Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) recently proposed a regional visa program that would allow immigrants to live and work exclusively in Detroit or other cities in the United States. A regional immigration option through a state-based visa program would create a temporary work permit that would allow participating states to manage the flow and regulate the quantity of temporary migrants who want to live and work within their borders. Ideally, law-abiding visa holders would be eligible for renewal and free to apply for permanent residency during their stay in the United States. Although overseen by the federal government, a state-based visa program would allow state governments to craft a better-functioning work-visa program that is more adaptable to their local economic conditions than the present system run by the federal government — perhaps even supplying lessons for future federal work-visa programs. A state-based visa program would direct immigration to the states that want it without forcing much additional immigration on those that do not. Unlike existing employment-based visas that tie foreign workers to one firm, state-based visa holders would be free to move between employers in the state — leading to thicker, more equitable, and more efficient local labor markets. A state-based visa would increase prosperity by allowing additional migration to portions of the country and economy that demand them. Successful international experiences with regional visas in Australia and Canada provide some valuable policy lessons and hint at the major economic benefits of such a policy in the United States.


Isotope separation is one of the grand challenges of modern society and holds great potential for basic science, medicine, energy, and defense. We consider here a new and general approach to isotope separation. The method is based on an irreversible change of the mass-to-magnetic moment ratio of a particular isotope in an atomic beam, followed by a magnetic multipole whose gradients deflect and guide the atoms. The underlying mechanism is a reduction of the entropy of the beam by the information of a single-scattered photon for each atom that is separated. We numerically simulate isotope separation for a range of examples, including lithium, for which we describe the experimental setup we are currently constructing. Simulations of other examples demonstrate this technique's general applicability to almost the entire periodic table. We show that the efficiency of the process is only limited by the available laser power, since one photon on average enables the separation of one atom. The practical importance of the proposed method is that large-scale isotope separation should be possible, using ordinary inexpensive magnets and the existing technologies of supersonic beams and lasers.


To establish methods for improving drought tolerance in Brassica oilseeds, we examined the influence of soil water deficit on solute accumulation in expanded and expanding leaves. We assessed the contribution of individual solutes to osmotic adjustment (OA) and determined the effect of homozygosity on the variation of the expression of OA. Juvenile plants of canola (Brassica napus cvv. Karoo and Monty) and Indian mustard (B. juncea line PI-81792) were grown under glasshouse conditions. The 3 genotypes expressed similar magnitudes of OA in response to drought, compared with a 2-fold higher OA in expanding leaves than in fully expanded leaves. Drought-induced changes in OA of expanded leaves of all genotypes were largely due to the accumulation of nitrate (42-47%), soluble sugars (31-38%), and proline (11-14%). In expanding leaves, K + accumulation was significant (23-27%) as was proline (17-22%), whereas nitrate and soluble sugars were less important than in expanded leaves. By comparison, ions of Na+, Cl-, and water-soluble Mg 2+ and Ca2+ did not contribute significantly to OA. Proline was hardly detected in well watered plants, but sharply increased in leaves of droughted plants in direct proportion to the magnitude of OA (80 ± 7 mmol/MPa, r2 = 0.94). A comparison between doubled haploid (DH) and commercial seed sources of 2 B. napus cultivars showed similar mean values in OA. The DH lines had a 33% lower coefficient of variation in OA than cv. Karoo and 48% lower than cv. Monty among replicate plants. Proline may be a suitable 'marker' for OA in juvenile Brassica plants because of all the solutes measured, its concentration was directly proportional to the magnitude of OA across cultivars and leaf types. The use of DH lines will improve the precision in selection of genotypes that have the capacity to osmotically adjust under soil water deficit.


. Recently proposed Capsule Network is a brain inspired architecture that brings a new paradigm to deep learning by modelling input domain variations through vector based representations. Despite being a seminal contribution, CapsNet does not explicitly model structured relationships between the detected entities and among the capsule features for related inputs. Motivated by the working of cortical network in human visual system, we seek to resolve CapsNet limitations by proposing several intuitive modifications to the CapsNet architecture. We introduce, (1) a novel routing weight initialization technique, (2) an improved CapsNet design that exploits semantic relationships between the primary capsule activations using a densely connected Conditional Random Field and (3) a Cholesky transformation based correlation module to learn a general priority scheme. Our proposed design allows CapsNet to scale better to more complex problems, such as the multi-label classi-fication task, where semantically related categories co-exist with various interdependencies. We present theoretical bases for our extensions and demonstrate significant improvements on ADE20K scene dataset.


This book is the product of a long journey by a company of academics and practitioners sharing a common interest, titled the Spirituality and Music Education Group (SAME). It started at the International Society for Music Education Conference in Bologna in 2008, with its first gathering in Birmingham in 2010. This book is a product of the various meetings of this group. Since the group formed, the notion of spirituality has been struggling to find a way through the dominant ideology of secularisation in the West to a place in a post-secularising world.
This book concentrates on examining this issue from the position of music educators on three continents. This process can be defined as both separate from as well as part of the dominant Christian and humanist traditions, whatever is appropriate in a particular culture. The book represents a fascinating array of lenses through which to examine the many and complex strands within the concept of spirituality.


Which soldier in a platoon is most likely to be a future hero? A unique, proprietary survey of 526 World War II combat veterans shows two distinct profiles of combat-decorated veterans. While both rate highly on three common personality characteristics – leadership, loyalty, and risk-taking – the strength of these dimensions vary between those who were eager to enlist (eager heroes) versus those who were drafted or otherwise reluctant to enlist (reluctant heroes). While one might look more like John Wayne in The Green Berets, the second looks more like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. These findings offer two key contributions. Conceptually, these profiles in heroism can help us better understand leadership in crisis situations. Operationally, these profiles may aid recruiters of future soldiers – along with fire fighters, police officers, and rescue workers – by knowing what characteristics in potential employees might best reflect the potential for heroic leadership. They also offer insights as to how training can develop heroic potential.


The use of alternate oils (AO) in aquafeeds is now a reality due to the rise in
the price of fish oil (FO). The lack of n-3 long-chain (>C20) polyunsaturated fatty
acid (n-3 LC-PUFA) in AO is a major constraint due to the resulting low levels of n-3
LC-PUFA obtained in farmed fish. The aim of this study was to understand the
metabolic basis underlying current and innovative strategies to maintain n-3 LCPUFA
levels in salmonids, particularly for Atlantic salmon, fed diets in which fish oil
(FO) is substituted with AO in a series of four independent experiments. Use of
Echium oil (EO) rich in stearidonic acid (SDA) has the potential to bypass the initial
Δ6 desaturase enzyme which is a rate limiting step for n-3 LC-PUFA biosynthesis.
This hypothesis was tested by growing Atlantic salmon in freshwater and seawater on
diets where FO was completely substituted by either EO or rapeseed oil (RO) with
comparison to a FO diet. The results indicated that SDA rich oil is a more suitable
candidate for FO replacement in aquafeeds for Atlantic salmon compared to
conventional vegetable oils due to enhanced n-3 LC-PUFA biosynthesis. The use of a
FO finishing diet (FOFD) is a suitable way to restore n-3 LC-PUFA in fish after a
growth period with AO. Preferential FA metabolism may contribute to n-3 LC-PUFA
restoration by favouring β-oxidation of saturated fatty acids and/or monosaturated
fatty acids. Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)
restoration was investigated in rainbow trout fed a diet where FO was substituted by
50% palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) and 75% PFAD followed by a FOFD period.
There was no evidence for preferential FA metabolism occurring and the dilution
model was a good predictor of FA changes after dietary change. In aiming at
improving the n-3 LC-PUFA restoration by the FOFD strategy, a short term food
deprivation after growth on 75% PFAD prior to feeding the FOFD was undertaken for
Atlantic salmon smolts. Short term food deprivation reduced lipid content especially
in the fillet of fish which lead to an increase in n-3 LC-PUFA % composition. Subsequent feeding to satiation with a FOFD improved the restoration of n-3 LCPUFA
in the fillet of unfed fish. This thesis also examined the use of oil blends in
aquafeeds with emphasis on varied DHA and EPA ratio as a strategy for sustaining n-
3 LC-PUFA in Atlantic salmon. The DHA and EPA ratio of FO is typically 1:1.5 in
any blend of FO and AO. According to EPA and DHA metabolism in fish, higher
dietary DHA content to EPA might be more suitable for optimizing their deposition.
We tested whether altering the dietary DHA: EPA ratio in Atlantic salmon by
increasing dietary DHA inclusion in conjunction with low dietary n-3 LC-PUFA
content may enable efficient n-3 LC-PUFA deposition in fish. The results indicated
that a diet having a higher DHA: EPA ratio than usually encountered in FO or FO/AO
blend diets is better suited for optimizing n-3 LC-PUFA deposition in Atlantic
salmon.


Abstract A perturbation in the carbon-isotope record at the time of the Pliensbachian–Toarcian boundary (~ 184 Ma) in the Early Jurassic is reported, based on new data from Yorkshire, England. Two sharp δ13Corg negative excursions, each with a magnitude of ~ −2.5 ‰ and reaching minimum values of −28.5 ‰, are recorded in the bulk organic-matter record in sediments of latest Pliensbachian to earliest Toarcian age. A similar pattern of negative carbon-isotope excursions has been observed at the stage boundary in the SW European section at Peniche, Portugal in δ13Ccarbonate, δ13Cwood and δ13Cbrachiopod records. The isotopic excursion is of interest when considering the genesis and development of the later Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (OAE), as well as the second-order global extinction event that spans the stage boundary. Furthermore, the isotope excursion potentially provides a chemostratigraphic marker for recognition of the stage boundary, which is currently achieved on the basis of different ammonite faunas in the NW European and Tethyan realms.


This paper deals with the structure synthesis and reconfiguration analysis of variable-DOF (variable-degree-of-freedom) single-loop mechanisms with prismatic joints based on a unified tool—the dual quaternion. According to motion polynomials over dual quaternions, an algebraic method is presented to synthesize variable-DOF single-loop 5R2P mechanisms (R and P denote revolute and prismatic joints, respectively), which are composed of the Bennett and RPRP mechanisms. Using this approach, variable-DOF single-loop RRPRPRR and RRPRRPR mechanisms are constructed by joints obtained from the factorization of motion polynomials. Then reconfiguration analysis of these variable-DOF single-loop mechanisms is performed in light of the kinematic mapping based on dual quaternions as well as the prime decomposition. The results show that the variable-DOF 5R2P mechanisms have a 1DOF spatial 5P2P motion mode and a 2DOF Bennett-RPRP motion mode. Furthermore, the variable-DOF 5R2P mechanisms have two transition configurations, from which the mechanisms can switch among their two motion modes.


Traditional psychoanalysis views relationships as forged through individual drives--a satisfaction and fulfillment of needs and desires. Rucker and Lombardi contend, however, that all relationships cannot be explained so simply; rather, they argue that human relationships carry meanings which cannot be reduced solely to the psychic contributions of each of the individuals involved. Instead, Subject Relations discusses the existence of a related unconscious rooted in mutual subjective experience. The authors cite numerous clinical examples that show how the unconscious material generated by human interrelatedness comes to light. Drawing on the work of Matte-Blanco as well as traditional object relations theorists such as Melanie Klein, D.W. Winnicott, and Thomas Ogden, the authors examine how identifications that exist through unconscious processes manifest themselves in psychoanalytic theory and practice.


ABSTRACT:Anthropological studies of doubt have typically highlighted its productivity, pointing to the space that doubt opens to question established frameworks. This article builds on these observations by exploring an instance of doubt that I argue is unproductive. For Pentecostals on the Zambian Copperbelt, the fact that they do not receive the extravagant riches promised by the prosperity gospel—a Christian movement that is central to their faith—is not usually a problem. Most Pentecostal believers are able to reinterpret small gains in terms of a locally redefined prosperity, and therefore manage the doubts that their lack of wealth produces. For the poorest and most socially marginal believers, however, this kind of productive engagement with doubt is not possible. The productivity of doubt is therefore more an expression of structural factors than of the nature of doubt itself. This suggests that doubt—or at least the ability to mobilize doubt effectively—is a key index of power. This article provides an ethnographic exploration of the failure of the prosperity gospel while also expanding anthropological understanding of what makes doubt productive.


Although the concept of algorithms has been established a long time ago, their current topicality indicates a shift in the discourse. Classical definitions based in logic seem to be inadequate to describe their aesthetic capabilities. New approaches stress their involvement in material practices as well as their incompleteness. Based on the distinction of form and medium, as known for example in Luhmann's work, we propose that algorithms are actual forms taken out of a medium we tentatively call algorithmicity. We attempt an observation of defining aspects of such a medium by drawing a trajectory across a number of sound pieces. The operation of exchange between form and medium we call reconfiguration and it is articulated along this trajectory.


Laboratory experiments are an  important methodology  in economics, especially  in the field of behavioral  economics.  However,  it  is  still  debated  to  what  extent  results  from  laboratory experiments can be applied to field settings. One highly important question with respect to the external validity of  experiments  is whether  individuals  act  the  same    in  experiments as  they would in the field. This paper presents evidence on how individuals behave in donation experiments and how the same  individuals behave  in a naturally occurring decision situation on charitable giving. The results show  that behavior  in experiments  is correlated with behavior  in  the  field. The results are robust  to variations  in  the experimental setting, and  the correlation between experimental and  field  behavior  is  between  0.25  and  0.4. We  discuss whether  this  correlation  should  be interpreted  as  strong  or  weak  and  what  consequences  the  findings  have  for  experimental economics.


Optimal transport (OT), which provides a distance between two probability distributions by considering their spatial locations, has been applied to widely diverse applications. Computing an OT problem requires solution of linear programming with tight mass-conservation constraints. This requirement hinders its application to large-scale problems. To alleviate this issue, the recently proposed relaxed-OT approach uses a faster algorithm by relaxing such constraints. Its effectiveness for practical applications has been demonstrated. Nevertheless, it still exhibits slow convergence. To this end, addressing a convex semi-relaxed OT, we propose a fast block-coordinate Frank-Wolfe (BCFW) algorithm, which gives sparse solutions. Specifically, we provide their upper bounds of the worst convergence iterations, and equivalence between the linearization duality gap and the Lagrangian duality gap. Three fast variants of the proposed BCFW are also proposed. Numerical evaluations in color transfer problem demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform state-of-the-art algorithms across different settings.


Title of Document: CLOSING THE GAP: BEST PRACTICES FOR FUNDING RESIDENTIAL REHABILITATION Kathleen Amanda Taus, Master of Historic Preservation, 2015 Directed By: Professor Dennis J. Pogue, Ph.D. Graduate Program in Historic Preservation School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation University of Maryland, College Park This paper explores the history of preservation financing and the different financing structures currently available for owner-occupied housing across the nation. While there is a federal program for commercial structures, no such program exists for owner-occupied housing. This has restricted the availability of rehabilitation funds needed to increase the nation's viable housing stock. A variety of programs are available from government agencies, from the non-profit sector, and as a result of partnerships between the two. The recommendations from this paper take into account best practices from current programs to propose a framework that can be instituted nationwide to provide funding options for owner-occupied homes. CLOSING THE GAP: BEST PRACTICES FOR FUNDING SOURCES FOR RESIDENTIAL REHABILITATION


Information Systems research on Open Data has been primarily focused on its contribution to egovernment inquiries, government transparency, and open government. Recently, Open Data has been explored as a catalyser for service innovation as a consequence of big claims around the potential of such initiatives in terms of additional value that can be injected into the worldwide economy. Subsequently, the Open Data Services academic conversation was structured (Lindman et al. 2013a). The research project presented in this paper is an interpretive case study that was carried out to explore the factors that influence the diffusion of Open Data for new service development. This paper contributes to this debate by providing an interpretive inductive case study (Walsham 1995) of a tourism company that successfully turned several city authorities' raw open datasets into a set of valuable services. Results demonstrate that 16 factors and 68 related variables are the most relevant in the process of diffusion of open data for new service development. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the suitability of Social Constructionism and interpretive case study research to inductively generate knowledge in this field.


Fog computing is an architectural style in which network components between devices and the cloud execute application-specific logic. We present the first review on fog computing within healthcare informatics, and explore, classify, and discuss different application use cases presented in the literature. For that, we categorize applications into use case classes and list an inventory of application-specific tasks that can be handled by fog computing. We discuss on which level of the network such fog computing tasks can be executed, and provide tradeoffs with respect to requirements relevant to healthcare. Our review indicates that: 1) there is a significant number of computing tasks in healthcare that require or can benefit from fog computing principles; 2) processing on higher network tiers is required due to constraints in wireless devices and the need to aggregate data; and 3) privacy concerns and dependability prevent computation tasks to be completely moved to the cloud. These findings substantiate the need for a coherent approach toward fog computing in healthcare, for which we present a list of recommended research and development actions.


Advances in positioning, Web mapping, cellular communications and wiki technologies have surpassed the original visions of GSDI programs around the world. By tapping the distributed knowledge, personal time and energy of volunteer contributors, GI voluntarism is beginning to relocate and redistribute selected GI productive activities from mapping agencies to networks of non-state volunteer actors. Participants in the production process are both users and producers, or 'produsers' to use a recent neologism. Indeed, GI voluntarism ultimately has the potential to redistribute the rights to define and judge the value of the produced geographic information and of the new production system in general. The concept and its implementation present a rich collection of both opportunities and risks now being considered by leaders of public and private mapping organizations world-wide. In this paper, the authors describe and classify both the types of people who volunteer geospatial information and the nature of their contributions. Combining empirical research dealing with the Open Source software and Wikipedia communities with input from selected national mapping agencies and private companies, the authors offer different taxonomies that can help researchers clarify what is at stake with respect to geospatial information contributors. They identify early lessons which may be drawn from this research, and suggest questions which may be posed by large mapping organizations when considering the potential opportunities and risks associated with encouraging and employing Volunteered Geographic Information in their programs.


Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus of the Flaviviridae family. HCV-infected hepatocytes are known to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), which initiate lipid peroxidation, a reaction that converts polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as arachidonate, into reactive carbonyls that inactivate proteins. To study the effect of lipid peroxidation on HCV replication, we administered arachidonate to Huh7 cells that harbor an HCV replicon (Huh7-K2040 cells). After incubation in medium supplemented with arachidonate but deprived of lipid-soluble antioxidants, the cellular amount of malondialdehyde (MDA), a product of lipid peroxidation, increased markedly in Huh7-K2040 cells but not in parental Huh7 cells that do not harbor an HCV replicon. This increase was followed by a sharp reduction (>95%) in HCV RNA. Both of these events were prevented when cells were treated with vitamin E, a lipid-soluble antioxidant. After prolonged incubation of Huh7-K2040 cells with arachidonate in the absence of lipid-soluble antioxidants, the amount of MDA decreased after the reduction in the amount of HCV RNA. Thus, in the presence of arachidonate and in the absence of lipid-soluble antioxidants, HCV replication induces lipid peroxidation that reduces the amount of HCV RNA. Our results provide a mechanism for the previous observation that polyunsaturated fatty acids inhibit HCV replication [Kapadia SB, Chisari FV (2005) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:2561–2566], and they suggest that these agents may be effective in inhibiting HCV replication in vivo.


Cass Sunstein's book, The Partial Constitution, brings together a number of his constitutional law essays from the last ten years. During that time, Sunstein has argued, powerfully, for the unconstitutionality of regulatory constraints on access to abortion; for the constitutionality of and the need for regulation of violent pornography; for the constitutionality of limits on both campaign spending and congressional control over public broadcasting; for the deep consistency, conventional wisdom to the contrary notwithstanding, of the Court's repudiation of Lochner in 1937 with its 1974 decision in Roe v. Wade; for the view that we should accord far less deference than we do to presently held preferences and presently conceived "interests" in our public or collective decisionmaking; and for the view that at the heart of our constitutional traditions lies a commitment to deliberative democracy which, if sufficiently attended, could generate many more specific constitutional entailments, including but not limited to those put forth above. This book represents, and by so doing strengthens, these arguments and a good number of others as well. This book is well worth reading and rereading if for no other reason than to get a sense of the power of traditional legal arguments when put to often quite nontraditional political ends.What Sunstein has tried to do in this book is to weave his arguments on particular issues into a coherent whole, largely by identifying and then developing the common philosophical premises of the various positions he has taken over the last ten years. He then argues that the conception of the Constitution that emerges from a careful elaboration of those premises is both truer to our history and more just than the competing visions of the Constitution that both constitutional theorists and the Court have developed in the modem, post-New Deal era. Importantly, though, Sunstein does not simply present "his" interpretation of the Constitution as one possible interpretation among any number. Rather, his starting premises, he clearly believes, are correct and widely held to be so. If that assumption is right, and if we share with him a commitment to rational forms of argument, then the Constitution he envisions is not just "his" interpretation; instead, it is in an important sense "our" Constitution. It follows that the conclusions he reaches on substantive constitutional positions, including some he calls "surprising," should command general assent. I think this larger, overarching project is not in the end successful, but I also think it is a tremendously worthy endeavor. It is a project full of promise and hope: the Constitution here envisioned is a just Constitution which could indeed service the ends of justice in contemporary life. Consequently, when the project fails, the failures are tremendously disappointing, and the reasons for those failures important.In this review, I will first describe the deep structure of Sunstein's Constitution by outlining what I take to be the major premises elaborated in his book and then criticizing sequentially each of the premises I take to be the basic building blocks of Sunstein's "partial Constitution." All of Sunstein's basic premises, I think, are more problematic than Sunstein believes them to be. By identifying the problems I hope to suggest that the flaws, although deep, are curable, and that whether or not that is the case, the constitutional goals Sunstein puts forward in this book are goals we should applaud.


The traditional research paradigm represents discoveries flowing linearly from basic science conducted in public institutions to applied research and commercialization undertaken largely by private industry. This characterization fails to accurately portray the nonlinear and chaotic nature of research and development (R&D) processes. Recent United States (U.S.) legislation aimed to promote economic growth through supporting research acknowledges the "blurring of lines" between public and private research activities. Moreover, incentive alignments have recently emerged between public and private interests in life science R&D. In this context, the Berkeley/Novartis strategic alliance is shown to be a collaborative public/private relationship that is sourced in such incentive alignments. It is also argued that this alliance is consistent with the fundamental complementary relationships that formed some of the principles structuring the original foundation for Land Grant universities.


This paper describes the first in a series of interactive workshops designed for a three-year research project concerned with addressing nutritional issues in older hospital patients. As many individuals are involved in the process of assessing and treating patients, and preparing and delivering their food, existing 'food systems' have been difficult to envision and understand holistically; each individual is involved, to a greater or lesser extent, in only a fragment of the whole system, not able to appreciate the totality of the experience encountered by the patient. Preparing for this workshop enabled the disparate disciplines within the research team to work together on common objectives and to understand more clearly the problematic issues within current food provision in the hospitals. The workshop itself involved the individuals collectively known as the 'food family', identified during preliminary ethnographic studies, to ensure that the researchers' understanding of the status quo of the current food system was accurate and full. The rationale for the design of the activities and methods used in this workshop is described along with an evaluation of the outcomes of these activities and how they helped verify data and inform the next stage of this project.


![Figure][1]

A diagram of Cassini's final orbits (blue curves), showing the last ring-grazing orbit and the 22 Grand Finale orbits.

IMAGE: NASA JET PROPULSION LABORATORY

Launched in 1997, the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004 and spent the following 12 years orbiting far outside the planet's rings. Among the mission's many discoveries were potentially habitable environments on Saturn's moons, including a subsurface ocean of water on Enceladus.

To avoid accidental contamination of the moons with any Earth bacteria that might have hitched a ride on the spacecraft, mission planners decided that when Cassini ran out of fuel it would be deliberately crashed into Saturn. As fuel reserves ran low, the spacecraft embarked on a series of maneuvers that took it through previously unexplored regions and ended with its destruction.

The first phase was a series of 20 "ring-grazing" orbits in which Cassini passed near the outer edge of the rings. Then the trajectory was shifted to fly through the gap between the planet and the inner edge of the rings, a phase dubbed the "Grand Finale." Cassini flew through this region 22 times, in various orientations designed to optimize the scientific measurements made by its numerous instruments. Finally, in 2017 Cassini dove into the planet itself at 35 km s−1, leading to the spacecraft's fiery disintegration in the upper atmosphere.

The papers in this section present results from those final phases of the mission. They include studies of Saturn's puzzling magnetic field, an isolated inner radiation belt, auroral radio emission, the mass and composition of solid grains falling from the rings toward the planet, and the composition of Saturn's atmosphere. Many more results will follow from Cassini's last period of exploration in the Saturn system.

 [1]: pending:yes


An important part of the water supply in California and the western United States is derived from runoff fed by mountain snow melt. Snow accumulation responds to both precipitation and temperature variations, and forms an interesting climatic index, since it integrates these influences over the entire late fall-spring period. The study area includes the Sierra Nevada, which accumulates most of the snow pack and comprises a major portion of the water-bearing region of California. The purpose of this study is to shed light upon the link between climate and year-to-year variability in the snow pack. Specifically, we wanted to determine (a) the dependence of snow pack and streamflow upon natural climate variability, and (b) if the relationships linking snow and streamflow to climate variations are stable over the history of instrumental records by using pre-1948 historical records to test the results from 1948-present. The basis of the study will be several long series of historical observations containing observed variability over daily-toseasonal time scales. Our focus is on measurements on/around April 1, when snow accumulation is typically greatest. The primary data is from a network of mountainous snow courses; many have records of six decades or more. For any given year, the spring snow water equivalent (SWE) anomaly at a particular snow course is likely to be 25-60% of its long-term average. Although effects vary with region and with elevation, in general, the anomalous winter precipitation has the strongest influence on spring SWE fluctuations. Anomalous temperature has a weaker effect overall, but it has great influence in lower elevations such as in the coastal Northwest, and during spring in higher elevations. Patterns of the precipitation, temperature, and snow anomalies extend over broad regional areas, much larger than individual watersheds. These surface anomalies are organized by the atmospheric circulation, with primary anomaly centers over the North Pacific Ocean as well as over western North America. For most of the regions, anomalously low SWE is associated with a winter circulation resembling the PNA pattern. With a strong low in the central North Pacific and high pressure over the Pacific Northwest, this pattern diverts North Pacific storms northward, away from the region. Both warm and cool phases of ENSO tend to produce regional patterns with out-of-phase SWE anomalies in the Northwest and the Southwest.


I will present recent work at Caltech on the integration of optomechanical crystals for light and sound with electronic superconducting quantum circuits. Utilizing the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer platform, we have made key advances in the fabrication and integration of extremely low loss microwave phonon structures and low loss microwave superconducting resonators of high impedance. These technical advancements offer several intriguing opportunities for quantum information processing and networking with phonons, photons, and electrons in an integrated, wafer-scale platform. The focus of my talk will be on two examples of our efforts in this direction: (i) nonreciprocal photon transport and amplification arising from synthetic magnetic flux and reservoir engineering in an optomechanical crystal circuit, and (ii) waveguide-QED systems consisting of microwave-bandgap circuits with embedded transmon-like qubits.


2017 Abstract Introduction: The aim of this study was to develop a massive open online courses instructional design models based on connectivism theory in the higher education. Method: This is a qualitative content analysis study. In order to the SPELL OUT THIS ?? MOOCs books and articles were collected and the unit of analysis was determined. A total of 189 articles and book extracts from different databases were extracted. 62 units of study were selected based on purposeful sampling and compliance with the criteria of study. Criteria for selecting papers in this study were as follows; a) experimental studies and review articles that focus on massive open online courses, b) published in the period between 2006 and 2016 and c) related to the research subject. Then the semantic units' coding continued to reach saturation point. Finally, the main categories of sub-categories were segregated and the conceptual instructional model for MOOCs was designed based on the research findings. Results: After the coding process, the code based on the similarity or affinity with each other were classified. Finally, eight main categories and 22 sub-categories of qualitative data were extracted. The main layers of this model includes; a) philosophical and pedagogical umbrella, b)orientation, c) analysis, d) content, e) networking, f) motivation, g) demonstration, h)evaluation and i) management which is supported by the principles of connective theory Conclusion: MOOCs instructional design model presented in this study, exist in micro and macro levels. This MOOCs design model is for higher education levels. It also has other application in different


Secure routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks have been developed recently, yet, it has been unclear what are the properties they achieve, as a formal analysis of these protocols is mostly lacking. In this paper, we are concerned with this problem, how to specify and how to prove the correctness of a secure routing protocol. We provide a definition of what a protocol is expected to achieve independently of its functionality, as well as a communication and adversary models. This way, we enable formal reasoning on the correctness of secure routing protocols. We demonstrate this by analyzing two protocols from the literature.


The Taiwan Banks (Formosa Shoals), a large NE-SW oriented bathymetric feature near the southern end (23°N, 118 119°E) of the Taiwan Strait, is a region of extremely shallow water that exerts a profound effect on the propagation of tidal waves. As such waves propagate over the Taiwan Banks, they become distorted and asymmetric due to bottom friction and contribute to the generation of shallow water tides. The POM model was used in present study to simulate the tides in the Taiwan Strait region. Shallow water tidal dynamics in the area of Taiwan Banks are focused. The numerical model was validated against sea level observations from 34 tidal stations located on the coast of Mainland China and Taiwan. Trajectory records from two SVP drifters are used to be compared with the simulations using wavelet-based rotary spectral analysis. Numerical simulations show that the Taiwan Banks divide, separate and guide the southward propagating branch of an M2 tide along the western boundary of the Taiwan Strait as Kelvin Waves. The eastern branch which dissipates its energy by the bottom friction around the Taiwan Banks and the Penghu Islands gradually diminished along the south-eastern boundary of the Taiwan Strait. The northward propagating M2 dominates the tides in the waters east of the point 119.5°E, 22.8°N along the Penghu Channel instead. Moreover, the patterns of the standing waves of the 1/4 diurnal constituents are identified, it could be therefore hypothesized that the amplification of semi-diurnal tides in the Taiwan Strait is primarily due to the condition of two open ended channel co-oscillations. Co-oscillations are demonstrated by numerical simulations as well as an SVP drifter record which indicates that the Taiwan Banks act as the generator of the shallow water tides. The shallow water constituents are amplified and propagate southward to the South China Sea and diminish rapidly. From the SVP drifter data and short-time rotary spectral analysis, it is also interesting to note that the 1/5 diurnal constituent becomes significant compared to other shallow water constituents in the local vicinity of Taiwan Banks.


When the Germans launched their Spring Offensives of 1918, they placed tremendous pressure on the alliance between Britain and France. While French and British soldiers had formed strong relations through mutual cooperation at the Somme in 1916, the French experiences at Verdun and during the mutinies of 1917 had changed the way they viewed the war and, most crucially, how they would view any allied failures. When the British were forced to retreat following the beginning of Operation Michael in March 1918, the French reacted with fury. This article examines the nature of the French evaluations of the British during 1918 and the extent to which they judged their ally to have failed them. By using the collections of the Commissions de contrôle postal for the French army during the war, it will show the depths to which French opinion of the British fell in the first half of the year but also how British actions towards the war's conclusion managed to restore some of their honour in French eyes.


This work provides a way to merge Cloud Computing infrastructures with traditional or legacy network deployments, leveraging the best in both worlds and enabling a logically centralized control for it. A solution is proposed to extend existing Cloud Computing software stacks so they are able to manage networks outside the Cloud Computing infrastructure, by extending the internal, virtualized network segments. This is useful in a variety of use cases such as incremental Legacy to Cloud network migration, hybrid virtual/traditional networking, centralized control of existing networks, bare metal provisioning, and even offloading of advanced services from typical home gateways into the operator. By using what is called External Drivers, any organization can develop their own driver to support new, specific networking equipment. Our concept solution is prototyped on top of OpenStack, including changes to the API, command line interface and other mechanisms. Test results indicate that there are low penalties on latency and throughput, and that provisioning times are reduced in comparison with similar maintenance operations on traditional computer networks.


AIM
The aim of the study was to explore how 'new role' and other social carers and stakeholders involved in providing enhanced health and social care for older people perceive the social care support worker's professional status.

METHOD
Three different enhanced care approaches, of which two trained social care support workers to undertake new clinical support roles were studied in three residential homes: a local authority home, a voluntary sector home and a 'not for profit' independent sector home for older people. Participants were staff with national vocational qualifications at level 3 as new role carers with and without additional basic health skills awards. Other participant groups included care staff of other grades, care home managers, their parent organisation managers, and local and national stakeholders.

RESULTS
Staff in all three care settings believed themselves to be professionals in the homes in which they worked but were less sure of their status in the wider health and care landscape.

CONCLUSION
If the social carer workforce is to be considered a profession, it requires a professional framework in the form of a representative organisation, a code of conduct for practice and clarity as to how its new role activities interact with those of other established health professionals.


Distance education is expanding in all continents, and the use of video has dominated internet. Synchronous Video Communication (SVC) has not been an option thoroughly investigated and practitioners, who use and design synchronous learning scenarios, are in urgent need of guidance. Distant learners face many barriers, and as a result, they drop out more frequently than on-campus students. Educators seem to be equally affected by the "transactional distance" and the new digital literacies needed for facilitating online learning. This study explores the educators' perspective on how SVC could offer alternative educational forms and possibilities for distance learning. Findings had indicated that the use of visual communication and human to human contact (prosopogonosia: seeing faces) could have a strong impact on learning and teaching, therefore, a theory called Tele-proximity was formulated. Tele-proximity is defined as online embodiment that explains how instructors and students are connected in synchronous networked environment via tele-operations. SVC creates a sense of place or a stage where online identities perform and highlights recent research on audio-visual signals in communication and team work (Pentland, 2012, 2008). The theory can be seen as an extension of the Community of Inquiry Model (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000) and a theoretical framework according to which learning objectives could be designed. Transactional distance could be minimized and may be implemented to facilitate more synchronous, visual, and humane options in distance education.


Abstract. The promotion of Cultural Heritage (CH) goods has become a major challenges over the last years. CH goods promote economic development, notably through cultural and creative industries and tourism. Thus, an effective planning of archaeological, cultural, artistic and architectural sites within the territory make CH goods easily accessible. A way of adding value to these services is making them capable of providing, using new technologies, a more immersive and stimulating fruition of information. In this light, an effective contribution can be provided by sentiment analysis. The sentiment related to a monument can be used for its evaluation considering that if it is positive, it influences its public image by increasing its value. This work introduces an approach to estimate the sentiment of Social Media pictures CH related. The sentiment of a picture is identified by an especially trained Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN); aftewards, we compared the performance of three DCNNs: VGG16, ResNet and InceptionResNet. It is interesting to observe how these three different architectures are able to correctly evaluate the sentiment of an image referred to a ancient monument, historical buildings, archaeological sites, museum objects, and more. Our approach has been applied to a newly collected dataset of pictures from Instagram, which shows CH goods included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage properties.


In most spacecraft, there is a need to know the craft's angular rate. Approaches with least squares and an adaptive Kalman filter are proposed for estimating the angular rate directly from the star tracker measurements. In these approaches, only knowledge of the vector measurements and sampling interval is required. The designed adaptive Kalman filter can filter out noise without information of the dynamic model and inertia dyadic. To verify the proposed estimation approaches, simulations based on the orbit data of the challenging minisatellite payload (CHAMP) satellite and experimental tests with night-sky observation are performed. Both the simulations and experimental testing results have demonstrated that the proposed approach performs well in terms of accuracy, robustness, and performance.


The paper examines the effect of the import of cultural goods as defined by UNESCO (2009): cultural heritage, performance, visual arts, books, audio-visual material and design on emigration decisions. The import of cultural goods, by affecting individual preferences, reduces the cost of any migration move and favors outflows towards exporting countries. A gravity model for 33 OECD destination countries and 184 sending ones has been estimated for the period 2009-2013. The issue of identification and endogeneity has been addressed through the inclusion of a comprehensive set of fixed effects and by instrumenting cultural imports with past flows and an imputed share of cultural imports a la Card (2001). The positive relationship is robust across different classifications for cultural goods, areas of destination and alternative econometric techniques.


Ru(II) and Os(II) p-cymene dichloride complexes with either a pta (1,3,5-triaza-7-phosphatricyclo[22.214.171.124]decane) or [pta-Me]Cl ligand which exhibit anticancer activity were prepd. and characterized by 1H and 31P NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Three of the complexes, viz. [Os(h6-p-cymene)Cl2(pta)] and [M(h6-p-cymene)Cl2(pta-Me)]Cl (M = Ru, Os), also were characterized by single-crystal x-ray diffraction. The pta complexes are selective anticancer agents, whereas the pta-Me+ complexes are indiscriminate and damage both cancer and healthy cells but represent models for the protonated pta adduct which was implicated in drug activity. To establish a link between their biol. activity and the effect they have on DNA (a likely in vivo target), the reactivity of the complexes toward a 14-mer oligonucleotide (5'-ATACATGGTACATA-3') was studied using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. The complexes bind to the oligonucleotide with loss of chloride and in some cases loss of the arene. Loss of arene appears to be most facile with the Ru-pta complexes but also takes place with the Ru-pta-Me complexes, whereas arene loss is not obsd. for the Os complexes. As pH is reduced, increased binding to the oligonucleotide is obsd., as evidenced from mass spectrometric relative intensities. Binding energies between the metal centers and the surrounding ligands were calcd. using d. functional theory (DFT). The calcd. energies rationalize the exptl. obsd. tendencies for arene loss and show that the pta ligands are relatively strongly bound. Exchange of metal center (Ru vs. Os), methylation or protonation of the pta ligand, or change of the arene (p-cymene vs. benzene) results in significant differences in the metal-arene binding energies while leaving the metal-phosphine bond strength essentially unchanged. Significantly lower binding energies and reduced hapticity are predicted for the exchange of arene by nucleobases. The latter show higher binding energies for N s-bonding than for p-bonding. [on SciFinder (R)]


This paper targets control problems that exhibit specific safety and performance requirements. In particular, the aim is to ensure that an agent, operating under uncertainty, will at runtime strictly adhere to such requirements. Previous works create so-called shields that correct an existing controller for the agent if it is about to take unbearable safety risks. However, so far, shields do not consider that an environment may not be fully known in advance and may evolve for complex control and learning tasks. We propose a new method for the efficient computation of a shield that is adaptive to a changing environment. In particular, we base our method on problems that are sufficiently captured by potentially infinite Markov decision processes (MDP) and quantitative specifications such as mean payoff objectives. The shield is independent of the controller, which may, for instance, take the form of a high-performing reinforcement learning agent. At runtime, our method builds an internal abstract representation of the MDP and constantly adapts this abstraction and the shield based on observations from the environment. We showcase the applicability of our method via an urban traffic control problem.


This field guide provides information on marine turtles in the Maldives. Marine turtles live permanently in a saltwater environment. Unlike tortoises, marine turtles have a streamlined shell and flippers that allow them to swim quickly, but this is not enough to survive in saltwater. Their breathing and circulatory systems have, therefore, adapted to marine life.


Understanding the hydrological dynamics of boreal wetland ecosystems (peatlands) is essential in order to better manage hydropower inter-annual productivity at the La Grande basin (Northern Quebec, QC, Canada). Given the remoteness and the huge dimension of the La Grande basin, it is imperative to develop remote sensing monitoring techniques to retrieve hydrological parameters. The main objective of this study is to find out if multi-date and multi-polarization Radar Satellite 2 (RADARSAT-2) (C-band) image analysis could detect seasonal variations of surface soil moisture conditions of the acrotelm. A change detection approach through the use of multi temporal indexes was chosen based on the assumption that the temporal variability of surface roughness and natural vegetation biomass is generally at a much longer time scale than that of surface soil moisture (Δ-Index is based on a reference image that represents dry soil, in order to maximize the sensitivity of σ° to changes in soil moisture with respect to the same location when soil is wet). The Δ-Index approach was tested with each polarization: σ° for fully polarimetric mode (HH, HV, VV) and the cross-polarization coefficient (HV/HH). Results show that the best regression adjustment with regard to surface soil moisture content in boreal wetlands was obtained with the cross-polarization coefficient. The cross-polarization multi-temporal index enables precise volumetric surface soil moisture estimation and monitoring on boreal wetlands, regardless of the influence of vegetation cover and surface roughness conditions (bias was under 1%, standard deviation and RMSE were under 10% for almost all estimation errors). Surface soil moisture estimation was more precise over permanently flooded areas than seasonally flooded ones (standard deviation is systematically greater for the seasonally flooded areas, at all analyzed scales), although the overall quality of the estimation is still precise. Cross-polarization ratio image analysis appears to be a useful mean to exploit radar data spatially, as we were able to relate changes in wetland eco-hydrological dynamics to variations in the intensity of the ratio.


High performance cable catcher systems are an effective means of protecting office building windows and fa ades from effects of explosive blast. This paper presents experimental results for the response a simple cable catcher system subject to impact loads delivered using a drop-hammer testing facility. The objectives of this experimental programme were to investigate the loaddeformation behaviour of steel strand cables and to evaluate the dynamic performance of cable catcher systems in reference to their ability to absorb blast energy. Two steel cable arrangements (compacted and normal spiral strand) have been tensile tested in order to provide load-deformation curves as well as experimental values for the breaking load and Modulus of Elasticity. The cable catcher systems with rigid attachments as well as using simple energy absorbing connections were tested under impact loading. It was found that different cable arrangements have different failure modes while properties such as the cable breaking load and Modulus of Elasticity are vital in determining the capacity and behaviour of cable catcher systems under loading. Through impact testing, it was found that simple energy absorbing devices are highly effective in reducing the tensile force experienced by the cables. These devices limit the force in the cables to below breaking load and also provide a longer impact time which reduces the likelihood of the cables failing, but also slicing the failed glass panel upon impact.


Since independence in 1980, the 600,000 black Zimbabwean peasant families confined to marginal and overcrowded land have been eagerly awaiting President Mugabe's long-standing promise of land redistribution. In November 1997, Mugabe finally pressed ahead with his resettlement scheme and released a list designating 1,400 large-scale commercial farms earmarked for acquisition to the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (CFU). Mugabe's resettlement scheme has provoked much discussion and criticism centering around three major issues. First, many of the farms designated for appropriation are also some of the most agriculturally productive holdings in the Zimbabwean economy. Second, the land acquisition process has been criticized for its political rather than economic motivations. Third, news of the impending acquisition is believed to have in large part precipitated the plummet of the Zimbabwean dollar in early November 1997 and sent foreign investors scrambling. These issues call into question the transparency and efficacy of Mugabe's land scheme. The origins of the land issue in Zimbabwe date back to its British colonial occupation, when the majority of the black population of the country was confined to marginal, unproductive land while white farmers reaped the benefits of prime farmland and cheap black labor. Although President Mugabe has been crying for a redress of this imbalance since his coming to power in 1980, few serious measures had been initiated in the years of his rule. Subsequently, white commercial farmers still own more than half of Zimbabwe's arable land. In October of 1997, however, Mugabe finally hinted at decisive action, stating that 1997 would be final in terms of offering black farmers land, culminating in the list issued on November 20. However, it is far from clear that black farmers will be the true beneficiaries of the resettlement scheme; many fear that the land will fall instead into the hands of leading members of the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Popular Front. Past experience points to the usual gap between rhetoric and reality when it comes to land reform in Zimbabwe. Leading officials and former ministers have been high amongst the beneficiaries of land previously acquired for redistribution. Formerly white-owned farms meant to accommodate black peasant farmers after sale have been registered in the names of party officials and former ministers. Furthermore, the fact that identification of land for resettlement has been carried out by committees of politicians rather than agricultural specialists causes much concern. The British government, which had previously supported the land reform, expressed its concern that the program would be subject to corruption. Britain stated that it would continue its support only if the land scheme ensured that "a proper land register was established, that the process of acquisition and resettlement was transparent and that resettlement schemes were economic and would benefit the poor. …


Personality-disordered people are not uncommon in our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, or even our homes. They include people who are persistently paranoid, obsessive-compulsive, antisocial, or overly dependent. Most of them do not realize the hardships they create for themselves and their families. This book is an introductory guide for those who live and work around personality- disordered people, and for general readers seeking illustrations of the disorders. Dobbert illustrates warning signs that can be missed and walks readers through scenarios that are common with personality-disordered people. He explains how such maladies might develop, and most important, how they can be successfully addressed.


Construction practices towards conventional method is still being practiced widely even there were many researchers have done the studies on the inefficient of that method. On the other view, innovative construction had been the solution to improve the construction process flow. The need for innovation in construction industry is to enhance the efficiency for the success of project delivery. This could change the paradigm of norm construction practice which depends on conventional methods and a lot of non-value adding activities occur on that process flow. Industrialised Building System (IBS) is a method introduced to Malaysian construction players and it seem significance to the industry. This concept creates a new improvement for the successes of construction project by emerging techniques and materials in efficient way. This study shows the level of acceptance toward IBS concept comparing with conventional method. Interviews and questionnaires survey were done in getting data and analysed to get the factors relating time reduction, wastage and barriers of implementing it. Result shown the perception of construction players for IBS and it will provide to all parties the credits in choosing IBS concept for the project.


[1] The chemical composition, sources, and methods of production of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) were studied over the pack ice covered Arctic Ocean in summer. After ∼2 days' travel of air over the pack ice, two local CCN sources were identified: particles derived from the bursting bubbles on open water between ice floes (film and jet drops) and particles reaching CCN size by acquisition of oxidation products of dimethyl sulfide. The bubble-derived particle modes were found to have an exponential dependence on prevailing wind speed. The film drop generation depended less on wind speed and jet drop production depended more on wind speed than particles over open water did. However, the enhanced presence of film drop particles at wind speeds 12 m s−1 to dominate both mass and number. The jet drop mode was composed largely of sea salt, making a significant mass contribution already for wind speeds >5 m s−1. However, the smaller-sized jet drops were not pure sodium chloride but contained a varied and appreciable organic component. The sulfur-containing particles dominated the CCN population and mass for the most common wind speeds of 5–12 m s−1. Measured CCN concentrations were on average less than would have been expected from either a sulfate or a sea-salt composition and the observed particle-size distribution. It is concluded that other components, probably organic, depressed the nucleating ability of the particles. However, on clear sky days, there were a majority of occasions on which CCN concentrations were more than predicted from a sulfate composition and the measured size distribution.


Background
The Dutch maternity care system is known for its clear distinction between primary and secondary care based on a risk selection procedure. Low-risk pregnant women start their pregnancy under supervision of a midwife. If complications occur during pregnancy or birth, women are referred to an obstetrician. Women with a low risk for complications remain under the supervision of a midwife and have the possibility to choose their place of birth, either at home, in the hospital or in a birth center in all cases under the supervision of a midwife. The aim of the research was to explore the preferences of pregnant women with regard to place of birth and factors that influence the decision making for choosing a place of birth.
Methods
A cross sectional study was performed. A questionnaire was developed using the stated preference method best-worst scaling to identify the preferences of pregnant women for place of birth and the factors that influence the preference. The study population consisted of low-risk pregnant women with free choice to decide where to give birth. Women were mainly recruited via physical therapy practices and information meetings for pregnant women.
Results
Between July and September 2015, 144 women participated in the study. 52 women (36.1 %) preferred a midwifery-led home birth, 67 women (46.5 %) preferred a midwifery-led hospital birth, 5 women (3.5 %) preferred a midwifery-led birth center birth, and 20 women (13.9 %) preferred an obstetric-led hospital birth. No significant relation was found for the characteristics: parity, age, weeks of gestation, educational level, ethnicity, partner, distance to hospital, and residency in Overijssel.
Conclusion
Women with a preference for a home birth found comfortable environment, trust in the natural birth process and privacy as most important. Women opting for a hospital birth – midwifery-led or obstetric-led – found safety, assistance during childbirth and pain relief most important. Least important motives to all respondents were family involvement and no co-payment. Minor differences were found between women with a middle and high educational level with regard to the level of importance.


Genetic modifiers make a significant contribution to the pathophysiology of neurological disease. A common feature of heritable neurological disease is phenotype variation among patients with the same mutation. Some of the observed phenotype variation can be attributed to genetic modifiers. Identifying modifier genes in humans is challenging due to limitations of sample size and confounding environmental effects. Complementary approaches in model organisms can facilitate the identification and characterisation of modifier genes. Identifying genetic modifiers can help elucidate the genetic and molecular basis of neurological disease. This knowledge can be used to improve genetic risk assessment and foster the development of personalised therapeutic strategies based on molecular diagnosis.

Key Concepts:

Genetic modifiers contribute to phenotype variability in neurological disorders.

Model organisms are a useful system for identifying modifier genes and studying underlying mechanisms.

Synergy between human genetics and model systems can facilitate modifier gene identification and validation.

Identifying pathways that are influenced by gene modifiers may suggest novel therapeutic strategies.

Keywords:

modifier gene;
genetics;
neurological disease;
nervous system disease;
disease models;
mice


This paper describes the development of a model for integrating student evaluation of teaching results with academic development opportunities, in new ways that take into account theoretical and practical developments in both fields. The model is described in terms of five phases or components: (1) the basic student evaluation system; (2) an interpretive guidance system that helps lecturers understand and interpret their results; (3) a longitudinal reporting system that initiates opportunities for staff to engage in personal and professional development in the context of a learning community; (4) a structured professional development programme that builds a faculty learning community, in which the members utilise extended cycles of evaluation based on (5) a comprehensive evaluation model designed to develop and encourage the collection of evaluation data from a variety of sources concerning the quality and impact of teaching: the teacher; student learning outcomes; student experience; and the teacher's peers.


All aquifers are heterogeneous to a certain degree. The spatial distribution of hydraulic conductivity K(x, y, z), or aquifer heterogeneity, significantly influences the groundwater flow movement and associated solute transport. Of particular importance in designing an in-situ remediation plan is a knowledge of low-K layers because they are less accessible to remedial agents and form a bottleneck in remediation. The characterization of aquifer heterogeneity is essential to the solution of many practical and scientific groundwater problems. This article reviews the field technique using the multilevel slug test (MLST), which determines a series of K estimates at depths of interest in a well by making use of a double-packer system. The K(z) obtained manifests the vertical variation of hydraulic conductivity in the vicinity of the test well, and the combination of K(z) from different wells gives rise to a three-dimensional description of K(x, y, z). The MLST response is rather sensitive to hydraulic conductivity variation; e.g., it is oscillatory for highly permeable conditions (K > 5×10^(-4) m s^(-1)) and a nonoscillatory for K < 5×10^(-4) m s^(-1). In this article we discuss the instrumentation of the double-packer system, the implementation of the depth-specific slug test, the data analysis methods for a spectrum of response characteristics usually observed in the field, and field applications of the MLST.


Background: Orthosiphon stamineus (OS) Benth is a medicinal plant and native in Southeast Asia. Previous studies have shown that OS leaves possess antioxidant, cytotoxic, diuretic, antihypertensive, and uricosuric effects. These beneficial effects have been attributed to the presence of primary and secondary metabolites such as polyphenols, amino acids, and flavonoids. Objective: To develop and validate an high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-diode array detector (DAD) method combined with solid-phase extraction that involves precolumn derivatization with O-phthaladehyde for simultaneous analysis of free amino acids in OS leaves extracts. Materials and Methods: OS leaves were extracted with water (OS-W), ethanol (OS-E), methanol (OS-M), 50% ethanol (OS-EW), and 50% methanol (OS-MW). The extracts were treated by C18 cartridge before derivatization, resulting in great improvement of separation by Zorbox Eclipse XDB-C18 column. Results: The HPLC–DAD method was successfully developed and validated for analyzing the contents of free amino acids in OS extracts. The results showed that l-aspartic acid with 0.93 ± 0.01 nmol/mg was the major free amino acid in OS-W extract. However, in OS-E, OS-M, OS-EW, and OS-MW, l-glutamic acid with 3.53 ± 0.16, 2.17 ± 0.10, 4.01 ± 0.12, and 2.49 ± 0.12 nmol/mg, respectively, was the major free amino acid. Subsequently, l-serine, which was detected in OS-W, OS-E, and OS-M, was the minor free amino acid with 0.33 ± 0.02, 0.12 ± 0.01, and 0.06 ± 0.01 nmol/mg, respectively. However, l-threonine with 0.26 ± 0.02 and 0.19 ± 0.08 nmol/mL in OS-EW and OS-MW, respectively, had the lowest concentration compared with other amino acid components. Conclusion: All validation parameters of the developed method indicate that the method is reliable and efficient to simultaneously determine the free amino acids content for routine analysis of OS extracts. Abbreviations used: HPLC-DAD: High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Diode-Array Detection, OS: Orthosiphon stamineus, OS-W: Orthosiphon stamineus water extract, OS-E: Orthosiphon stamineus ethanol extract, OS-M: Orthosiphon stamineus methanol extract, OS-EW: Orthosiphon stamineus 50% ethanol extract, OS-MW: Orthosiphon stamineus 50% methanol extract, OPA: O-phthaladehyde, SPE: Solid Phase Extraction, UV: Ultraviolet, LOD: Limit of Detection, LOQ: Limit of Quantification, RSD: Relative Standard Deviation.


A humorous, an environmentally oriented and an authoritarian poster against littering were tested in a field experiment on their behavioural effectiveness. Corresponding slogans were placed on anti-littering posters designed for this study and used experimentally at four railway stations. The experimental design entailed 4 communication conditions including a control condition where no poster was presented. In each experimental run (N = 96), flyers were distributed for 30 minutes. The number of distributed flyers was counted, and the proportion of littered flyers was determined for each experimental run. It was found that the humorous and environmentally oriented posters achieved a reduction of 58% and 64%, respectively, in littering as compared with the control condition. The authoritarian poster was significantly less effective, but achieved a significant reduction of 25%. Considered together with some previous findings and theories, the results indicate that environmentally oriented and humorous anti-littering posters are more effective than authoritarian ones DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.72.1.14169


Analysed is background of precariat concept coined by British economist and sociologist G. Standing. Main idea advocated by Mr. Standig is the emergence of a new social class called precariat different from both middle class and traditional proletariat. Distinct features of the precariat are weak links with state, irregular income, loss of rights and social safeguards and absence of professional identity. The author discusses Mr. Standing's ideas. Precariat obviously appears not differ from proletariat either in its relation to means of production or to its position and role in the system of social production. Drawbacks of Standing's concept leads him into a methodological deadlock. It can be noticed in his description of proletariat as a class consisting of workers employed on a long-term regular basis and having fixed working day. Mr. Standing also shows proletariat as a class possessing some social privileges and opportunities such as promotion prospects, trade-union membership, collective bargaining and so on, an obvously shallow approach. Mr. Standing's desire to draw a clear distinction between the proletariat and the precariat borders on unhistoricism and Eurocentrism. Moreover, so author of the review, emergence and expansion of the precarization phenomenon (coupled with the expansion of informal employment) proves emergence of important changes in the modem system of social relations connected to overall deterioration of proletarians' position in the world.


Quantum computing is a powerful computational paradigm with applications in several fields, including machine learning. In the last decade, deep learning, and in particular Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), have become essential for applications in signal processing and image recognition. Quantum deep learning, however, remains a challenging problem, as it is difficult to implement non linearities with quantum unitaries Schuld et al. (2014). In this paper we propose a quantum algorithm for evaluating and training deep convolutional neural networks with potential speedups over classical CNNs for both the forward and backward passes. The quantum CNN (QCNN) reproduces completely the outputs of the classical CNN and allows for non linearities and pooling operations. The QCNN is in particular interesting for deep networks and could allow new frontiers in the image recognition domain, by allowing for many more convolution kernels, larger kernels, high dimensional inputs and high depth input channels. We also present numerical simulations for the classification of the MNIST dataset to provide practical evidence for the efficiency of the QCNN.


The late Cenozoic volcanic and tectonic activity of the enigmatic West Antarctic rift system, the least understood of the great active continental rifts, has been suggested to be plume driven. In 1991-1992, as part of the CASERTZ (Corridor Aerogeophysics of the Southeast Ross Transect Zone) program, an ∼25000 km aeromagnetic survey over the ice-covered Byrd subglacial basin shows magnetic "texture" critical to interpretations of the underlying extended volcanic terrane. The aeromagnetic data reveal numerous semicircular anomalies ∼100-1100 nT in amplitude, interpreted as having volcanic sources at the base of the ice sheet; they are concentrated along north-trending magnetic lineations interpreted as rift fabric. Models constrained by coincident radar ice soundings indicate highly magnetic sources, with a probable high remanent magnetization in the present field direction, strongly suggesting a late Cenozoic age. Magnetic anomalies over exposed late Cenozoic volcanic rocks along part of the rift shoulder and in coastal Marie Byrd Land are similar in form and amplitude. The CASERTZ aeromagnetic results, combined with >100 000 km of widely spaced aeromagnetic profiles, indicate at least 10 6 km 3 of probable late Cenozoic volcanic rock (flood basalt?) in the West Antarctic rift beneath the ice sheet and Ross Ice Shelf. Comparison with other plumes in active rift areas (e.g., Yellowstone and East Africa) indicates that this volume estimate lies in the range of magma generation found in these other low-extension continental rifts.


This study investigated the effect of instruction that included graphic organizers on LDS seminary students' ability to understand scriptural text and their ability to identify doctrines in scriptural text, utilizing a repeated measures, quasi-experimental design involving 209 ninth-grade student participants. The participants were randomly assigned by class to one of two treatment groups. Participants in the treatment group received instruction using graphic organizers with the standard curriculum and participants in the comparison group received instruction using only the standard curriculum. Three different measures were employed to measure the effectiveness of the graphic organizers intervention: (a) a multiple-choice test of LDS doctrines and principles; (b) an identifying doctrines and principles in text test; and (c) a student perception survey. Results of the ANOVA for the multiple-choice test indicated no significant difference between instructional groups for ability to recall facts from the class instruction and the class text, F (1, 205) = 1.60, p = .21, partial 2 = .21. Results of the ANOVA for the identifying doctrines and principles in text test, measuring transferability of the skills learned while studying the Doctrine and Covenants to a different text containing some of the same doctrines and principles, also indicated no significant difference between groups, F (1, 196) = 1.93, p = .17. The results for the student perception survey were positive; most students felt confident about their ability to comprehend scriptural text, but were slightly less confident about their ability to identify doctrines and principles in the text. The participants in this study were generally positive in their willingness to learn about and use graphic organizers. Results of this study indicated that graphic organizers did not significantly impact students' ability to identify doctrines and principles in scriptural text or to learn concepts from scriptural text. Comments This work made publicly available electronically on September 2, 2011. Recommended Citation Potter, Mark D., "Using Graphic Organizers with Scriptural Text: Ninth-Grade Latter-Day Saint (LDS) Students' Comprehension of Doctrinal Readings and Concepts" (2011). Theses and Dissertations. 1027. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/1027 Scholarly Communication Scholarly Communication 435-797-0816


Purpose The search for cause of death is important to improve knowledge and provide answers for the relatives of the deceased. Medical autopsy following unexplained death in hospital is one way to identify cause of death but is difficult to carry out routinely. Post mortem sampling (PMS) of tissues via thin biopsy needle or 'mini incisions' in the skin may be a useful alternative. A study was undertaken to assess how this approach is perceived by intensive care doctors and also to evaluate how this practice is considered in ethical terms in France. Methods A study of PMS practices immediately after death in 10 intensive care departments was performed. The medical director of each centre was interviewed by telephone and asked to describe practices in their unit and to outline the questions raised by this practice. Results PMS is routinely performed in 70% of the units which responded, without systematically obtaining formal consent and without precise rules for communicating results. Approaches to PMS differed between centres, but all physicians felt that PMS is useful for the scientific information it gives and also for the information it provides for relatives. All physicians regret the lack of standards to structure PMS practices. Conclusion Information from post mortem examinations is important for society to inform about causes of death, for doctors to improve practices and for decision-makers responsible for organising care. Debate persists regarding the balance between individual rights and community interests. It is suggested that an approach for identifying cause of death could easily be integrated into the relationship between carers and relatives, provided full transparency is maintained.


The automatic analysis of French texts using intex produces good results as long as the French dictionaries are complete. But Quebec French texts have a lot of linguistic particularities and pose specific problems. So the building of electronic dictionaries of Quebec French is essential. Such dictionaries have been in the process of construction over the last few years. intex appears to be a very efficient tool for comparing dictionaries and finding new words, or new uses of words, that must be added to these dictionaries, before they can be integrated into the intex system.


High-speed bearings and electrical motors are gradually getting available. This is of particular interest for the application of thermal turbomachinery. The availability of high speed bearing and motor components opens the way to new applications for low power, compact, oil-free and high speed radial compressors. This paper describes the basic design of a high speed single stage radial compressor for high pressure ratios and a wide flow range using a vaneless diffuser. The target application is aimed at domestic heat pumps. A commercially available 3D viscous code has been applied to calculate the flow field through impeller and diffuser. The choice of the bearings allows using very small tip clearances. Particular attention has been paid to minimize the secondary flows and therefore reduce exit flow non- uniformities in order to improve the global efficiency. To complete the design a commercial 3D Finite Element code has been used for stress prediction as well as for the calculation of the critical blade frequencies and their corresponding modes. During the design process the impeller blade geometry has continuously been checked for machinability in order to ensure a feasible impeller using conventional 5 axis milling machines.


In this paper, we investigate the use of nonlinear distortion of the electrical post-detection signal in order to design simple, yet very effective, maximum likelihood sequence detection (MLSD) receivers for optical communications with direct photo-detection. This distortion enables the use of standard Euclidean branch metrics in the Viterbi algorithm which implements MLSD. Our results suggest that the nonlinear characteristic can be optimized with respect to the uncompensated chromatic dispersion and other relevant system parameters, such as the extinction ratio. The proposed schemes with optimized distortion exhibit the same performance of more sophisticated MLSD schemes, still guaranteeing more efficient Viterbi algorithm implementation.


This article identifies indirect and direct colonial rule as causal factors in shaping support for democracy by exploiting a within-country natural experiment in Namibia. Throughout the colonial era, northern Namibia was indirectly ruled through a system of appointed indigenous traditional elites whereas colonial authorities directly ruled southern Namibia. This variation originally stems from where the progressive extension of direct German control was stopped after a rinderpest epidemic in the 1890s, and, thus, constitutes plausibly exogenous within-country variation in the form of colonial rule. Using this spatial discontinuity, we find that individuals in indirectly ruled areas are less likely to support democracy and turnout at elections. We explore potential mechanisms and find suggestive evidence that the greater influence of traditional leaders in indirectly ruled areas has socialized individuals to accept nonelectoral bases of political authority.


For optimal second language acquisition (SLA) classroom interactions have to allow normative speaking children to participate actively, because such initiative-rich participation enhances the children's development of linguistic and communicative competence. This article focuses on turn-taking initiatives. Turn-taking initiatives vary in their initiative strength. Restricting analysis exclusively to strong initiatives yields an incomplete picture of the contribution of a conversation to SLA. Less strong initiatives, too, must be taken into account. To analyze each utterance for its initiative value, a turn-taking taxonomy was developed, leading to turn-taking indices that represent the mean initiative value of all utterances by a speaker. Language data from kindergarten conversations show that only results on strong initiatives differ from results on turn-taking indices. It is argued that in order to assess the value of a conversation for SLA both kinds of measures, strong initiatives as well as indices, are necessary.


Chapter 1 describes the subjects and the investigation procedure including the recorded interviews and equipment used. It also outlines the ten pronunciation lessons that were given. Chapter 2 is a short account of the phonemes of Australian English. Chapter 3 is an account of the phonemes of Vietnamese, summarising and comparing the analyses of Nguyen Dang Liem and Le Ba Thao (later form: Thao Le). Chapter 4 compares Australian English and South Vietnamese, discussing the postulated correspondence of the phonemes and predicting errors arising from L1 interference. Chapter 5 is a detailed analysis of the English sounds spoken by the subjects, including descriptions of the results of the first and second tests. This chapter comprises detailed analysis of the vowels, diphthongs, consonants and consonant clusters pronounced by the subjects. The bulk of this chapter could have been contained in an appendix. A reader may choose to read only the first few pages and then go on to chapter 6. Chapter 6 is a summary of the vowels, diphthongs and consonants analysed in chapter 5, but presented in a less detailed way, enabling easier access to the findings in chapter 5. This chapter is especially useful for those who want to concentrate on the main points. Chapter 7 gives some practical ideas for teachers of English pronunciation to Vietnamese people. Chapter 8 describes the statistical agreement tests. It includes the percentages of difficulties and improvements of the vowels, diphthongs and consonants calculated overall and in word position, and the difficulties of the individual students. Chapter 9 gives a description of the approxilect spoken by South Vietnamese speakers of English. It includes a consideration of predictable and non-predictable error types and provides some details about first language interference. Chapter 10 provides an acoustical analysis of the vowels of South Vietnamese


Empirical risk minimization offers well-known learning guarantees when training and test data come from the same domain. In the real world, though, we often wish to adapt a classifier from a source domain with a large amount of training data to different target domain with very little training data. In this work we give uniform convergence bounds for algorithms that minimize a convex combination of source and target empirical risk. The bounds explicitly model the inherent trade-off between training on a large but inaccurate source data set and a small but accurate target training set. Our theory also gives results when we have multiple source domains, each of which may have a different number of instances, and we exhibit cases in which minimizing a non-uniform combination of source risks can achieve much lower target error than standard empirical risk minimization.


The wavelet transform, the S-transform, the Gabor transform, and the Wigner distribution function are popular techniques for power quality (PQ) analysis in electrical power systems. They are mainly used to identify power harmonics and power disturbances and to estimate power quantities in the presence of nonstationary power components such as root-mean-square values and total harmonic distortions. Recently, the Hilbert-Huang transform has been also used in PQ analysis. These techniques have proven to be useful in PQ analysis; however, their performances depend on the types of PQ events. In this paper, a novel frequency-shifting wavelet decomposition via the Hilbert transform is introduced for PQ analysis. The proposed algorithm overcomes the spectra leakage problem in the discrete wavelet packet transform and can be used for estimating power quantities accurately and for detecting flickers. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm was verified by computer simulations and experimental tests.


In mammalian retina, cholesterol excess is mainly metabolized to oxysterols by cytochromes P450 27A1 (CYP27A1) and 46A1 (CYP46A1) or removed on lipoprotein particles containing apolipoprotein E (APOE). In contrast, esterification by sterol-O-acyltransferase 1 (SOAT) plays only a minor role in this process. Accordingly, retinal cholesterol levels are unchanged in Soat1−/− mice but are increased in Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/− and Apoe−/− mice. Herein, we characterized Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/−Soat1−/− and Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/−Apoe−/− mice. In the former, retinal cholesterol levels, anatomical gross structure, and vasculature were normal, yet the electroretinographic responses were impaired. Conversely, in Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/−Apoe−/− mice, retinal cholesterol levels were increased while anatomical structure and vasculature were unaffected with only male mice showing a decrease in electroretinographic responses. Sterol profiling, qRT-PCR, proteomics, and transmission electron microscopy mapped potential compensatory mechanisms in the Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/−Soat1−/− and Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/−Apoe−/− retina. These included decreased cholesterol biosynthesis along with enhanced formation of intra- and extracellular vesicles, possibly a reserve mechanism for lowering retinal cholesterol. In addition, there was altered abundance of proteins in Cyp27a1−/−Cyp46a1−/−Soat1−/− mice that can affect photoreceptor function, survival, and retinal energy homeostasis (glucose and fatty acid metabolism). Therefore, the levels of retinal cholesterol do not seem to predict retinal abnormalities, and it is rather the network of compensatory mechanisms that appears to determine retinal phenotype.


The effect of gold and aluminum zero-mode waveguides (ZMWs) on the brightness of immobilized single emitters was characterized by probing fluorophores that absorb in the green and red regions of the visible spectrum. Aluminum ZMWs enhance the emission of Atto565 fluorophores upon green excitation, but they do not enhance the emission of Atto647N fluorophores upon red excitation. Gold ZMWs increase emission of both fluorophores with Atto647N showing enhancement that is threefold higher than that observed for Atto565. This work indicates that 200 nm gold ZMWs are better suited for single-molecule fluorescence studies in the red region of the visible spectrum, while aluminum appears more suited for the green region of the visible spectrum.


Investigations of RAFT dispersion polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) of 2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate (HPMA) in water/methanol at 60 °C using a cationically charged macroRAFT agent as the stabilizer block, namely P(N,N-diethylaminoethyl methacrylate)-stat-poly((ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate) (PDEAEMA-stat-PEGMA), have been conducted with a view to tune particle morphologies by manipulation of the pH and the ionic strength. Above the LCST (45 °C) of (PDEAEMA-stat-PEGMA), the system can only be conducted as a dispersion polymerization at sufficiently low pH such that the stabilizer block is sufficiently protonated to ensure solubility in the continuous phase. It is demonstrated (reported in the form of an extensive morphology diagram) that a range of morphologies including spherical particles, rods and vesicles can be accessed by adjustment of the pH (via addition of HCl) and the ionic strength (via the concentration of NaCl). A decrease in the charge density of the coronal stabilizer layer via an increase in the pH (less protonation) shifts the system towards higher order morphologies. At a given pH, an increase in ionic strength leads to more extensive charge screening, thus allowing formation of higher order morphologies.


Alarming escalation of the opiate epidemic makes clarity of best practice essential. Medication assisted treatment with psychotherapy is accepted as best practice but consensus about the most effective psychosocial strategies remain elusive. A careful review of existing guidelines, prominent meta-analyses and patient opinion, reveals dynamic and clear evidence based strategies for providers. Data indicates a strong correlation between 'time in treatment' and 'treatment approach'. Contingency management is the only approach consistently shown effective during the first twelve weeks of treatment. Cognitive restructuring approaches generally show efficacy when treatment extends beyond twelve weeks and are well supported in research. The authors present a strategic model consistent with the presented data. Recommendations Treatment approaches using a complex systems framework is sparsely represented in existing meta-analyses on treatment efficacy, are preferred by mothers in treatment include an increased emphasis on contingency management during the stabilization phase, a dynamic evolution of therapeutic approach over the course of treatment and a persistent focus on social network development throughout treatment.


The purpose of this Participatory Action Research (PAR) study was to discover ways to enhance well-being in young adults with DD and older adults in the Oak Grove community. This dissertation details how PAR was used in the Oak Grove community to identify ways to enhance purpose and meaningful activity for older adults while developing positive relationships with younger adults with DD through qualitative methods. Ryff and Keyes (1995) discovered that although some elements of well-being remain stable as a person ages, purpose-in-life drops significantly in older adults. In addition, young adults with developmental disabilities (DD) lack meaningful relationships, which negatively impacts their well-being (Mazurek, 2014). The data echoes the reported loneliness in young adults with DD in Oak Grove (the location of this study). Several older adults have purposefully tried to address this loneliness in young adults through inclusion in volunteer work; however, this has been on an intermittent basis and the need for meaningful relationships remains. Analyses of the data revealed ways to enlist the wisdom and knowledge of older adults to enhance the well-being of young adults with DD and consequently enhance the well-being of the older adult as well. Themes that were discovered in the data include the five elements of the Well-being Theory as they relate to the people of Oak Grove, specifically: engagement, positive relationships, positive emotion, purpose and meaning, and accomplishment (Seligman, 2011). In addition, multiple aspects of the unique nature of young adults with DD were revealed; the term exceptional people was used to identify this theme. Other important findings include the need for policy development for transportation for people with disabilities, the need for development of intergenerational activities, and the importance for further research.


Abstract We present probabilistic techniques that make synergistic use of available process information for diagnosis and detection of component fault manifestation in a multicomponent system. We begin by describing the motivation for using probabilistic techniques for systems diagnostics and then define probabilistic expressions that embody the diagnostics knowledge of interest. We show that a combination of a Bayesian expression with the solution to the Chapman-Kolmogoroff equation contains the diagnostic information of interest while explicitly making use of available process information including plant data or measurements, mathematical system models, and individual component reliability data. Given these probabilistic expressions, we introduce a practical means of obtaining the necessary constituent probability density functions corresponding to feasible component transitions via an adaptive Kalman filtering formulation. To demonstrate the consolidated probabilistic technique, we consider a low-order model of a balance of plant of a boiling water reactor, represented by 11 system variables, 9 component characteristics, and 5 observations. We simulate 5 to 10% degradations in two components subject to 1% signal noise in two different transient events. Our test calculations indicate that the proposed algorithm is able to provide correct fault detection and diagnosis of the faulted components and fault magnitudes, together with a rank-ordered likelihood of the binary faults.


A major QTL called 'Saltol' on rice chromosome 1 has been identified as linked to salinity tolerance traits of the landrace, Pokkali. A genomic library of Pokkali rice variety was constructed in bacteriophage Lamda Fix II with 20 kb inserts. Plaques containing genes implicated to salt tolerance have been identified using probes homologous to S-Ad methionine synthetase (SAM) and cation chloride co-transporter after two rounds of hybridization. Clearly demarcated plaques of the two clones of interest have been lifted out for DNA isolation and subsequent characterization to be followed by subcloning into TAC vectors for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of large genomic fragments into sensitive rice.


Title: Retail employees' experience of organisational culture. Key terns: Retail, employees, organisational culture, change. During the 1980's the focus on corporate culture had received revived attention. The key to corporate success was a strong unified culture and it soon became a secret weapon to gain a competitive advantage. Aligning corporate culture to the organisation's strategy is crucial in enabling organisations to respond to the rapid and ever-changing internal and external demands. Organisational culture is considered the glue that keeps an organisation together due to the impact of the culture on the organisation's survival. The objective of this research was to determine how employees experience organisational culture and how it manifests within a retail organisation. A purposive (n = 13) was taken of managers on different managerial levels within a South African retail company. All participants attended a strategic leadership intervention that was implemented. Data gathering was conducted by means of interviews based on the phenomenological approach. The interviews were transcribed and data analysis was carried out by means of content analysis. The results showed that the old culture of the organisation was typified by the power and role cultures as identified by Harrison and Stokes, whilst the new culture is typified by a move towards the performance culture with some elements of the support culture. The management style in the old culture was very autocratic with closed lines of communication. People relationships were formal and the focus was on individualism, where people were not regarded in the organisation. The new culture is very people focused and people feel a sense of belonging. There is a culture of continuous learning and there is a move towards collectivism. People live the values of the organisation. Age, race, gender or years of service in the company did not significantly influence employees' experiences of organisational culture. There were no significant differences in the cultural experiences of employees on different managerial levels. Recommendations for future research are made.