The legal debate over state sovereign immunity has persisted practically since the founding. Under the sovereign immunity doctrine, states cannot be sued without their consent even for violations of the Constitution or federal law. Sovereign immunity, thus, kindles the lasting tension between the supposed supremacy of federal law and the separate sovereignty of the states. Since its initial recognition of state sovereign immunity in Hans v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court has recognized several exceptions to the doctrine designed to secure state compliance with federal law. One such exception is the Ex Parte Young doctrine. In Ex Parte Young, the Court announced that individual state citizens could bring suit against state officers in federal court for an ongoing violation of federal law. In recent decades, however, the Supreme Court has vastly expanded the bar of sovereign immunity as an integral part of the "federalist revival" begun by the Rehnquist Court. The Court recently has incorporated the "anti-commandeering" principles from parallel federalism cases into its sovereign immunity jurisprudence, resulting in a significant narrowing of federal judicial power to hear claims against the states. In Virginia v. Reinhard, the Fourth Circuit confronted a question of first impression about the applicability of the Ex Parte Young exception. That case presented the issue of whether a state administrative agency could bring suit in federal court against another state agency to secure its compliance with federal law. In holding that the agency could not bring suit under Ex Parte Young, the Court of Appeals issued a decision with major implications for administrative law and how state agencies may enforce state compliance with federal regulatory schemes. This paper ultimately concludes that Reinhard merely constitutes a natural extension of the sound theoretical principles announced in the Supreme Court's most recent sovereign immunity cases. Moreover, the practical consequences for state agency enforcement of federal regulatory schemes will be minimal because of the remaining avenues available for enforcing federal rights.


Deformable models are by their formulation able to solve the surface extraction problem from noisy volumetric image data encountered commonly in medical image analysis. However, this ability is shadowed by the fact that the minimization problem formulated is difficult to solve globally. Constrained global solutions are needed, if the amount of noise is substantial. This paper presents a new optimization strategy for deformable surface meshes based on real coded genetic algorithms. Real coded genetic algorithms are favored over binary coded ones because they can more efficiently be adapted to the particular problem domain. Experiments with synthetic images are performed. These demonstrate that the applied deformable model is able extract a surface from noisy volumetric image. Also the superiority of the proposed approach compared to a greedy minimization with multiple initializations is demonstrated.


Vax1 and Vax2 have been implicated in eye development and the closure of the choroid fissure in mice and zebrafish. We sequenced the coding exons of VAX1 and VAX2 in 70 patients with anophthalmia/microphthalmia (A/M). In VAX1, we observed homozygosity for two successive nucleotide substitutions c.453G>A and c.454C>A, predicting p.Arg152Ser, in a proband of Egyptian origin with microphthalmia, small optic nerves, cleft lip/palate, and corpus callosum agenesis. This mutation affects an invariant residue in the homeodomain of VAX1 and was absent from 96 Egyptian controls. It is likely that the mutation results in a loss of function, as the mutation results in a phenotype similar to the Vax1 homozygous null mouse. We did not identify any mutations in VAX2. This is the first description of a phenotype associated with a VAX1 mutation in humans and establishes VAX1 as a new causative gene for A/M. Hum Mutat 33:364–368, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


This article provides the first comprehensive examination of the Montana Supreme Court's unique writ of supervisory control, from its creation as a way of controlling one corrupt judge during the War of the Copper Kings to the current justices' recent disagreements, and more recent agreements, over its use. Part II of the article examines the fascinating historical background of the Court's 1900 decision in State ex rel. Whiteside decision and its origins in one of America's great political scandals: the openly corrupt election of "copper king" William Andrews Clark to the U.S. Senate in 1899. This Part examines the role of the plaintiff, state Senator Fred Whiteside, in exposing Clark's efforts to bribe his way into the Senate, and how Chief Justice Theodore Brantly used Whiteside's case to take the Court further than any previous American court had gone in exercising a state supreme court's constitutional power to supervise lower courts. Part III of this article examines the Whiteside decision in the context of traditional nineteenth-century legal views regarding the authority of a jurisdiction's highest court to review the actions of lower courts via direct appeal, on the one hand, and through prerogative, or extraordinary, writs on the other. This part begins with an overview of the broad power of "superintending control," which was exercised by the court of King's Bench in England over common law courts. Unlike the court of King's Bench, American courts came to view superintending control as "a peculiar" power only to be exercised under extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, the Montana Supreme Court's creation and frequent use of a powerful but previously unknown supervisory writ constitutes the most forceful assertion of the power of superintending control of any American court.Part IV of this article establishes that the reason the Court strongly asserted this power when it did was to respond to Montana's pervasive corruption. In particular, the writ was created to control a district judge in Butte, William Clancy, who had been "bought and paid for" by one copper king, and whose biased rulings in his patron's favor were wreaking financial havoc on competing mining operations. Before Whiteside, the Court's opinions reveal increasing frustration because jurisdictional limits on direct appeals and the traditional prerogative writs prevented the Court from responding in a timely way to Clancy's discretionary pretrial rulings. As that frustration built, the honesty of the Supreme Court justices themselves was called into question during the U.S. Senate investigation into William Clark's election. A short while after that embarrassing experience, the Court invented a powerful new method of discretionary judicial review, which it began using almost exclusively to supervise the crooked Butte judge.Part V of this article examines the development of the writ of supervisory control over the last century until Montana's adoption of a new Constitution in 1972. At times over the decades before the 1972 constitutional convention the Court broadened the writ's use, at other times the Court tried to constrict it, and at still others justices questioned the writ's very legitimacy, coming within one vote of abolishing the writ in the 1950s.Part VI then examines how, seven decades after the writ's creation, the lingering debate about its legitimacy should have been silenced by adoption of the 1972 Constitution. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention rejected the Judiciary Committee's proposal to abolish the Supreme Court's power of supervisory control. Instead, the judiciary article they adopted strengthened those powers by eliminating any ability of the legislature to limit the Court's supervisory jurisdiction. Part VII then analyzes the court's jurisprudence concerning the writ after adoption of the new Constitution. In particular, this part will explains how in the 1980s and 1990s the Court confused its standards for exercising supervisory control over a lower court with its much more restrictive standards for exercising original jurisdiction over important litigation that bypassed trial courts altogether and was instead filed directly in the Supreme Court. This section also looks at how the Court, until the last few years, was in the midst of another periodic expansion of the writ, leading to strong internal disagreements, but has recently reached an apparent consensus that has resulted in few petitions being granted.Finally, Part VIII returns to the Whiteside decision, and explains how the Court's creation of the writ of supervisory control in 1900 was almost a century ahead of its time in resolving one of the most difficult issues in appellate law: whether and how to allow discretionary appellate review of important interlocutory orders when justice dictates, even though the black-letter final judgment rule prohibits "piecemeal" review of non-final decisions.


The upper strata of the sandstone exposed in a road cut in Wind River Canyon contain abundant burrows with associated downbent laminae. The burrows are long, slender, sharply defined cylinders of sandstone normal to stratification. These deformed laminae can cause interpretive errors. Experiments suggest that the extent and type of downbending reflect subsurface removal of sediment rather than drag caused by downward penetration of the burrower.


The article is devoted to the analyses of change in determinating factors of modern societies' stratification. Global transformation of competitive market capitalism into rental model immediately affects changes in social structure of society. Reaching the limits of saturation of global markets as a resource repository of capitalism, increase of competition over resources determines the change of predominating mechanism of resource distribution: market is supplanted by directive distribution. Due to transformation of key factors of post-industrial economy contemporary societies face risig challenges to the foundational model of social stratification, based on market-based class aggregation and class relations. It is shown that optimistic attempt to stabilize conventional social structure by co-opting excessive working class (blue collars) into middle class (white collars) that is oriented to employment in service economy predictably failed since technological segments of post-industrial economy need no mass labor occupancy. Due to the lack of alternatives mass wage labor ceases to be income source for increasing number of unwanted people united within precariat concept. Protest activity of precariat can be partially compensated by social state activity: by strategies of gross working time reduction, introducing of basic income not linked to work etc. But this strategy is only possible in the most developed post-industrial countries. In the rest of the world strategies of precariat cooptation into dominating social order by opening access to various rents are economically restricted. It is posited that the new social stratification will be determined mainly not by the exhausted market economy interactions but by political and authoritative opportunities of different groups to get access to resources (capitals, wealth, rents etc.) that are distributed hierarchically. It is prognosticated that this trend will result in increase of alternative authoritative political factors of stratification (estate-based, neopatrimonial, rent-based) distributing the access of social groups to resources. In Russia economic and political power factors lead to hybrid model with market-based stratification which did not succeed to become dominating in post-soviet period is being expelled to periphery by neopatrimonial and rent-estate-based factors of social groups stratification.


Behavioral economics (BE) examines the implications for decision-making when actors suffer from biases documented in the psychological literature. This article considers how such biases affect regulatory decisions. The article posits a simple model of a regulator who serves as an agent to a political overseer. The regulator chooses a policy that accounts for the rewards she receives from the political overseer—whose optimal policy is assumed to maximize short-run outputs that garner political support, rather than long-term welfare outcomes—and the weight the regulator puts on the optimal long run policy. Flawed heuristics and myopia are likely to lead regulators to adopt policies closer to the preferences of political overseers than they would otherwise. The incentive structure for regulators is likely to reward those who adopt politically expedient policies, either intentionally (due to a desire to please the political overseer) or accidentally (due to bounded rationality). The article urges that careful thought be given to calls for greater state intervention, especially when those calls seek to correct firm biases. The article proposes measures that focus rewards to regulators on outcomes rather than outputs as a way to help ameliorate regulatory biases.


This essay focuses upon the historic 2008 campaign and instances that reveal racial paradox and division. In a race that promised to deliver the first female President, first female Vice President, or the first black President, both crude and subtle identity politics were revealed that challenged the claim made by much of the media punditry that the American citizenry had moved into a "post-racial" epoch of cultural color blindness. Hence Barack Obama's success does not represent the transcendence of identity politics, but rather his skillful navigation of our chaotic collective racial consciousness. In "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," Obama chronicled his racial journey and described the ways in which he was forced to manage his identity to put white relatives and acquaintances at their ease. However, despite his choice and construction of his identity as a black man, during the 2008 campaign Obama often became the blank slate onto which racial and other identity based hopes and phobias were transferred. His biography as "the son of a black man from Kenya and white woman from Kansas" placed him at many identity intersections. As a result, Obama was often asked to authenticate or distance himself from his identity in a way not required of other candidates. Obama was simultaneously urged to address concerns that he was "too black" or "not black enough." Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin faced no such scrutiny. This obsession with racial identity is more revealing of disorder than transcendence. This essay explores Barack Obama's ability to successfully navigate these hopes and phobias. While Obama's ability to negotiate an intersectional identity may have been his most impressive achievement of the 2008 campaign, it has not dislodged our deep discomfort in openly and honestly discussing matters of race.


Matrix Free Methods for Large Scale Optimization Jiashan Wang Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor James V. Burke Department of Mathematics Sequential quadratic optimization (SQP) methods are widely used to solve large-scale nonlinear optimization problems. We build two matrix-free methods for approximately solving exact penalty subproblems that arise when using SQP methods to solve large-scale optimization problems. The first approach is a novel iterative re-weighting algorithm. The second approach is based on alternating direction augmented Lagrangian technology applied to our setting. We prove that both algorithms are globally convergent under loose assumptions. SQP methods can be plagued by poor behavior of the global convergence mechanisms. Here we consider global convergence results that use an exact penalty function to compute stepsizes. To confront this issue, we propose a dynamic penalty parameter updating strategy to be employed within the subproblem solver in such a way that the resulting search direction predicts progress toward both feasibility and optimality. We prove that does not decrease the penalty parameter unnecessarily in the neighborhood of points satisfying certain common assumptions. We also discuss a coordinate descent subproblem solver in which our updating strategy can be readily incorporated. In the final application of the thesis, we consider a block coordinate descent (BCD) method applied to graphical model learning with special structures, in particular, hub structure and latent variable selection. We tackle the issue of maintaining the positive definiteness of covariance matrices for general rank 2 updates. An active set strategy is employed to speed up BCD for hub structure problem. For latent variable selection problems, we propose a method for maintaining a low rank factorization for the covariance matrix while preserving the convexity of the subproblems for SBCD. We show that our proposed method converges to a stationary point of a non-convex formulation. Extensive numerical experiments are discussed for both models.


Starting from the nineties of the twentieth century, in Italy, the first specific tools have been developed to guarantee territorial agreements, in order to deal with the issue of local autonomies and to set the metropolitan areas, by the law 142 of 1990. In 2014, the most recent 'Delrio' Reform tried to list the categories of the metropolitan cities in order to build links and balances between central and local authorities. An effort that has gone hand in hand with that made by the European Union in the field of urban development and which found the principles of a collaborative and integrated Community policy in the 201420 Cohesion Policy and in the 2016 EU Urban Agenda for the implementation of a transformed metropolitan area, including various urban frames, namely the most marginal ones.


This dictionary provides fast and easy access to terms in areas such as: legal, judicial and court proceedings; law enforcement, police and military training; chemical essentials and chemical precursors; natural, synthetic and designer drugs; banking and money laundering. It also presents some related terminology for environmental, medical, psychological, social and economic matters. The dictionary includes a large number of jargon terms, and explanations of these have been provided in some cases, in order to ensure better understanding. This work is an indispensable tool for conference interpreters, court interpreters, translators and social workers.


In recent years, MPC has become a prominent advanced control technique, especially in
large industrial processes. However, for enormous complexity, non-convexity and
computational reasons, MPC practice and applications have been restricted to linear
plants. During the last decade, many formulations have been developed for MPC
formulation of linear and nonlinear, stable and unstable plants but still there remain
some unsolved issues which depend on plant specifications. Instability, unfeasibility,
non-convexity and lack of robustness are examples of unsolved issues.
In this thesis a control system has been designed for a highly nonlinear and non minimum
phase Four-Tank system. Then constrained optimization is employed in the
MPC formulation to repair violation on boundaries. It also leads the system to work with
the best performance. Additionally, the influence of most effective tuning parameters in
MPC strategy has been investigated. In particular main part of the thesis has focused on
performance criteria based on good reference tracking in model predictive control domain. Regarding to investigate the performance of this algorithm and due to
application of "nonlinear Four-Tank system" in control theory and industry, this system
is considered as a plant to be examined under this method. The most attractive aspect of
this system is; the time-varying movement of a right half plane transmission zeros across
the imaginary axis. This system's configuration makes the process difficult to control
under the previous controllers. This problem appears to be one of the most important and
practical designs of nonlinear system in process control.
In this thesis, besides good performance, the algorithm enjoys from relative simplicity
and faster response in compare with the algorithms developed in other previous works.
The problems of complexity of algorithm, non-convexity of the optimization, especially
when working with nonlinear plants are the most common problems in the control
design criteria. Since linear model predictive control is used instead of nonlinear model
predictive control; these problems are avoided to be appeared in this work. All the
results in this study show fast performance in controlling the Four-Tank system. Both of
the weighting matrices are considered so that a system is fast enough smooth control
signals and they are tuned till the desired performance is achieved.. Low value of
prediction horizon and weighting matrices are more preferable to reduce number of free
variable and avoid complexity of analysis.


Objective
The preventive vaccine for HIV has been an unachieved goal and the increasing prevalence burdens the field of medicine for the last three decades. The challenge is due to the substantial overall sequence variability that is found across the genome of HIV- 1. Here a retrospection has been done to investigate the degree of conservation in the targets of the 2F5 and 4E10 neutralizing antibodies. The 6 and 7 amino acid long epitopes of the neutralizing antibodies are embedded in the MPER (Membrane Proximal External Region) of the HIV-1 glycoprotein 41.
Methods
HIV-1 gp 41 nucleotide sequences reported from different parts of the world were collected as fasta sequences on a random basis. The sequences were aligned and investigated for mutations found in the epitopes targeted by the 2F5 and 4E10 neutralizing antibodies.
Results
Substitutions and deletions almost in all the residues were found. The mutations that were found in each of the residue can critically affect the affinity of the neutralizing antibodies. The occurrence of these mutations in the critical residues in combination with the neighboring residues may offer a survival advantage for the virus to escape from these circulating neutralizing antibodies. This invariant nature which is substantiated earlier has been diverging over the years.
Conclusion
The mutations can crucially alter the dynamicity and the reactivity of the 2F5 and 4E10 antibodies directed to the putative vaccine targets. This confers the fact that these targets may be less appropriate a candidate for a vaccine. The infidel reverse transcriptase that copies these 'selfish' survivable mutants is characteristically favoring the virus to make progeny which can escape the surveillance by these neutralizing antibodies. Hence, due to the observed trend in the lack of conservation, it becomes necessary to search for better candidates for a stronger immune response that promises success in vaccine strategies.


Rising land values accompanying the growth of central business districts and popularity of
inner city living in resurgent world cities have raised questions about the impact on lower
value, small businesses, who struggle to compete for space in the city. In London, planning
authorities are developing policies based on the affordable housing model that require
developers of mixed-use schemes on land previously in employment use, to include an
amount of 'affordable workspace'. This research examines policy objectives and outcomes
of thirteen mixed-use schemes with affordable workspace across London, with a particular
focus on the London Borough of Hackney, which has been using planning gain to implement
affordable workspace since 2003. The perspectives of the three main stakeholders are
considered; the planning authority, the developer and the workspace provider.
The research reveals that the motivations for affordable workspace policies are more about
promoting economic development – in particular either protecting or promoting creative
industry clusters – than promoting social equity or sustainability. To ascertain whether
policy is addressing the problem, the case studies explore the factors influencing the success
of schemes, the difficulty of defining and delivering 'affordability', whether the causes of the
problem are being tackled, and who are the winners and losers. The impact of policy on
economic development, city vibrancy, social equity and sustainability is analysed. The
policy's contribution to job creation, cluster formation and economic diversity is explored
with reference to local and regional objectives. The research shows that, although there are
clear benefits of the policy for artists and small, creative industry businesses, there are
problems of industrial gentrification, the plight of lower-value businesses, and homogenous
developments that contribute little to the economic or social diversity of the area.
Recommendations are made for alternative or complementary strategies to address the
problems facing small, low-value businesses in cities.


In this paper, we describe pivotal experiences that have shaped our respective professional journeys when teaching action research. We situate these experiences in relation to how they have contributed to our collective living theory of practice. This discussion unfolded as we explored ways to improve our own practices and the practices of our students. We conclude that this and similar questions can only be authentically answered when we as practitioners and faculty in higher education settings are willing to interrogate the contexts within which we interact and the complex intersections between our own intentional practices and selves and our students' willingness to engage in critical discourse.


The background to this paper is that shoppers, particularly women, are motivated by a variety of different reasons, including socialising and enjoyment. Despite the growth of Internet retailing (e-retailing), these social needs are largely unmet in e-shopping. In the high street, women do most of the shopping but online shopping (e-shopping) tends to be dominated by male shoppers. At the same time, social networking is growing fast and is especially popular amongst young females. The purpose of this paper is to draw on prior research about why people shop in order to explore the concept of social e-shopping, based on combining e-shopping with social networking. We propose that shoppers, particularly young females, will prefer social e-shopping to traditional e-shopping. We carried out a qualitative study for our propositions with a comparison experiment, semi-structured questionnaire and focus group, to compare a traditional e-shopping website with a social e-shopping one. The findings reveal that young women prefer social e-shopping sites. Both utilitarian and hedonic young adult female shoppers found social e-shopping enjoyable and useful. However, although many participants found the social e-shopping site more difficult to use, this was outweighed by their enjoyment of the site and its usefulness. The study demonstrates the potential value of the concept of social e-shopping for future research. The findings have practical implications in that social e-shopping can be a valuable strategy for e-retailers wanting to gain competitive advantage and to positively increase the e-shopping behaviour intentions of young women. This study is original in being the first academic study of which we are aware to propose the concept of social e-shopping and examine the influences of social e-shopping on consumer shopping behaviour.


Concurrency is used pervasively in the development of large systems programs. However, concurrent programming is difficult because of the possibility of unexpected interference among concurrently executing tasks. Such interference often results in "Heisenbugs" that appear rarely and are extremely difficult to reproduce and debug. Stress testing, in which the system is run under heavy load for a long time, is the method commonly employed to flush out such concurrency bugs. This form of testing provides inadequate coverage and has unpredictable results. This paper proposes an alternative called concurrency scenario testing which relies on systematic and exhaustive testing We have implemented a tool called CHESS for performing concurrency scenario testing of systems programs. CHESS uses model checking techniques to systematically generate all interleaving of a given scenario. CHESS scales to large concurrent programs and has found numerous previously unknown bugs in systems that had been stress tested for many months prior to being tested by CHESS. For each bug, CHESS is able to consistently reproduce an erroneous execution manifesting the bug, thereby making it significantly easier to debug the problem. CHESS has been integrated into the test frameworks of many code bases inside Microsoft and is being used by testers on a daily basis.


Children represent the most vulnerable members of society, and as such provide valuable insight into past lifeways. Adverse environmental conditions translate more readily into the osteological record of children, making them primary evidence for the investigation of ill-health in the past. To date, most information on growing up in Roman Britain has been based on the Classical literature, or discussed in palaeopathological studies with a regional focus, e.g. Dorset or Durnovaria. Thus, the lifestyles and everyday realities of children throughout Britannia remained largely unknown. This study sets out to fill this gap by providing the first large scale analysis of Romano-British children from town and country. The palaeopathological analysis of 1643 non-adult (0-17 years) skeletons, compiled from the literature (N=690) and primary osteological analysis (N=953), from 27 urban and rural settlements has highlighted diverse patterns in non-adult mortality and morbidity. The distribution of ages-at-death suggest that older children and adolescents migrated from country to town, possibly for commencing their working lives. True prevalence rates suggest that caries (1.8%) and enamel hypoplasia (11.4%) were more common in children from major urban towns, whereas children in the countryside displayed higher frequencies of scurvy (6.9%), cribra orbitalia (27.7%), porotic hyperostosis (6.2%) and endocranial lesions (10.9%). Social inequality in late Roman Britain may have been the driving force behind these urban-rural dichotomies. The results may point to exploitation of the peasantry on the one hand, and higher status of the urban population as a more 'Romanised' group on the other. Comparison with Iron Age and post-medieval non-adults also demonstrated a decline in health in the Roman period, with some levels of ill-health, particularly in the rural children, similar to those from post-medieval London. This research provides the most comprehensive study of non-adult morbidity and mortality in Roman Britain to date. It has provided new insights into Romano-British lifeways and presents suggestions for further work.


Sleep disorder is common among the general population. A nutritional supplement containing alpha-s1-casein tryptic hydrolysate and L-theanine was evaluated for its effects in improving sleep quality. The study was conducted using a double-blind randomized trial.  Intervention group received once-daily capsules of 150 mg alpha s1 casein tryptic hydrolysate and 50 mg L-theanine, and the control group were given placebo (150 mg skimmed milk powder) for four weeks. The outcome measurements were assessed on weekly basis using PSQI, DASS-21, clinical and biochemical parameters. ANOVA test were used to assess within group differences and ANCOVA were used to check for differences between groups. Significantly lower (better) sleep latency score, sleep disturbances score and daytime dysfunction score were demonstrated on week-4 in intervention group compared to placebo group. Profound differences were observed between the two groups for anxiety and stress scores from week-3 onwards, in which lower anxiety and stress scores were observed in intervention group compared to placebo group. In addition, significantly lower depression score in intervention group compared to placebo group on week-4 was observed. Intervention supplement has demonstrated potent effects in relieving anxiety, stress, depression and sleep quality.


Background: Maternal death as an event has become one of the key indicators to determine the quality of the health services in a region; being a social and public health policy problem. Methods: A cross sectional descriptive exploratory quantitative research with quantitative aproach was made during January 2010 - December 2012. Relevant information was collected knowing the occurrence of maternal deaths, with their respective causes and socio-demographic variables. Results: 25 reported cases were studied during the analyzed period. Between the causes of prevalent deaths it was noticed: at first place, infectious causes followed by hypertensive disorders, bleedings, and childbirth complications successively. The Barranquilla District and Soledad municipality had the highest number of reported cases, women attended on average 3,21 pre-natal medical controls prior to labor, the subsidized population had a high occurrence rate of the event with 75% in 2012, 46% in 2011 and 34% in 2010. In women´s age group 27 to 32 years were noticed 7 cases, followed by 6 cases reported in the age group 15 to 20. Conclusion: In order to get a public health policy in a good epidemiological behaviour is crucial the notification and reporting of maternal death and causes to determine the health services in a region.


An account of the essentially Aristotelian philosophy of John Sergeant (1623-1707) and his Blackloist colleagues, Kenelm Digby and Thomas White. Sergeant and his circle were concerned to present a theology and philosophy immune to sceptical doubts; and, though hitherto neglected, they exemplify an important aspect of seventeenth-century thought.


We propose an unsupervised method that, given a word, automatically selects non-abstract senses of that word from an online ontology and generates images depicting the corresponding entities. When faced with the task of learning a visual model based only on the name of an object, a common approach is to find images on the web that are associated with the object name and train a visual classifier from the search result. As words are generally polysemous, this approach can lead to relatively noisy models if many examples due to outlier senses are added to the model. We argue that images associated with an abstract word sense should be excluded when training a visual classifier to learn a model of a physical object. While image clustering can group together visually coherent sets of returned images, it can be difficult to distinguish whether an image cluster relates to a desired object or to an abstract sense of the word. We propose a method that uses both image features and the text associated with the images to relate latent topics to particular senses. Our model does not require any human supervision, and takes as input only the name of an object category. We show results of retrieving concrete-sense images in two available multimodal, multi-sense databases, as well as experiment with object classifiers trained on concrete-sense images returned by our method for a set of ten common office objects.


The exploration of new opportunities and the exploitation of existing competencies represent two competing logics for innovation and change within organizations. IS projects seeking to foster innovation need to balance these forces, and recognize the distinct role that each plays. Through its essential role in generating a design space between existing problems and design options, the requirements phase of a development project represents a domain where exploration and exploitation need to be integrated. Based on a field study involving interviews with 39 IT professionals managing large and complex development initiatives, we analyze the degree to which prevailing requirements practices incorporate the logics of exploration and exploitation. Our findings focus on key challenges faced by project teams in failing to engage exploration as a necessary element in requirements practice. In addition, we offer several recommendations to enhance the pursuit of organizational innovation by supporting both exploration and exploitation.


Identifying and Providing Vocational Services for Adults with Specific Learning Disabilities Clients with Specific Learning Disabilities present a significant challenge to professionals in the field of Rehabilitation. Identification of persons with learning disabilities is complicated by the wide array of performance characteristics that may be present. A theoretical framework is presented that will allow professionals to identify and evaluate individuals with learning disabilities. Case studies are used to illustrate the diagnostic process. Also presented are recommendations for vocational counseling and guidance, remediation of job-related skill deficits, and job placement. Specific learning disabilities are a heterogeneous group of disorders which are both persistent and pervasive throughout an individual's life (National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities, 1987). As learning disabled children reach adulthood their problems increase in complexity. Thousands of children identified as learning disabled in years past have grown into adulthood. Other adults exhibit characteristics of learning disability, but have not been formally identified (Thomas, 1982). Because of a lack of knowledge concerning appropriate diagnostic procedures, older adolescents and adults with specific learning disabilities are often denied access to the academic instruction, prevocational preparation and vocational counseling that they need in order to develop adult skills and abilities (Crimando & Nichols, 1982). Few professionals are prepared to work with the adult learning disabled population and few employers are aware of, or sensitive to, the needs of adults with specific learning disabilities (Shofner, 1981; Thomas, 1981). The learning disabled adult presents a significant challenge to practitioners in the field. The Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Public Law 93-112) mandated that persons with disabilities could not be excluded from jobs or any activity or training program receiving federal funds solely on the basis of a handicapping condition. Section 7 of the Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1986 (Public Law 99-506) lists Specific Learning Disabilities among the handicapping conditions included under the 1973 Act. Among the issues that must be addressed if vocational rehabilitation facilities are to successfully meet the needs of adults with learning disabilities are (a) how to identify and evaluate the learning disabled adult for rehabilitation eligibility and (b) how to provide appropriate rehabilitation services for adults with specific learning disabilities. The purpose of this article is to address these two issues. Identifying Adults With Specific Learning Disabilities Federal law defines specific learning disability as follows: "Specific learning disability" means a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations. The term includes such conditions as perceptual handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. The term does not include children who have learning problems which are primarily the result of visual hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage (U.S. Department of Education, 1981, p. 5557). The definition was originally designed to be used in the identification of learning disabilities in school aged children, and has been criticized because of vagueness and for reliance on exclusion clauses to define the population (Lynch & Lewis, 1988). For example, the federal definition excludes learning problems that are due primarily to sensory impairments, mental retardation, motor handicaps, or to environmental, cultural or economic disadvantage. …


This study examines the question of how 20th-century Western art theory has influenced contemporary Chinese art education at the college level, focusing specifically on the problems of misreading, namely, mistranslation and misinterpretation. For this purpose, I offer two case studies: an analysis of my interviews with some Chinese academics, including art theorists and translators, and an analysis of Chinese college students' essays responding to my lectures on visual culture.

The two case studies shed light on some basic questions: (1) What are the misreadings due to the cultural differences between China and the West? (2) Why and how have these misreadings happened? (3) Are there purposeful misreadings? (4) If yes, why and how? (5) And what is the possible significance of such misreadings to Chinese and Western art education?

Answering the above questions, two types of misreadings are identified. One is unintentional, such as mistranslation due to language and cultural barriers, while the other one is intentional or purposeful manipulation. In the two case studies, I examine the purposeful misreading of Western art theory, and demonstrate that it is the Chinese way to localize Western art theory for Chinese use. This claim is supported by the findings from my analyses of the interviews and Chinese students' essays.

In this dissertation I suggest that the problem of purposeful misreading of modern Western art theory is caused by the traditional Chinese culture of respect for senior academics and the contemporary Chinese practice of localizing Western theory. The ingrained culture of respect for senior academics makes it difficult for junior academics to question and challenge the works of their superiors. Additionally, the Chinese academics tend to appropriate Western concepts and theories by making them accommodate Chinese values and the grand narrative of Chinese culture.


We present preliminary results for a 3-dimensional dose evaluation software system (P DRESS, patient-specific 3-dimensional dose real evaluation system). Scanned computed tomography (CT) images obtained by using dosimetry were transferred to the radiation treatment planning system (ECLIPSE, VARIAN, Palo Alto, CA) where the intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) nasopharynx plan was designed. We used a 10 MV photon beam (CLiX, VARIAN, Palo Alto, CA) to deliver the nasopharynx treatment plan. After irradiation, the TENOMAG dosimeter was scanned using a VISTA™ scanner. The scanned data were reconstructed using VistaRecon software to obtain a 3D dose distribution of the optical density. An optical-CT scanner was used to readout the dose distribution in the gel dosimeter. Moreover, we developed the PDRESS by using Flatform, which were developed by our group, to display the 3D dose distribution by loading the DICOM RT data which are exported from the radiotherapy treatment plan (RTP) and the optical-CT reconstructed VFF file, into the independent PDRESS with an ioniz ation chamber and EBT film was used to compare the dose distribution calculated from the RTP with that measured by using a gel dosimeter. The agreement between the normalized EBT, the gel dosimeter and RTP data was evaluated using both qualitative and quantitative methods, such as the isodose distribution, dose difference, point value, and profile. The profiles showed good agreement between the RTP data and the gel dosimeter data, and the precision of the dose distribution was within ±3%. The results from this study showed significantly discrepancies between the dose distribution calculated from the treatment plan and the dose distribution measured by a TENOMAG gel and by scanning with an optical CT scanner. The 3D dose evaluation software system (P DRESS, patient specific dose real evaluation system), which were developed in this study evaluates the accuracies of the three-dimensional dose distributions. Further applications of the system utility are expected to result from future studies.


.The dominant perspective in Business Intelligence (BI) projects and applications has been the technological conception, usually focused on the technical-instrumental nature of computing. This conception has avoided the change in the paradigm from a business model based on the use of tangible resources in favour of one based on the exploitation of intangible resources (data, interaction, networks, etc.). This would explain why applied BI projects, remain anchored in the old organization and operational patterns of traditional businesses in most companies. The technological perception of BI gives continuity to the stovepipe activity of companies, both in their management and in their organizational structures, where the impact of interaction as a generator of business opportunities is very limited, and often non-existent; and the effect of large volumes of data as a value generator is reduced to an operational and technical problem. Hence, the importance of considering BI as a new business philosophy that entails new forms of business organization and a new way of management based on the interaction and analysis of large volumes of internally generated data. Our interest is not only to emphasize the nature of the new business philosophy in the application of BI, but to carry out a discussion about the organizational and operational structure of businesses -according to a conception based on interaction and data as generators of business value-, and about actionable intelligence.


PURPOSE
To report a series of 21 patients with perifoveal exudative vascular anomalous complex (PEVAC) and to investigate the anatomical changes over time.

METHODS
We conducted a retrospective study. Clinical data of consecutive patients, presenting at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital between 2014 and 2019, were analyzed. The data collected included best-corrected visual acuity, fundus photography, optical coherence tomography (OCT), OCT-angiography, fluorescence angiography, and indocyanine green angiography.

RESULTS
We included 21 patients with a PEVAC lesion with a mean follow-up of 24.3 ± 13.8 months (range, 9-46 months). Patients with PEVAC were on average 75.3 ± 11.1 years (range, 53-90 years). The large perifoveal vascular aneurysmal abnormality was associated with small retinal hemorrhages in six patients and hard exudates in three patients. The PEVAC lesion was associated with intraretinal cystic spaces on OCT in 15 patients. Twelve of 21 patients showed no changes in cystic spaces on OCT during follow-up: 9 patients had stable cystic spaces and 3 patients had no cystic spaces. In contrast, in 9 of 21 patients, we observed changes in cystic spaces on OCT during follow-up. In two patients, cystic spaces appeared during follow-up, and in seven patients, there was a spontaneous resolution of cystic spaces. In three of these seven patients, the PEVAC lesion completely disappeared. Two patients, with stable intraretinal cystic spaces on OCT, were treated with intravitreal injections of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor without improvement.

CONCLUSION
Perifoveal exudative vascular anomalous complex is an idiopathic perifoveal retinal vascular abnormality that is associated with intraretinal cystic spaces. These intraretinal cystic spaces associated with a PEVAC lesion, and even the PEVAC lesion itself, can have a spontaneous resolution over time.


Contrary to the received idea that globally spread papa/mama words are constantly reinvented by children in different languages, we show here that these words are always inherited from the most ancient stages of their respective families, with the exception of a number of borrowings – which are not innovations, either. We then show that probabilistic calculations aiming to demonstrate that global and other remote etymologies might be mere chance resemblances are invalid, and that chance cannot be reasonably invoked in the cases these calculations deal with. Consequently, the global convergence of papa/mama words can only be a trace of a common heritage of all human languages. Finally, we link this finding with others, indicating that these words must have appeared early, most probably at the very origin of articulate language.


Although significant progress has been made in understanding the behavior of natural nanoparticles in Earth's critical zone (i.e., surface and near-surface environment), little is known about nanoparticle stability in higher-temperature environments where they are increasingly being found. Here we report the first direct observations of the thermal behavior of natural nanoparticles at near atomic scale, revealing that their thermal stability is dependent on particle size and on the surrounding host mineral. Native Au nanoparticles (mean diameter ∼4 nm) incorporated in arsenian pyrite from refractory Au ores were observed under the transmission electron microscope during in situ heating to 650 °C. While isolated Au nanoparticles melt, with the melting point being a function of size, we show that when incorporated in arsenian pyrite, Au nanoparticles become unstable unless the nanoparticle size distribution coarsens by diffusion-driven, solid-state Ostwald ripening. This change in nanoparticle stability starts above 370 °C, setting an upper temperature and size limit for the occurrence of nanoparticulate Au in refractory sulfides. These findings not only provide new insights into the behavior of nanoparticulate Au and other metals during geological processes and throughout their metallurgical recovery from refractory ores, but also provide a new tool to define the thermal history of nanoparticle-bearing geologic and planetary materials.


This qualitative research utilised a health services research framework and ethnographic methods to explore, describe and analyse contemporary child and family health (C&FH) nursing practice in an area of New South Wales, and identify the major factors that impact on their ability to effectively support families. The research identified the complexity of current C&FH nursing practice and changes in the philosophy that underpinned this at the policy level that were difficult to adopt. Despite a change in policy direction that advocated a partnership approach, nurses predominantly continue to frame their practice within an "expert" model. The nurses also struggled to deliver new service models while maintaining access for all families. Some explanations for the tensions experienced by the nurses relate to their age and educational preparation within the workforce. Other factors relate to the structures and management systems evident within the health service that employs them. To effectively support new families within the community, health systems must adequately resource services and support C&FH nurses in changing from a paradigm of expert to partner, consistent with primary health care practice.


This paper addresses the topic of "libel tourism," a phrase used to describe cases where plaintiffs sue for defamation in a foreign jurisdiction and then seek to enforce judgments in the U.S., where the outcome might have been different because of protections for speech embodied in the United States Constitution. A number of commentators have discussed libel tourism at length, and this paper does not provide a treatise on the topic. Rather, it reviews recent reactions from legislators, courts, and commentators, and then offer some thoughts about whether these reactions appropriately balance concerns of comity and free speech. Ultimately, the essay concludes that U.S. attempts to address the issue of libel tourism have been quite broad, and suggests a more cautious approach that would better contribute to maintaining America's role as a leader in the evolving world of tort law.


The perceptual structure of the five themes of Roger Reynolds's The Angel of Death was investigated. We studied how listeners follow the musical progression of each theme and whether or not they perceive the temporal implications. In the first phase, participants performed three tasks on the full themes, one of which consisted of segmenting the musical ideas online. In the second phase, participants were presented with pairs of excerpts from the themes, judged whether both belonged to the same theme, and if they did which one occurred first in the theme. Participants' segmentations corresponded to surface discontinuities in places, but were strongly influenced by the rhetorical structure of the themes in others. Listeners (particularly nonmusicians) encountered difficulties when they were required to perform more abstract tasks out of the musical context such as the belongingness judgment, which depended on surface similarities, and the temporal-order judgment, which depended on previous hearing of the full themes.


The purpose of the study was to investigate a modification of a managerial accounting technique, Activity-Based Costing (ABC), as a tool for addressing Information Resource Management (IRM) concerns within business processes. To indicate that ABC has been adapted for the IRM context, this study called the tool "Activity-Based Analysis" (ABA). ABA includes ABC's costing methodology as well as additional methods to address broader issues. The research method was a single-site case study at a property and casualty insurance company. The unit of analysis was a business process consisting of activities needed to provide claims handling services for workers' compensation insurance. Four questions guided the study: 1. Did ABA identify management information required to monitor process effectiveness and efficiency? 2. Did ABA support outsourcing decision making by identifying IRM cost components within business processes? 3. Did ABA identify information resources; that are sharable? 4. Did ABA identify differences between Company organizational characteristics andIRM department organizational characteristics?


In 1861, young Joseph Twichell cut short his seminary studies to become a Union Army chaplain in New York's Excelsior Brigade. A middle-class New England Protestant, Twichell served for three years in a regiment manned mostly by poor Irish American Catholics. This selection of Twichell's letters to his Connecticut family will rank him alongside the Civil War's most literate and insightful firsthand chroniclers of life on the road, in battle, and in camp. As a noncombatant, he at once observed and participated in the momentous events of the Peninsula and Wilderness Campaigns and at the Second Bull Run, as well as at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania. Twichell writes about politics and slavery and the theological and cultural divide between him and his men. Most movingly, he tells of tending the helpless, burying the dead, and counseling the despondent. Alongside accounts of a run-in with slave hunters, a massive withdrawal of wounded soldiers from Richmond, and other extraordinary events, Twichell offers close-up views of his commanding officer, the "political general" Daniel Sickles, surely one of the most colorful and controversial leaders on either side. Civil War scholars and enthusiasts will welcome this fresh voice from an underrepresented class of soldier, the army chaplain. Readers who know of Twichell's later life as a prominent minister and reformer or as Mark Twain's closest friend will appreciate these insights into his early, transforming experiences.


This paper describes the rapid development of China's construction industry and especially its bidding system. After summarily depicting the history, scope, employees and contractors in China's construction industry, the paper identifies that even after nearly thirty years' development, the sector is still harassed by the problems of low productivity, unskilled employees, unsophisticated technologies, inadequate legal framework and flawed mechanism. This paper also points out that the status quo of performance information in China's construction industry still leaves much to be desired, and that in order to merge into the global market, China has made much effort to introduce the competitive bidding mechanism and the method of evaluated lowest bidding price to the industry. Via picturing the course of using the method of evaluated lowest bidding price in China's construction industry, the paper also characters why and how the performance information is used in the sector. At the end of the paper, it is pointed out that although some certain district has made some efforts to use performance information, most Chinese scholars and government officials are still convinced that the method of evaluated lowest bidding price does accord with the market-oriented trend and should certainly be widely adopted in the future.


This study investigates the thermal danger of Erbium (Er):YAG laser ablation. Classical preparation techniques have many disadvantages caused by unfavorable changes of temperature, pressure, and by mechanical vibrations. The effect of mechanical vibrations and pressure is eliminated by use of laser ablation technique. The purpose of this study was to analyze the side effects resulting from thermal changes of enamel and dentin in extracted human teeth subjected to pulsed Er:YAG laser radiation using both wet and dry ablation methods. The micrographs of the sections were checked and measured afterwards. The effect of the investigated laser irradiation on the origin of cracks was analyzed in the scanning electron microscope. The hard structures of the teeth were observed under transmitted and polarized light. The occurrence of cracks can be directly correlated to overheating during dry enamel ablation, because heat is generated by absorption of the laser beam by enamel and dentin. The addition of water mist during irradiation not only enables rapid ablation of enamel and dentin, but offers thermal protection to the pulp. The heat changes to the pulp caused by an energy level of 200 mJ from the tested laser system may be reduced by adding a fine water spray during the lasing procedure.


Sediment pore‐water dissolved organic matter (DOM) in two North Dakota prairie pothole lakes was quantified by dissolved organic carbon analysis (DOC) and its composition was characterized as a function of sediment depth for molecular weight distribution (MWD), molar absorptivity at 280 nm (ɛ280), and fluorescence properties. Fluorescence excitation emission matrices were further analyzed by creating a Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC) model specific to sedimentary pore‐water DOM. The range of absolute pore‐water DOC concentrations (∼ 26–183 mg C L−1) greatly exceeded abundances reported for other wetlands and generally increased with depth. Significant changes occurred in ɛ280 and fluorescence seasonally. Prairie pothole pore‐water DOM is primarily allochthonous in nature and three 'humic‐like' components explained ∼ 90% of total sample fluorescence, while a single 'non‐humic' component was responsible for the remaining 10%. The contribution of the non‐humic component, however, was more significant in the top 7 cm of sediment in samples collected in early autumn and is presumably derived from algal precursor material produced by primary production in the water column over the summer. The PARAFAC results corroborate ɛ280 and MWD changes in pore‐water DOM composition over the growing season. This dynamic process could affect the type of DOM available for biogeochemical processes seasonally.


We examined (a) the effect of threat messages (media messages suggesting that an outgroup is threatening to an ingroup) versus nonthreat messages (messages refuting the outgroup's threat) on intergroup bias, (b) the mechanisms underlying that effect, and (c) whether nonthreat messages would result in smaller effects of negative stereotypes on intergroup bias, compared with threat messages. We found that exposure to a threat message about immigrants (compared with a nonthreat message) resulted in more support for punitive immigration policies. This occurred via two sequential mediators: feelings of anger and contempt toward the outgroup, and outgroup derogation. The effect of negative stereotypes on intergroup bias was smaller in the nonthreat message condition than the threat message condition. We discuss implications for the effects of minority news portrayals.


This paper studies the different set of references that helped understand the diagnostics on what determined the Brazilian crisis in the 80s and the failure of the developmentist strategy. Such strategy was in force until the Brazilian State, which had already relinquished many of the roles assumed in the past decades, also abandoned its function as a leader of the Brazilian development. As for the 90s, based on a previous diagnostic strongly influenced by considerations marked by ideologies and backed by a power alliance between the economical and political elite - who have often acted as advocates and spokespeople of strong international interests -, the Brazilan State took to its ultimate consequences a project of international insertion and radical transnationalization of the control over Brazilian decision centers and economical structures.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Preoperative embolization facilitates the surgical management of complex cerebral arteriovenous malformations (cAVMs). This analysis aims to investigate the risks for preoperative cAVM embolization with Onyx. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed clinical data of all patients who underwent embolization with Onyx as a preoperative treatment of cAVMs at our institution since 2005 (US Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approval). Patients with arteriovenous fistulas were excluded. A total of 107 patients were treated for cAVMs during the study period. Of those patients, 41 underwent cAVM embolizations with Onyx in 82 procedures. RESULTS: After the embolization, the cAVM diameter was reduced from 3.71 ± 1.55 cm to 3.06 ± 1.89 cm (P < .05). Median volume reduction was 75%. Complete occlusion with embolization alone was achieved in 4 (10%) cAVMs. The recurrence rate for completely occluded cAVMs was 50% (2 patients). A total of 71% of the 41 patients treated with Onyx underwent surgery, and 15% underwent radiosurgery. There were 9% who have not yet received definitive treatment of their residual cAVMs. A new permanent neurologic deficit occurred in 5 patients (6.1% per procedure or 12.2% per patient). CONCLUSIONS: A considerable risk for a permanent neurologic deficit remains for cAVM embolization with Onyx. The risk has to be carefully weighted against the benefit of volume reduction in the treatment of cAVMs.


OBJECTIVE
Suboptimal levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) are common in haemodialysis patients (Chronic Kidney disease-5D: CKD-5D) and may be associated with reduced muscle strength and increased falls risk. We tested the hypothesis that 25OHD levels may be independently associated with falls risk in CKD-5D.

BACKGROUND
Supplementation with calcium and cholecalciferol reduces hip and other nonvertebral fractures in elderly individuals, and this effect may in part be attributable to reduction in falls frequency. The relationship between 25OHD and falls risk has not been investigated in CKD-5D.

DESIGN AND PATIENTS
This is a cross-sectional study of 25 CKD-5D patients with predialysis 25OHD, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25(OH)(2)D) and intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) measurement. Falls risk was assessed by quadriceps muscle strength, FallsScreen((c)) test (FST), Berg Balance Scale (BBS), timed 'up and go' (TUG) test, Modified Barthel Index (MBI) and Falls Efficacy Scale (FES).

RESULTS
Mean age was 69.8 +/- 12.1 years, and median time on dialysis was 3.1 years. Median 25OHD level was 55.3 nmol/l (range 20.8-125.8 nmol/l). Muscle strength was significantly positively correlated with 25OHD (P = 0.024) but not with 1,25(OH)(2)D (P = 0.477) or PTH (P = 0.461). Statistically significant correlation between 25OHD levels and FST (P = 0.028) plus MBI (P = 0.0046) was noted. No significant correlation was detected between falls risk and 1,25(OH)(2)D or PTH.

CONCLUSIONS
Suboptimal levels of 25OHD in CKD-5D are associated with reduced quadriceps muscle strength and increased falls risk. 25OHD may be more important than the active renal metabolite 1,25(OH)(2)D for muscle strength with implications for vitamin D choice and goals of supplementation. Further investigation is required to examine effectiveness of calciferol supplementation on the incidence of falls in CKD-5D.


The past decade has witnessed a rapid growth in self service that allows consumers to take on the traditional role of a service worker in the provision of a service. Self service has long existed - think of placing a call by dialing a telephone instead of using a telephone operator or pressing a button in an elevator instead of using an elevator operator - but its importance has grown as advances in information technology (IT) have created many opportunities to leverage self-service technology for large gains in efficiency and convenience. Using computer kiosks, airline travelers check in to their flights; on the Internet, consumers purchase products without ever speaking to a sales agent; and, using a mobile phone, customers check their bank balances and transfer funds. Self-service technology continues to become more efficient and more convenient, and, as a result, increasingly organizations, including businesses, non-profits and governments, are using self-service technology to operate more productively and to better serve their customers.Self-service technology has already transformed entire industries, from ATMs in banking to e-commerce in the travel industry, resulting in significant savings for businesses which are passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices and better service. However, even though self-service technology has generated a wide range of benefits and savings for consumers, businesses, and government, it is only the beginning. Over at least the next decade, self-service technology has the potential to be a major force for growth in productivity and improvements in quality of life. We estimate that if self-service technology were more widely deployed, the U.S. economy would be approximately $130 billion larger annually, the equivalent of an additional $1,100 in annual income for every household.These savings could not be coming at a more crucial time. Most national economies will need the power of self-service technologies if they are to avoid serious economic problems stemming from significant growth in the number of retirees, a situation that will be particularly acute in Europe, Japan, and the United States. In the United States, for example, the number of retirees for every 1,000 working age adults is projected to grow from 213 today to 346 by 2030. For Social Security recipients in 2030 to not see a decline in their inflation-adjusted payments without workers seeing a decline in their after-tax incomes, economic productivity will have to increase by 62 percent. Unfortunately, the Social Security Administration estimates productivity will grow just 40 percent. As a result, in 2030, either worker incomes after Social Security taxes are deducted will be significantly lower, or Social Security benefits will be lower, or both. Self-service technologies promise to be a major source of needed productivity growth, enabling the United States, Japan, Europe, and other nations facing demographic challenges to realize such growth without reductions in wages or benefits.But these benefits will not automatically occur unless the right policies are in place and the wrong ones are avoided. First, governments should avoid putting in place restrictions on self-service business models and processes. This means that policymakers must resist the efforts of special interest groups that press for restrictions in technology to protect their economic or social interests at the expense of the average citizen. Second, where appropriate, governments should proactively promote self-service delivery of government services. For example, governments should pass along to citizens the savings from using lower-cost self-service options. Governments should also help create a climate conducive to expansion of self-service technologies. This means that government should support the development and deployment of technologies that enable self-service, like broadband, electronic IDs, and mobile payment systems. In the United States in particular, Congress should increase the minimum wage thereby providing firms with more incentive to invest in self-service technology, while at the same time helping to boost the incomes of low income Americans. In addition, Congress should establish an academic Center of Excellence to develop best practices for accessible design for self-service technology. Finally, we recommend that policymakers establish stronger safety nets for workers adversely affected by technological change so that the workforce can more easily adapt to a rapidly changing economy.Self-service technology offers a broad set of benefits to consumers and businesses and has the potential to contribute even more to our national prosperity and quality of life. While self-service technology is widespread, it is still relatively new and will only continue to improve in quality over time. However, policymakers must avoid enacting policies to restrict self-service while at the same time putting in place appropriate policies to stimulate the self-service economy to realize these benefits.


Mesenchymal stem cells can use Fas delivered by exosomes to trigger long-lasting changes in epigenetic programming. Individuals with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are at increased risk for reduced bone mass, severe forms of which are called osteoporosis. One treatment for SLE is mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) transplantation, although the beneficial effects usually outlast the transplanted MSCs (see the commentary by Ng et al.). Liu et al. found that when implanted in MRL/lpr mice, which have a mutation in the death receptor Fas and are a model for SLE, transplanted bone marrow MSCs (BMMSCs) from wild-type mice released exosomes that were taken up by MRL/lpr BMMSCs. In vitro, the Fas in these exosomes was integrated into MRL/lpr BMMSCs, which increased the release of the microRNA miR-29b, thereby reducing its intracellular abundance and increasing the abundance of the DNA demethylase Dnmt1 (a target of miR-29b) as well as the methylation of the Notch1 promoter (a target of Dnmt1). Notch signaling promotes the maintenance of an undifferentiated state in stem cells, and MRL/lpr BMMSCs showed hypomethylation of the Notch1 promoter, increased expression of various Notch target genes, and decreased ability to form bone in vivo when implanted into immunocompromised mice with hydroxyapatite tricalcium phosphate as a carrier. Transplantation of BMMSCs from wild-type mice improved the bone mineral density and thus lessened the osteoporotic phenotype of MRL/lpr mice, and also increased the ability of BMMSCs from MRL/lpr mice to form bone in vivo. These effects were mimicked to varying degrees when MRL/lpr mice were treated with exosomes from wild-type BMMSCs, a miR-29b inhibitor, the Notch signaling inhibitor DAPT, or a Notch-specific siRNA. Thus, these results suggest that exosomes from transplanted MSCs stimulate the epigenetic reprogramming of recipient MSCs to rescue their function. S. Liu, D. Liu, C. Chen, K. Hamamura, A. Moshaverinia, R. Yang, Y. Liu, Y. Jin, S. Shi, MSC transplantation improves osteopenia via epigenetic regulation of Notch signaling in lupus. Cell Metab. 22, 606–618 (2015). [PubMed] K. S. Ng, T. M. Kuncewicz, J. M. Karp, Beyond hit-and-run: Stem cells leave a lasting memory. Cell Metab. 22, 541–543 (2015). [PubMed]


The current paper explores perceived norm conflict, social identification and learning approaches in the applied context of higher education. Research has established the influence of identification with fellow students, and their perceived norms, on student approaches to learning. However, in the current paper, we argue that this model is not entirely ecologically valid and that students are not the only source of normative influence in the study context. In this first step to unpack these complex normative influences, we examine the next mostproximal source of normative informationthe educator. In essence, we explore the ways that the normative communications of a within-field educator can also influence student learning approaches and the ways these two sets of normative effects may interact. Testing a sample of undergraduate students at Australian universities, we explore how students resolve conflicting intragroup norm sources. Findings suggest that, in line with previous literature, stronger identification with the field of study is associated with deep learning approaches, and this effect is moderated by perceived student norms such that the valence of the study norms can undermine or accentuate this effect. Novel results unpacking the effects of normative conflict suggest that this moderation effect is only present when educator norms are ambiguous and that, in instances of clearly conflicting normative messages, the identification main effect prevails. The implications and applications are discussed.


This essay examines Neo-Pagan practices of magick and, via Rogers's criteria for a transhuman theory of communication, argues that these practices enact a transhuman dialog that has potential to enhance environmentally sustainable ways of living. Magick helps to re-member immanence in all entities through learning to exercise modes of sensation that have become dormant. Of central importance to the practice of magick is taking eros seriously while expanding awareness beyond the human to the other-than-human. Such sensory experiences and relationships serve to recover the concrete from the dominance of the abstract, eros from the dominance of rationality, the material from the dominance of the ideational, and the natural from the dominance of culture. This essay works to bridge theoretical and practical implications of dialogs with nature by identifying practices that can overcome trained incapacities that block sensual, dialogic relations with the other-than-human world, while also acknowledging limitations in the transformative potential of Neo-Pagan ideologies and practices.


For half a century the US has sat at the center of the global economic system, and Western-style capitalism has dominated. Now, it's no secret that the center of gravity is shifting. The advanced economies that in 2000 consumed 75% of the world's output will, by 2050, consume just 32%. Meanwhile, the emerging economies of the world--Brazil, India, China, and others--will surge forward. As these fast-growing, low-income economies mature, will they adopt the practices of the old guard? Or will they make their own way, and create the next prevailing version of capitalism? What new opportunities will that create for firms around the world? Standing on the Sun tackles these questions with fresh ideas and provocative examples. Based on firsthand observations of companies defying capitalism's old rules yet prospering, the authors outline new principles for commercial success. Among them: * The obsession with return on equity gives way to more broad-based measurements of success. * Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market is redeemed by the "invisible handshake" of collaborative networks. * Businesses take ownership of the impacts they now call "externalities." Those who need to understand the emerging shape of global capitalism will benefit from Standing on the Sun.


Abstract.
 Asa Gray never expanded his knowledge of floristic bryology to the extent he developed expertise in flowering plant taxonomy. Nevertheless, he became experienced in bryological floristics early in his botanical career, and Gray absorbed new bryological information, both floristic and conceptual, throughout his life from wherever it was generated. He had plans to advance bryology in the United States, including an exsiccata and publishing a volume devoted to cryptogams as part two of the second edition of his Manual, but both never happened. His respect for the bryological talent and energy of William S. Sullivant, whose achievements Gray consistently encouraged and fostered, allowed Sullivant, a non-academic in Columbus, Ohio, to become a highly regarded bryologist of international stature and the designated Father of American Bryology. The growth of bryofloristic knowledge in the United States is traced from the earliest colonial period to later workers, including Dillenius, André Michaux, Palisot de Beauvois, Henry Muhlenberg, Lewis Schweinitz, Lewis Beck, and John Torrey, to Asa Gray, and eventually to William Sullivant. The bryological work and accomplishments of each of them show that all participated in a sophisticated international network of information exchange by letter or other conveyance, thereby building important collections of bryophyte specimens and printed references. For some, this happened during the 1800s when improvements in compound light microscopy led to the resolution of morphology not before revealed with certainty in bryophytes and to conceptual advances in understanding the biology of these plants, which in turn allowed the discovery of the mesoscale structural uniqueness of them and continuing advancements in their systematics in the post-Sullivant era.


This pocket-sized reference for new and seasoned intensive care unit (ICU) nurses contains critical knowledge presented in the clear, precise, "Fact Facts" format. It provides quick access to a broad array of guidelines, procedures, and equipment used by ICU nurses daily as well as on a less frequent basis. The book covers assessment and procedural skills, medications, intravenous (IV) therapy, nutrition, wound care, sterile field setup, and patient preparation. It facilitates equipment mastery for respiratory and cardiac care along with troubleshooting tips for monitoring and mechanical devices. Also included is information on specific types of critical care units, such as cardiac, surgical, neuro, and the burn unit. Documentation, advance directives, organ donations, palliative and end-of-life care are also discussed. The resource addresses the requirements of The Joint Commission and recommendations of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, such as isolation precautions and use of personal protective equipment. Other important information is provided such as normal hemodynamic measurements, basic electrocardiographic (EKG) rhythms, 12-lead EKG electrode placement, and a "Do Not Use" abbreviation list in the appendix that will help prevent medication errors. NOTE: This title is not for sale in the UK


Movies and TV shows are probably the most attractive media of language learning, and the associated subtitle is an important resource in the learning process. Despite its significance, subtitle has never been exploited effectively as it could be. In this paper we present ENGtube, which is a video service for ESL (English as Second Language) learners. The key component of this service is an integrated environment for displaying the video clips, the source subtitle and the translated subtitle with rich information at users' disposal. The rich information of subtitle is produced by various speech and language technologies.


SHALINI BHARAT* INTRODUCTION This study contrasts the attitudes and sex-role perceptions of working couples differing in terms of wives' job status (career vs. non-career wives) and belonging to two socio-cultural settings in India which can be regarded as distinct with respect to norms of gender equality. These norms are assumed to be reflected in women's general social status, literacy rate and rate of work participation. With the participation of women in the formal economic sector globally, research interest in the dual earner, dual career or double pay cheque families has also increased (Hart Mann, 1981; Hood, 1983; Huber and Spitze, 1983; Kapur, 1970, 1974; Meissner, Humphreys, Meis and Scheu, 1975; Ramu, 1987, 1989; Shukla, 1987, 1989). Of particular interest to researchers have been the family management patterns and sex-role perceptions as influenced by women's increased role outside her home boundaries. In general, the existing findings indicate that regardless of their employment status, women continue to bear the major house hold responsibilities and perform multiple roles as worker, home maker, mother and wife. Another important observation is that even in dual earner families, men continue to enjoy their main breadwinner or provider status. Ramu (1987,1989) found that both husbands and wives in dual earner families in India perceived men mainly in their provider role. The striking finding was that the employed wives, more than the non-employed, were the most conservative in their perception of husband's roles. The gender identity, rather than women's work status, was more important in determining their attitudes towards adult roles and marriage. In other words, women's work status did not help them to alter their sex-role perceptions. Shukla (1988) reported that dual earner couples experienced maximum satisfaction in performing their gender defined roles. For an American sample, Hood (1983) showed that while couples generally accepted the necessity and importance of women's economic contribution, very few of them were willing to relinquish the abstract ideal of men in provider role. That such gender based perceptions help in maintaining the traditional division of household labour, is supported by findings that indicate role overload, role stress and role conflict among working women (Chakraborty, 1978; Epstein, 1971; Kapur, 1974; Rapaport and Rapaport, 1982). Sex-role perceptions and attitudes towards working women are influenced by the cultural norms of gender equality which determine the position of women in society and their educational and economic status. In most societies, as also in India, cultural norms favour women mainly in their domestic and marital roles (Rao and Rao, 1988). If they work, they are regarded merely as secondary or supportive earners. It is the husbands who are accorded the "main provider" status (Ramu, 1989). It is suggested that women's employment does not alter sex - role perceptions mainly because of the prevailing culturally defined gender based norms. Ramu's explanation of the traditional sex-role perceptions among working couples in India is that both men and women continue to be governed by the traditional beliefs and values which "encourage wives to acknowledge and defer to their husbands even though they share the provider role" (Ramu, 1987:913). For a western sample, Hardesty and Bokemier (1989) have suggested that it is important for women to them, selves hold egalitarian sex-role attitudes when expecting similar attitudes from others and co-operation from husbands in household matters. Studies on women and work have also made use of the concept of resources to examine family and marital patterns among working couples (Blood and Wolfe, 1960). The Resource theory specifies education, income and occupation as resources in bargaining for power within the marital relationship. The partner who possesses a greater level of these resources enjoys greater power and control. …


Tradition can be understood as the handing down of local knowledge, statements,practices, beliefs, legends, customs, information, from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice, or something that is handed down, a long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting. It is an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior, as a religious practice or a social custom. Meanwhile, identity may be described as "The state or fact of being the same one; the state or fact of remaining the same one, as under varying aspects or conditions; the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another; the condition or character that distinguishes a person or a thing."In one society tradition and identity can be related one to each other since one major tradition could be considered as one prominent identity to this society. An endurable tradition may generate a meaningful identity to one society. It is believed that that tradition is a conscious model of past lifeways that people use in the construction of their identity.One example of tradition discussed here is the Javanese slametan, which is practiced from generation to generation whether by the Javanese who live in Java island or those who live in other areas, which include outer islands such as Bali, Madura, Sumatra, and Kalimantan as well as in the Netherlands Suriname.


Reinforcement learning with sparse rewards is challenging because an agent can rarely obtain non-zero rewards and hence, gradient-based optimization of parameterized policies can be incremental and slow. Recent work demonstrated that using a memory buffer of previous successful trajectories can result in more effective policies. However, existing methods may overly exploit past successful experiences, which can encourage the agent to adopt sub-optimal and myopic behaviors. In this work, instead of focusing on good experiences with limited diversity, we propose to learn a trajectory-conditioned policy to follow and expand diverse past trajectories from a memory buffer. Our method allows the agent to reach diverse regions in the state space and improve upon the past trajectories to reach new states. We empirically show that our approach significantly outperforms count-based exploration methods (parametric approach) and self-imitation learning (parametric approach with non-parametric memory) on various complex tasks with local optima. In particular, without using expert demonstrations or resetting to arbitrary states, we achieve the state-of-the-art scores under five billion number of frames, on challenging Atari games such as Montezuma's Revenge and Pitfall.


The addition-of-velocities hypothesis, which Kantor recently claimed to have verified, has been investigated using a different experimental arrangement. A laser beam was passed through a moving mica window, which might be considered as a Huygens-type moving source of light. An interferometer was built with which to detect and measure any change in speed of the emitted light. The apparatus allowed investigation of: the effects of window speed, which could be varied continuously up to 63m/sec; direction of window motion with respect to direction of propagation; and the effects of air in the beam path. Emission theory as used by Kantor predicted a 13 fringe shift; however, no shift was observed under any conditions. The estimated sensitivity of the method is 1/20 fringe. Our results are therefore consistent with the second postulate of special relativity, but not with Kantor's hypothesis.


The article describes the events that accompanied the process of the appearance, production , and decline of artillery production in Lviv in the XIV–XVIII centuries. The factors that have become prerequisites for setting up the production of guns in Lviv are analyzed. An important factor influencing the development of metalworking and weapons production in Lviv w as the rich deposits of marsh ore from the Dniester along the Zubra River valley to Lviv. Long before the casting of artillery in the city was already pouring bells. Due to its favorable geographical location, Lviv was an important center of trade and crafts, which in turn contributed to the rapid emergence of new weapons in the city. The initial period of development of artillery production is characterized, the preserved Lviv bell tower of the XІV century is described from the holdings of the Museum of the Polish Army, it was concluded that its design corresponds to the requirements of the time. The key moments of the development of artillery production in Lviv in the XVI – XVII centuries are considered with an emphasis on the ethnic origin of foundries operating in the city. The influence of European production technologies is monitored through foreign craftsmen who worked as a sworn city foundries. The high authority of Lviv foundries is evidenced by the right to supervise masters of their profession throughout the territory of the Rzeczpospolita on a par with Krakow's colleagues. We do not find any documentary references to the involvement of Ukrainians in working with city guns. Obviously, this is due to the general confrontation between the communities in the city at the time. Military-political and economic reasons for the actual cessation of production of artillery after the invasion of Charles XII's troops are examined. An attempt to resume casting in Lviv at the beginning of the XVIII century is described. On the basis of the analysis of some documents of the Epiphany fraternity and a comparative analysis of the image of the figures of saints on guns, it is established that I. Polyansky — the author of the last known series of guns poured in Lviv, was of Greek Catholic faith, that is — Ukrainian in origin.


"Red Light Green Light" author Cassandra Clawson compares her experience with writing to that of a person "maneuvering through traffic." She uses an extended metaphor of streetlights to help illustrate her progression as a writer. As you read, pay attention to how this metaphor functions. How does she define red lights? Green? Yellow? How does the metaphor add structure and focus to the essay? The author also uses rhetorical questions to help illustrate her points. How does this approach affect her audience? Do the questions serve to engage the reader? In her conclusion, Clawson discusses her future as a writer. How does the introduction of a new idea affect the essay's overall focus and purpose?


Molcho and Pickett1 suggest that it is unrealistic and counterproductive to try and prevent all childhood injury. We agree, welcome this contribution and support the intent of their article to facilitate debate and discussion around the issue.

We agree with their view that the dominant paradigm in injury control is that all childhood injuries, irrespective of their origins, are unacceptable. We would argue this paradigm extends to all age groups. Taken to its extreme, this position does not, however, stand up to scrutiny. Are the proponents seriously suggesting we seek to prevent even the mildest of injuries? For example, a child tripping over and sustaining a barely visible abrasion to her arm but nevertheless is crying as a result. We believe most parents would probably briefly console the child and once the crying had abated encourage them to continue playing and then completely forget about the incident.

There clearly are unstated thresholds that guide which injuries we should pay attention to, which vary depending on circumstances. Nevertheless, it is likely that many in the injury control field are challenged by the idea that, for example, some medically treated sports injuries may be acceptable if the benefits are seen significantly to outweigh the costs.

In this commentary we critically appraise the criteria proposed by Molcho and Pickett1 to classify the occurrence of childhood injuries into acceptable or non-acceptable.

Molcho and Pickett1 propose that the following are deemed unacceptable: '(1) intentional injuries; (2) severe, fatal, or disabling injuries; (3) injuries occurring while involved in unhealthy, unnecessary, or abnormally risky behaviours; and (4) injuries that occurred while ignoring known preventive measures. However, injuries that are unintentional, occurring during a necessary or health generating activity, and that do not …


This Note presents a legal, economic, and regulatory roadmap to drive long-term innovation in sustainable energy generation. Next-generation nuclear power, which fundamentally mitigates many safety and nuclear waste issues, is the focus of this Note; however, the economic concepts can be applied to encourage solar, wind, advanced battery, and other sustainable technologies with high upfront costs and low long-term variable costs. Advanced nuclear energy generation is economically competitive on a long-term levelized cost basis, but suffers from a timing issue—a large amount of capital is needed upfront, with repayment over several decades, during which time significant capital costs can accrue (e.g., compounding interest, often at unfavorably high interest rates). This Note offers solutions to offset capital costs in both regulated and deregulated energy markets, including tools to accelerate recognition of future revenue and to reduce interest rates.


Abstract I discuss a solution to the Yale shadow puzzle, due to Roy Sorensen, based on the actual process theory of causation, and argue that it does not work in the case of a new version of the puzzle, which I call 'the Bilkent shadow puzzle'. I offer a picture of the ontology of shadows which, together with an alternative view of causation, constitutes the basis for a new solution that uniformly solves both puzzles.


The New Zealand Ministry of Education (MoE) has begun measuring the light, temperature, noise and CO2 level of 21 selected schools using a single sensor. This sensor is being developed as a method for routine measurement in order to understand the performance of New Zealand's school buildings. This study used a Climate Based Daylight Modelling to appraise the MoE methodology, to determine what can be learned from the use of a single sensor in one location in a classroom, to estimate the lighting comfort across a space. Daylighting is focused upon because it has the most spatial variation in a space. The findings of this study support the assertion that a one-point sensor measurement on a vertical wall could predict illuminance across the centre of the horizontal work plane; and provide a useful benchmark to estimate the light distribution across a space. However, regardless of how representative of a space a one-point measurement is, it is difficult to quantify the daylight distribution over time throughout the space. If various daylight indicators are well documented and analysed alongside the measured data, a strategically positioned one-point sensor on the vertical wall could be useful in predicting the daylight quantity of a space.


Since 1971, the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) has retrofitted about 1300 bridges to improve their seismic resistance. CALTRANS has investigated 13 earthquakes since 1971 but only recently have retrofitted bridges been involved. In both the 1986 Palm Springs earthquake and the 1987 Whittier Earthquake, retrofitted bridges were subjected to moderate shaking. Damage to State highway bridges during the Whittier earthquake was confined primarily to one bridge at the Interstate 605 and 5 Interchange. Shear damage, classified as moderate, occurred to the columns of one bent. The exact influence of the retrofit on the bridge response is not known at this time. The bridge was shored up and opened to traffic in less than 22 hours. CALTRANS is currently beginning a second retrofit program aimed at improving the overall response of tall ramp briges.


Recently, mediation-aided composition has been widely adopted when dealing with incompatibilities of services. However, existing approaches suffer from state space explosion in compatibility verification and cannot automatically generate the BPEL code. This paper presents a Petri net approach to mediation-aided composition of Web services. First, services are modeled as open WorkFlow Nets (oWFNs) and are composed using mediation transitions (MTs). Second, the modular reachability graph (MRG) of composition is automatically constructed and the compatibility is analyzed, so that the problem of state space explosion is significantly alleviated. Furthermore, an Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rule-based technique is developed to automatically generate the BPEL code of the composition, which can significantly save the time and labor of designers. Finally, the prototype system has been developed.


This thesis utilises the second fundamental law of capitalism in order to study the development of income inequality in Sweden, from the start of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21stcentury. The law is studied from a historical perspective (examination of national accounts as time series), and empirically analysed (regression analysis). The results retrieved indicate that the income diverging force of savings exceed the income converging force of growth (via income, innovation, and education). This means that income inequality is predicted to increase. The main conclusion drawn is that choosing whether to save or not on behalf of every individual affects the capital stock of the aggregate economy. When individual savings pile up the aggregate capital stock increases, and if this increase surpasses the growth in national income the capital-to-income ratio increases. This ratio is in a sense a measure of how capitalistic the country is. More income inequality is expected to be found the higher this ratio gets.


This paper evaluates the empirical evidence of increasing the chances of financial crises induced by opening up developing countries to short-term capital inflows, and appraises the various proposals made for mitigating the severity of financial crises. We point out that there is solid evidence that financial opening increases the chance of financial crises. There is more tenuous evidence that financial opening contributes positively to long-run growth. Hence, there may be a complex trade off between the adverse intermediate run and the beneficial long run effects of financial opening. The literature is abounded with proposals aimed at improving this intertemporal trade-off, reducing the costs of financial crises. A version of the Lucas critic may limit the welfare gain of these proposals. Hence, a better understanding of the structural characteristics leading to exposure and crises is the key for designing a successful restructuring of the global capital market. Some of the reforms may fall short of success due to coordination failure: they may be effective only if they were adopted comprehensively by all the relevant financial centers. Finally, some of the proposals may be too optimistic, ignoring the time inconsistency and political economy considerations, as well as presuming the ability to verify unambiguously the quality of adjustment.