We propose a general approach using Laplacian Eigenmaps and a graphical model of the human body to segment 3D voxel data of humans into different articulated chains. In the bottom-up stage, the voxels are transformed into a high-dimensional (6D or less) Laplacian Eigenspace (LE) of the voxel neighborhood graph. We show that LE is effective at mapping voxels on long articulated chains to nodes on smooth 1D curves that can be easily discriminated, and prove these properties using representative graphs. We fit 1D splines to voxels belonging to different articulated chains such as the limbs, head and trunk, and determine the boundary between splines using the spline fitting error. A top-down probabilistic approach is then used to register the segmented chains, utilizing their mutual connectivity and individual properties. Our approach enables us to deal with complex poses such as those where the limbs form loops. We use the segmentation results to automatically estimate the human body models. While we use human subjects in our experiments, the method is fairly general and can be applied to voxel-based segmentation of any articulated object composed of long chains. We present results on real and synthetic data that illustrate the usefulness of this approach.


Contrastive learning allows us to flexibly define powerful losses by contrasting positive pairs from sets of negative samples. Recently, the principle has also been used to learn cross-modal embeddings for video and text, yet without exploiting its full potential. In particular, previous losses do not take the intra-modality similarities into account, which leads to inefficient embeddings, as the same content is mapped to multiple points in the embedding space. With CrossCLR, we present a contrastive loss that fixes this issue. Moreover, we define sets of highly related samples in terms of their input embeddings and exclude them from the negative samples to avoid issues with false negatives. We show that these principles consistently improve the quality of the learned embeddings. The joint embeddings learned with CrossCLR extend the state of the art in video-text retrieval on Youcook2 and LSMDC datasets and in video captioning on Youcook2 dataset by a large margin. We also demonstrate the generality of the concept by learning improved joint embeddings for other pairs of modalities.


In response to the need for stable and adequate funding for tobacco control and the shortage of personnel working in the field, the Vietnam Tobacco Control Fund (VNTCF) was established through the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms in 2012. In September 2014, VNTCF awarded its first set of grants. Built on the local evidence-based context and needs as well as lessons learnt from other countries, VNTCF adapted best practices with adjustments that fit the country's political, economic and social environment. The key strengths of the VNTCF are the evidence-based model; multisectoral management; clearly dedicated funding mechanism, defined vision, objectives and function; outcomes based mechanism and a multisectoral approach to releasing grants. Although several challenges remain such as insufficient human resources to undertake the workload, complex and cumbersome administrative processes, and limited capacity for tobacco control in the country, VNTCF has achieved several successes. The establishment of VNTCF in Vietnam is a critical milestone within the country's fight against the tobacco epidemic. It showed not only the commitment of the local authorities to the fight but also their determination to ensure sustainable funding for tobacco control activities in Vietnam. Analysing VNTCF's critical success elements, key strengths and challenges is helpful for other countries which want to establish or modify a tobacco control fund.


This article examines the role of discourses about new media technology and the web in the rise of the 5-Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, or M5S) in Italy. Founded by comedian and activist Beppe Grillo and web entrepreneur Gianroberto Casaleggio in 2009, this movement succeeded in becoming the second largest party at the 2013 national elections in Italy. This article aims to discuss how elements of digital utopia and web-centric discourses have been inserted into the movement's political message, and how the construction of the web as a myth has shaped the movement's discourse and political practice. The 5-Star Movement is compared and contrasted with other social and political movements in western countries which have displayed a similar emphasis on new media, such as the Occupy movement, the Indignados movement, and the Pirate Parties in Sweden and Germany. By adopting and mutating cyber-utopian discourses from the so-called Californian ideology, the movement symbolically identifies itself with the web. The traditional political establishment is associated with "old" media (television, radio, and the printed press), and represented as a "walking dead," doomed to be superseded and buried by a web-based direct democracy.


Presented at the 10th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Purdue University, USA Team research has been much more widespread in the natural sciences than in economics. Yet when it comes to modeling an economy (especially the global economy) in detail, the quantity and range of inputs necessary makes team work the only viable option. Drawing some inspiration from Australian experience, GTAP's founder, Tom Hertel, realized this from his Project's inception in 1993. The data base required to model international trade flows could not have been developed without the enthusiastic cooperation of many individuals and institutions around the world. Funding GTAP's central team at Purdue required external support. National agencies in Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, and the US are members of the supporting research consortium. The natural interest of international economic agencies led to GTAP having five such supporting agencies by 1997, which grew to ten by 2006. GTAP has striven to put the maximum feasible amount of its data, methodology and models into the public domain. It has run numerous residential intensive training courses in the use of the GTAP data and model: these have been held in the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The success of these courses reflects the modeling experience of the teams of course instructors and the availability of special-purpose software which allows simulations to be run without programming skill or previous knowledge of the software used. Researchers making use of GTAP have been prolific in number, and in their output. In mid April 2007, applications on the GTAP web site numbered 781. There were 366 subscribers to the GTAP data base at the end of April 2007, but the number of individuals making use of GTAP data exceeded 4,000.


Rubber, Hevea brasiliensis, is a valuable crop of some countries in
Asia. In the rubber industry, fertiliser application is one of the most effective
methods to enhance growth of rubber seedlings in the nursery. However,
application of chemical fertilisers has several disadvantages such as fast
nutrient leaching, fertiliser bum and requirement of intensive labour for split
applications. In recent years, slow-release fertilisers have been introduced to
solve the above problem so n many crops including rubber. Studies on the
effect of slow-release fertilisers on rubber are limited and there has been no
work reported on the use of isotope technique to accurately study nutrient
uptake and efficiency of fertilisers use.
This study was set up with the aim of studying the rate of nutrient
release of slow-release fertilisers and their effect on the performance of rubber
seedlings using 15N isotope dilution technique. Two experiments, namely,
laboratory incubation and glass-house experiments were conducted. Five
fertilisers were evaluated, four of which were slow-release fertilisers
(Agroblen, Best Tab, Kokei Nugget and Nurseryace) and one conventional
chemical fertiliser (Nitrophoska Yellow). In the soil-incubation experiment,
Bungor and Sungai Buloh series soils were used, while in the glass-house
experiment, only Bungor series soil was used
Results from the incubation experiment showed that during the period
of incubation, Nitrophoska Yellow gave the fastest rate of fertiliser
decomposition and NPK release, while Nurseryace were persistently the
lowest. Higher fertiliser decomposition and release of N and K were obtained
in Bungor series soil as compared to Sungai Buloh series soil. However
phosphorus release in Bungor series soil was lower than that in Sungai Buloh
series soil. It was found that there was a very close relationship between
fertiliser decomposition and NPK release of slow-release fertilisers,
particularly for Kokei Nugget and Nitrophoska Yellow.


Abbeys and Priories of Medieval Wales is a comprehensive, illustrated guide to the religious houses of Wales from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. It offers a thorough introduction to the history of the monastic orders in Wales (the Benedictines, Cluniacs, Augustinians, Premonstratensians, Cistercians, the military orders, and the friars), and to the life inside medieval Welsh monasteries and nunneries, as well as providing the histories of almost sixty communities of religious men and women, and descriptions of the standing remains of their buildings. As well as a being a scholarly book, a number of maps, ground plans, and practical information make this moreover an indispensable guide for visitors to Wales's monastic heritage. The monastic houses of medieval Wales were of great cultural and political, as well as religious significance, yet to many they remain picturesque ruins of a bygone age. This book brings these institutions to life for readers, and locates them firmly within the broader history of Wales and the Welsh.


This study investigated the language learning processes and literary experiences of Korean adolescent students enrolled in a literature-based program. This study utilized practitioner research in which the researcher bridged the gap between theory and practice by teaching an EFL class and carrying out research with the intention of changing her own teaching practice. Data collection consisted of audio-recordings of classroom conversations and interviews, students' writing in and outside of the classroom, a survey, the teacher's field notes, and other classroom documents. Data was analyzed to address the following research questions: 1) How do young EFL learners in a literature-based communicative language learning context respond to literary texts? and 2) What is the role of the classroom teacher who promotes responses from EFL learners in response-oriented communicative language instruction? Data analysis revealed 1) that the students perceived the use of literature as a new and effective way of learning English; 2) that the students' experience went beyond language learning; 3) that the teacher promoted oral and written communication that focused on responses to the literature used. Considering the impact of literature on the EFL students, the author suggests implementation of literature-based instruction and further studies in EFL settings.


If we take the basic definition of postmodernism given in Lyotard's seminal The Postmodern Condition 'an incredulity towards metanarratives' - (1984, xxiv) as a working definition for sociology, then a postmodern sociology is an attractive possibility. At first glance, at least, a postmodern theoretical umbrella for sociology can allow the discipline to develop its increasingly diverse strengths without the enormous constraint, which has weighed it down in false expectation for much of this century, of the idea that it is a science of 'society as a whole', moreover the idea that it is such a science in the name of human emancipation.

In this essay I consider a possible postmodern sociology and I argue that while it may be a very attractive idea for theorising sociology and for theorising some directions for it, it is seriously flawed. However, rejecting postmodernism as a theoretical possibility does not mean a return to the idea of society as a whole, it does not signal a call to return to some mythical 'golden age' when sociologists were able to produce understandings of society which could enlighten and emancipate us all. This 'grand vision' theorising of sociology has of course been around for a long while, in various guises - Marxist, Parsonian, etc. I'm not, then, doubting its intellectual heritage. Rather, I'm questioning the worth of its commitment to epistemology and I'm working from a critique of the political effects of epistemology. My essay assumes this critique.


Therapeutic ultrasound angioplasty is a new minimally invasive cardiovascular procedure for disrupting atherosclerotic lesions. Mechanical energy is transmitted in the form of ultrasound waves via long, flexible wire waveguides navigated to the lesion site through the vascular system. The underpinning principle of this technology is that plaque may be disrupted through a combination of direct contact ablation, pressure waves, cavitation and acoustic streaming, which all depend on the amplitude and frequency of displacements at the distal tip of the wire waveguide. This study identifies a number of key design issues for clinical devices of this type, and describes testing procedures to measure selected performance characteristics. A commercially available generator (100 W) and acoustic horn are used in combination with Nickel-Titanium (NiTi) wire waveguides. A laser sensor system was constructed to measure the frequency and amplitude output at the distal tip of the wire waveguide, and this was compared to amplitude estimations obtained using an optical microscope. Power was observed to affect both output amplitude and frequency. A finite element model has been previously developed to simulate the transmission of ultrasound waves in short wire waveguides. In this study, this methodology has been extended to the design of long, tapered wires for realistic clinical applications. Trials were conducted using these wire waveguides, demonstrating the ablation of model calcified materials accessed via long wire waveguides.


Description This package implements a state-of-the-art version of the Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm (SPSO-2011 and SPSO-2007 capable). hydroPSO can be used as a replacement of the 'optim' R function for (global) optimization of non-smooth and non-linear functions. However, the main focus of hydroPSO is the calibration of environmental and other real-world models that need to be executed from the system console. hydroPSO is model-independent, allowing the user to easily interface any computer simulation model with the calibration engine (PSO). hydroPSO communicates with the model through the model's own input and output files, without requiring access to the model's source code. Several PSO variants and controlling options are included to fine-tune the performance of the calibration engine to different calibration problems. An advanced sensitivity analysis function together with user-friendly plotting summaries facilitate the interpretation and assessment of the calibration results. hydroPSO is parallel-capable, to alleviate the computational burden of complex models with ''long''execution time. Bugs reports/comments/questions are very welcomed (in English, Spanish or Italian).


The management and predictive planning of the processes to create business services is more difficult than the planning of production processes, because services cannot be produced in stock and customers are involved in their creation. In this paper, the author proposes a method for service scheduling and optimization based on an ontology to describe business services and related concepts. The author schedules operations required to create a service. With each service process and its operations, soft and hard constraints on the execution of operations and the required resources are posted. These constraints are derived from service level agreements. A legal plan must then satisfy all hard constraints. All soft constraints are matter of optimization. Using a tabu search, a near-optimal solution of the service scheduling problem is achieved.


The debate about how to characterize performance on the number line estimation (NLE) task has yielded a diverse set of accuracy measures. These accuracy measures include characterizing performance by deviation from the correct score with percent absolute error (PAE), modeling the shape of responses via the logarithmic-to-linear shift, and modeling the strategy use via the cyclical power model (one and two cycle). In the present study, accuracy on a symbolic NLE task was examined using phenotypic and quantitative genetic analyses of all four measurements. Data were collected from a same-sex twin sample at ages 12 and 15 (N = 150 pairs) as part of the Western Reserve Reading and Math Project. Linear mixed-effect models were used to compare how well the four NLE accuracy measures predicted math achievement, as measured by the Woodcock Johnson-III Fluency, Calculation, and Applied Problems subtests, after cognitive ability was controlled. NLE accuracy measures were not related to Fluency or Calculation after cognitive ability was controlled, but all NLE accuracy measures were related to Applied Problems at 12 and 15 years old. Although theories about what the NLE task measures have been contested in the literature, the relationship between NLE accuracy and achievement did not differ regardless of the type of accuracy measure used. In addition, the estimates for genetic and environmental influences were proportionately similar across the NLE accuracy measures. Overall, all proposed measures of accuracy in the present sample appear appropriate for prediction of math achievement in adolescents.


This thesis presents the work carried out to develop a simulation system for nuclear power
plants, denominated TRETA / COPMA-III integrated simulator, which allows the simulation of
the thermalhydraulic processes that take place in this type of facilities, in normal operation and
emergency operation, as well as the control room crew actions related with the management of
the emergency situations. The simulation of the thermalhydraulic processes is carried out by
means of the TRETA (PWR) or TIZONA (BWR) simulators, both developed by the Spanish
Nuclear Council (CSN). In what concerns to the simulation of the human performance, and
taking into account the fact that in this type of facilities the management of the emergencies is
strongly proceduralized, the COPMA-III procedures simulator is used. This simulator has been
developed by the Halden Reactor Project (HRP), and it was adapted by the HRP development
team for its use in the integrated simulator.
This new tool is characterized mainly by its modular structure and its interconnection ability
with other codes. In an individual way, the different codes that compose the simulator present
advanced capacities in its models. Firstly, the TRETA simulator presents great versatility in defining
the grade of complexity in the simulation of the processes. On the other hand, regarding
to the COPMA-III simulator, it enables the automatic simulation of human actions proceduralized
or planned, that means, all of those manual performances of which it is possible to develop
a deterministic scheme, including aspects of timing and work load. Concerning the simulator
package modular structure, it makes possible even the substitution of the process or procedures
simulators and the implementation of any other simulator that it is considered more appropriate
for specific necessities.
This simulation system not only could be applied to validate the procedures design, but rather
could be use in the verification of the consistency of the analyses made in the safety analysis.
This last aspect is specially relevant, because these studies don?t include, except for seldom
cases, the dynamic evaluation of the operator actions impact in the analysis of the accidental
sequences.


In computer graphics, calculating realistic shadowing and lighting terms for an arbitrary scene is a fundamental problem. When accurate interaction of lights with objects in a scene is achieved it greatly enhances the believability and the immersion that the viewer experiences. In this report we give a background to real-time shadow determination algorithms and present two approaches for real-time rendering of shadows that accurately model the umbrae and penumbrae of area light sources. A description of geometry shaders, a new technology in real-time rendering, is given, and we describe new methods that demonstrate how they can be used to shift significant amounts of mesh computation from the CPU to the GPU in the penumbra wedge soft shadow algorithm. We also present comparative and performance analyses of the soft shadow algorithms developed and discuss the performance characteristics of utilizing the geometry shader stage in shadowing algorithms. Our geometry shader based implementation provides a 21% performance increase to the penumbra wedge soft shadowing algorithm for certain meshes.


This paper describes a new direct-reading personal dosimeter designed to detect vapors of organic chemicals. The device employs the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique for direct measurement of the amount of analyte collected on the dosimeter, requiring no sample desorption or wet-chemical extraction procedure. The time-weighted average exposure to the chemical vapors can be determined on the dosimeter substrate. The results with benzoic acid used as the model compound illustrate the usefulness of this SERS-based dosimeter.


Photopolarimeter-Radiometer (PPR) maps of daytime temperatures on Ganymede at a resolution of 220 kilometers show the expected anticorrelation with albedo, but morning temperatures were about 10 kelvin warmer than expected. Europa had a subsolar temperature of 128 kelvin and a lower effective thermal inertia than either Ganymede or Callisto, and Io's night side was cooler than predicted by recent models, perhaps requiring revision of heat-flow estimates. The lowest 250-millibar temperatures in the Great Red Spot (GRS) generally corresponded to the visually darkest regions. Temperatures remained cold north of the GRS, but they rose by as much as 6 kelvin to the south over the 2800-kilometer PPR resolution. A visually bright region northwest of the GRS was also relatively cold. It is likely that NH3 clouds affected the determination of the 500-millibar temperature field, which appears qualitatively different.


This full day workshop intends to explore approaches, methods and techniques that can be used in participatory prototyping of services. The participants will contribute with their experiences of different ways of working with participatory prototyping. During the workshop the participants will share, explore and give feedback on the method or case that they present. By engaging in other methods there will also be a learning activity. Another aim of the workshop is to initiate research and development of knowledge within the emerging field of participatory prototyping of services and product service systems. One particular interest regards the relation between details and "the whole". The emphasis of the workshop is to have creative learning experiences.


A trait is a programming construct which provides code reusability. Traits are groups of methods that can be reused orthogonally from inheritance. Traits offer a solution to the problems of multiple inheritance by providing a behavior-centric modularity. Since traits offer an alternative to traditional inheritance-based code reuse, a couple of questions arise. For example, what is a good granularity for a Trait enabling reuse as well as plug ease? How much reuse can we expect on large existing inheritance-based hierarchies? In this paper we take as case study the Smalltalk Collection hierarchy and we start rewriting it from scratch using traits from the beginning. We show how such library can be built using traits and we report such a preliminary experience. Since the Collection library is large, we focused and built the main classes of the library with Traits and report problems we encountered and how we solved them. Results of this experience are positive and show that we can build new collections based on the traits used to define the new library kernel.


Objective: Dimensional properties of personality are new field which is placed under DSM-5 Section-3 for further research. DSM-5 Personality Inventory (PID-5) is an effective instrument to assess and implement personality dimensions in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment among adolescents; but the researches are limited. To address this issue, we aimed to compare the dimensional personality features between depressive and anxious adolescents using PID-5. Methods: Participants were recruited after they were evaluated with semi-structured psychiatric interviews. Patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders were excluded and total 280 subjects (70 male and 70 female in each group) were included in depression (DG) and anxiety (AG) groups. Results: Total PID-5 scores and all of the personality dimension scores, except those for negative affectivity (NA), were found to be significantly higher in DG than AG. We found positive correlation between all personality scores and the severity of depression and anxiety. Discussion: Our study showed that, even after excluding the cases with comorbidities, no difference was found between the DG and AG regarding NA; and this result could be the proof of the individually elevated NA in both groups bypassing a possible genetic influence. We found that DG had higher disinhibition scores than AG; and the lower disinhibition of anxious children may reflect higher behavioral inhibition levels, which is considered to be a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Cross-sectional design of our study makes it difficult to evaluate causality be-tween the personality dimensions and psychopathology; so further longitudinal studies using these new personality dimensions are needed.


Abstract Here we report on five pilot projects working to develop effective professional development aimed at improving diversity, equity, and inclusion within the geosciences. All five projects were funded by the NSF GEO Opportunities for Leadership in Diversity (GOLD) program, which was designed to bring together geoscientists and social scientists to create innovative pilot programs for preparing and empowering geoscientists as change agents for increasing diversity. Each project has different objectives and applies different combinations of methods, but focuses on professional development, bystander intervention training, and the formation of new networks in the pursuit of systemic, institutional change. This article describes the origins, aims, and activities of these projects, and reflects on lessons learned to date. These projects are still ongoing, but in their first two years they have received more interest than anticipated and more demand than can be fulfilled, suggesting an unserved need in the field. We have also found that teams with varied backgrounds, experiences, and expertise are vital to overcoming common struggles in facing inequalities. Coaching from experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion keeps the teams motivated, particularly when many team members are accustomed to typical scientific research. Finally, institutional change requires time to catalyze, develop, and institutionalize, highlighting the importance of sustained effort over years.


Ion beam figuring (IBF) technology for small scale optical components is discussed. Since the small removal function can be obtained in IBF, it makes computer-controlled optical surfacing technology possible to machine precision centimeter- or millimeter-scale optical components deterministically. Using a small ion beam to machine small optical components, there are some key problems, such as small ion beam positioning on the optical surface, material removal rate, ion beam scanning pitch control on the optical surface, and so on, that must be seriously considered. The main reasons for the problems are that it is more sensitive to the above problems than a big ion beam because of its small beam diameter and lower material ratio. In this paper, we discuss these problems and their influences in machining small optical components in detail. Based on the identification-compensation principle, an iterative machining compensation method is deduced for correcting the positioning error of an ion beam with the material removal rate estimated by a selected optimal scanning pitch. Experiments on ϕ10 mm Zerodur planar and spherical samples are made, and the final surface errors are both smaller than λ/100 measured by a Zygo GPI interferometer.


It is known that tropical grasslands such as Serengeti host large populations of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and that they respond to abiotic and biotic factors. It is also known that AM symbioses are important for the uptake of essential plant nutrients, which, in turn, influences the biomass and nutritional quality of herbivores and their predators. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of AM symbioses on the biomass of different trophic levels of an ecosystem. To do this, we first measured the neutral lipid fatty acid biomarker 16:1ω5 to estimate the biomass of AM fungi in a long‐term grazing exclusion experiment. Then, we used model selection of Bayesian linear regressions to infer the primary factors that influence AM fungal biomass. Using model selection of different combinations of soil characteristics, we selected the best model using the leave‐one‐out cross‐validation information criterion. Finally, we used the Madingley model to simulate the influence of AM fungi on higher trophic levels. We combined spatially explicit information about soil phosphorus and AM fungal biomass to explore the emergent patterns of the Serengeti resulting from AM symbioses. Our Bayesian analysis indicated that total soil phosphorus was the strongest predictor of AM fungal biomass, and there were significant interactions with grazing. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal biomass is lowest in soil where phosphorus is limited and increases with increasing phosphorus concentration. Biomass was also significantly higher in plots that were not grazed. The Madingley model indicated that nutritional benefits of AM symbioses maintain a substantial proportion of the biomass across all trophic levels. Synthesis. Our analysis shows that inputs of phosphorus through arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses substantially increase the ability of plants to grow and maintain nutritional quality, cascading through the biomass of consumers and predators in the ecosystem. Although they account for less than 1% of the total modelled biomass, the predicted nutritional benefit provided by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi increased the biomass of macro‐organisms in the Serengeti by 48%. When considering the management of biodiversity, future ecosystem models should account for the influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on all trophic levels.


The aim of this study was to determine the diagnostic and prognostic significance of ischemia modified albumin (IMA) levels in patients with Crimean‐Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF). This retrospective study was conducted with patients with CCHF. IMA levels in patients with CCHF were determined using the rapid colorimetric method. IMA levels of CCHF patients were significantly higher compared with the control group (P = 0.0001). At an IMA cut‐off point of 0.555 ABSU (absorbance units), sensitivity was 65.1%, specificity 82.5%, positive predictive values (PPV) 82.5%, and negative predictive values (NPV) 65.1%. IMA levels of patients with hemorrhage were significantly higher compared with patients without hemorrhage (P = 0.005). IMA has been validated as both a new and sensitive ischemia and oxidative stress biomarker. In addition to its diagnostic significance, IMA investigated in CCHF patients at time of arrival may be an important marker with its prognostic role in determining in the early stage whether the disease will follow a hemorrhagic course. J. Med. Virol. 85:684–688, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


The statistically equivalent signature (SES) algorithm is a method for feature selection inspired by the principles of constrained-based learning of Bayesian Networks. Most of the currently available feature-selection methods return only a single subset of features, supposedly the one with the highest predictive power. We argue that in several domains multiple subsets can achieve close to maximal predictive accuracy, and that arbitrarily providing only one has several drawbacks. The SES method attempts to identify multiple, predictive feature subsets whose performances are statistically equivalent. Under that respect SES subsumes and extends previous feature selection algorithms, like the maxmin parent children algorithm. SES is implemented in an homonym function included in the R package MXM, standing for mens ex machina, meaning 'mind from the machine' in Latin. The MXM implementation of SES handles several data-analysis tasks, namely classi�cation, regression and survival analysis. In this paper we present the SES algorithm, its implementation, and provide examples of use of the SES function in R. Furthermore, we analyze three publicly available data sets to illustrate the equivalence of the signatures retrieved by SES and to contrast SES against the state-of-the-art feature selection method LASSO. Our results provide initial evidence that the two methods perform comparably well in terms of predictive accuracy and that multiple, equally predictive signatures are actually present in real world data.


BACKGROUND
Increased flow in the subclavian artery feeding a vascular access for hemodialysis can induce steal phenomena in the vertebral (VA) and internal mammary artery (IMA). The aim of this study was to describe the hemodynamic effects of access flow on the VA and IMA in patients with native fistulas and grafts.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Peak systolic (PSV) and end diastolic (EDV) velocity measurements of the VA, IMA and carotid arteries, as well as flow volume measurements of the subclavian artery, were performed. Flow measurements at the side of the vascular access were compared with the contralateral side. Fifty-five patients were consecutively included, most with a radio-cephalic fistula on the left arm with a mean shunt volume of 1156 ml/min.

RESULTS
Pathologic flow patterns were observed in the ipsilateral VA in four patients (7.3 %); contralateral VA flow was normal in all patients. Peak systolic velocity of the VA was significantly decreased at the side of the shunt arm with a PSV of 42.6 ± 11.8 cm/s compared to 48.4 ± 15.6 cm/s contralateral (p < 0.05). The IMA flow pattern were normal in all patients. The PSV of the IMA was significantly decreased (p < 0.01) at the side of the shunt arm (87.5 ± 29.1 cm/s) compared to the non-shunt arm (95.9 ± 27.4 cm/s).

CONCLUSION
We describe significant hemodynamic effects of fistulas to the vertebral and internal mammary arteries. Doppler spectral analysis of the vertebral and internal mammary arteries should be integrated in ultrasound, especially in patients with cerebrovascular or cardiac symptoms.


A new method of segmenting unconstrained handwritten numeral strings is proposed. It is based on the extracting of foreground and background features. In order to find foreground features for the first time an algorithm based on skeleton tracing is introduced. The skeleton of each connected component is traversed in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions, and intersection points which are visited in each traversal, are mapped on the outer contour to form foreground feature points. In order to find background features, another new algorithm is proposed. Considering vertical projections of top and bottom profiles, two background skeletons are found. After processing these two background skeletons, background feature points are extracted. Background and foreground feature points are assigned together to construct candidate segmentation paths. Finally each segmentation path is evaluated based on the properties of its left and right connected components. Our method can provide a list of good segmentation hypotheses for segmentation-based recognition systems. The NIST SD19 database (handwritten numeral strings) is used for evaluating of the method, and experiments show a very promising result.


We present a scenario where dark matter is in the form of dark atoms that can accomodate the experimentally observed excess of positrons in PAMELA and AMS-02 while being compatible with the constraints imposed on the gamma-ray flux from Fermi/LAT. This scenario assumes that the dominant component of dark matter is in the form of a bound state between a helium nucleus and a $-2$ particle and a small component is in the form of a WIMP-like dark atom compatible with direct searches in underground detectors. One of the constituents of this WIMP-like state is a $+2$ metastable particle with a mass of 1 TeV or slightly below that by decaying to $e^+e^+$, $\mu^+ \mu^+$ and $\tau^+ \tau^+$ produces the observed positron excess. These decays can naturally take place via GUT interactions. If it exists, such a metastable particle can be found in the next run of LHC. The model predicts also the ratio of leptons over baryons in the Universe to be close to -3.


A clear lesson of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa is the need for strong public health systems globally, including in the United States. Ebola has highlighted the dangers of weak public health systems, from the immense shortage of health workers in West Africa to the budget cuts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In response to Ebola and the broader threat of infectious disease, President Obama has proposed a $6.2 billion supplemental funding request to Congress. The supplemental would surge resources for containing and treating Ebola in West Africa -- including a reserve of funds to enable a robust, flexible response going forward -- enhance prevention and detection of, and response to, Ebola in the United States, and buttress U.S. and partner country health systems to respond rapidly and flexibly to all infectious disease hazards in the future. The additional resources the supplemental would devote to the ongoing Ebola crisis is critically important. So is the supplemental request's funding to prepare for the future, including developing treatment centers in the United States that would provide advanced care and isolation facilities, and funding for research and development for vaccines and medicines for Ebola and other novel infections. The request would also provide the first significant batch of funding to the Global Health Security Agenda, which President Obama unveiled in February 2014. The Global Health Security Agenda takes an all-hazards approach to building greater global capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious diseases, from zoonotic diseases and antibiotic resistant bacteria to biosecurity and bioterror threats. From environmental degradation to increased human-animal interchange, the threats are only increasing. Strong public health systems at home and globally are our best defense. Congress should support the President's supplemental funding request, furthering a bipartisan U.S. tradition of support for global health, continuing U.S. global leadership in the Ebola response, and preparing our country and our world for disease threats of the future.


The law and economics revolution has, with few exceptions, bypassed international law, perhaps for some of the same reasons that realist political scientists ignore international law, or perhaps because of a concern that economic analysis is somehow less useful in the international context than in the domestic context. First, we identify three reasons why international lawyers have not, to date, extensively used economic analysis, and explain why none of these reasons is persuasive. Second, we provide a reason to believe that economic analysis will enrich our understanding of international law by outlining the analogy between the market of international relations and traditional markets for goods. Subsequent sections explore the applicability of economic analysis to three important international law topics: the allocation of prescriptive jurisdiction, the law of treaties, and the competences of international organizations. We identify certain methodologies of the new institutional economics and the public choice branch of economics, such as game theory and transaction cost economics, as having much greater promise than other economic approaches, including price theory used without reference to transaction costs and strategic considerations. Finally, we outline some of the problems associated with economic analysis of international law and set forth some ideas for a research program.


ARTICLE INFO In this article the effects of gravity on the mixed convection of a microflow is studied numerically by using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). To do this, the hydrodynamic boundary condition equations should also be modified. The cold fluid enters to the microchannel and leaves it after cooling its hot walls. Calculations are provided for a wide range of Knudsen number (Kn). The results are presented as the isotherms and streamlines, the values of slip velocity and temperature jump and the local and global profiles of velocity, temperature and Nusselt number. It is observed that LBM is able to simulate the mixed convection in a microchannel appropriately. It is claimed that the effects of buoyancy forces are important for Kn 0.05 they can be ignored. Moreover, the buoyancy forces make a rotational cell in the microchannel flow which generates the negative slip velocity at Kn=0.005.


The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of zoning and development in city planning in Nigeria, with the aid of relevant statutes and cases. In other to generate meaningful data, we generated primary data from journals, books and online comments while secondary data was gotten from staff of government development agencies via interviews.  With these staff we interviewed we generated data directly relating to the impact of zoning and development in city planning in Nigeria. Our findings revealed that the zoning of a city or state drives infrastructural development as well as human capital development in terms of creating jobs, attracting investors and increase internally generated revenue for the state. We recommended that government should decongest  the  existing cities from time to time by creating zones, districts, etc, as to drive the necessarily development. Keywords: Zoning, Development, NURP ACT 2004, Relevant Cases


A successful privatization effort has heralded Morocco's formal break with the dirigiste economic policies of the past in favor of the disengagement of the state from certain social and economic obligations. It remains to be seen whether the government's objectives and its overall program of financial and economic liberalization can be implemented in the face of entrenched resistance within its own rent-seeking bureaucracy. Between the years 1988 and 1993 there were over 2,300 privatization transactions in developing countries, yielding US$96 billion in revenues.l The bulk of this activity was centered in Latin America and the Caribbean, while the Middle East and North Africa, remained relatively timid and obstinately tied to the state-centrist economic policies of the past. Certain countries in the region, however, began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to shed this dependence on the public sector, foremost among them the Kingdom of Morocco. Spearheaded by King Hasan II, the new economic platform in Morocco called for an increased reliance on private entrepreneurship and investment as the engines of growth for the future. An integral part of these reforms was the privatization program, which aimed at ceding a large percentage of the state patrimony to local and foreign interests. The Casablanca stock exchange was earmarked by the privatization ministry as a crucial vehicle for the transparent and equitable divestment of state enterprises to a broad group of investors within Moroccan society. In return, the "financial deepening" of the economy as a whole was expected to spur the creation of the necessary legal, regulatory, and financial infrastructure to support a new vanguard of private firms. Some sections of the Moroccan government also hoped that the privatization program would help the stock exchange become a cost-effective means of financing the emerging companies of corporate Morocco. Privatization and the development of a capital market were thus perceived as complementary and mutually reinforcing. This article will discuss the economic, social and political implications of privatization in Morocco. It maintains that first, the political struggle within the government between different interests both opposed to and advocating privatization has had a significant effect on the pace, success and popular perception of the Moroccan divestment program; and second, that privatization has done little to empower new groups within the society or reduce the glaring disparity in wealth between various sectors of the population. It is too early to say whether privatization has complemented the larger process of economic liberalization and financial deepening of the economy. EARLY STAGES OF PRIVATIZATION On 11 December 1989, the political commitment to privatization was codified into law by a vote in the Moroccan parliament of 78 to 45 with three abstentions. The extent of the divestiture program, however, was, and still is, a hotly debated issue, as opinions abound on the optimal strategic mix between public and private sectors. An initial list of 75 enterprises and 37 hotels, slated for divestiture by the end of 1995, was later augmented by the addition of two more firms and an extension of the deadline to the end of 1998. Of the companies on the list, the firms in the energy and financial sectors represented the highest share of their sectors' value-added. The transport, communication and mining sectors, all dominated by the state, were conspicuously absent from that list. As of the summer of 1996, 25 companies, among them Shell Oil and Banque Marocaine du Commerce Exterieur (BMCE), and 17 hotels had been completely sold or partially divested, earning over 10.5 billion dirhams2 ($1.3 billion) in revenues for state coffers with an additional 2.2 billion dirhams ($270 million) in investment commitments.3 A familiar divestiture structure in Morocco, especially for larger state holdings, is the sale to a noyau dur, or hard core of shareholders, by direct negotiation or tender to provide management expertise and a possible capital injection. …


This article examines the contradictions inherent in blind women's appearance management. Based on an anthropological analysis of interviews with 40 blind women in Israel, the article argues that while serving as a valuable tool within stigma management, appearance management operates simultaneously as a site of rigorous discipline of the body in an effort to comply with feminine visual norms, and as a vehicle for the expression and reception of sensory pleasure. It argues for the significant role of blind women's appearance in negotiating normalcy and rejecting the normative, stigmatizing script written for them as disabled-blind-women. By studying the role of appearance in the lives of women who do not rely on sight as a central mode of perception, the article addresses the complicated position of blind women in visual culture and challenges the traditional ocular focus of the study of feminine identity and gender performance.


Outcrop analogues provide crucial insights into fracture networks that are difficult to attain from borehole data alone, especially in exploration areas where wells are sparse, and knowledge of the reservoir is minimal. However, the interpretation of geological data almost invariably involves human input, which introduces interpreter bias into the workflow. To reduce the uncertainty that is inherent in data derived from analogue outcrop studies, the degree to which different interpreters may affect the resultant outputs must be understood, and non-geological variations need to be constrained and mitigated. We apply this approach to quantify the variability in fracture network interpretations derived from satellite imagery, using a population of geologists of varying levels of expertise and experience. In this study we asked all participants to pick fractures from the same satellite image, at the same scale, under the same conditions, and then compared their results. We selected examples of different fractured carbonate units with varying degrees of image quality. Our analysis of the results focuses on the variations in topology, orientation, intensity and length within the resultant fracture network picked by each participant. We illustrate the implications of the variability with respect to DFN modeling and suggest strategies to standardize fracture interpretations to reduce picker-bias, by post-processing the picks using a topological correction and linkage algorithm. As expected, we see significant variability in the interpretative picks from different geologists. The effect of this variability on fracture modelling is addressed with respect to orientation, connectivity, and length-intensity scaling. The biggest variations were in how different people digitized closely spaced fractures (fracture arrays), and which fractures people chose to pick. End-member styles in the picking were either to pick many segmented co-aligned fractures, or to pick a single fracture spanning long distances. Different styles have a profound effect on inferred size-intensity scaling relations and can result in a three-fold range in picked fracture intensity within an area. By applying a topological and linkage correction to the picked data the variance in the measured parameters decreased. However, significant variations in bulk fracture properties still existed in the post-processed interpretations. Variability can be further mitigated by improved training of inexperienced pickers by fracture experts, or by expert-led implementation of machine learning algorithms. Understanding the use-case for a specific fracture study is important: the human aspect of uncertainty in fracture modelling can and should be minimized at all stages in the interpretation process.


Silicon photonics is expected to reduce size and cost of photonic devices and realize large scale photonic integrated circuits for telecom and datacom applications. In this paper, we demonstrate a compact wavelength tunable laser module using hybrid integrated semiconductor optical amplifier and silicon waveguide resonators. The power consumption of the laser module is 1 W to obtain +8 dBm fiber coupled power under the module temperature of 70°C. Such integration technology broadens design flexibility of silicon-based photonic devices and their applications.


The development of high throughput sequencing techniques has allowed for greater investigations into environmental microbial communities in this thesis. Using the Illumina Solexa sequencing technology we investigated prokaryote communities in replicate soil samples from four soil types: both the organic and mineral layers of two UK forest sites, an oak stand and a Corsican pine stand. Prokaryote diversity was assessed using the 16S SSU rRNA encoding genes from DNA and rRNA (reverse transcribed to cDNA) extracted simultaneously from the same sample. From a total of > 4.5 million sequence reads, only 0.6 % of the reads overlapped between RNA and DNA samples. Marked differences were seen between the distribution of Phyla from RNA and DNA. The community structure showed a small number of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) having high relative abundance and many OTUs being detected in low or single numbers, representing a 'rare biosphere' community composition. Taxonomy of RNA was further described at phylum and family level. Only 30 % of OTUs could be assigned taxonomy at phylum level and, of those, only 46 % at family or genus level (bootstrap support >70). At phylum level, the RNA samples were homogeneous across all soil types, dominated by β/γ-Proteobacteria, α-Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria. 7 phyla were detected in all samples and rarely detected phyla showed high diversity between samples. At family level the samples were much more heterogeneous, different phyla showed different family taxonomic distribution patterns, with Firmicutes and Actinobacteria the most diverse. We used principal component analysis comparing 27 environmental variables against the Shannon-Weaver diversity index of each soil sample. Each soil type was seen to have its own unique fingerprint of diversity. pH was observed as the most influential parameter to diversity, and C:N ratio, zirconium and zinc levels also considered important. 24 of the 27 parameters explained the majority of the variation in the diversity of the soil samples, concluding that prokaryote diversity in these soils is determined by complex interactions between a wide range of environmental conditions. Together this demonstrates that the prokaryote soil community are extremely diverse and dynamic.


Abstract Paediatric muscle disorders have significant implications for anaesthetists. Their effects extend beyond skeletal muscle and manifestations in other organ systems are frequently seen; in addition, adverse reactions to anaesthetic drugs may result in fatality if unrecognised or inadequately treated. In the past, it was thought that muscular dystrophies and myopathies put a patient at increased risk of malignant hyperthermia, however, the link between these conditions has largely been dismissed and other anaesthetic catastrophes, such as anaesthesia-induced rhabdomyolysis, are now recognised. Undiagnosed muscle disorders put children at risk of experiencing adverse reactions to anaesthesia. A high index of suspicion should be exercised during preoperative review to facilitate anaesthetic choices and guide intraoperative management.


In the recent past the state of the art in meteorology has been to produce weather forecasts from ensemble prediction systems. Forecast ensembles are generated from multiple runs of dynamical numerical weather prediction models, each with different initial and boundary conditions or parameterizations of the model.
However, ensemble forecasts are not able to catch the full uncertainty of numerical weather predictions and therefore often display biases and dispersion errors and thus are uncalibrated. To account for this problem, statistical postprocessing methods have been developed successfully. However, many state of the art methods are designed for a single weather quantity at a fixed location and for a fixed forecast horizon.
This work introduces extensions of two established univariate postprocessing methods, Bayesian model averaging (BMA) and Ensemble model output statistics (EMOS) to recover inter-variable and spatial dependencies from the original ensemble forecasts. For this purpose, a multi-stage procedure is proposed that can be applied for modeling dependence structures between different weather quantities as well as modeling spatial or temporal dependencies. This multi-stage procedure combines the postprocessing of the margins by the application of a univariate method as BMA or EMOS with a multivariate dependence structure, for example via a correlation matrix or via the multivariate rank structure of the original ensemble.
The multivariate postprocessing procedure that models inter-variable dependence employs the UWME 8-member forecast ensemble over the North West region of the US and the standard BMA method, resulting in predictive distributions with good multivariate calibration and sharpness.
The spatial postprocessing procedure is applied to temperature forecasts of the ECMWF 50-member ensemble over Germany. The procedure employs a spatially adaptive extension of EMOS, utilizing recently proposed methods for fast and accurate Bayesian estimation in a spatial setting. It yields excellent spatial univariate and multivariate calibration and sharpness. Further the method is able to capture the spatial structure of observed weather fields.
Both extensions improve calibration and sharpness in comparison to the raw ensemble and to the respective standard univariate postprocessing methods.


Abstract The Caune de l'Arago Cave (southern France) has yielded one of the best preserved and best documented sedimentary successions of the European Middle Pleistocene (Oxygen Isotopic Stages 14 to 12). Herbivorous ungulates (horse, reindeer, red deer, fallow deer, bison, musk ox, argali, and tahr) are well represented in the three major stratigraphic units CM1, CM2, and CM3. CM1 and CM3 correspond to cold and dry climate and CM2 represents temperate and humid environmental conditions. Dental microwear and mesowear analyses were performed for the ungulates from CM1–3 to test whether these methods of dental wear evaluation were suitable for detecting climate-driven changes in the dietary resources of the Arago ungulate community. We found that both dental mesowear and microwear indicate dietary traits and their relationship to climatic conditions as reflected by vegetation cover and community structure. In all units, even if some species seem to share habitats or resources, it appears that the overlap in their feeding ecology is very low. The CM1 and CM3 units, where pollen analysis indicates that the climate was cold and dry, show the lowest diversity in dietary traits. The CM2, where climate is known to be more temperate and humid, the spectrum of dietary traits is large—grazers, browsers, and mixed feeders are present.


This study investigates potential impacts connected to the removal of manganese nodules on deepsea
sediment biogeochemistry and benthic microbial communities. The study site is located in the
DISCOL Experimental Area (DEA) in the Peru Basin where a large scale disturbance experiment has
been carried out in 1989. Investigations were performed during RV SONNE cruise SO242/2 in Sep.
2015 in the framework of the JPI Oceans programme 'Ecological Aspects of deep sea mining'. The
focus of the work presented here is on effects on the community structure, activity, and functions of
benthic microorganisms. Sediment cores and manganese nodules were sampled in different disturbed
and undisturbed areas. Overall, four microhabitats within the initial DISCOL disturbance tracks, a
recent disturbance track created by an epibenthic sledge, and reference areas outside the DEA were
investigated. Samples for laboratory incubations and analyses were taken with ROV and multicorer
while fluxes were studied in situ with autonomous benthic chamber and micro profiler systems.
Sediments were characterized by their colour, phytopigments, particulate carbon and nitrogen
contents. The microbial activities were evaluated on the basis of diffusive oxygen fluxes, extracellular
enzymatic activities, and uptake of radiolabelled compounds (i.e. bicarbonate and leucine). Microbial
communities and diversities were characterized via 16S rRNA Illumina tag sequencing.
Our data show that areas, where the simulated mining activity removed the reactive surface layer
were most affected, even after 26 years. Most microbial and biogeochemical characteristics at these
sites still resemble conditions of deeper sediment layers, with strongly reduced microbial abundances,
activities of extracellular enzymes involved in organic matter degradation, respiration rates, and
inorganic carbon fixation rates. A significant impact was also observed for the bacterial and archaeal
community structure and diversity that differed considerably from communities found at reference sites.
Similar effects were also identified at another microhabitat, where surface sediments were still present
but largely reworked into ripple-like structures. Also here microbial and biogeochemical characteristics
were more similar to subsurface layers than to undisturbed sites.
We conclude that deep-sea mining reduces microbial activities, and changes their community
structure and consequently their function in manganese nodule ecosystems for decades. Differences
between microhabitats indicate that strong sediment redistribution and especially the loss of the
surface layer represent the strongest impacts. Since microbes represent the basis of a multi-trophic
food web, higher trophic levels and larger organisms may also be indirectly affected by the observed
changes.


We create market-based measures from options data to predict changes in REIT capital structure. REIT capital structure differs from that of typical listed firms: REITs have high leverage ratios of about 50 percent, their use of short-term debt is higher and more volatile, and debt issuance and reduction are much higher and more volatile than the typical Compustat universe. Given that REITs have high leverage and a volatile capital structure, predicting REIT capital structure change should be valuable. We do so using market-based measures which update at higher frequency than traditional accounting characteristics.Realized volatility and forward-looking risk expectations from option prices are significant predictors of both debt and equity issuance in REITs. Realized volatility is also a significant predictor of net changes in REIT leverage. Consistent with Borochin and Yang (2015), we find that REITs with higher historical volatility or fewer option contracts are less likely to increase leverage in the following quarter. Increases in the perception of REIT equity risk, measured by the spread between implied and realized volatilities, are negatively associated with equity issuance. The spread between call and put volatilities, a measure of expected REIT performance, is correlated with future debt issuance. Our explanation for these behaviors is that REIT managers use market information about risk as an input into their capital structure decisions.


Cultural influences impact on all our lives and this is no less true for people with Down syndrome. In this book we describe various cultural responses to disability; we look at families and individuals with Down syndrome from a cross-cultural perspective and how best they can be supported, and we examine the form and functions of service systems that are culturally sensitive and appropriate. Within each of these three main sections, a particular topic is spotlighted to illustrate the practical implications of the pointsmade. The content particularly addresses the needs of families with people with Down syndrome who are adults. Our aim is to make readers better informed about the life circumstances and experiences of people with Down syndrome and of their families throughout the world and not just within their own culture. We emphasise the need for sensitivity to the ways in which different cultures can respond to a person with Downsyndrome and for greater tolerance of the different aspirations which families and communities have for these people. We suggest new ways of assisting families to provide better opportunities for these young people to lead more fulfilled lives, wherever in the world they live. These need not entail a great deal of money but they do require persons willing to act as personal supporters. We propose means of finding such individuals. Finallywe urge a reappraisal of the type and range of services that are provided to people with Down syndrome so that their aspirations for friendships, employment and family life receive attention. However, these new forms of support services will only become fully successful when society's attitude to disability is transformed from primarily a medical problem to a social issue: from a specialist concern to a community focus and froma charitable ethos to one built on a shared humanity.


Dasyurus is monœstrous and has one breeding season a year, which begins at the end of May or early in June and lasts into the first fortnight in August (i.e. it extends over the winter months). The male does not appear to experience a marked rutting season. Copulation is similar to that of Didelphys (Selenka), and the sperms can remain alive in the Fallopian tubes for at least two weeks. Anœtrus.--The anœstral period lasts more than half the year. Pro-œstrus.--Pro-œstrus appears to extend over a varying period of from four to twelve days. During this time, the lips of the cloaca become swollen, the pouch enlarges somewhat and becomes slightly tumid and moist, and the Graafian follicles increase in size and become vesicular. The uterine mucosa increases in thickness and becomes more vascular, its glands lengthen and become convoluted and the uterine epithelium also tends to thicken. Œstrus.--Œstrus lasts usually for one or two days and is the period during which copulation occurs. The changes already initiated during pro-oestrus in the various parts of the reproductive system are continued without interruption. Post-œstrus.--Post-œstrus, which term we employ to designate the period following œstrus and terminated by ovulation, occupies as a rule about five or six days. The tumidity of the cloacal lips disappears, but the changes in the pouch and uterus still continue, not, however, very actively. In the ovary (1) the ova give off the first polar body and the spindle for the second meiotic division is formed. (2) The follicles attain maturity and ultimately rupture, setting free the ova. Ovulation.--Ovulation marks the end of this period and occurs generally about five or six days after cestrus. It is spontaneous and independent of copulation and is remarkable because of the large number of ova liberated. Ovulation is succeeded (a) by pregnancy or (b) by pseudo-pregnancy. Pregnancy.--Fertilisation is effected in the upper part of the Fallopian tube and the second polar body is there given off. As a rule more young are born than can possibly survive owing to the limited accommodation in the pouch. The gestation period is not less than eight and not more than fourteen days, but the interval between copulation and birth is usually considerably longer. Corpora lutea are formed and persist throughout the greater part of the time that the animal is lactating. Nursing Period.--This period may be divided into two phases. (1) Period of Fixation.--A period, lasting for seven or eight weeks, during which the young are firmly attached to the teats. (2) Free Period.--A period of eight or nine weeks when the young are free in the pouch but dependent on the mother for food. After this time the various organs gradually return to a state of rest. Pseudo-pregnancy.--We have applied this term to the period following ovulation iu cases where the ova have failed to develop, because of the occurrence in it of a series of changes in the reproductive organs essentially identical with those met with in pregnant females. Corpora lutea are formed in the ovaries which are identical with those in the pregnant female. The pouch enlarges, and its sweat and sebaceous glands reach a state of hypertrophy and functional activity comparable to that in the pregnant female. The mammary glands also enlarge and reach a state of development equal to that in a female thirty-six hours after parturition. The uteri enlarge and become vascular, often to a marked degree. The uterine mucosa undergoes a series of changes, progressive, regressive and regenerative. Metœstrus.--This is an indefinite period during which the whole of the reproductive organs return to a state of rest.


Global trade can give rise to new economic possibilities in developing regions and open a boundless world of opportunity for design and production. The following pages contain a composite map of the supply chains behind electronics manufacturing. Constructed by bringing together the routes of consumer electronics products at different stages of assembly, this map provides an overview of the network traveled in global manufacturing. As production has become increasingly complex, actors have emerged to take advantage of friction inherent in supply lines. Each point and pathway shown on the map is a site for the potential proliferation of transnational conflict. The products we consume traverse convoluted pathways of production--pathways put at risk by questionable practices that bring profits at the expense of working conditions, regional stability, and the environment. As seen in this supply chain, the smooth shells that characterize electronic objects can also be cracked by the jagged realities entailed in their construction. This map highlights some of actors who benefit from the increasing complexity of transnational production. Far flung suppliers in East Asia subcontract subassemblies to agents who mitigate economic prices at the cost of poor working conditions and reduced oversight. African militias make fortunes through regimes of control and violence built from precious deposits of rare minerals. Waterways and landscapes become contaminated by the rapid development of global industry, without regard for local consequences. Supply chains for human trafficking overlap with the production pathways that shape the products of new digital lifestyles. These violations lend themselves to different forms of resistance. Fair trade movements address the demands that force individuals into inequality--for example, the addiopizzo movement rejects the influence of the Mafia in Italian production. Organized crime and unethical business practices can by unraveled by limiting the routes they manipulate to reach consumers; in one case new legislation attempts to limit involvement in the trade of conflict minerals in the Congo and stem the violence of the regimes that control them. By mapping supply chains these flows of illicit behavior can be investigated, identified, and interrogated. Scholars, journalists, educators, and lawmakers are able to assemble source data to visualize the geographies and communities at stake in this process. This brings the politics of logistics to a scale that can reveal the space for resistance. Growing numbers of web projects develop discourses from this mode of comprehension. Projects like Sourcemap (http://www.sourcemap.com) and Greenmap (http:// www.greenmap.com) provide tools for assembly with the awareness that global pathways are open to reassembly; they are constantly rewritten and reformed. …


There is a need for outcome measurement tools which are able to provide accurate and reliable information regarding the efficiency and efficacy of therapeutic intervention of soft tissue injury e.g. ligament tear. Electrical activity within the body tissues has been shown to be influenced by the tissue state, and following injury, bioelectric changes have been demonstrated for example in bone healing and nerve regeneration. This project considers the relationship between the electrical potentials recorded from the skin surface and clinical recovery following a soft tissue lesion. The measurement of the skin potential is not new but the application and approach used is novel in that a non invasive differential skin surface potential is used instead of the traditional and invasive transcutaneous potential. The differential potential was initially investigated in non injured subjects in order to gain an understanding of its character and behaviour. Simultaneous monitoring of environmental, physiological and psychological factors enabled evaluation of their influence on the generation mechanisms. In order to carry out the work, specialist instrumentation was designed and computer software developed. Injured subjects were recruited during two test series and the results compared with those obtained from the non-injured subjects. Differences in potential profiles were marked on occasions. However a significant percentage of injured subjects presented a profile which was very similar to the non injured subject potentials. The failure to demonstrate consistent differences between potentials from the groups may reflect the lability of tissue potentials or that their behaviour is not purely related to local tissue state. Psychological factors were shown to exert influences on the potentials and differences in environmental and physiological conditions may also be responsible for the variations seen. The refinement of the test apparatus and protocol which is discussed may facilitate more discriminative data collection.


Background: Second generation cephalosporins (CFPs) are more active in the treatment of acute pyelonephritis during pregnancy but their cost is considerably higher than their predecessors. Cefuroxime, a second generation CFP with oral and parenteral presentations, might offer significant advantages and become a first choice antimicrobial in this setting. Aim: To compare the efficacy, safety and cost of cefuroxime and cephradine in the treatment of acute pyelonephritis in pregnancy. Patients and methods: Hospitalized women with 12 to 34 weeks of pregnancy, with clinical and bacteriological diagnosis of acute pyelonephritis, were randomly assigned to receive cefuroxime (Curocef (r), GlaxoWellcome) 750 mg t.i.d, i.v or cephradine 1 g q.i.d., i.v. If the isolated organism was resistant to the assigned drug the patient was excluded. Once patients were afebrile, they were switched to an oral form of the same antimicrobial. They were discharged according to the clinical status and treated for a total of 14 days. Laboratory tests, including urine culture were requested during controls and at the end of follow-up at 28 days. Results: One hundred and one patients were randomized: 49 to receive cephradine and 52 to receive cefuroxime. Patients in the cefuroxime group had fewer febrile days (mean 1.7 vs 2.2, p<0.05), faster clinical recovery (mean 2.7 vs 3.1 days, p<0.05), a higher rate of bacteriological cure at 28 days (78.8% and 59.2%, p<0.05) and lower rate of failure (21.2% vs 40.8 % p<0.05). The rate of resistance of isolated uropathogens was l4% to cephradine and 1% to cefuroxime. Conclusions: Cefuroxime can be considered as a first choice option in the treatment of acute pyelonephritis during pregnancy due to its tolerance, microbiological activity and efficacy. (Rev Med Chile 2000; 128: 749-57).


In this paper we investigate how much various classes of Web spam features, some requiring very high computational effort, add to the classification accuracy. We realize that advances in machine learning, an area that has received less attention in the adversarial IR community, yields more improvement than new features and result in low cost yet accurate spam filters. Our original contributions are as follows:
 • We collect and handle a large number of features based on recent advances in Web spam filtering.
 • We show that machine learning techniques including ensemble selection, LogitBoost and Random Forest significantly improve accuracy.
 • We conclude that, with appropriate learning techniques, a small and computationally inexpensive feature subset outperforms all previous results published so far on our data set and can only slightly be further improved by computationally expensive features.
 • We test our method on two major publicly available data sets, the Web Spam Challenge 2008 data set WEB-SPAM-UK2007 and the ECML/PKDD Discovery Challenge data set DC2010.
 Our classifier ensemble reaches an improvement of 5% in AUC over the Web Spam Challenge 2008 best result; more importantly our improvement is 3.5% based solely on less than 100 inexpensive content features and 5% if a small vocabulary bag of words representation is included. For DC2010 we improve over the best achieved NDCG for spam by 7.5% and over 5% by using inexpensive content features and a small bag of words representation.


Compared with model architectures, the training process, which is also crucial to the success of detectors, has received relatively less attention in object detection. In this work, we carefully revisit the standard training practice of detectors, and find that the detection performance is often limited by the imbalance during the training process, which generally consists in three levels - sample level, feature level, and objective level. To mitigate the adverse effects caused thereby, we propose Libra R-CNN, a simple but effective framework towards balanced learning for object detection. It integrates three novel components: IoU-balanced sampling, balanced feature pyramid, and balanced L1 loss, respectively for reducing the imbalance at sample, feature, and objective level. Benefitted from the overall balanced design, Libra R-CNN significantly improves the detection performance. Without bells and whistles, it achieves 2.5 points and 2.0 points higher Average Precision (AP) than FPN Faster R-CNN and RetinaNet respectively on MSCOCO.


In 1975, in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, the Court ruled that professionals were not exempt from the antitrust laws, although in footnote 17 it stated that antitrust might apply differently to the professions. Footnote 17 notwithstanding, the court aggressively applied antitrust to restraints among professions without special consideration. In cases concerning restraints on professional advertising decided under the First Amendment, however, the Court has prominently considered the allegedly special nature of professional markets. In California Dental Advertising v. FTC, the Court's first antitrust case to consider restraints on professional advertising, a narrow majority emphasized that professional restraints required a more searching analysis than the Court of Appeals gave them. Although the Court explicitly recognized for the first time the appropriateness of applying "truncated" Rule of Reason analysis to certain restraints among competitors without examining the effect of the restraint or of the competitors' market power, the Court remanded for an examination of the plausible efficiency justifications the dentists had raised. This article shows that a large empirical literature already provides the evidence that the Court sought that restraining professional advertising raises prices without improving quality.


Most of the Romanian ski tracks have been equipped in the mountain areas, at altitudes lower than 1500 m, in the proximity of human areas. The most relevant indicator of the development of ski lands in Romania is given by the total length of the ski tracks which, in 2010, was 168 km. Without any further references to other constituents of the tourism infrastructure from this field, one can say that the Romanian ski area is characterised by an insufficient development of ski tracks. In the Romanian Carpathians, the average density of the ski tracks is about 2 m/km, with important variations in different mountain areas. The most equipped and developed ski domain from Romania (26% from the total length of the ski tracks) is located in the Curvature Carpathians area, in the territory of Prahova and Brasov counties. The development of this area was initiated and supported during the Communist regime through the layout of several mountain resorts of national importance within which the length of the ski tracks is noticeable. The main factor that influenced the development of the ski lands in this area is related to the proximity of the capital city, but also of several important towns, such as Brasov, Ploiesti and Pitesti that have provided the resorts with a large and constant flux of tourists. In the years to come, the development prospects of this field are considerable taking into account the growing interest shown by the Romanian tourists in the practice of winter sports, but also the availability of the local authorities towards earning European funds in order to lay out new ski tracks equipped at European standards


Renal disease in Australia is increasing at an alarming rate. Many of the patients presenting with renal failure are from rural and remote areas where renal and other health care services are minimal. What services are available tend to be predominantly managed by nurses because of the way that renal services are organised in regional areas. Consequently, there is an assumption that renal nurses are autonomous in their practice and accountable for the decisions they make. The purpose of this study was to explore these assumptions within the bounds and context of a regional renal unit. The aim of the study was to increase nurses' awareness about their responsibility when taking on expanded nursing roles in terms of their decision-making ability, and capacity, and what this means in terms of accountability.
Critical ethnography was adopted as the methodology to explore the nature of decision-making in the renal unit context. Particular emphasis was placed on how nurses used their knowledge during daily routine practice. Carspecken's (1996) five-stage method of critical ethnography incorporated periods of prolonged participant-observation, structured and unstructured interviews and documentation review. Concepts from Giddens' (1984) structuration theory provided a theoretical framework that sensitised the researcher to certain 'aspects of nursing practice' to guide data collection and analysis. These, in turn, provided major chapter headings for the thesis: decision-making across time-space encounters (Contextuality), the rules and resources (Social Structures) available for decision-makers and the nurses' ability and skills (Knowledgeability). In addition, Giddens (1984) 'Dialectic of Control' was threaded throughout the finding chapters as a major theme that addressed the nurses' capacity (power and control) to make and implement decisions. Collectively the researcher and participants gained new insights about decision-making practices, during reflection and dialogue, one learning from the other. It was assumed that if, and when, decision-making concerns were recognised, the nurses themselves could possibly make changes to their practice with the aim of enhancing patient outcomes.
Time-space played an important factor in controlling nurses' decision-making, but this was often in complex and subtle ways. Encounters across time-space often controlled who made decisions and when. This alternating decision-making behaviour caused conflict and confusion that, at times, undermined some nurses' authority and overall responsibility as decision makers. Even though many nurses spoke about being autonomous decision makers, most unknowingly followed established routines and practices that was not always conducive to best-practice principles. Social structures, the rules and resources, could enable and constrain decision-making within this context. The rules that nurses ascribed to were not always known at a discursive level, therefore, rationale could not always be given for the decisions they made. When rules could be spoken about, not all the nurses followed them. Reasons for breaching unit rules varied such as out-dated rules or policies, limited resources that required 'short-cuts' and, at times, no recognition that rules were being broken. Knowing the rules and prescribing to routine practices provided a sense of safety as the nurses made decisions. This did not necessarily mean that best decisions were being made but gave a presentation that the decisions being made were satisfactory. Knowledgeability about the rules and resources available to nurses, and decision-making encounters across time-space, appeared to be a key feature that enabled the nurses to exercise their dialectic of control. When a nurse had, or perceived to have, control over the decisions they made, this, in turn, facilitated a sense of "being autonomous". Despite this shared perception of being in control, several nurses remained frustrated and constrained by bureaucratic policies and hierarchical structures. However, the nurses, too, could create these constraints, knowingly or unknowingly, as they went about their day.
Recommendations resulting from these findings include that further research is required on certain aspects of decision-making such as the role emotions play when making decisions, how ethical issues embedded in routine practice are recognised, and how risk and uncertainty are acknowledged and then managed. When nurses do not question their decision-making roles, they can become constrained in their decision-making capacity and ability. Without deliberate reflection aspects that control nurses' decision-making may never be exposed, thus changed. The implications of this study are central for both patient outcomes and the professional development of nursing.


Leaf rust of wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) caused by the fungus Puccinia triticina (formerly P. recondita f. sp. tritici ), is one of the most important foliar diseases of this crop. Lr37 rust resistance gene, which confers resistance in wheat against leaf rust, was introgressed into cultivated wheat from Aegilops ventricosa Tausch. Rust races with virulence to Lr37 have been identified in different countries, but it still provides resistance to a wide range of races and is useful in combination with other resistance genes. There are no reports about the presence, frequency and origin of Lr37 in Argentinean wheat cultivars. In this work, we analyzed 88 registered Argentinean wheat cultivars developed by different breeding companies and institutions during the last 15 years by means of a molecular marker which is diagnostic of the 2NS-2AS translocation which carries Lr37 . Only 4 cultivars showed the amplification product associated with this chromosome fragment. These four cultivars which carry the translocated 2NS-2AS chromosome were registered by the same breeding company during the last seven years and all of them have European germplasm in their genealogy. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report of the presence of Lr37 in registered South American cultivars.


This dissertation studies topics in macro-finance with a focus on economic uncertainty. The first chapter (Government Debt and Risk Premia) studies the implications of government debt for asset prices. I document a set of new facts that government debt is related to risk premia in various asset markets. First, the debt-to-GDP ratio positively predicts excess stock returns. The forecast power is compelling, and it outperforms many popular predictors. Second, higher debt-to-GDP ratio is correlated with higher credit risk premia in both corporate bond excess returns and yield spreads. Third, higher debt-to-GDP ratio is associated with lower real risk-free rate. Fourth, higher debt-to-GDP ratio predicts lower average returns on government debt. Expected return variation contributes to a sizable amount of the volatility of the debt-to-GDP ratio. Fifth, debt-to-GDP ratio positively comoves with fiscal policy uncertainty. Fiscal uncertainty also has direct effects on the asset prices consistent with the effect of debt-to-GDP ratio. I rationalize these empirical findings in a general equilibrium model featuring recursive preferences, endogenous growth, and time-varying fiscal uncertainty. In the model, the tax risk premium is sizable and its time variation is driven by fiscal uncertainty. Furthermore, the model generates an endogenous positive relationship between the debt-to-GDP ratio and fiscal uncertainty: fiscal uncertainty increases debt valuation through discount rate channel whereas higher debt conversely raises uncertainty in future fiscal consolidations. In the second chapter (Volatility Risk Pass-Through), we estimate and explain the international transmission of output volatility shocks to both currencies and international quantity dynamics. We produce novel empirical evidence on the relevance of output volatility (vol) shocks for both currency and international quantity dynamics. Focusing on G-17 countries, we document several facts: (1) consumption and output vols are imperfectly correlated within countries; (2) across countries, consumption vol is more correlated than output vol; (3) the pass-through of relative output vol shocks onto relative consumption vol is moderate, especially if the uncertainty shocks originate from small countries; and (4) consumption differentials vol and exchange rate vol are disconnected, in contrast to the perfect correlation implied by a model of perfect risksharing with time-additive preferences. We rationalize these findings in a frictionless model with multiple goods and recursive preferences featuring a novel-and-rich risk-sharing of vol shocks. The third chapter (Volatility, Intermediaries, and Exchange Rates) studies how financial market volatility drives exchange rates through the risk management practice of financial intermediaries. We build a model in which the major participants in the international financial market are levered intermediaries subject to Valueat-Risk constraints. Higher portfolio volatility translates into tighter funding conditions and increased marginal value of wealth. Thus, foreign currency is expected to appreciate. Our model can resolve the BackusSmith puzzle, the forward premium puzzle, and the exchange rate volatility puzzle quantitatively. Our empirical test verifies two implications of the model that both financial market volatility and funding condition measurement have predictive power on exchange rates. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2437 Graduate Group Economics First Advisor Amir Yaron Subject Categories Economics | Finance and Financial Management This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2437 ESSAYS ON ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY AND MACRO-FINANCE


In 2016, Pakistan introduced a five-year plan to repeal the Frontier Crimes Regulation of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and integrate the region into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. The political conflict between mashar (elders), who are advantaged by the law, and kashar (youth), who are disadvantaged by it, has been an obstacle to reform. This article also demonstrates that this conflict has been an endemic feature of the law since its establishment by British authorities in 1901.


The results of geological, geomorphic and hydrogeological research indicate spatially variable neotectonic activity of the Ukrainian part of the Roztocze region. This activity is confirmed by analysis of some geometric and morphometric coefficients (especially drainage basin elongation ratio, drainage basin circulatory ratio, drainage basin shape and lemniscate coefficient), which were calculated for 1646 drainage areas of the 3rd to 6th order, and morphometric linear coefficients (mountain-front sinuosity index and valley floor width-valley height ratio coefficient), which characterise the fault scarps. The south-western margin of the Rava Roztocze and Yaniv Roztocze regions, following NW-SE-trending faults, belongs to structures of the 1st or 2nd class of relative tectonic activity. On the other hand, in the north-eastern marginal zone in the Ukrainian part of the Roztocze region, a relatively active segment comprised between Maheriv and Zhashkiv shows a characteristic NW-SE orientation of valleys, controlled by a network of secondary sub-parallel faults. In the southern part of the analysed area, the Stavchanka River drainage basin related to the NW-striking fault zone, and the sub-parallel edge of the zone of the Vereshytsia-upper Mlynivka transverse depression are relatively active. Some relatively inactive areas are those of smaller drainage basins of the 3rd to 6th order, located within the zone of the main watershed between the Rata and Lubaczowka rivers in the Rava Roztocze region and the Zubra and Poltva rivers in the Lviv Roztocze region.


When studying for a mathematics degree, it has been shown students have great difficulty working with proof (Moore, 1994). Yet, to date, there has been surprisingly little research into how we could improve the way students study mathematical proofs. Furthermore, there is relatively less research on students' proof comprehension skills when compared with that of their proof construction skills (Ramos and Inglis, 2009).

The aim of this thesis was therefore to build upon the existing proof comprehension literature to determine methods of improving undergraduate proof comprehension. Previously, text based manipulations (e.g. Leron, 1985; Rowland, 2001; Alcock, 2009a) have been tested as a way of improving proof comprehension but these have often not been as successful as we would have liked. However, an alternative method, called self-explanation training, has been shown to be successful at improving comprehension of texts in other fields (Chi et al., 1989; Wong et al., 2002; Rittle-Johnson, 2006; Ainsworth and Burcham, 2007).

This thesis reports three studies that investigate the effects of self-explanation training on proof comprehension. The first study confirmed the findings of previous self-explanation training research in other fields. Students in the study who received the self-explanation training showed a significantly greater understanding of the proof text compared to that of a control group.

Study 2 used eye-tracking analysis to show that self-explanation training actually changed the way students in the study read proofs; they concentrated harder on the proof (as measured by mean fixation durations), and made more between-line transitions.

The final study revealed that self-explanation training can be implemented into a genuine pedagogical setting with relative ease and also showed the positive effects on proof comprehension last for a longer term of three weeks.

From the findings of the research reported in this thesis it can be concluded that many students who participated in these studies appeared to have the knowledge required to understand proofs, it is perhaps they just needed some guidance on how to apply their knowledge. Self-explanation training appears to do this as it significantly improved proof comprehension in the short-term as well as offering longer-term benefits. More research will be needed to confirm these findings, given that the studies here involved participants from only one UK university on what would be considered as typical mathematics degree courses for the UK. However, these findings are promising and provide the foundation for improvements in undergraduate proof comprehension.


This article presents the devising, development, prototyping and assessment of a wearable arm-ECG sensor system (WAMECG1) for long-term non-invasive heart rhythm monitoring, and functionalities for acquiring, storing, visualizing and transmitting high-quality far-field electrocardiographic signals. The system integrates the main building blocks present in a typical ECG monitoring device such as the skin surface electrodes, front-end amplifiers, analog and digital signal conditioning filters, flash memory and wireless communication capability. These are integrated into a comfortable, easy to wear, and ergonomically designed arm-band ECG sensor system which can acquire a bipolar ECG signal from the upper arm of the user over a period of 72 h. The small-amplitude bipolar arm-ECG signal is sensed by a reusable, long-lasting, Ag–AgCl based dry electrode pair, then digitized using a programmable sampling rate in the range of 125 to 500 Hz and transmitted via Wi-Fi. The prototype comparative performance assessment results showed a cross-correlation value of 99.7% and an error of less than 0.75% when compared to a reference high-resolution medical-grade ECG system. Also, the quality of the recorded far-field bipolar arm-ECG signal was validated in a pilot trial with volunteer subjects from within the research team, by wearing the prototype device while: (a) resting in a chair; and (b) doing minor physical activities. The R-peak detection average sensibilities were 99.66% and 94.64%, while the positive predictive values achieved 99.1% and 92.68%, respectively. Without using any additional algorithm for signal enhancement, the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values were 21.71 and 18.25 for physical activity conditions (a) and (b) respectively. Therefore, the performance assessment results suggest that the wearable arm-band prototype device is a suitable, self-contained, unobtrusive platform for comfortable cardiac electrical activity and heart rhythm logging and monitoring.


ABSTRACT This study investigates the challenges of implementing and using electronic payments in Ghana. In addition, it also attempts to assess the degree of usage of card based payments systems i.e e-zwich, debit and credit cards. Several electronic payment systems have been introduced into the country in recent times with the most significant being e-zwich smart card payment system, a national domestic smart card payment system meant to reduce the large amount of cash held outside the banking system. Despite the progress made, it is estimated that only 20% of the population have bank accounts and 90% of the cash issued by the Bank of Ghana is still held by the non-bank public The study uses primary data collected through deep interviews with Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GHIPSS), the company in charge of the e-zwich payment system in Ghana and senior officials of some of the major banks in Ghana. Questionnaires were also distributed to shops and individuals that use e-zwich and debit cards. The implementation of e-zwich although have challenges is a step in the right direction for national development. The study revealed also that e-zwich has the potential to reduce the unbanked in Ghana and is beginning to show some good signs in terms of some good initiatives by GHIPSS. However, more education of the public and the banks is needed to realise its full potential.