhibit both prob- abilistic and nondeterministic behaviour. Our framework comprises an abstraction approach based on stochastic two-player games, two refinement methods and an efficient algorithm for an abstraction-refinement loop. The key idea behind the abstraction approach is to main- tain a separation between nondeterminism present in the original MDP and nondeterminism introduced during the abstraction process, each type being represented by a different player in the game. Crucially, this allows lower and upper bounds to be computed for the values of reachability properties of the MDP. These give a quantitative measure of the quality of the abstraction and form the basis of the corresponding refinement methods. We describe a prototype implementation of our framework and present experimental results demonstrating automatic generation of compact, yet precise, abstractions for a large selection of real-world case studies.


BACKGROUND
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has become a significant part of the GP's workload since the introduction of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in 2008. Patients with advanced CKD (stages G4 and G5) often have comorbidities, varied disease progression, and are likely to be older. GPs may experience difficulties with management decisions for patients with advanced CKD, including when to refer to nephrology.

AIM
To explore GPs' views of managing patients with advanced CKD and referral to secondary care.

DESIGN AND SETTING
Qualitative study with GPs in four areas of England: London, Bristol, Birmingham, and Stevenage.

METHOD
Semi-structured interviews with 19 GPs. Transcribed interviews were thematically analysed.

RESULTS
GPs had little experience of managing patients with advanced CKD, including those on dialysis or having conservative care (treatment without dialysis or a transplant), and welcomed guidance. Some GPs referred patients based on renal function alone and some used wider criteria including age and multimorbidity. GPs reported a tension between national guidance and local advice, and some had learnt from experience that patients were discharged back to primary care. GPs with more experience of managing CKD referred patients later, or sometimes not at all, if there were no additional problems and if dialysis was seen as not in the patient's interests.

CONCLUSION
GPs want guidance on managing older patients with advanced CKD and comorbidities, which better incorporates agreement between local and national recommendations to clarify referral criteria. GPs are not generally aware of conservative care programmes provided by renal units, however, they appear happy to contribute to such care or alternatively, lead conservative management with input from renal teams.


This paper views the increasing social networking as an efficient emerging ministry to the moveable generation. Through social network such as Facebook, ministry from a pastoral perspective can
become more authentic and meaningful. Ministry is relational. Social Networking sites provide a strong platform to being part in other people's life. Social networking and living online builds
community beyond geographical boarders. Young adults and youths digital identity often reflects their faith, this is supported by research which suggests a practice of more openness to share and expose private issues online. Spiritual and religious views are freely shared, creating sacred spaces in the midst of life practising a holistic faith identity in a secular community. Providing a strong platform for information flow, Social Network is attractive in a postmodern society where inviting people to join in events are perceived as non threatening, making church community events transparent and available to people who do not attend church, inviting spiritual friendships and relationships. Social Networking strengthens relationship in a non hierarchical manner and invites the minister into lives where there previously would have been barriers, engaging in prayer and bible study as well as pastoral care through social networking, thus relationships deepens via social networking making people real. It has been observed that, although community building happens on the net, church affiliation loyalty remains to the local community. Therefore presence ministry though social networks emerges as a core form of ministry, where relations to youth who move from local church to university campuses are kept alive. The asynchronous nature of communication within social networking eases the minister in her work. The minister is able to engage with many individuals at the same time. Before the minister could visit
one person at a time, now she visits 5-6 individuals at any given time. Therefore social networking not only increases the quality of the work, but also empowers the minister to be more efficient.


The world business has been changed tremendously during last thirteen year. This is all due to the revolutionary dot com digital business. The dot com digital business has given big swing to world business. No one now can deny the power and capabilities of the internet technology. However, from 2001 onwards the growth of internet business has declined. Our paper investigates the major reasons behinds this. The focus of our paper is south Asian market because we believe this region has more potential of growth within internet business as compare to any other part of the world. The focal point of our paper is to identify obstacles which are hindering the growth of service based internet commerce in south Asian market. We have also come up with the possible solutions which when applied can create a room for big growth of internet business.


Simultaneous Localization and Map Building (SLAM) and Map Aided Localization (MAL) are very effective techniques employed extensively in robot navigation tasks. However, biases and drifts in both exteroceptive and proprioceptive sensors adversely impair correct localization (in MAL) and also impair map building (in SLAM). More specifically, accumulated errors as a result of biases in the sensors cause the algorithms to diverge and produce inconsistent and inaccurate results. Although offline calibration of these sensors can reduce the effects to some extent, the process results in longer setup and processing times. Moreover, during operation, the sensors' calibration may often be subject to changes or drifts requiring regular resetting and initialization. A convenient, appropriate and effective approach to overcome problems associated with biases in sensors has been to explicitly model and estimate the bias parameters concurrently with the vehicle state online using an augmented state space approach. This paper investigates the properties of the concurrent bias estimation in MAL using an augmented, estimation theoretic state space approach for the localization of a large class of mobile robots, consisting of autonomous ground vehicles. This involves a rigorous theoretical study of the issues of observability and convergence, their interrelations and effects on the algorithm's performance. This paper shows analytically that if sensor biases are estimated jointly with the vehicle pose in a MAL framework: 1) The uncertainties of the estimated errors in the bias parameters of both proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors diminish in each update. 2) A derived lower bound is reached in each of these estimates. 3) The rate of convergence to this lower bound is also derived. 4) Although often neglected in the literature, observability is a major issue. From the analysis it is derived that in order to guarantee observability in MAL with bias estimation, it is necessary to observe simultaneously at least two distinct landmarks, which are not on a straight line with the vehicle position. Extensive simulations are provided to illustrate the theoretical results established for the general case of nonlinear dynamics and slowly varying sensor biases. The results are further exemplified and verified experimentally using a sophisticated MAL algorithm, utilizing a low cost inertial navigation sensor suite.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY * By focusing on the downside of risk, companies can overlook opportunities that provide significant possibilities for organizational innovation and new competitive advantage. * Opportunities can arise from within the organization and externally. Internal sources include technological innovations, supply chains, how a company structures itself, partners with other entities, and operates to deliver its products and services. Externally, sensitivity to customer needs, competitors and the political, legal and social landscape can provide opportunities. * Assessing, and potentially altering, the organization's risk appetite is a first step in managing opportunities related to risk, A company's risk appetite is influenced by its culture and changes over time. Risk appetite can be altered by improving organizational learning, using networks for increased learning, expanding the time horizon, and expanding the breadth of stakeholders considered in the analysis. * Companies that can identify and profit from opportunities often do so through innovation. Innovation can include a breakthrough idea that leads to a winning product. Innovation is a system to improve the likelihood that ideas will flourish and lead to market success. Financial professionals play a critical role by creating structures, measures, and incentives and rewards systems that keep the innovation system goal-oriented. * Evaluating is the final step in the process of managing opportunities that have been identified as both aligned with corporate strategy and viable within the organization's structure. This can include expected profits, expected value added (profits minus the cost of capital involved in developing and running the opportunity project), or common measures such as ROI. ********** When General Electric launched Ecomagination, its commitment to products and services that are as profitable as they are ecologically sound, it recognized an opportunity where many others saw only risk. While competitors were litigating and lobbying to avoid liability, GE discovered opportunities from concerns about the environment by developing products ranging from energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs to hybrid locomotives. Ecomagination is a business strategy driving growth. Revenues from this program already exceed $12 billion annually, according to a 2006 report (http ://ge.ecomagination. com/site/news/media/2006ecore port.html). GE is not alone; many companies are discovering opportunities in, and making money from, issues traditionally seen as too risky By focusing on the downside of risk, companies can overlook opportunities that provide significant possibilities for organizational innovation and new competitive advantage. The reality is that risk and opportunity are two sides of the same coin--and both require attention by those who want to survive and thrive in the current business climate. By knowing how to recognize, manage and innovate around risk, a world of opportunity is available to companies. Consider Kinepolis, a Belgian movie theater operator that entered the market in 1997 when cinema audience numbers were in decline and cinema operators across Belgium were closing. The first Kinepolis theater opened on the ring road outside of Brussels--a location challenging the conventional wisdom that movie theaters needed to be centrally located to capture foot traffic and spontaneous movie watchers. Kinepolis also entered the market when most observers believed that a movie theater could not be a successful business proposition. The world's first megaplex, with 25 movie screens and 7,600 seats, provided superior screens, sound, and seats, the latest movies, and free parking in a city notorious for its high parking cost and scarce parking in the downtown area. Kinepofis achieved spectacular growth, capturing 50% of the market in Brussels in the first year, expanding to France, Spain, Poland, and Switzerland, and posting a 14. …


Archaea display a variety of type IV pili on their surface and employ them in different physiological functions. In the crenarchaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius the most abundant surface structure is the aap pilus (archaeal adhesive pilus). The construction of in frame deletions of the aap genes revealed that all the five genes (aapA, aapX, aapE, aapF, aapB) are indispensible for assembly of the pilus and an impact on surface motility and biofilm formation was observed. Our analyses revealed that there exists a regulatory cross-talk between the expression of aap genes and archaella (formerly archaeal flagella) genes during different growth phases. The structure of the aap pilus is entirely different from the known bacterial type IV pili as well as other archaeal type IV pili. An aap pilus displayed 3 stranded helices where there is a rotation per subunit of ∼138° and a rise per subunit of ∼5.7 Å. The filaments have a diameter of ∼110 Å and the resolution was judged to be ∼9 Å. We concluded that small changes in sequence might be amplified by large changes in higher-order packing. Our finding of an extraordinary stability of aap pili possibly represents an adaptation to harsh environments that S. acidocaldarius encounters.


Objective: This study characterizes supplement use among United States Air Force members as well as attempts to identify an association between supplement use and Air Force Physical Fitness Test (AFPFT) scores or self-reported deployment health. Methods: The study population (n = 24,020) was comprised of Airmen who completed a Web Based Preventive Health Assessment (WebPHA), Post Deployment Health Assessment (PDHA) and completed an AFPFT within six months of their WebPHA. Binary logistic regression was performed to predict AFPFT scores and deployment health outcomes based on supplement usage. Chi-squared analysis was performed to determine if there is any significant association between self-reported supplement use and having an AFPFT score ≥75 or seeking medical care during deployment. Results: Majority of the population (79.9%) reported using dietary supplements of some kind. Enlisted members, overweight and obese members were more likely to report supplement use than officers and normal weight members, respectively. Nutritional supplement users were 43% more likely to obtain a composite score (≥75), while diet/weight loss supplement users were 51% less likely to obtain a passing score. Specific types of supplements were associated with increased odds of seeking medical care, however overall supplement was not associated with passing the AFPFT or seeking medical care during deployment. Conclusions: A large portion of Airmen report using dietary supplements. This study did not find a significant association between overall supplement use and improved physical performance, reflected on the Air Force Physical Fitness Test or improved health, indicated by fewer medical visits during deployment.


Objective— Use of alternative tobacco products including electronic cigarettes is rapidly rising. The wide variety of flavored tobacco products available is of great appeal to smokers and youth. The flavorings added to tobacco products have been deemed safe for ingestion, but the cardiovascular health effects are unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of 9 flavors on vascular endothelial cell function. Approach and Results— Freshly isolated endothelial cells from participants who use nonmenthol- or menthol-flavored tobacco cigarettes showed impaired A23187-stimulated nitric oxide production compared with endothelial cells from nonsmoking participants. Treatment of endothelial cells isolated from nonsmoking participants with either menthol (0.01 mmol/L) or eugenol (0.01 mmol/L) decreased A23187-stimulated nitric oxide production. To further evaluate the effects of flavoring compounds on endothelial cell phenotype, commercially available human aortic endothelial cells were incubated with vanillin, menthol, cinnamaldehyde, eugenol, dimethylpyrazine, diacetyl, isoamyl acetate, eucalyptol, and acetylpyrazine (0.1–100 mmol/L) for 90 minutes. Cell death, reactive oxygen species production, expression of the proinflammatory marker IL-6 (interleukin-6), and nitric oxide production were measured. Cell death and reactive oxygen species production were induced only at high concentrations unlikely to be achieved in vivo. Lower concentrations of selected flavors (vanillin, menthol, cinnamaldehyde, eugenol, and acetylpyridine) induced both inflammation and impaired A23187-stimulated nitric oxide production consistent with endothelial dysfunction. Conclusions— Our data suggest that short-term exposure of endothelial cells to flavoring compounds used in tobacco products have adverse effects on endothelial cell phenotype that may have relevance to cardiovascular toxicity.


Dynamic Responses Expression of the tumor suppressor p53 is activated in response to cell stress. The dynamics of p53 activation can vary, depending on the stressor, resulting in either pulsatile or constant p53 levels; however, the functional consequence of these different dynamics is unclear. Purvis et al. (p. 1440) developed a method to control p53 dynamics in human cells. Pulsing p53 selectively activated genes involved in cell cycle arrest and DNA repair, allowing recovery from DNA damage. In contrast, sustained p53 promoted induction of terminal genes leading to cellular senescence. Thus, protein dynamics can affect cell fate decisions. After DNA damage, pulses of p53 allow recovery, whereas sustained levels lead to senescence. Cells transmit information through molecular signals that often show complex dynamical patterns. The dynamic behavior of the tumor suppressor p53 varies depending on the stimulus; in response to double-strand DNA breaks, it shows a series of repeated pulses. Using a computational model, we identified a sequence of precisely timed drug additions that alter p53 pulses to instead produce a sustained p53 response. This leads to the expression of a different set of downstream genes and also alters cell fate: Cells that experience p53 pulses recover from DNA damage, whereas cells exposed to sustained p53 signaling frequently undergo senescence. Our results show that protein dynamics can be an important part of a signal, directly influencing cellular fate decisions.


Present investigation evaluates the anti tumor activity of stachydrine by inhibiting histone diacetylase enzyme in gastric cancer. Gastric cancer was induced by chronic administration of 1-Methyl-3-nitro-1- nitrosoguanidine (MNNG) for 40 weeks. Thereafter rats were treated with stachydrine (5 and 10 mg/kg, IP) for 8 week. Antitumor activity was assessed at the end of protocol by estimating lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) concentration in the serum and Cell cycle, apoptosis ratio, HDAC activity, expression of acetylated H3&4 proteins, markers of oxidative stress [superoxide dismutase (SOD) & glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px)], cytokines and histopathological study of gastrointestinal tissues was also done in MNNG induced gastric cancerous rats. There were significantly (p<0.01) decreases the concentration of LDH in serum of stachydrine treated rats compared to MNNG induced gastric cancerous rats. It was observed that alteration in the cell cycle and apoptosis in the gastrointestinal tissues with the stachydrine treatment compared to cancerous rats. Moreover, activity of HDAC, markers of oxidative stress and level of cytokine significantly (p<0.01) decreases in the gastrointestinal tissues of stachydrine treated rats compared MNNG induced gastric cancerous rats. Histopathology of gastric tissue suggested that stachydrine treatment reverse the hyperplasia, metaplasia in MNNG induced gastric cancerous rat. Present study concludes that stachydrine ameliorates the gastric cancer induced MNNG in rats on the virtue of its HDAC inhibition activity.


Liberalism, the founding philosophy of many constitutional democracies, has been criticized in recent years from both the left and the right for placing too much faith in individual rights and distributive justice. In this book, David Johnston argues for a reinterpretation of liberal principles he contends will restore liberalism to a position of intellectual leadership from which it can guide political and social reforms. He begins by surveying the three major contemporary schools of liberal political thought - rights-based, perfectionist, and political liberalism - and, by weeding out their weaknesses, sketches a new approach he calls humanist liberalism. The core of Johnston's humanist liberalism is the claim that the purpose of political and social arrangements should be to empower individuals to be effective agents. Drawing on and modifying the theories of John Rawls, Michael Walzer, Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, Amartya Sen, and others, Johnston explains how this purpose can be realized in a world in which human beings hold fundamentally different conceptions of the ends of life. His humanist liberalism responds constructively to feminist, neo-Marxist, and other criticisms while remaining faithful to the core values of the liberal tradition.


Why would a political scientist write a biography of a U.S. national security advisor? Biography focuses on a single individual and has no guidelines on where or how to collect evidence or on how to organize that evidence. Nonetheless, a biography of General Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, allowed me to provide a broad overview of forty years of U.S. foreign policy history, to conduct an in-depth study of the personnel and organization involved in the national security decision-making, and to narrate the life of an extremely influential and interesting public figure. Biography fulfills many of political science's disciplinary objectives, in fact: it speaks to important issues of political science, it offers thick description and facilitates the drawing of causal inferences, it addresses agency and structure, it is falsifiable, and it is able to communicate with a larger public.


In August 2009, the Secretary of Commerce directed the Office of Management and Budget to establish a task force to research issues related to the collection and tabulation of marriage and relationship data. One focus of the research was family relationships, particularly with respect to same-sex couples who report being married. This paper reports on the second phase of qualitative research conducted by the Census Bureau under the auspices of the OMB working group. The first phase involved focus groups conducted primarily with persons in cohabiting same-sex relationships. The groups explored the meaning and interpretation of the current decennial Census and American Community Survey relationship and marital status items (see Bates, DeMaio, Robins and Hicks, 2010). Major conclusions were: (1) both items were perceived to be asking about a legal status (2) few same-sex couples that were not legally married chose "husband/wife" or "now married" (3) most legally married same-sex couples reported "husband/wife" and "now married" (regardless of place of residence), (4) the marital status categories were viewed as inadequate by unmarried same-sex couples, and (5) relationship categories should be re-ordered according to functional equivalence. As a result of the focus groups and expert panel review, two alternatives were developed for both relationship and marital status. This paper will report testing of these alternatives via one-on-one cognitive interviews conducted with persons from both same and different-sex households. To gauge level of sensitivity and potential backlash to the alternatives, some of the interviews will be conducted among heterosexual married persons residing in traditionally conservative states. We will conclude the paper with recommended wording to be further tested in larger scale quantitative content tests.


ABSTRACT Knowledge is a critical enabling factor for healthy agri-food innovation systems (AIS). AIS and related knowledge management (KM) frameworks face significant implementation challenges. We review applications of KM to AIS, the current state of the art and shortcomings and present a new KM framework, Agricultural Knowledge Management for Innovation (AKM4I). Previous agricultural KM frameworks do not integrate innovation pragmatically, use linear, reductionist, top-down pathways to innovation, and do not explicitly incorporate issues of power, politics, ownership, and trust when combining scientific and local knowledge across multiple stakeholders. The AKM4I framework addresses systemic interactions favouring innovation outcomes by formalising flows and management of information and knowledge between diverse sets of stakeholders; and explicitly considering previously unresolved practical and relational barriers aiming to facilitate more equitable, rapidly evolving, and actionable knowledge generation and management for innovation and transformational change. An agricultural case study serves as an example of the implementation of AKM4I.


Meltblown (MB) microfiber fabrics after electrostatically charging are used as the filtering piece in medical masks and N95 respirators.  Using  this material,  the  required  filtration  efficiencies  (FE)  of  bacteria,  virus,  and  submicron  particles  are satisfactorily met mainly by the electrostatic attraction of the particles on the fiber surface by the charges embedded in the fibers  at  a  low  pressure  drop  (DP) with  high  breathability  across  the mask.  The masks  are  initially manufactured  for  a disposable one‐time use. However,  if there  is a shortage,  inactivation of the virus on the contaminated masks to reuse  is possible. Several inactivation methods are discussed in terms of their efficacy to kill the virus and the integrity of the mask in  terms  of  loss  of  FE  and  the  deformation  of  the  respirators.  In  this  paper,  SARS  CoV‐2  and  COVID‐19  are  used interchangeably.


The previous article in this series described the assessment and management of patients with functional somatic symptoms. Most such patients make no more than normal demands on doctors and can be helped with the approach outlined. However, a minority have more complex needs and require additional management strategies. These patients typically have a longstanding pattern of presenting with various functional symptoms, have had multiple referrals for investigation of these, and are regarded by their doctors as difficult to help.

Charles Darwin (1809-82) suffered from chronic anxiety and varied physical symptoms that began shortly after his voyage in the Beagle to South America (1831-6). Despite many suggested medical explanations, these symptoms, which disabled him for the rest of his life and largely confined him to his home, remain medically unexplained

Because such patients may evoke despair, anger, and frustration in doctors, they may be referred to as "heartsink patients," "difficult patients," "fat folder patients," and "chronic complainers." The use of these terms is inadvisable. If patients read such descriptions in their medical notes they are likely to be offended and lose faith in their doctor and may make a complaint. In psychiatric diagnostic classifications these patients are often referred to as having somatisation disorder. We prefer the term "chronic multiple functional symptoms" (CMFS).

Over 4% of the general population and 9% of patients admitted to tertiary care have CMFS. Each primary care doctor will have on average 10-15 such patients.

Most patients with CMFS are women. They often have recurrent depressive disorder and a longstanding difficulty with personal relationships and may misuse substances. There is an association with an emotionally deprived childhood and childhood physical and sexual abuse. Some patients will clearly have general disturbances of personality.

The risk of iatrogenic harm from over-investigation and over-prescribing for somatic complaints makes it …


Given a finite ground set N and a value vector a ∈ R , we consider optimization problems involving maximization of a submodular set utility function of the form h(S) = f (∑ i∈S ai ) , S ⊆ N , where f is a strictly concave, increasing, differentiable function. This function appears frequently in combinatorial optimization problems when modeling risk aversion and decreasing marginal preferences, for instance, in risk-averse capital budgeting under uncertainty, competitive facility location, and combinatorial auctions. These problems can be formulated as linear mixed 0-1 programs. However, the standard formulation of these problems using submodular inequalities is ineffective for their solution, except for very small instances. In this paper, we perform a polyhedral analysis of a relevant mixed-integer set and, by exploiting the structure of the utility function h, strengthen the standard submodular formulation significantly. We show the lifting problem of the submodular inequalities to be a submodular maximization problem with a special structure solvable by a greedy algorithm, which leads to an easily-computable strengthening by subadditive lifting of the inequalities. Computational experiments on expected utility maximization in capital budgeting show the effectiveness of the new formulation.


The ways in which economists value natural resources has been, and continues to be, a constantly evolving process. At first, only transactions that took place in the marketplace were considered. However, it was not long until it was realised that this concept was an incomplete way to value natural resources and hence the concept of non-market valuation was introduced. These non-market valuation methodologies prevailed for about 50 or 60 years, but, at the present time, it is being realised that the current methodologies are incomplete and it is time for another new paradigm shift. The market and non-market valuation calculations currently used only include anthropocentric (human related) values and have omitted ecocentric ecosystem service values such as the pollination of crops that takes place by bees and flies. The question we are posed with now is how to calculate the true value for ecosystem services in given this new paradigm shift?


Studies of the English gentleman have tended to focus mainly on the nineteenth century, encouraging the implicit assumption that this influential literary trope has less resonance for twentieth-century literature and culture. Christine Berberich challenges this notion by showing that the English gentleman has proven to be a remarkably adaptable and relevant ideal that continues to influence not only literature but other forms of representation, including the media and advertising industries.Focusing on Siegfried Sassoon, Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh and Kazuo Ishiguro, whose presentations of the gentlemanly ideal are analysed in their specific cultural, historical, and sociological contexts, Berberich pays particular attention to the role of nostalgia and its relationship to 'Englishness'. Though 'Englishness' and by extension the English gentleman continue to be linked to depictions of England as the green and pleasant land of imagined bygone days, Berberich counterbalances this perception by showing that the figure of the English gentleman is the medium through which these authors and many of their contemporaries critique the shifting mores of contemporary society. Twentieth-century depictions of the gentleman thus have much to tell us about rapidly changing conceptions of national, class, and gender identity.


1. Urine osmolality and plasma and urine arginine vasopressin (AVP) were measured before, during and at the end of 23 h of water deprivation in four groups of subjects. There were eight non-polyuric manic-depressive patients taking lithium (the lithium group), seven manic-depressive patients taking other psychotropic drugs but not lithium (the other drug group), seven healthy subjects (the control group) and three lithium-treated patients with polyuria (the polyuric lithium group). 2. The lithium group had a resistance to the effect of AVP on the renal tubule with a fivefold increase in AVP excretion at a given urine osmolality. However, their water homoeostasis was intact as they lost no more weight during water deprivation than did the control group. 3. The relationship beween urine osmolality and AVP excretion has been defined from these results and the effect of lithium treatment on it has been characterized. The results suggest that lithium competitively inhibits the effect of AVP on the renal concentrating mechanism but does not decrease the 'theoretical' maximum urine osmolality. 4. The other drug group had a high basal urine flow which was due to a primary increase in water intake. The responsiveness of the renal concentrating mechanism to AVP was the same in this group as in the control group. 5. The polyuric lithium group had the highest basal urine flow and lost the greatest amount of weight during water deprivation. Neither urine osmolality nor AVP excretion was at a maximum in the basal state, as both increased during water deprivation. These relationships between urine osmolality and AVP excretion indicated a much greater resistance to AVP than in the other lithium-treated patients. 6. We suggest that these patients are polyuric as they become thirsty and drink before their AVP secretion increases to levels high enough to overcome the resistance to AVP. The results suggest, however, that in the basal state their water intake may be more than the minimum determined by the resistance to AVP.


Computerized gas chromatography-mass spectrometry techniques using selected ion monitoring and deuterated internal standards were used to assay simultaneously the medial basal hypothalamic concentrations of dopamine (DA) and noradrenaline (NA) and their major metabolites in individual rats 30 min after the administration of two different inhibitors of tyrosine hydroxylase, alpha-methyl-p-tyrosine (alpha-MT) and 3-iodo-L-tyrosine (MIT). Consistent with inhibition of DA synthesis, administration of both alpha-MT and MIT resulted in marked reductions (P less than 0.005) in the hypothalamic concentrations of DA and its metabolite homovanillic acid as well as in highly significant increases in prolactin secretion. alpha-MT administration, but not MIT, resulted in a highly significant decrease in NA concentration and a highly significant increase in the concentration of the NA metabolite 3,4-dihydroxyphenylethyleneglycol (DHPG). The hypothalamic ratio DHPG/NA was thus markedly increased (P less than 0.005) by alpha-MT indicating increased NA neuronal activity. alpha-MT administration also resulted in increased ACTH secretion (P less than 0.0005), an effect not observed following MIT. It is proposed that the effects on hypothalamic NA activity and ACTH secretion caused by alpha-MT are stress-mediated and unrelated to tyrosine hydroxylase inhibition. MIT is devoid of these effects but exhibits blockade activity, thus indicating it to be a preferable drug for the acute inhibition of tyrosine hydroxylase in neuroendocrine investigations.


Too little attention has been paid to the role of judiciary in strengthening democracy and the rule of law in Latin America, with even less attention on the Argentine judicial system. In this paper, the role of the courts in consolidation will be examined through the Argentine case study. Part I outlines the current state of the literature on democratization and the rule of law with respect to Latin America, while Part II reviews what has been written about the Latin American judiciary and its influence on the rule of law. Part III evaluates the development of the judiciary and the rule of law in Argentina - focusing on the Argentine Supreme Court from its constitutional founding in 1853 through the end of the twentieth century. Part IV then evaluates the current-day Argentine predicament with respect to the Supreme Court's role during the turn-of-the-century economic crisis and President Kirchner's present judicial reform efforts. The lessons learned from the Argentine case study are many and diverse, but several general themes deserve mention: (1) Democratic consolidation takes time to develop, and the judiciary plays an important role as an important horizontal check on presidential and legislative action. (2) Informal institutions and practices are far more important and explanatory than formal institutions. To understand the role of the judiciary in Argentina, one must look beyond court opinions and constitutional text to examine the historical, economic, and political context in which the judiciary functioned. (3) Public trust in a democratic institution is essential for the institution to be able to carry out its duty - in this case, for the judiciary to serve as a primary guardian of the rule of law.


Game theory has been used to model large-scale social events—such as constitutional law, democratic stability, standard setting, gender roles, social movements, communication, markets, the selection of officials by means of elections, coalition formation, resource allocation, distribution of goods, and war—as the aggregate result of individual choices in interdependent decision-making. Game theory in this way assumes methodological individualism. The widespread conclusion that game theory predictions do not in general match observation has led to many attempts to repair game theory by creating behavioral game theory, which adds corrective terms to the game theoretic predictions in the hope of making predictions that better match observations. But for game theory to be useful in making predictions, we must be able to generalize from an individual's behavior in one situation to that individual's behavior in very closely similar situations. In other words, behavioral game theory needs individuals to be reasonably consistent in action if the theory is to have predictive power. We argue on the basis of experimental evidence that the assumption of such consistency is unwarranted. More realistic models of individual agents must be developed that acknowledge the variance in behavior for a given individual.


Corruption allows firms to earn profits unfairly. In exchange for bribes and inducements that occupy a gray zone of uncertain legality, government officials and politicians offer firms better deals, terms, or benefits than they would otherwise obtain. These unfair advantages are sought by companies for a wide variety of reasons --to win contracts; to obtain production licenses, import permits, or permits to acquire a competitor; to secure subsidies, tax rates (or tax holidays), or tolerance for cartel collaboration; or to achieve any number of other corporate goals. Through corruption, firms can effectively buy impunity for an equally wide range of harmful actions, from producing poor-quality or even dangerous products and services to polluting the environment, violating human rights violations, and conducting illegal trade.
This drafted book chapter explains why many initiatives against bribery in international markets seem dysfunctional. Reasons are categorized as (i) "technical reasons" including inherent challenges associated with the crime and barriers for efficient enforcement; (ii) "institutional reasons" meaning challenges associated with the organization of various enforcement functions, and (iii) "political reasons" comprising the backdrop for political priorities as well as the relevance of government's coordination of anticorruption strategies internationally.
Based on the given review of reasons for inadequate enforcement, the chapter describes policy tracks that appear particularly meaningful for governments and other players who want to see markets better protected against corruption.


A key component of successful coastal management efforts is an effective communication and engagement strategy focused on raising awareness of a region to different stakeholders to encourage more pro-environmental behaviors. Accordingly, in recent times there has been a proliferation of research focused on improving engagement and communication with different users of the coastal environment. Despite this effort, a paucity of evidence is available to guide better communication and engagement with visitors (i.e., tourists). Addressing this knowledge gap is critical given the adverse impacts of current global coastal tourism on ecosystem health, and projected future increases in coastal tourism. Using a case study of the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area (WHA) in Australia, we contribute toward filling this gap by identifying visitors' perception of the region and their self-reported and intended pro-environmental behaviors. We also identify the types of information they access and trust, and explore whether different message framings on the value of the WHA influence visitors' intended pro-environmental behavior. We determine that although visitors to the Ningaloo Coast WHA are optimistic about the future sustainability of the region, they have low understanding of the rules and regulations in place to support its management. Further, we find that visitors consider tourism to be a serious threat to the future of the region. However, most participants in our study considered the quality of their own environmental behavior to be high, and thus not contributing to these threats, although this did differ by gender. Finally, we highlight that visitors to the Ningaloo Coast WHA, for the most part, obtain their knowledge of the region during their visit, primarily through local signage and visitors centers. We discuss the implications of these results, and highlight future considerations for coastal managers when developing visitor-focused communication and engagement strategies.


The Student-Teacher Edition of Microsoft Office 2003 is the best-selling version of the software suite, and Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003, Student-Teacher Edition is the first book to tackle it from the perspective of this unique user. The SE Using format will help you explore advanced techniques that can save you time and help automate repetitive tasks. You will be able to increase your productivity in all areas of any one of the Microsoft Office 2003 applications. You'll also learn ways to make them work better together, further increasing your productivity. Take a look at Microsoft Office 2003 through the eyes of an expert with Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003, Student-Teacher Edition.


THE PERCEIVED NEEDS OF HIGH SCHOOL MALE ADOLESCENTS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR MENTORING ADOLESCENTS OF DIVORCED PARENTS Tod Bishop Tanner, Ed.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003 Chairperson: Dr. Mark E. Simpson The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived needs of high school male adolescents and study possible implications for mentoring those of divorced parents. The researcher defines adolescents, discipleship, mentoring, needs based ministry, and the traditional home for the purpose of this study. The researcher presents a model for mentoring in studying the example Christ set in the relationship He had with His disciples. This relationship was one built within a small group that later had a large impact on others following the commands of Christ. The dissertation discusses the importance of developing relationships with others in order to influence them both now and in the future. The research also addressed the perceived needs of to day's high school male adolescents. Some of these needs are relationships with other people, a desire to excel in educational achievements, and other related issues. These perceived needs have a direct impact upon the ways a young person lives his life. The research for this study was conducted in the northern suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. The researcher surveyed high school male adolescents who attend Sunday school in three Southern Baptist churches. Once this was completed the researcher collected the surveys and tabulated the result. The study presented charts and graphs comparing the perceived needs of high school male adolescents who come from divorced homes with those who come from intact homes. The four areas being compared was one's perception ofmentoring relationships, anger related issues, one's perception toward school, and relational needs. Once the information was tabulated and displayed the researcher drew conclusions related to mentoring relationships. Those who come from divorced homes had lower mean scores in all four areas. This statistical information helped to reveal that high school male adolescents who have experienced a divorce between their parents would benefit from a mentoring relationship. The research also discovered that today's high school male adolescents struggle with anger related issues and have a high perception of mentoring relationships.


We present a detailed analysis of the intrinsic UV absorption in the central HDF-S target QSO J2233-606, based on a high-resolution, high-S/N (~25-50) spectrum obtained with VLT UVES. This spectrum samples the cluster of intrinsic absorption systems outflowing from the AGN at radial velocities v ≈ -5000 to -3800 km s-1 in the key far-UV diagnostic lines: the lithium-like CNO doublets and H I Lyman series. We fit the absorption troughs using a global model of all detected lines to solve for the independent velocity-dependent covering factors of the continuum and emission-line sources and ionic column densities. This reveals increasing covering factors in components with greater outflow velocity. Narrow substructure is revealed in the optical depth profiles, suggesting that the relatively broad absorption is comprised of a series of multiple components. We perform velocity-dependent photoionization modeling, which allows a full solution to the C, N, and O abundances, as well as the velocity-resolved ionization parameter and total column density. The absorbers are found to have supersolar abundances, with [C/H] and [O/H] ≈ 0.5-0.9, and [N/H] ≈ 1.1-1.3, consistent with enhanced nitrogen production expected from secondary nucleosynthesis processes. Independent fits to each kinematic component give consistent results for the abundances. The lowest ionization material in each of the strong absorbers is modeled with similar ionization parameters. Components of higher ionization (indicated by stronger O VI relative to C IV and N V) are present at velocities just redward of each low-ionization absorber. We explore the implications of these results for the kinematic-geometric-ionization structure of the outflow.


Increasingly, built environment professionals in Australia, including architect, landscape architect and planner practitioners, are becoming involved in planning and design of projects for, and in direct consultation with Indigenous communities and their proponents. Critically, built environment professionals must be able to plan and design, and demonstrate respect for Indigenous protocols, cultural issues and their community values. Yet many students graduate with little or no comprehension of Indigenous knowledge systems or the protocols for engagement with Australian or international Indigenous communities in which they are required to work. This paper reports on a recently completed Office of Learning & Teaching funded project that was designed to improve the knowledge and skills of tertiary students in the built environment professions including proposing strategies and processes to expose students in the built environment professions to Australian Indigenous knowledge systems. This is a positive beginning in a long-term decolonising project.


Create an infrastructure to manage all your web content, and deploy it to various external production systems A complete guide to Web Content Creation and Distribution Understand the concepts and advantages of Publishing-style Web CMS Leverage a single installation to manage multiple websites Integrate Alfresco web applications with external systems In Detail Alfresco provides a robust, easy to use, and scalable web content framework for managing multiple websites leveraging a common web infrastructure. If you are interested in configuring and building a new website quickly, determined to create a scalable infrastructure to stage multiple websites, and want to secure and control the content being pushed to external applications, then you have reached the right place. This book will guide you through creating, managing and publishing web content in staging, test and production environments. It will help you set up an infrastructure for supporting multiple websites using Alfresco, enabling a shortened web development cycle, and providing high return on investment and low cost of ownership. This book will take you from the basics of publishing style CMS - such as web forms, page templates, and staging - to the skills that will make you an Alfresco developer, covering advanced topics such as workflow, web services integration, and more. You will learn the various options used to install Alfresco including File System Deployment receivers on target production servers. You will also learn to configure a single instance of Alfresco to serve multiple web projects. Focus is given to reuse assets such as images, forms, and workflows across multiple web projects. It will introduce you to advanced concepts of separating the web content from presentation. The entire process of creating web content, getting it approved and published to a staging environment needs a robust workflow process. You will learn and have extensive hands-on experience with the examples given in the book to create a flexible workflow. You will learn about Alfresco Web Editor, a new feature released with the latest version of Alfresco 3.3. You will learn to configure Web Editor for in-context editing of web pages. You will be able to try out various integration options using Alfresco's RESTful web services framework. By the end of the book, you will be able to set up an extensible enterprise web content management system for your company and customers. Create an infrastructure to manage all your web content, and deploy it to various external production systems What you will learn from this book Install and configure File System Receiver (FSR) on target production servers to deploy the content from a staging server to multiple production servers Develop various page templates for renditions of output pages Preview the web pages within the context of the website including user interface Configure workflows for approving and publishing content to staging Administer the Alfresco WCM system Configure Web Editor for in-context editing of web pages Various installation options of Alfresco WCM Configure a new website using site wizard Define web forms to create and store structured web content Approach This book takes a step-by-step approach for building a complete web content management system using Alfresco. A greater emphasis is given to the concepts of web content creation and distribution. Plenty of sample code and screenshots are used to help you apply these concepts in a real production scenario. Who this book is written for If you are a web developer or content manager and wish to build a website using Alfresco, customize it and use it as per your clients needs, then this book is for you. It will also help business users to migrate from the existing proprietary web development tools to standards based open source web content management. Although no knowledge of Alfresco is presumed, exposure to HTML, XML, JavaScript, Java, and related web technologies will help you to get the most from this book.


Decreasing the soaring energy cost is imperative in large data centers. Meanwhile, limited computational resources need to be fairly allocated among different organizations. Latency is another major concern for resource management. Nevertheless, energy cost, resource allocation fairness, and latency are important but often contradicting metrics on scheduling data center workloads. Moreover, with the ever-increasing power density, data center operation must be judiciously optimized to prevent server overheating. In this paper, we explore the benefit of electricity price variations across time and locations. We study the problem of scheduling batch jobs to multiple geographically-distributed data centers. We propose a provably-efficient online scheduling algorithm - GreFar - which optimizes the energy cost and fairness among different organizations subject to queueing delay constraints, while satisfying the maximum server inlet temperature constraints. GreFar does not require any statistical information of workload arrivals or electricity prices. We prove that it can minimize the cost arbitrarily close to that of the optimal offline algorithm with future information. Moreover, we compare the performance of GreFar with ones of a similar algorithm, referred to as T-unaware, that is not able to consider the server inlet temperature in the scheduling process. We prove that GreFar is able to save up to 16 percent of energy-fairness cost with respect to T-unaware.


SCONUL Research Extra is a cooperative access and borrowing scheme for staff and research students in UK and Irish higher education institutions. Under the terms of the scheme, eligible researchers may visit any participating library and register as an external borrower. The scheme is run on behalf of SCONUL, the Society of College, National and University Libraries which represents the directors of the library and information services in all the universities of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and in most other UK institutions of higher education, and the directors of the national libraries; it is for all institutions in membership of SCONUL able to lend library materials and, with 158 institutions signed up, it is now the largest reciprocal borrowing scheme in the UK and Ireland, serving almost the entire membership of SCONUL.


The effect of various pre-drying treatments and storage temperatures on the color (L*, a*, b*, chroma, and hue angle) and phenolic composition of green Cyclopia subternata was investigated. Pre-drying treatments, which included comminution+drying (T2), steaming (ca. 90-93 degrees C/60 s)+comminution + drying (T3), and comminution+steaming+drying (T4), had a detrimental effect (p<0.05) on the color parameters relative to the control (T1) (drying of intact leaves). All drying took place at 40 degrees C and 30% relative humidity (RH). Of the pre-drying treatments (T2, T3, and T4), the best retention of the green leaf color was observed for T3 (p<0.05). T2 reduced the SS and TP contents of the leaves (p<0.05) as well as the content of individual phenolic compounds, including mangiferin, isomangiferin, and eriocitrin. Scolymoside did not follow the same trend as the other compounds, with the intact leaves having the lowest content. It is postulated that oxidation of eriocitrin (eriodictyol-7-O-rutinoside) to scolymoside (luteolin-7-O-rutinoside) occurred with comminution and steaming. The phenolic composition of samples, subjected to T1 and T3 and a 6 month storage period at 0 and 30 degrees C, remained stable. Storage at 30 degrees C resulted in detrimental color changes, leading to the loss of the green leaf color irrespective of the pre-drying treatment.


Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) is a mature and proven technology for nanomaterial characterization. Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA) is a more recent addition to the spectrum of particle characterization techniques and has many similarities to DLS, leading to some confusion as to their relative capabilities. The broad range of measurement capabilities for each technique is complementary in nature, providing a wealth of valuable information. The differences between the two techniques allow the data from one technology to validate and support the other.


Engaging with business is vital for moving towards a more sustainable future. This paper examines nine different business and biodiversity platforms from across the IUCN network. This study aims to explore the benefits and challenges associated with these initiatives, so others undertaking this journey can be inspired and learn from these experiences.


A three-phase dc-dc converter based on the three-phase neutral point clamped (NPC) commutation cell is proposed, which is intended for use in applications where the energy from a medium dc bus voltage needs to be processed. In this paper, all six continuous conduction modes (CCMs) are described, presenting the main waveforms and equations. For the discontinuous conduction modes the main equations are also provided for a complete converter characterization. Experimental results for a 10 kW, 800 V input voltage, 200 V output voltage, 91% efficiency, 40 kHz laboratory prototype are also presented to verify the theoretical analysis carried out.


OBJECTIVE: Alaska Native and other circumpolar indigenous populations have historically experienced high infant mortality rates, for unknown reasons. Through routine newborn screening, Alaskan and Canadian indigenous infants have been found to have a high frequency of a single sequence variant (c.1436C→T) in the gene coding for carnitine palmitoyltransferase type 1A (CPT1A). We sought to determine whether these 2 findings were related. METHODS: As part of a quality control exercise at the Alaskan Newborn Metabolic Screening Program, we conducted genotyping for 616 consecutively born, Alaska Native infants and reviewed their medical records. We conducted an ecological analysis comparing Census area–level variant CPT1A allele frequency and historical Alaska Native infant, postneonatal, and neonatal mortality rates. RESULTS: Infant death was identified for 5 of 152 infants homozygous for the c.1436C→T sequence variant (33 deaths per 1000 live births), 2 of 219 heterozygous infants (9 deaths per 1000 live births), and 0 of 245 infants carrying no copies of the variant allele (χ2 = 9.2; P = .01). All 7 cases of infant death had some evidence of an infectious process at the time of death, including 5 with respiratory infections. Census areas with the highest frequency of the variant allele had the highest historical infant, postneonatal, and neonatal mortality rates. CONCLUSIONS: Our data provide preliminary evidence that a highly prevalent CPT1A variant found among Alaska Native and other indigenous circumpolar populations may help explain historically high infant mortality rates. Larger definitive studies are needed.


This paper addresses the well- known scene of "Asiatics" in the tomb of Khnumhotep II at Beni Hassan (tomb BH 3), which an associated inscription dates to Year 6 of Senusret II (ca. 1897–1878 bce). Many scholars have studied this scene and come to a variety of conclusions about the original home of the foreigners represented and the specific reason for their apparent visit to Egypt. These various theories are discussed and evaluated herein through a detailed review of the scene's individual elements, along with its accompanying inscriptions. Attention is also paid to the additional levels of meaning embedded in the scene, in which the foreigners function as symbols of controlled and pacified denizens of the chaotic realm that constantly surrounds and threatens the ordered world of the Egyptians. The symbolic levels at which the scene functions within its ritually charged setting neither conflict with nor detract om its historic value, but rather complement and enhance the inherent richness and complexity of the concepts that underlay its creation. DOI:10.2458/azu_jaei_v01i3_kamrin


Abstract. The responses of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the equatorial Pacific annual cycle to external forcing changes are studied in three 3,000-year-long NCAR-CCSM3 model simulations. The simulations represent the period from 300 thousand years before present (ka BP) to present day. The first idealized simulation is forced only with accelerated orbital variations, and the rest are conducted more realistically by further adding on the time-varying boundary conditions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and continental ice sheets. It is found that orbital forcing dominates slow ENSO evolution, while the effects of GHGs and ice-sheet forcing tend to compensate each other. On the orbital time scales, ENSO variability and annual cycle amplitude change in-phase and both have pronounced precessional cycles (~ 21,000 years) modulated by variations of eccentricity. Orbital forced ENSO intensity is dominated linearly by the change of the coupled ocean-atmosphere instability, notably the Ekman upwelling feedback and the thermocline feedback; and is also possibly affected during ENSO intrinsic developing season by the remote (or extratropical) influences of the short-scale stochastic weather noises. The acceleration technique is found to dampen the precessional signal in ENSO intensity. In glacial-interglacial cycles, additionally, the weakening/strengthening of ENSO owning to a more concentrated/depleted GHGs level leaves little net signal as compensated by the effect coherent change of decaying/expanding ice sheets. They influence the ENSO variability through changes in annual cycle amplitude via a common nonlinear frequency entrainment mechanism while the GHGs effect might has an additional linear part.


Transit timing variations (TTVs) are a valuable tool to determine the masses and orbits of transiting planets in multi-planet systems. TTVs can be readily modeled given knowledge of the interacting planets' orbital configurations and planet-star mass ratios, but such models are highly nonlinear and difficult to invert. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are often used to explore the posterior distribution for model parameters, but, due to the high correlations between parameters, nonlinearity, and potential multi-modality in the posterior, many samplers perform very inefficiently. Therefore, we assess the performance of several MCMC samplers that use varying degrees of geometric information about the target distribution. We generate synthetic datasets from multiple models, including the TTVFaster model and a simple sinusoidal model, and test the efficiencies of various MCMC samplers. We find that sampling efficiency can be greatly improved for all models by sampling from a parameter space transformed using an estimate of the covariance and means of the target distribution. No one sampler performs the best for all datasets. For datasets with near Gaussian posteriors, the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampler obtains the highest efficiencies when the step size and number of steps are properly tuned. Two samplers — Differential Evolution Monte Carlo and Geometric adaptive Monte Carlo, have consistently efficient performance for each dataset. Based on differences in effective sample sizes per time, we show that the right choice of sampler can improve sampling efficiencies by several orders of magnitude.


This study explores Early Childhood Education teachers' experiences of learning English in multi-lingual Mauritius and the way these influence their pedagogical practices. English is the official language of instruction despite not being the first language of the majority of teachers and learners. Consequently, the children's first language has become an inexorable feature of Mauritian classrooms. Studying the construction of language pedagogy through teachers' accounts is a significant step towards understanding the existing dynamics among languages used in the classroom − more so in Early Childhood Education, a key stage that lays the foundation for further language development. My study examines my participants' experiences of learning and teaching English in a range of contexts. The interpretative paradigm informs the choice of life history as research methodology. This methodology allows the researcher to co-construct the voice of the participants as agents and critics of their own experiences and practices. It provides the researcher with an insight into their experiences of language learning and teaching practices. Data was produced through biographic narrative interviews, classroom observations, informal conversations, and assemblage and commentary on selected artifacts. The data production process was directed towards producing deeper textured insights into the challenges and potential of the use of English. The data was analysed through a grounded and inductive approach. The production of the narratives constituted the first level of analysis. In the second level of analysis, themes identified in the five narratives were analysed through a cross-case comparison. The third level of analysis acted as a validatory move wherein antithetical cases ('outliers') were further scrutinised to test initial findings. The findings indicate that the process of teacher development spans across time and contexts that teachers occupy from the time of birth onward. Formal and informal as well as local and foreign contexts influence the teachers' language experiences in various ways at different points in time. The findings further draw attention to the individualised nature of teachers' becoming in the midst of blurred boundaries wherein a multiplicity of interacting factors mutually impact upon one another. Teacher agency also emerges as a salient feature of the process. A model of teacher professional development is then presented using the biological construct of evolution to show the intricate link between biographies, experiences and practices. The metaphor of the evolutionary drift depicts teacher development as a process that comprises change through transformation, adaptation and assimilation. The double-edged nature of this process is however indicated since teachers can also modify their environment. The "double helix model of teacher professional development" is then proposed to represent the nuanced complexities of negotiating language learning in Early Childhood Education classrooms. The upward movement of the spiralling double helix highlights teacher professional development as a continuing process whereby biography and pedagogical practices evolve in the light of teachers' on-going experiences. Teachers enact the interpretation and re-interpretation of these experiences in their pedagogical practices. The thesis concludes by elaborating on the ways in which the study has pushed methodological, contextual and theoretical boundaries. It states the implications of the findings on teachers, teacher educators and policy makers while pointing to the limitations of the study and proposing possibilities for future research.


The Relationship between Source of Self-esteem and Body Composition in College Women Breckann Moncur Department of Exercise Sciences, BYU Master of Science Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between achievement self-esteem, self acceptance self-esteem and body composition in college women. Methods: One-hundred and fifty eight college women were recruited to participate in the study. Participants were healthy, between the age of 18 and 25 yrs, not taking medication that would alter metabolism, and able to participate in physical activity without restriction. As part of the study the participants filled out the Worth Index, which measured level of self-acceptance and achievement self-esteem. The questionnaire included four subscales: basic human worth, performance factor, personal security and appearance. Body composition was assessed using the BOD POD. Results: Participants in the study were 19.9 ± 1.7 yrs, had a BMI of 22.5 ± 3.2 kg/m2 and a percent body fat of 26.4 ± 6.4. Source of self-esteem was primarily self-acceptance selfesteem with participants on average scoring 65 ± 11 out of 84 (high moderate) compared to an achievement self-esteem score of 35 ± 10 out of 84 (low moderate). When evaluating the subscales a similar trend appears with the exception of the performance factor, which was more normally distributed. Achievement self-esteem in appearance was positively correlated to percent body fat (p<0.05). Global self-esteem was not related to percent body fat in this population. BMI was negatively related to performance factor and appearance with selfacceptance self-esteem (p<0.05). Global self-esteem was significantly lower for individuals in the highest BMI category. Conclusion: College women who identified less with achievement self-esteem in the subscale of appearance had a lower percent body fat than women who identified more with achievement self-esteem in the subscale for appearance. Also, women who had a higher BMI identified less with self-acceptance self-esteem in the subscales of appearance and performance. Women who had a higher BMI had lower overall self-esteem.


The East Taiwan Ophiolite (ETO) is a fragment of the eastern-most South China Sea that was accreted to the Eurasian margin during the Pliocene and is a member of the Western Pacific and Cordilleran belt ophiolite group. Ophiolites from the Western Pacific and Cordilleran belt are typically subduction-related (i.e., supra-subduction or volcanic-arc) but the ETO is compositionally, isotopically and mineralogically similar to subduction-unrelated ophiolites. The primary melt compositions of ETO basaltic rocks were calculated and range from high-Mg basalt to picrite (i.e., MgO = 10 to 14 wt%). The mantle potential temperature (TP) estimates are within the range of ambient mantle (1300 1400°C) and other mid-ocean ridge ophiolites (i.e., Macquarie Island and Masirah) indicating that it is consistent with a mid-ocean ridge setting. Mantle potential temperature estimates for rocks from a mantle-plume-type ophiolite (i.e., 1620 1630°C) are anomalously high whereas rocks from supra-subduction zone ophiolites show a wider range that extends from ambient (i.e., Troodos and Semail) TP to very high (i.e., Betts Cove and Bay of Islands) TP.


Background The relationship between orthostatic hypotension and clinical outcome in older adults is poorly understood. Blood pressure drop rate (ie, speed of blood pressure drop) may particularly reflect the imposed challenge to the baroreflex and the associated clinical outcome (ie, frailty and number of falls). This study aimed to compare orthostatic blood pressure drop rate and drop magnitude with regard to their association with frailty and number of falls. Methods and Results Blood pressure was measured continuously during a standardized active stand task in 168 patients (mean age 81.4±7.0; 55.4% female) who visited a geriatric outpatient clinic for cognitive or mobility problems. The association of orthostatic blood pressure drop rate, blood pressure drop magnitude, and baroreflex sensitivity (ie, increase in heart rate divided by systolic blood pressure drop magnitude) with frailty (Fried criteria and 4 frailty markers) and self‐reported number of falls was assessed using linear regression models, adjusting for age and sex. Systolic blood pressure drop rate had the strongest association with frailty according to the 4 frailty markers (β 0.30; 95% CI, 0.11–0.49; P=0.003) and number of falls (β 1.09; 95% CI, 0.19–1.20; P=0.018); diastolic blood pressure drop magnitude was most strongly associated with frailty according to the Fried criteria (β 0.37; 95% CI, 0.15–0.60; P<0.001). Baroreflex sensitivity was associated with neither frailty nor number of falls. Conclusions Orthostatic blood pressure drop rate was associated with frailty and falls and may reflect the challenge to the baroreflex rather than drop magnitude.


The inventory of Pleistocene mammal-bearing deposits of Calabria is reported, on the basis of the data available in the literature. Most of the deposits are represented by open-air sites, while cave deposits, always containing human artifacts too, are very scarce; this is to be referred to the lithology of the region, having few outcrops of carbonatic rocks. In many cases, precise informations on the stratigraphy and the composition of the faunal assemblages are lacking. A revision of the faunal assemblages is needed, also to better define times and modalities of the dispersal of the taxa to Sicily.


This paper deals with the design of a compact gearbox for the DTU 10 MW reference offshore wind turbine. An innovative gearbox concept consisting of a fixed planetary stage and a differential compound epicyclic stage is proposed. Power splitting and compound epicyclic transmission technologies are employed, which can effectively reduce the gearbox size. The power transmission principle of the gearbox is described and power distribution ratios in two transfer paths are calculated via the geometrical and mechanical relationships among the gearbox components. The gearbox is designed based on the design loads and fatigue criteria by referring to relevant international standards. A high-fidelity drivetrain numerical model is established by means of a multi-body system (MBS) approach. Then, the power distribution ratios in two transfer paths are compared between the simulation results and the design values with a good agreement. Resonance analysis of the drivetrain model is conducted by means of the Campbell diagram and energy distribution of components, and the results show that no severe resonance phenomena appear in this drivetrain model. Additionally, the load-sharing behavior of the gearbox model is assessed under different environmental conditions, and the results indicate that the compact gearbox has a good load-sharing performance. Such a compact gearbox design, which fulfills all the design requirements for offshore applications, could be a good alternative for offshore wind turbines.


Introduction Gastric bypass is today the most frequently performed bariatric procedure,but, despite of it, several complications can occur with varied morbimortality. Probably all bariatric surgeons know these complications, but, as bariatric surgery continues to spread, general surgeon must be familiarized to it and its management. Gastric bypass complications can be divided into two groups: early and late complications, taking into account the two weeks period after the surgery. This paper will focus the early ones. Method Literature review was carried out using Medline/PubMed, Cochrane Library, SciELO, and additional information on institutional sites of interest crossing the headings: gastric bypass AND complications; follow-up studies AND complications; postoperative complications AND anastomosis, Roux-en-Y; obesity AND postoperative complications. Search language was English. Results There were selected 26 studies that matched the headings. Early complications included: anastomotic or staple line leaks, gastrointestinal bleeding, intestinal obstruction and incorrect Roux limb reconstruction. Conclusions Knowledge on strategies on how to reduce the risk and incidence of complications must be acquired, and every surgeon must be familiar with these complications in order to achieve an earlier recognition and perform the best intervention.


Nilo-Saharan, a phylum spread mainly across an area south of the Afro-Asiatic and north of the Niger-Congo phylum, was established as a genetic grouping by Greenberg. In his earlier, continent-wide classification of African languages in articles published between 1949 and 1954, Greenberg had proposed a Macro-Sudanic family (renamed Chari-Nile in subsequent studies), consisting of a Central Sudanic and an Eastern Sudanic branch plus two isolated members, Berta and Kunama. This family formed the core of the Nilo-Saharan phylum as postulated by Greenberg in his The Languages of Africa, where a number of groups were added which had been treated as isolated units in his earlier classificatory work: Songhay, Eastern Saharan (now called Saharan), Maban and Mimi, Nyangian (now called Kuliak or Rub), Temainian (Temeinian), Coman (Koman), and Gumuz.
 Presenting an "encyclopaedic survey" of morphological structures for the more than 140 languages belonging to this phylum is impossible in such a brief study, also given the tremendous genetic distance between some of the major subgroups. Instead, typological variation in the morphological structure of these genetically-related languages will be central. In concrete terms this involves synchronic and diachronic observations on their formal properties (section 2), followed by an introduction to the nature of derivation, inflection, and compounding properties in Nilo-Saharan (section 3). This traditional compartmentalization has its limits because it misses out on the interaction with lexical structures and morphosyntactic properties in its extant members, as argued in section 4. As pointed out in section 5, language contact also must have played an important role in the geographical spreading of several of these typological properties.


The quantitative analysis of trading wars is now an actual and modern problem although the first works on optimisation of the custom duties date back to the end of the 19th century. The problem of reducing the number of possible solutions to the conflict and precise identifying of the optimal strategies is important. Applying mathematics makes the problem more formal, allows removing political tension in search of optimum solutions to all participants of the trading conflict. We consider that some state sells a product manufactured both in the country and abroad to other countries. The country-consumer of the product faces a choice of the import regulation in relation to the situation by means of the import duty size. A goal of such regulation may be the income of taxes and customs payments or the growth of the domestic manufacturer part in sales volumes. A goal of the importer which it achieves by the import volume variation is either profit, or a number of workplaces in the countries making the imported product. We introduce three multicriteria problems which correspond to different purposes of economic agents. The Pareto set is constructed for each problem. The main attention is paid to the Pareto set reducing based on additional information on the preference relation of the economic agents. Several calculations are made and illustrative examples are given.


Romania is among Eastern European societies facing a massive depopulation in the last two and a half decades. Large-scale emigration has occurred under the circumstances of massive fertility decline and population ageing following 1989. Immigration has been insignificant until now, in spite of the negative natural growth and the presence of large Romanian-speaking populations next to the Eastern borders of the country. Our paper investigates long-term migratory trends and their relation to general macro-economic and macro-social processes. We place the Romanian historical experience concerning developmental aspects of changes in migratory flows and stocks. Existing macro-historical narratives diverge first in their expectations concerning socioeconomic development. On the one hand, models of "migration transition" and "migration cycles" share an optimistic view of developmental prospects of peripheral and semi-peripheral societies. For instance, Skeldon considered the Eastern European region as an "emerging or potential core". As a consequence, he expected that these societies would become new destinations of global migratory flows. On the other hand, researchers relying on world-system theory emphasize that global structural inequalities are likely to persist, thus Eastern European societies are likely to remain enclosed in their semi-peripheral condition. Under such circumstances massive emigration could continue and could lead to large-scale depopulation of certain regions. Our paper argues that the long-term evolution of macro-structural indicators and migratory flows in Romania do not substantiate developmental optimism. World-system theories could provide useful frame to interpret existing data.


In large-scale Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), leveraging data sinks' mobility for data gathering has drawn substantial interests in recent years. Current researches either focus on planning a mobile sink's moving trajectory in advance to achieve optimized network performance, or target at collecting a small portion of sensed data in the network. In many application scenarios, however, a mobile sink cannot move freely in the deployed area. Therefore, the precalculated trajectories may not be applicable. To avoid constant sink location update traffics when a sink's future locations cannot be scheduled in advance, we propose two energy-efficient proactive data reporting protocols, SinkTrail and SinkTrail-S, for mobile sink-based data collection. The proposed protocols feature low-complexity and reduced control overheads. Two unique aspects distinguish our approach from previous ones: 1) we allow sufficient flexibility in the movement of mobile sinks to dynamically adapt to various terrestrial changes; and 2) without requirements of GPS devices or predefined landmarks, SinkTrail establishes a logical coordinate system for routing and forwarding data packets, making it suitable for diverse application scenarios. We systematically analyze the impact of several design factors in the proposed algorithms. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms reduce control overheads and yield satisfactory performance in finding shorter routing paths.


In Cosmographical Glasses Constance Relihan examines the ways in which sixteenth-century English texts - traveler's reports, ethnographic studies, and geographic guides - provide the foundation for how fictional prose of the period envisions the locations in which its tales are set. Relihan suggests that this nonfictional discourse becomes central to how the fictional prose of the period imagines cultural identity, fictional purpose, and gender identity. Places and cultures were defined in opposition to each other in early modern romances. In the examples in Cosmographical Glasses, writers attempt to define the spaces of their texts in an effort to identify what it means to be male, English, and Elizabethan. Through these texts, Relihan considers the various ways in which fictional pieces seize the spirit of ethnographic and geographic texts, as well as the ways in which historically identifiable and overtly fictional places were used to complicate representations of utopian fantasies. A number of prose romances and novella collections and their use of historical and geographical facts are analyzed in order to explore the associations between the genre, the discourses of colonialism, and the construction of gender. These texts become "glasses" that reflect and refract the social and cultural realities of early modern England. Those interested in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, the history of the novel, and the influence of travel literature on fictional texts will appreciate Cosmographical Glasses.


This thesis presents results for the determination of the QCD jet energy scale and the single top quark cross-section. Hadron jets are the most commonly observed objects in p-p collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Because of this, they are part of the final state of almost any process, and are an important part of all searches for extensions of the Standard Model. This thesis presents an in situ determination of the jet energy scale with a systematic uncertainty of less than 3%. Single top quark production at the LHC is a sensitive probe of physics beyond the standard model, and is itself an important background for Higgs searches. In this thesis, data-driven models for important backgrounds to single top quark events are developed, and are used to measure the t-channel single top quark production rate in 35 / picobarns of integrated luminosity.


The increased use of information and communication technologies (ICT) leads to new ways of doing business internationally. Nowadays, firm-specific intangible assets as well as services often constitute the most important factors for the creation of value. Besides, geographic distances tend to be less relevant. The main objective of international tax planning consists of minimising the effective tax rate of the whole company or group. In this paper, it is examined for several instruments of international tax planning whether new chances of minimising the effective tax rate emerge with the use of ICT and to what extent new risks occur. The analysis comprises the (re)location of a company's residence, the (re)allocation of functions and risks, the implementation of a transfer pricing system, the choice of the form and location of investments abroad as well as hybrid forms of co-operation. For each instrument, both current and non-current tax issues are considered. We conclude that, due to ICT, it is easier to make use of the international tax differential by choosing the optimal location and form of investment and by allocating functions and risks. Thus, companies can pay more attention to the tax-optimal choice between international locations and the importance of this instrument to reduce the effective tax rate is further strengthened by the use of ICT.


This chapter presents an overview of the developments and potentials of mobile technologies and their major impact on society and the daily activities of individuals. The increase of sensors embedded in everyday objects enable these objects to sense the environment and communicate. This creates new possibilities to gather and process large amounts of data. We show how these opportunities can trigger a paradigm shift in the social sciences. Social scientists no longer collect data but use data that is available and collected for other reasons. These data will vary in validity and quality. It can come from sensors in personal mobile devices, smart environments, or social infrastructures. This asks a strong interpretive approach from multimethod- and mixed methods researches to harness these data.


A method for the prediction of the interactions within complex reaction networks from experimentally measured time series of the concentration of the species composing the system has been tested experimentally on the first few steps of the glycolytic pathway. The reconstituted reaction system, containing eight enzymes and 14 metabolic intermediates, was kept away from equilibrium in a continuous-flow, stirred-tank reactor. Input concentrations of adenosine monophosphate and citrate were externally varied over time, and their concentrations in the reactor and the response of eight other species were measured. Multidimensional scaling analysis and heuristic algorithms applied to two-species time-lagged correlation functions derived from the time series yielded a diagram from which the interactions among all of the species could be deduced. The diagram predicts essential features of the known reaction network in regard to chemical reactions and interactions among the measured species. The approach is applicable to many complex reaction systems.


This paper measures impacts of production of crops, forestry, livestock and aquaculture on household welfare, poverty and inequality in rural Vietnam using fixed-effects regressions. Data used in this paper are from Vietnam Household Living Standard Surveys 2002 and 2004. It is found that impact estimates of the production of crops and forestry on per capita income and consumption expenditure are not statistically significant. Impact estimates of the livestock production are positive and statistically significant for per capita income, but not statistically significant for per capita expenditure. However, the aquacultural production has positive and statistically significant impacts on both income and expenditure. As a result, the aquacultural production helps the producing households reduce the poverty incidence by 4.3 percentage points. It also decreases the poverty gap and poverty severity indexes of the producing households by around 13 percent and 15 percent, respectively. The aquacultural production also reduces the rural expenditure inequality, albeit at an extremely small magnitude.


The aim of this study was to investigate the association between well-known diseases and fear of them in individuals over 50 years of age. Information on the fear of diseases can be relevant for both public health information purposes and clinical setting diagnostics. However, very few studies have investigated the fear of diseases in individuals over the age of 50. We used an electronic survey method and asked individuals older than 50 to report their fear of eight different diseases. Fear of diseases was the outcome measure. A 10-point Likert scale questionnaire was used to assess the fear of contracting different diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, HIV, depression, diabetes, skin disorders (eczema and psoriasis), and chronic pain. There were 376 respondents. Cancer and Alzheimer's disease were associated with the most fear. Fear of these two diseases was significantly higher than for other diseases ( p = 0.01). Age had no significant impact on the fear of diseases (p = 0.68). Of the 376 respondents, 39% reported a strong fear (10 points) of Alzheimer's disease, whereas 30% reported a strong fear of cancer. Only 2% reported a strong fear of cardiovascular disease. This study suggests that cancer and Alzheimer's disease evoke the most fear.»/>


We describe a digital music distribution system which fixes current problems in prevailing economic models for selling digital music. Our system aims to address the perverse incentives in the current digital music market, in which music buyers and music creators have incompatible goals and desired outcomes. The model gives users an added buying incentive: when a user buys a song, that user has a stake in how well that song does in the future. If a user buys a song, he or she is allocated a portion of the revenue from every future sale of that song. We present a proof-of-concept prototype of the system, to assess the viability of these ideas via simulated market conditions and via direct user interaction.


Learning in a multiagent system is a challenging problem due to two key factors. First, if other agents are simultaneously learning then the environment is no longer stationary, thus undermining convergence guarantees. Second, learning is often susceptible to deception, where the other agents may be able to exploit a learner's particular dynamics. In the worst case, this could result in poorer performance than if the agent was not learning at all. These challenges are identifiable in the two most common evaluation criteria for multiagent learning algorithms: convergence and regret. Algorithms focusing on convergence or regret in isolation are numerous. In this paper, we seek to address both criteria in a single algorithm by introducing GIGA-WoLF, a learning algorithm for normal-form games. We prove the algorithm guarantees at most zero average regret, while demonstrating the algorithm converges in many situations of self-play. We prove convergence in a limited setting and give empirical results in a wider variety of situations. These results also suggest a third new learning criterion combining convergence and regret, which we call negative non-convergence regret (NNR).


While calls continue for corporations to take a larger role in addressing social issues, little guidance is available to help change leaders within those corporations understand how to orient their organizations towards creating socially desired value. The responsibility generally falls to those working in "corporate social responsibility" or "corporate sustainability." This study began with a literature review focusing on the intersection of CSR/sustainability and organizational change. CSR/sustainability practitioners were interviewed, and described the difficulty of reconciling public pressure, day to day business realities, brand imperatives, organizational structures, and their own personal motivations. Interview data revealed a set of organizational motivators, strategies, actions and barriers to creating socially desired value. And by employing a strategic foresight process of trend extrapolation, a set of uncertaintie s was developed. These helped guide the creation of actionable recommendations for change leaders to help their organizations develop greater commitment to creating socially desired value.


With the tremendous growth of network technology, network attackers are also rationally increased to disrupt the activities and hacking the data from the network users by the intruder. To provide the security from the intruder is most important one. Many researchers were proposed a different approach for providing security they does not tackle the problem, it leads an untruthful in the network. In existing system they propose a game based intrusion request and response process by game play of header node to access the data by their correct play, from this if the real header play it in wrong method means all the client user under the header also suffer from the access of the data. To tackle this issue we enhanced the game theory based on the individual play in the network to avoid the suffering of misplayed game played by the header using the IPDRS Engine.


This report analyses and reviews the corporate finance structure of non-financial corporations (NFCs) in the euro area, including how they interact with the macroeconomic environment. Special emphasis is placed on the crisis that began in 2007-08, thus underlining the relevance of financing and credit conditions to investment and economic activity in turbulent times. When approaching such a broad topic, a number of key questions arise. How did the corporate sector's capital structure, internal and external financing sources, and its tendency to leverage, evolve in the euro area over the last decade and in the run-up to the financial crisis in particular? Did these developments contribute to and/or exacerbate the financial crisis? Did the corporate sector's response to various shocks and vulnerabilities support or encumber the euro area economy, both during the financial crisis and in its aftermath?