Since 1979, China has made tremendous progress in its transformation to a socialist market economy. As part of this process, China's financial system has evolved to one characterised by a high degree of marketization. At the same time, China today faces new challenges to growth and development, particularly from the necessity of restructuring its economy to focus increasingly on innovation and away from government led investment and low wage labour. In the context of digital financial services, China has been a late mover but this has changed dramatically in the past five years, to the point today where China is one of the major centres for digital financial services and financial technology ("fintech"). Looking forward, China needs to provide an appropriate regulatory basis for the future development of digital financial services and fintech, balancing growth and innovation with financial stability. China today is exhibiting signs of a last mover advantage in this respect that may see it leaping regulatory developments elsewhere.


Manipulating droplets of biological fluids in an electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD)-based digital microfluidic platform is a significant challenge because of biofouling and surface contamination. This problem is often addressed by operating in an oil environment. We study an alternate configuration of sessile compound droplets having an aqueous core surrounded by a smaller oil shell. In contrast to the conventional EWOD platform, an open digital microfluidic platform enabled by the core-shell configuration will allow electrical, mechanical, or optical probes to get unrestricted access to the droplet, thus enabling highly flexible and dynamically reconfigurable lab-on-chip systems. Understanding droplet oscillations is essential as they are known to enhance mixing. To our knowledge, this is the first study of axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric oscillations of compound droplets actuated using EWOD platforms. Mode shapes for both axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric oscillations were studied and explained. Enhancement in the axisymmetric oscillation of the core by decreasing the shell volume was obtained experimentally and modeled theoretically. Smaller shell volumes reduce the damping losses, allowing the appearance of nonaxisymmetric modes over a larger range of operating parameters. The oscillation frequency regime for obtaining prominent nonaxisymmetric oscillations for different shell volumes was identified. Compound droplets provide a mechanism to reduce biofouling, sample contamination, and evaporation. We demonstrate axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric oscillations of compound droplets with the biological core of red blood cells, providing crucial first steps for promoting applications such as rapid efficient assays, mixing of biological fluids, and fluidic photonics on hysteresis-free surfaces.


Genome-scale data have revealed daily rhythms in various species and tissues. However, current methods to assess rhythmicity largely restrict their focus to quantifying statistical significance, which may not reflect biological relevance. To address this limitation, we developed a method called LimoRhyde2 (the successor to our method LimoRhyde), which focuses instead on rhythm-related effect sizes and their uncertainty. For each genomic feature, LimoRhyde2 fits a curve using a series of linear models based on periodic splines, moderates the fits using an Empirical Bayes approach called multivariate adaptive shrinkage (Mash), then uses the moderated fits to calculate rhythm statistics such as peak-to-trough amplitude. The periodic splines capture non-sinusoidal rhythmicity, while Mash uses patterns in the data to account for different fits having different levels of noise. To demonstrate LimoRhyde2's utility, we applied it to multiple circadian transcriptome datasets. Overall, LimoRhyde2 prioritized genes having high-amplitude rhythms in expression, whereas a prior method (BooteJTK) prioritized "statistically significant" genes whose amplitudes could be relatively small. Thus, quantifying effect sizes using approaches such as LimoRhyde2 has the potential to transform interpretation of genomic data related to biological rhythms.


Abstract The effect of carbonate on the growth of barite {001} surfaces from aqueous solutions supersaturated with respect to barite (Ωbarite ~ 12) was studied by hydrothermal atomic force microscopy (HAFM) and Raman spectroscopy at temperatures ranging from 25 to 70 °C. The experiments showed that the effects of carbonate depend on the specific location of growth. For mono-layers growing on pristine barite, the carbonate-additive promotes growth and the spreading rate of two-dimensional islands increases with temperature. However, growth is inhibited in layers growing on surfaces, which grew in carbonate-containing solution. The threshold carbonate concentration necessary to completely inhibit growth is inversely correlated with temperature. Raman spectroscopy revealed the presence of carbonate within crystals, which grew in carbonate-containing solution. Judging by these findings, incorporation of carbonate into the structure of growing barite as a thermally activated process likely is a controlling factor, which inhibits barite growth. Thus the study shows that additives can exert opposing effects on growth not only depending on additive concentration but also depending on the specific growth location. The implication of this work, therefore, is that bimodal effects of additives on crystal growth occur more frequently than generally recognized. The insights into the mechanisms of such bimodal effects of additives can significantly contribute to the understanding and predictability of the kinetics of macro-scale processes such as barite scale formation or the behavior of barium sulfate in CO2-sequestration fluids


Employment Law Concentrate is a high quality revision guide which covers the main topics found on undergraduate and GDL courses. The clear, succinct coverage of key legal points within a specific topic area, including key cases, enables students to quickly grasp the fundamental principles of this fast-moving area. The book focuses on the needs of students to succeed in their exams, showing how all the legal rules fit together and the approach that should be adopted when answering questions. A range of pedagogical features help with preparation for exams and suggest numerous ways to improve marks.


The lack of detailed experimental controls has been one of the major obstacles hindering progress in molecular electronics. While large fluctuations have been occurring in the experimental data, specific details, related mechanisms, and data analysis techniques are in high demand to promote our physical understanding at the single-molecule level. A series of modulations we recently developed, based on traditional scanning probe microscopy break junctions (SPMBJs), have helped to discover significant properties in detail which are hidden in the contact interfaces of a single-molecule break junction (SMBJ). For example, in the past we have shown that the correlated force and conductance changes under the saw tooth modulation and stretch-hold mode of PZT movement revealed inherent differences in the contact geometries of a molecular junction. In this paper, using a bias-modulated SPMBJ and utilizing emerging data analysis techniques, we report on the measurement of the altered alignment of the HOMO of benzene molecules with changing the anchoring group which coupled the molecule to metal electrodes. Further calculations based on Landauer fitting and transition voltage spectroscopy (TVS) demonstrated the effects of modulated bias on the location of the frontier molecular orbitals. Understanding the alignment of the molecular orbitals with the Fermi level of the electrodes is essential for understanding the behaviour of SMBJs and for the future design of more complex devices. With these modulations and analysis techniques, fruitful information has been found about the nature of the metal-molecule junction, providing us insightful clues towards the next step for in-depth study.


We propose the employment of radial vertical combdrive actuators to implement two-axis micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) scanners. The devices are designed based on a five-layer polysilicon surface micromachining process. A cross-bar spring structure consisting of lower and upper torsion springs is incorporated to achieve two rotational degrees of freedom, enabling the dual-axis rotation. Both the vertical combdrive actuators and the torsion springs are hidden underneath the mirror to achieve a small form factor. Theoretical analysis is performed for comparison of various designs. Preliminary experimental results are also obtained.


Our previous research found that FMD Outbreaks in foreign countries have a significant positive influence on U.S. swine meat exports. However, not all of these FMD-affected countries adopted the same treatment policy to ease domestic FMD issues. This study proposes a gravity model with fixed-effect regressions to analyze the effects of FMD in countries that import U.S. swine meat. Annual trade data for seventeen countries are used in this study. This study confirms that different policies change the results from FMD. FMD-affected countries which adopted a vaccination policy have negative impacts on U.S. swine meat exports, and the estimated results did confirm that these seven countries are still very important swine meat markets for the U.S.


The present paper reports on a case study that investigated under what circumstances households use migration to cope with climate variability and food insecurity. Fieldwork was conducted in three communities in Dong Thap Province in the Upper Mekong Delta in Viet Nam. Methods used included a household survey (N=150), participatory research tools and key informant interviews. Ninety per cent of the survey respondents reported that climate-related stressors, such as floods, storms and changes in rainfall patterns, had adversely affected their livelihoods. Those effects, however, were more often qualified as being "moderate" rather than being "severe", and for the survey population as a whole, no evidence was found that climatic stressors were principal drivers of migration from the area. The Upper Mekong Delta in Viet Nam is undergoing rapid economic development, with increasing migration mostly being driven by demand for labour in industrial centres. However, an analysis differentiated by income groups reveals that poorer households with little or no land are much more likely to be severely affected by climatic stressors than non-poor households. Their ability to cope and adapt locally is limited, and migration, which in most cases tends to be internal, is a common alternative. The present paper shows the importance of disaggregating climate impacts and migration causes for different socioeconomic groups.


Binding of features helps object recognition in contour integration but hinders it in crowding. In contour integration, aligned adjacent objects group together to form a path. In crowding, flanking objects make the target unidentifiable. However, to date, the two tasks have only been studied separately. K. A. May and R. F. Hess (2007) suggested that the same binding mediates both tasks. To test this idea, we ask observers to perform two different tasks with the same stimulus. We present oriented grating patches that form a "snake letter" in the periphery. Observers report either the identity of the whole letter (contour integration task) or the phase of one of the grating patches (crowding task). We manipulate the strength of binding between gratings by varying the alignment between them, i.e., the Gestalt goodness of continuation, measured as "wiggle." We find that better alignment strengthens binding, which improves contour integration and worsens crowding. Observers show equal sensitivity to alignment in these two very different tasks, suggesting that the same binding mechanism underlies both phenomena. It has been claimed that grouping among flankers reduces their crowding of the target. Instead, we find that these published cases of weak crowding are due to weak binding resulting from target-flanker misalignment. We conclude that crowding is mediated solely by the grouping of flankers with the target and is independent of grouping among flankers.


Abstract This paper describes the experiences of bereaved children and parents and their use of UK childhood bereavement services. It forms part of a larger qualitative study and was undertaken in the context of questions about the impact of bereavement on children and their status and participation in research, raising important methodological and ethical issues. Interviews were undertaken with 24 bereaved children and 16 parents who had used one of eight organizational case study services. Participant observation of six group interventions was undertaken. The study identified a multiplicity of bereavement experiences both within and between families. Children identified difficulties in managing and expressing their feelings, isolation, problems at school, and fear for their surviving parent. Parents found it difficult to maintain their parenting role as they struggled with their own bereavement and the disruption in their circumstances. Children and parents who participated in interventions were able to describe the significant ways in which they found it helpful, including the benefit of speaking to someone who understood their experience. Although some experienced difficulties in attending group interventions, bereaved parents welcomed the support to help them provide appropriate care for their bereaved child. By providing an "ecological niche" for bereaved children, UK childhood bereavement services contribute to meeting outcomes identified in recent policy initiatives.


The Large River Monitoring Network (LRMN) of the Biomonitoring of Environmental Status and Trends (BEST) Program measured tissue concentrations of selected contaminants and evaluated biomarker responses in black bass (Micropterus sp.), common carp (Cyprinus carpio), and channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) at 14 locations within Colorado River Basin (CDRB) in 2003. Major tributaries including the Yampa, Green, Gunnison, San Juan, and Gila Rivers were also sampled. Organic and inorganic contaminants were measured in whole-body composite fish samples, and the H4IIE bioassay determined dioxin-like activity in these samples. Fish health indicators (condition factor, somatic indices), immune system indicators (macrophage aggregate parameters), various molecular biomarkers (EROD, vitellogenin), and reproductive indicators (steroid hormones, gonadal histology) were measured in individual fish. Mean microsomal EROD activity was greatest in carp (>9 pmol/min/mg) from Phoenix, AZ, in channel catfish (>10 pmol/min/mg) from Vernal, UT and Grand Junction, CO, and in bass (>60 pmol/min/mg) from Vernal, UT. Fish health indicators including macrophage aggregates and oocyte atresia indicated poor health of carp in the Lake Mead area. High health assessment index (HAI) values in bass, channel catfish, and carp collected throughout the CDRB were attributed to abnormalities of the liver, kidney, and spleen. Histological examination of the gonads revealed several intersex fish. Previous contaminant studies in this basin have a wide range of focus from high concentrations of selenium in irrigation return flows to emerging contaminants downstream of Las Vegas. Other concerns include dropping water levels in the lower Colorado River and the reestablishment of endangered species within the CDRB. The goal of this BEST LRMN project is to help characterize fish health and contaminant concerns in the CDRB.


Sentence similarity measures play an increasingly important role in text-related research and applications in areas such as text mining, Web page retrieval, and dialogue systems. Existing methods for computing sentence similarity have been adopted from approaches used for long text documents. These methods process sentences in a very high-dimensional space and are consequently inefficient, require human input, and are not adaptable to some application domains. This paper focuses directly on computing the similarity between very short texts of sentence length. It presents an algorithm that takes account of semantic information and word order information implied in the sentences. The semantic similarity of two sentences is calculated using information from a structured lexical database and from corpus statistics. The use of a lexical database enables our method to model human common sense knowledge and the incorporation of corpus statistics allows our method to be adaptable to different domains. The proposed method can be used in a variety of applications that involve text knowledge representation and discovery. Experiments on two sets of selected sentence pairs demonstrate that the proposed method provides a similarity measure that shows a significant correlation to human intuition


The knee extensor exercise model was specifically developed to enable in vivo estimates of peak muscle blood flow and O(2) uptake in humans. The original finding, using thermodilution measurements to measure blood flow in relation to muscle mass [P. Andersen and B. Saltin. J. Physiol. (Lond.) 366: 233-249, 1985], was questioned, however, as the measurements were two- to threefold higher than those previously obtained with the (133)Xe clearance and the plethysmography technique. As thermodilution measurements have now been confirmed by other methods and independent research groups, we aimed to address the impact of muscle mass estimates on the peak values of muscle perfusion and O(2) uptake. In the present study, knee extensor volume was determined from multiple measurements with computer tomography along the full length of the muscle. In nine healthy humans, quadriceps muscle volume was 2.36 +/- 0.17 (range 1. 31-3.27) liters, corresponding to 2.48 +/- 0.18 (range 1.37-3.43) kg. Anthropometry overestimated the muscle volume by approximately 21-46%, depending on whether quadriceps muscle length was estimated from the patella to either the pubic bone, inguinal ligament, or spina iliaca anterior superior. One-legged, dynamic knee extensor exercise up to peak effort of 67 +/- 7 (range 55-100) W rendered peak values for leg blood flow (thermodilution) of 5.99 +/- 0.66 (range 4.15-9.52) l/min and leg O(2) uptake of 856 +/- 109 (range 590-1,521) ml/min. Muscle perfusion and O(2) uptake reached peak values of 246 +/- 24 (range 149-373) and 35.2 +/- 3.7 (range 22.6-59. 6) ml. min(-1). 100 g muscle(-1), respectively. These peak values are approximately 19-33% larger than those attained by applying anthropometric muscle mass estimates. In conclusion, the present findings emphasize that peak perfusion and O(2) uptake in human skeletal muscle may be up to approximately 30% higher than previous anthropometric-based estimates that use equivalent techniques for blood flow measurements.


The formal and informal education have a significant impact on human capital accumulation, which is strongly influencing the growth and development of a country. While the formal education is acquired especially through the learning system, the informal one is correlated to the professional experience at the workplace, both of them being considered a long-term investment. Because the educational effort is indirectly related to the preference rate in time and directly related to the school efficiency, people have to rationally choose between the time spent working and the period spent with education, giving up on one of these activities. Yet, there is an alternative that reduces the necessity of the substitution through the factor time and which leads to an endogenous knowledge accumulation, into the productive act: the learning-by-doing process. Unfortunately, in Romania this is a concept very vague defined and applied, even in the case of the multinational corporations' subsidies.


This study investigated the effects of musical instrument learning on the concomitant development of cognitive, behavioural and socio-emotional skills in 38 seven- to nine-year-old children. Pre- and post-test measures of intelligence, memory, socio-emotional behaviour, motor ability and visual-motor integration were compared in children who received either extra-curricular musical training (EMT: n = 19) or statutory school music group lessons (SSM: n = 19). Results showed a significant association between musical aptitude and intelligence overall. The EMT group showed a significant increase in IQ (7 points), in comparison to 4.3 points for the SSM group, suggesting an effect of musical learning on intelligence. No effects were found for memory, or for visual motor integration or socio-emotional behaviour. However, significant improvements in gross motor ability where revealed for the EMT group only, for the aiming and catching composite. With regard to the measure of fluid intelligence, these findings support previous studies. The novel use of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children provides evidence that musical learning may support development in a child's ability to judge distance, consider velocity, focus and use their proprioceptive, interoceptive and exteroceptive nervous systems.


Post harvest biology and technology of citrus fruits is gaining importance as the therapeutic value of citrus fruits is realized and supported by the increase in health awareness among the general public. This book is the most comprehensive reference on citrus fruit biology, biotechnology and quality. Basic and applied scientific information is interwoven to serve the researcher, marketer, scientist, nutritionist, or dietician. With discussions of fruit morphology, anatomy, physiology and biochemistry and chapters on growth phases, maturity standards, grades and physical and mechanical characteristics of citrus trees, this book provides the foundation for understanding growth, harvest and post harvest aspects of these important plants. Insect-pests and diseases, irrigation, nutrition and rootstocks are also addressed. * Provides practical tips for post harvest management * Includes all aspects of citrus fruit biology, technology and quality evaluation. * Discusses biotechnological applications and potential fresh citrus fruit quality improvement * Evaluates medicinal and therapeutic applications and recent clinical findings * Exhaustive glossary included


The syntactic form of explicit as-similes provides a ready-made infrastructure for linguistic creativity that writers and speakers can exploit with remarkable freedom. This chapter adopts a computational approach to similes, asking: what kinds of knowledge must a computational agent possess so as to recognize the ironic intent of a humorous comparison and to what degree is this intent telegraphed to the audience by the use of specific markers or support structures? Using automated means to collect two very large corpora of similes, one that favours the conventional and one that favours the creative use of similes, the chapter describes the characteristics of similes used with ironic intent and the role played by 'about' as a scaffolding structure for creative similes.


This thesis focuses on identifying the degree of contribution of the most important factors affecting Body and Paint business of Volvo Car Corporation in Sweden. It is clear that Body and Paint business for VCCS directly depends on the number of registered accidents. Our major purpose is to determine the factors which have direct or indirect effect on reduction in the number of accidents in Sweden and to analyze in which degree they may affect the business. During the interviews with senior staff members, we discover that particularly city safety cars are mentioned by most of the specialists. Other important factors highlighted were mileage, weather, company car/ private car and age of a car. City Safety is a technology designed to help the driver mitigate, and in certain situations avoid, collisions at low speed by automatically bracking the vehicle. The estimated claim rate frequency i.e. claims per contract rate was 50% lower for city safety equipped; then other warranty cars models without system. The study also analysis the effect of rain, mean temperature and snow on Volvo Body part sales in Stockholm Sweden. Temperature snow impacted road accidents significantly. Snow was shown to be the leading variable, as the number of accidents increases sharply with increased snowfall. Temperature is the second important variable in the list i.e. as the temperature decreases by 1C the sales of body and paint business in Stockholm increases by 1.6%. Time variable such as weekday, month, and year also plays significant role in this model. During Fridays 51% high accidents are expected then accidents occurred on Sundays.


This research is motivated from preliminary teamwork on analyzing the "Performance Gap" of three high-performance buildings, which are currently under operation. All three buildings are facing operational challenges that are not unusual considering the complexity of their systems. However, evidence from design documents, an existing energy model, and operational data suggests that their performance is not entirely reflecting the design intent. This research follows the premise that there is a need to design buildings as systems-of-systems to be able to understand, interpret, quantify, design, and fine-tune the dynamic couplings between systems. This research was dedicated to a high-performance academic building (HPAB) – one of the above three buildings – as a case-study to gain understanding on the complexities of systems coupling, and learn and apply dynamic simulation-based systems coupling tools and methods. The main focus of the study is the classrooms because of the existing evidence on the significant impact of indoor environmental comfort on student performance in academic facilities.

The HPAB case-study building incorporates, at the source side, ground-coupled water-to-water heat pumps (WWHP) and solar-thermal as primary means of heating, with boiler used as a backup source. Cooling is provided by the cold side of the WWHP system. On the demand side, heating and cooling are delivered via thermally active radiant floors; while air handling systems take care of the ventilation and de/humidification needs, and provide supplementary heating and cooling. The building was initially designed to rely on natural ventilation for summer cooling; however, designers realized that natural ventilation alone was not able to meet the building cooling demands in the summer. Nevertheless, the building has operable windows and a central atrium that seems to be collecting the air from the individual spaces and exhausting it after some heat recovery.

The thermally active building is not adequately meeting the demands from some critical zones. Furthermore, the operation is not consistent with the reduced hours of summer operation of an academic building. These and other observations on the building indicate that the air and radiant systems are not operating in synergy. Existing industry practices in building controls systems, and the research literature show limited evidence of efforts to attempt to harmonize these two complementary systems.
Simulation was used to re-create the HPAB building's mechanical system response in two levels: a classroom-level model, and a Whole Building Energy Model (WBEM). The implementation was in EnergyPlus modeling software. Design documents, and historic operational data from the building automation system (BAS) were used for calibration. In this work, various features of Energy Management System (EMS) module of EnergyPlus has been utilized to create a responsive mechanical system control within the simulation. In the end, the typical responses of the building spaces could be accurately recreated in the simulation for both models.

In the next step, testing different controls approaches – labelled as Strategies – and comparing them with defined comfort and stability metrics showed that harmonizing the air and radiant systems, in addition to increasing the consistency of the radiant system operation, results in improvement to the system operation without sacrificing the comfort.

This research explores the challenges of employing a WBEM to assist building design decisions by accounting for the building dynamics and enabling the coupling and tuning of systems parameters and control strategies through simulation. The research demonstrates the benefits of improved operational control sequences that are more in tune with the building's design intent.


The Manin constant of an elliptic curve is an invariant that arises in connection with the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer. One conjectures that this constant is 1; it is known to be an integer. After surveying what is known about the Manin constant, we establish a new sufficient condition that ensures that the Manin constant is an odd integer. Next, we generalize the notion of the Manin constant to certain abelian variety quotients of the Jacobians of modular curves; these quotients are attached to ideals of Hecke algebras. We also generalize many of the results for elliptic curves to quotients of the new part of J0(N), and conjecture that the generalized Manin constant is 1 for newform quotients. Finally an appendix by John Cremona discusses computation of the Manin constant for all elliptic curves of conductor up to 130000.


We present a comparative study of solvent effects on the 15N NMR shielding constants and the lowest electronic excitation energy (n --> pi*) in the three diazines (pyrazine, pyrimidine, and pyridazine) in aqueous solution. This solvent is modeled using either a polarizable continuum model (PCM) or a discrete polarizable model (DPM). We analyze the results obtained with the two models in terms of differences/similarities in the reaction field produced at the solute. The PCM reaction field is found to be quite sensitive to the dimension of the cavity and so are the molecular properties. However, constructing the cavity so that the DPM and PCM reaction fields become similar in magnitude leads to quite similar results for the studied molecular properties modeling the solvent using either the PCM or the DPM. Compared to experimental data, the most accurate predicted results are obtained by describing the closest water molecules at the same level of sophistication as that of the solute, whereas the bulk solvent may be described using either PCM or MM. Finally, a comparison with geometry-optimized clusters seems to show that it is important to check potential deficiencies in the force field in order for this to treat hydrogen bonding in a consistent manner.


Powered wheelchairs play a vital role in bringing independence to the severely mobility-impaired. Our robotic wheelchair aims to assist users in driving safely, without undermining their capabilities or curtailing the natural development of their skills. An important research question is to determine the conditions under which shared control is most beneficial. In this paper, we describe an experiment, where a distracting secondary task caused the majority of participants to crash the wheelchair when driving without assistance. However, when they were assisted by our collaborative controller, not only did they drive safely, but they also increased their performance in the secondary task. We demonstrate that a degree of shared control is beneficial even to proficient drivers under certain circumstances, for instance when they are under a heightened workload.


An effective way to control post-harvest rotting of table grapes is the use of sulfur dioxide (SO2). However, under certain conditions, the use of SO2 can cause significant loss, mainly associated with bleaching of the berries. Therefore, it is believed that the use of bags with and without copper nanoparticles that modify the atmosphere will allow for the control of Botrytis cinerea as well as the ability to dispense with the use of sulfur dioxide generation. The objective of this test is to evaluate the use of bags with and without copper nanoparticles that modify atmosphere and to evaluate their ability to control post-harvest B. cinerea, as well as their effect on the conservation of physical and chemical characteristics of table grapes. The results indicate that the use of air bags with or without copper nanoparticles that modify the atmosphere and do not require sulfur dioxide generation were able to control B. cinerea post-harvest and preserve the physical and chemical parameters of grape table cv. 'Thompson seedless'. Significant differences were seen in parameters such as whitening, dehydration and incidence of stalk rot. A group of panelists could not distinguish differences in the sensory attributes and acceptability of the grapes regardless of treatment.


The rear axle gear is one of the key parts of transmission system for automobiles. Its healthy state directly influences the security and reliability of the automotives. However, non-stationary and nonlinear characteristics of gear vibration due to load and speed fluctuations, makes it difficult to detect and diagnosis the faults from the transmission gear. To solve this problem a fault prognosis and diagnosis method based on a combination of radial basis function(RBF) and back-propagation (BP) neural networks is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a moving average pretreatment is used to suppress the time series fluctuation of vibration characteristic parameter tie series and reduce the interference of random noise. Then, the RBF network is applied to the pretreated parameter sequences for fault prognosis. Furthermore, based on self-learning ability of neural networks, characteristic parameters for different common faults are learned by a BP network. Then the trained BP neural network is utilized for fault diagnosis of the rear axle gear. The results show that the proposed method has a good performance in prognosing and diagnosing different faults from the rear axle gear.


Spring discharge and groundwater levels were used to study groundwater outflow recessions, groundwater reservoir sizes, water yielding properties and saturated hydraulic conductivities in a sandy till area in southeastern Sweden. Water chemistry was used as an indicator of flow paths. The catchment areas of the five springs, ranging from approximately 0.01 km2 to 0.2 km2 in size, were all mainly covered with coniferous forest. The maximum active groundwater storages of the catchment areas of the springs varied from 75 to 145 mm. As a comparison the maximum total groundwater storage of the till in the catchment area of the largest spring was estimated to 1,250 mm. Two springs were chosen for detailed studies. The highest peak discharge of the smallest of these springs was 1.7 mm/day and it usually dried up in summer. The discharge from the largest spring was evenly distributed and varied between 0.2 and 0.8 mm/day. Frequent analyses of water chemistry during a spring with intense snowmelt revealed no change of water composition in spite of a great increase in discharge; for the smallest spring by more than 30 times. Integrated values of the specific water release from the unsaturated zone to the groundwater reservoir were calculated from runoff volumes and decreasing groundwater levels for the catchment area of the largest spring. The different values obtained from dry summer and winter periods, 0.024 and 0.047 respectively, indicated a strong influence from evapotranspiration. It the same spring, an areally integrated value of the saturated hydraulic conductivity was estimated to 6 × 10−5 m/s from a linearized solution of the Boussinesq equation.


Teachers are expected to take responsibility for children's moral development, particularly in the primary years, but how best to go about approaching the issues? In this book, the author explores a classroom approach that uses both drama and narrative stories to explore moral issues: drama gives children an opportunity to work through moral problems, make decisions and take up moral positions; stories offer a resource for moral education whereby children can learn through the 'experiences' of those in the story. Through providing a number of case studies, the author shows how this may be done by practitioners in the lassroom.


Under Fire: A Rhetorical Analysis of Marcus Garvey's ApologiaTaking pen in hand in 1917, Marcus Garvey portentously wrote that the world would soon see a revolutionary transformation in black leadership. Furthermore, he prophesied that this new race champion would "...not be a white man with a black heart, nor a black man with a white heart, but a black man with a black heart."(2) In 1918, Garvey emerged as that new leader. His tenure as a protagonist, however, was not without its setbacks and scandals. As a result, contemporary scholars, such as Cronon, Edwards, Manoedi, Martin, and Stein, have viewed Garvey as somewhat of a paradox.(3) From one perspective, Garvey and his movement reached fruition and decay in less than a decade. From another, Garvey and his philosophy transcended generations. Many of his thoughts on black pride, liberation, and solidarity were adopted by succeeding movements, including the Black Power Movement and the Nationalistic Movement of the Black Muslims. It is, however, Garvey in his historical context that I wish to examine in this essay. More specifically, I am interested in how Garvey dealt with adversities to his movement and critics of his character.Throughout much of Garvey's career as a movement leader, he was plagued by mistakes, blunders, poor decisions, and a terrible business sense. As a result, Garvey spent much of his time justifying these setbacks in an attempt to maintain and defend the strong following and the rich sources of income he received from blacks around the world. This rhetorical form of sell defending discourse is referred to as apologia.Apologia has been studied by rhetorical scholars for several decades.(4) B.L. Ware and Wil A. Linkugel, two scholars who have advanced the theoretical study of apologia stated, "We believe that apologetic discourses constitute a distinct form of public address, a family of speeches with sufficient elements in common so as to warrant legitimately generic status." They also noted that "The recurrent theme of accusation followed by apology is so prevalent in our record of public address as to be, in the words of Kenneth Burke, one of those situations typical and recurrent enough for men to feel the need of having a name for them."(5) Apologia as a form of rhetoric can be presented in a number of mediums (TV, books, newspapers, speeches, radio) and can assume a number of rhetorical approaches (denial, conspiracy logic, scapegoating, discrediting one's accusers). In the case of Marcus Garvey, he utilized a combination of mediums and approaches in his apologia.In this essay I argue that Marcus Garvey employed five basic rhetorical approaches in an attempt to defend his character and to maintain his movement. These five strategies were: denial, scapegoating, discrediting of accusers, transcendence, and conspiracy/plot logic. The structure of this paper has three sections, with the second section demanding most of the attention. In part one, I give a brief overview of Garvey's life, with an emphasis on decisions and events that attracted negative criticism. In part two, I analyze each of the five forms of apologia that Garvey used in responding to this criticism. And in the third and final section, I draw some conclusions about Garvey's use of apologia. Ultimately, I hope to provide a better understanding of the apologetic strategies that Garvey employed in his attempt to prolong the life of his movement and to defend his character.The value of this analysis is two-fold: 1) to improve our understanding of how Garvey rhetorically reconciled the tension between intensifying his persona as a movement leader and restoring his public image and balance in the eyes of his followers; and 2) to obtain better insight into the rhetorical techniques and social conditions that produce apologetic discourse.GARVEY'S LIFE(6)There was nothing about Marcus Garvey's early life that suggested that one day he would become one of the most influential black leaders in the world. …


Health shocks are an important source of risk. People in bad health work less, earn less, face higher medical expenses, die earlier, and accumulate much less wealth compared to those in good health. Importantly, the dynamics of health are much richer than those implied by a low-order Markov process. We first show that these dynamics can be parsimoniously captured by a combination of some lag-dependence and ex-ante heterogeneity, or health types. We then study the effects of health shocks in a structural life-cycle model with incomplete markets. Our estimated model reproduces the observed inequality in economic outcomes by health status, including the income-health and wealth-health gradients. Our model has several implications concerning the pecuniary and non-pecuniary effects of health shocks over the life-cycle. The (monetary) lifetime costs of bad health are very concentrated and highly unequally distributed across health types, with the largest component of these costs being the loss in labor earnings. The non-pecuniary effects of health are very important along two dimensions. First, individuals value good health mostly because it extends life expectancy. Second, health uncertainty substantially increases lifetime inequality by affecting the variation in lifespans.


YANKOV, P., 2009. Changes in the composition and water sustainability of soil units under the effect of some soil tillage systems. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 15: 393-399 The investigation was carried out during 2003-2008 in the trial field of Dobrudzha Agricultural Institute on slightly leached chernozem soil type. A stationary field trial investigated the effect of some soil tillage systems (plowing at 24-26 cm – plowing at 14-16 cm; plowing at 24-26 cm – disking at 10-12 cm; disking at 10-12 cm – disking at 10-12 cm; no tillage – no tillage; cutting at 26-24 cm – cutting at 8-10 cm) on the composition and water sustainability of the structural soil units. Soil samples were taken after harvesting of wheat from the 0-10, 10-20 and 20-40 cm layers. Soil structure was determined through dry and wet screening of soil to find out the percent of the structural soil units of different size (>5, 5-3, 3-1, 1-0.25 and <0.25 mm). The systems involving annual tillage with plowshare destabilized the soil units and decreased the percent of water sustainable soil units along the entire depth of the cultivated profile. The constant shallow tillage done with disk clod-breaker at the same depth deteriorated soil structure in the surface layer. The low degree of crumbing at cutting and the elimination of the mechanical impact at minimal (below 10 cm) and no tillage in combination with decreased mineralization processes as a result from reduced air circulation lead to the decrease or the lack of destructive effect of these soil tillage systems on the soil units. In the lower plow layer, restructuring and increasing of the water sustainable soil units was observed at these types of soil tillage.


Approximately 99 percent of past production and remaining
 identified resources of gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc in the United
 States are accounted for by deposits that originally contained at least 2
 metric tonnes (t) gold, 85 t silver, 50,000 t copper, 30,000 t lead, or
 50,000 t zinc. The U.S. Geological Survey, beginning with the 1996 National
 Mineral Resource Assessment, is systematically compiling data on these
 deposits, collectively known as "significant" deposits. As of
 December 31, 1996, the significant deposits database contained 1,118 entries
 corresponding to individual deposits or mining districts. Maintaining,
 updating, and analyzing a database of this size is much easier than managing
 the more than 100,000 records in the Mineral Resource Data System and
 Minerals Availability System/Minerals Industry Location System, yet the
 significant deposits database accounts for almost all past production and
 remaining identified resources of these metals in the United States. About 33 percent of gold, 22 percent of silver, 42
 percent of copper, 39 percent of lead, and 46 percent of zinc are contained
 in or were produced from deposits discovered after World War II. Even within
 a database of significant deposits, a disproportionate share of past
 production and remaining resources is accounted for by a very small number
 of deposits. The largest 10 producers for each metal account for one third
 of the gold, 60 percent of the silver, 68 percent of the copper, 85 percent
 of the lead, and 75 percent of the zinc produced in the United States. The
 10 largest deposits in terms of identified remaining resources of each of
 the five metals contain 43 percent of the gold, 56 percent of the silver, 48
 percent of the copper, 94 percent of the lead, and 72 percent of the zinc. Identified resources in significant deposits for each
 metal are less than the mean estimates of resources in undiscovered deposits
 from the 1996 U.S. National Mineral Resource Assessment. Identified
 resources are roughly the same magnitude as cumulative past production.
 Assuming that roughly the same proportion of resources in undiscovered
 deposits will occur in significant deposits, a substantial number of
 significant deposits remain to be discovered.


In this paper, we report on an investigation of affecting guppy fishes (Poecilia reticulata) by silver ions (0, 0.3, 0.6, 1.2, 2.5, and 5 muM) for seven days under well-controlled experimental conditions. To observe the physiological changes, we attempted to determine metallothionein (MT) as a biomarker of heavy metal stress. For this purpose, we proposed a sensor utilizing a carbon electrode coupled with flow injection analysis. The experimental conditions, which have been optimized, were as follows-applied potential: 750 mV, mobile phase: Britton-Robinson buffer (pH 1.9) with flow rate of 0.6 ml/min, time filter: 2.5 s, "current R": 1 muA. Under these conditions, the detection limit of MT was estimated as 100 pM. After the optimizing step, the fish tissues were measured. Based on the results obtained, MT content increased with increasing dose of silver ions and time of the treatment. The results obtained were in good correlation with those obtained by adsorptive transfer stripping technique coupled with differential pulse voltammetry Brdicka reaction, which was used as the reference technique.


Organizations deal with complex information systems innovations such as enterprise resource planning systems to enable and support their operations. While there is considerable research on organizations' adoption, implementation, and use of such complex information systems, prior literature has not dwelt as much on the diffusion or the spread of such complex information systems across a population of organizations. A limited number of studies have shown different information sources such as external, internal, and mixed influences to drive diffusion, and found variations in the diffusion patterns of different complex information systems. These findings, however, belong to different populations and do not account for organizational or technology characteristics that may be influential in diffusion. This study seeks to expand our understanding by examining the diffusion of several complex information systems within the same population of S&P-500 organizations between 1990 and 2008 by modeling different influence mechanisms and employing event-history analysis.


In response to the energy crisis, global warming, and climate changes, microalgae have received a great deal of attention as a biofuel feedstock. Due to a high lipid content in microalgal cells, microalgae present as a promising alternative source for the production of biodiesel. Environmental and culturing condition variations can alter lipid production as well as chemical compositions of microalgae. Therefore, application of the strategies to activate lipid accumulation opens the door for lipid overproduction in microalgae. Until now, many original studies regarding the approaches for enhanced microalgal lipid production have been reported in an effort to push forward the production of microalgal biodiesel. However, the current literature demonstrates fragmented information available regarding the strategies for lipid production improvement. From the systematic point of view, the review highlights the main approaches for microalgal lipid accumulation induction to expedite the application of microalgal biodiesel as an alternative to fossil diesel for sustainable environment. Of the several strategies discussed, the one that is most commonly applied is the design of nutrient (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur) starvation or limitation. Other viable approaches such as light intensity, temperature, carbon dioxide, salinity stress, and metal influence can also achieve enhanced microalgal lipid production.


In 1982 the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation publishe d its report on The Arts in Schools: Principle s , Practice and Provision in which it stated unequivocally that 'the arts have an essential place in the ba l anced education of our children and young people,. It went on : We live in an increas i ngly multiracial and multicultural society in which we must learn to understand and respond to other ways of seeing and doing ... We are sure that, in the forms of education needed in this changing situation, the arts and principles and methods of teaching they represent, will prove to be more and not less significant than at present .. Our own experience working in this field of African arts in schools over the last two years totally endorses this view.


The increase in mobile phone penetration is stimulating a trend towards the use of mobile phones to supplement or even replace traditional telephone surveys. Despite this trend, few studies have systematically compared differences between the two modes. This article describes a study in which both mobile and fixed phone were used to collect data on a national survey on internet and cultural practices. Findings revealed significant differences between mobile phone respondents and fixed phone respondents in terms of demographic characteristics and responses to some of the substantive items of the survey. In terms of data quality the mobile phone survey proved to be different from the fixed phone survey in two indicators: completion times and percentage of respondents with item omissions. The mobile phone survey was more difficult to implement than the fixed phone survey since much more screening was required to identify working phone numbers; in addition it yielded a lower response rate than the fixed phone survey.


Several illnesses such as paradoxical embolism, decompression sickness, migraine and cerebral ischemia are characterized by bubbles which might cross the septum wall between left and right atrium. In this study, we aimed to detect bubbles on echocardiographic frames which are segmented automatically using snakes method. In recent studies, analyzes are done on fixed ROIs and PFO grading as well. We conclude that our approach would give more accurate results for bubble detection and counting by taking account into entire Left Atrium (LA) areas.


Red kangaroos Macropus rufus, merino sheep Ovis aries and rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus were studied in grazing trial in the arid zone of W New South Wales. Animals grazed a chenopod shrubland composed of low halophytic bushes of Maireana pyramidata interspersed with a herb layer of annual forbs and grasses. Maximum food intakes of rabbits, kangaroos and sheep during the trial were 68, 62 and 61 g kg-0.75 day-1, respectively. These intakes are similar despite the 30% difference in basal metabolic rates between eutherians and marsupials. All species avoided Maireana but when food was scarce sheep switched to it more strongly than did the other herbivore species. Sheep consumed 20% of their intake as Maireana at a pasture biomass of 250 kg ha-1 compared to only 10% y the other two species at this biomass. Maireana reached 20% of the intake of rabbits and kangaroos at a pasture biomass of 100 kg ha-1. Harvesting efficiencies (ability to maintain food intake at low vegetation biomasses) of kangaroos, sheep and rabbits were considerably higher than that of sheep grazing sown pastures in higher rainfall areas. The three herbivore species appeared equally capable of reducing the pasture to an ungrazable residuum of less than 20 kg ha-1. The relationship between food intake and food availability for each species of herbivore was an asymptotic function, suggesting that this, rather than a linear function, is the typical pattern for most mammalian herbivores


Historical reference conditions have long been used to guide the restoration of degraded ecosystems. However, a rapidly changing climate and altered disturbance regimes are calling into question the usefulness of this approach. As a consequence, restoration goals are increasingly focused on creating communities that are resilient to novel environmental stressors and emphasis is being placed on defining functional targets through the use of plant traits. While changes in forest structure and composition have received much attention, long‐term changes in stand‐level functional traits are not well understood. We used dendrochronology to reconstruct historical forest structure and composition in 1880, the year immediately following the disruption of the natural fire regime in a mixed conifer forest in Arizona, USA. We analysed the differences in pre‐settlement and contemporary forest composition, structure and community‐weighted mean (CWM) traits, and functional diversity metrics (Rao's Q and functional richness) for four plant functional traits: leaf nitrogen content (leaf N), specific leaf area (SLA), wood density and bark thickness. We observed significant shifts in forest composition, structure, CWM traits and functional diversity from 1880 to 2011. These changes reflect a reduction in fire and drought tolerance, driven largely by increases in the relative importance of Abies concolor and Pinus strobiformis. Compositional changes were associated with declines in CWM leaf N, SLA, wood density and bark thickness. We found lower multitrait functional diversity (Rao's Q) in contemporary forests driven primarily by leaf N; however, bark thickness variation was greater in contemporary forests than in 1880. Synthesis and applications. Compositional shifts towards reduced average bark thickness and wood density in contemporary forests driven by land‐use change have likely reduced forest resilience to both fire and drought. Managers can manipulate forest structure and species composition to achieve functional objectives by increasing stand‐level bark thickness to promote fire tolerance and increasing stand‐level wood density to promote drought tolerance. Forecasts for extended fire seasons along with declining precipitation are projected for many ecosystems around the planet. A focus on restoring optimal functional trait combinations may be as important as managing ecosystem structure for restoring resilient ecosystems.


Phytase, also known as phytate-degrading enzyme, catalyzes the hydrolysis of phytate (inositol hexakisphosphate) with sequential release of phosphate and lower inositol phosphate. We report here a new plasmid construct designated as pMSuia from pBAD-TOPO that harbors a 1.1 kb phytase gene (phyMS) from Mycobacterium smegmatis, and expression as well as characterization of the purified recombinant M. smegmatis phytase. DNA sequencing analysis and multiple alignment exercise indicated that the M. smegmatis phytase is different from both known acid and alkaline phytases. The active ~45 kDa recombinant enzyme was expressed and confirmed by enzyme assay and Western blot analyses. Ni-NTA affinity purified recombinant M. smegmatis phytase exhibited specific activity of 233.51 U/mg, optimal pH of 3 and 7 and optimal temperature of 60°C. The purified enzyme retains almost 30% of the initial activity after incubation at 90°C for 60 min. The enzyme showed broad substrate specificity with Km and Vmax of the recombinant enzyme for sodium phytate substrate of 0.105 ± 0.016 mM and 26.93 ± 1.21 mM min-1, respectively.


The preparation and properties of a semisolid nickel sulfate-sorbitol complex are described. The absorbance curve of the complex corresponds closely with that of an approximately saturated solution of hydrated nickel sulfate in water with the advantage of a two-fold increase in absorbancy index at the peak absorption. Used as a filter component it eliminates the undesirable properties of a liquid filter. A freshly made 3.5-mm thickness of complex had an average transmittance at 2850 A of 75% which showed a slight decrease after three years. An appreciable loss of transmittance after nine years arises from the development of an absorption band at 2850 A. The relationship of this band with a temperature-sensitive band in water solutions of pure nickel sulfate is discussed. The filter remains visually clear indicating that the complex has not crystallized in nine years.


Abstract. We present a new modeling approach analyzing and predicting the Transit Time Distribution (TTD) and the Response Time Distribution (RTD) from hourly to annual time scales as two distinct hydrological processes. The model integrates Isotope Hydrograph Separation (IHS) and the Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (IUH) approach as a tool to provide a more realistic description of transit and response time of water in catchments. Individual event simulations and parameterizations were combined with long-term baseflow simulation and parameterizations; this provides a comprehensive picture of the catchment response for a long time span for the hydraulic and isotopic processes. The proposed method was tested in three Andean headwater catchments to compare the effects of land use on hydrological response and solute transport. Results show that the characteristics of events and antecedent conditions have a significant influence on TTD and RTD, but in general the RTD of the grassland dominated catchment is concentrated in the shorter time spans and has a higher cumulative TTD, while the forest dominated catchment has a relatively higher response distribution and lower cumulative TTD. The catchment where wetlands concentrate shows a flashier response, but wetlands also appear to prolong transit time.


Abstract. A large number of activities have been carried out to characterise the levels of mercury (Hg) species in ambient air and precipitation, in order to understand how they vary over time and how they depend on meteorological conditions. Following the discovery of atmospheric Hg depletion events (AMDEs) in Polar Regions, a significant research effort was made to assess the chemical-physical mechanisms behind the rapid conversion of atmospheric gaseous Hg (Hg0) into reactive and water-soluble forms which are potentially bioavailable. The understanding of the way in which Hg is released into the atmosphere, transformed, deposited and eventually incorporated into biota is of crucial importance not only for the polar regions but also for the marine environment in general. The oceans and seas are both sources and sinks of Hg and play a major role in the Hg cycle. In this work, the available Hg concentration datasets from a number of terrestrial sites (industrial, rural and remote) in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres as well as over oceans and seas have been investigated. The higher Hg species concentration and variability observed in the Northern Hemisphere suggest that the majority of emissions and re-emissions occur there. The inter-hemispherical gradient with higher total gaseous mercury (TGM) concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere has remained nearly constant over the years for which data are available. The analysis of Hg concentration patterns indicates the differences in regional source/sink characteristics, with increasing variability toward areas strongly influenced by anthropogenic sources. The large increase in Hg emissions in rapidly developing countries (i.e., China, India) over the last decade, due primarily to a sharp increase in energy production from coal combustion, are not currently reflected in the long-term measurements of TGM in ambient air and precipitation at continuous monitoring sites in either Northern Europe or North America. The discrepancy between observed gaseous Hg concentrations (steady or decreasing) and global Hg emission inventories (increasing) has not yet been explained, though the potential oxidation of the atmosphere during the last decade is increasing. Currently, however, a coordinated observational network for Hg does not exist.


This disclosure describes techniques for largely automated on-device troubleshooting of conferencing and enterprise equipment through a simple user interface. Through the interface, troubleshooting can be performed for peripherals such as cameras, speakers, microphones, touch controllers, and near-field communication (NFC) devices. In case of a test failure, additional logging information is captured and sent for further processing to determine if the issue can be resolved using a software fix, or alternatively, if a hardware fix is necessary. On-device troubleshooting provides a local, offline interface to diagnose problems with equipment and reduce escalations to next level of support and/or returns of the equipment or parts.


In this thesis I develop a contemporary history of memetics, or the field dedicated to the study of memes. Those working in the realm of meme theory have been generally concerned with developing either evolutionary or epidemiological approaches to the study of human culture, with memes viewed as discrete units of cultural transmission. At the center of my account is the argument that memetics has been characterized by an atypical pattern of growth, with the meme concept only moving toward greater academic legitimacy after significant development and diffusion in the popular realm. As revealed by my analysis, the history of memetics upends conventional understandings of discipline formation and the popularization of scientific ideas, making it a novel and informative case study in the realm of science and technology studies. Furthermore, this project underscores how the development of fields and disciplines is thoroughly intertwined with a larger social, cultural, and historical milieu.


Nuclear collisions can compress nuclear matter to densities achieved within neutron stars and within core-collapse supernovae. These dense states of matter exist momentarily before expanding. We analyzed the flow of matter to extract pressures in excess of 1034 pascals, the highest recorded under laboratory-controlled conditions. Using these analyses, we rule out strongly repulsive nuclear equations of state from relativistic mean field theory and weakly repulsive equations of state with phase transitions at densities less than three times that of stable nuclei, but not equations of state softened at higher densities because of a transformation to quark matter.


This paper uses a vector autoregression model estimated with Bayesian methods to identify the effect of productivity news shocks on labour market variables by imposing that they are orthogonal to current technology but they explain future observed technology. In the aftermath of a positive news shock, unemployment falls, whereas wages and the job finding rate increase. The analysis establishes that news shocks are important in explaining the historical developments in labour market variables, whereas they play a minor role for movements in real activity. We show that the empirical responses to news shocks are in line with those of a baseline search and matching model of the labour market and that the job destruction rate and real wage rigidities are critical for the variables' responses to the news shock.


The catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last spring and summer has triggered an intense search for more effective regulatory methods that would prevent such disasters. The new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) is under pressure to adopt the British "safety case" system, which requires the preparation of a facility-specific plan that is typically several hundred pages long. This system is supposed to inculcate a "safety culture" within companies that operate offshore in the British portion of the North Sea because it overcomes a "box-ticking" mentality and constitutes "bottom up" implementation of safety measures. Safety cases are strictly confidential: only company officials, regulators and, in limited circumstances, worker representatives, are allowed to see the entire plan. This Article argues that the safety case approach should not come to America because this confidentiality, as well as the levels of risk tolerated by the British system, conflict with the both the spirit and the letter of American law. American regulators also lack the resources necessary to make a safety case regime minimally successful.


We propose a new type of noise reduction method suitable for autonomous mobile robots that require small and light-weighted devices and low-computational-cost algorithms. In the proposed method, four-line omni-directional micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) microphones are mounted on the robot head. The proposed method can reduce various kinds of noises simultaneously: directional noises are reduced by time-frequency masking using null beamformers and subtractive beamformers, and diffuse noises are reduced by multi-channel Wiener filtering using coherences. The effectiveness of the proposed method was shown in terms of speech recognition accuracies and speech qualities: the word error rate was reduced by 45% and 0.16 points of PESQ-MOS were improved compared with conventional time-frequency masking.


Abstract Loss of small herbaria is an unfortunate global trend and initiation of new collections at small academic institutions is an increasingly rare occurrence. In 2006, a new herbarium was established at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh. The PLAT herbarium has since grown to more than 7,000 specimens, many of them representative of the flora of northeastern New York (especially Clinton County). Previous to 2006, this region was without a recognized herbarium, the nearest in-state collections being more than 150 miles away. Although botanists have previously worked in the region, relatively few plant species were recorded for Clinton County by the New York Flora Atlas—a resource providing species distribution records based on specimens accessioned in herbarium collections. Given the dearth of available distribution data for Clinton County (including the eastern Adirondack Mountains and the western Lake Champlain valley), this project sought to provide records of previously unreported species by comparing NY Flora Atlas maps with current holdings. 203 species will now be added to the NY Flora Atlas for Clinton County, roughly half of those considered exotic. This exercise has amplified the importance of supporting and maintaining small regional herbaria as repositories of valuable biodiversity information. Likewise, this project also highlights the enduring value of training in floristics and taxonomy.


MUTATIONAL-KINETIC ANALYSIS REVEALS THE ROLES OF ARGININES AND AROMATICS IN THE CORE OF THE GABAA RECEPTOR LIGAND-BINDING POCKET Phu N. Tran, B.S. Marquette University, 2011 The γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABA) receptor is a member of the cys-loop family of ligandgated ion channels that plays a crucial role in normal brain function by transducing the majority of inhibitory neurotransmission in the central nervous system. The studies documented in this dissertation were aimed at validating and refining the current best model for the interaction of GABA with the GABAA receptor via structure-function perturbation analysis. Mutationalkinetic data was used in conjunction with homology modeling knowledge to draw up architectural and functional roles of the arginines and aromatics in GABA-binding pocket. The results provide interesting new insights. Two positively charged arginine residues, which have been implicated in ligand binding, were profiled through serial mutagenesis, to get at the specific side chain properties required for the roles they serve. The structural and functional contribution of four aromatic residues were examined through measuring the influence of their side chain on GABA binding rate with respect to changes caused by point mutations. An interaction between two aromatic residues critical for proper ligand binding was discovered through a screen for functional coupling between them and four neighboring arginines. These results were subsequently employed in an attempt to refine the current ligand-receptor interaction model, proposing specific roles for the amino acid residues studied. In the current best model of the GABAA receptor's ligand-binding pocket, the amino moiety of GABA is coordinated by a cation-π interaction with β2Y97 and the carboxyl moiety coordinated by an interaction with either β2R207 or α1R67 (or possibly both). Here, we incorporate the results of this dissertation to modify and add significant detail to this model. The model proposed here includes the following features: a hydrophobic interaction between β2Y97 and β2F200, an inter-subunit cation-π interaction between β2Y97 and α1R132, a cation-π interaction between the amino group of GABA and β2F200, hydrogen bond(s) between the carboxyl end of GABA and the guanidinium group of α1R67, and an interaction between the side chain of β2R207 and the backbone carbonyl of β2Y97.


Purpose: To determine the antitumor activity of the novel proteasome inhibitor bortezomib in patients with indolent non–Hodgkin's lymphoma. Experimental Design: Patients with follicular lymphoma (FL), marginal zone lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma, small lymphocytic lymphoma/chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia were eligible for study. Bortezomib was given at a dose of 1.5 mg/m2 as an i.v. push on days 1, 4, 8, and 11 of a 21-day cycle. Eligibility included the following: (a) no more than three prior therapies, (b) at least 1 month since prior chemotherapy, (c) measurable disease, and (d) an absolute neutrophil count of >1,000/μL and a platelet count >50,000/μL for the first dose of any cycle. Results: Seventy-seven patients were registered, of which 69 were assessable for response based on the completion of two cycles of therapy. Subtypes included FL (59.5%), mantle cell lymphoma (52%), small lymphocytic lymphoma/chronic lymphocytic leukemia (16.2%), marginal zone lymphoma (21.6%), and one Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia. The median number of prior therapies was three. The most common grade 3 toxicity was lymphopenia (35%) and thrombocytopenia (31%). Twenty-five patients experienced grade ≤2 sensory neuropathy (32), and 8% experienced grade 3 neurosensory toxicity. The overall response rate was 45% (40% on an intention to treat) including 10 complete remissions. Of 18 patients with FL, 9 responded with 4 complete response. The median time to treatment response for FL was 12 weeks, whereas the median time to treatment response for other subtypes of non–Hodgkin's lymphoma was only 4 weeks. Conclusions: These data suggest that bortezomib has significant single agent activity in patients with FL, and that longer durations of treatment may improve overall response. Clin Cancer Res; 16(2); 719–26


This study examines the perspectives of psychotropic medications held by young adults with mood disorder diagnoses. This article presents an analysis of qualitative interviews with 52 young adults who had been involved with public systems of care during adolescence and had used psychiatric medications. A concatenated analytic approach was used. First, we used a thematic analysis across cases, then a narrative analysis within selected cases. Two main themes emerged from the thematic analysis that captured aspects of the experience of taking medication. First, young adults described the effects of the medications and how they thought the medications were working. They described the impact on their moods, thinking, bodies, and functioning, and the ways in which these effects related to their lives. Second, the process of taking medications emerged as an important aspect of the medication treatment experience, including the trial-and-error nature of treatment and interactions with psychiatrists. The narrative analysis within cases identified that some youth created a medication narrative composed of three elements: why medications were needed, what medications do, and participants' outlook on future medication use. These narratives are helpful in understanding prior patterns of service use and are instructive in framing young people's future intentions to use medications. Findings support the importance of eliciting the perspectives of young adults about their treatment and ensuring that services are designed and delivered in developmentally appropriate ways tailored to this group.


This dissertation is the result of a research focused on the study, with the help of finite element analysis , of an aircraft windshield-surround structure with an innovative configuration, that satisfies the bird-strike requirement according to the EASA Certification Specifications 25.631 on the "Bird-strike Damage" [CS25.631 (2003)].
The first step was the numerical analysis of a simplified, but realistic, square flat windshield model subjected to impact by a 1.8 kg bird model at 155m/s with an impact angle of 90◦. The FE-SPH coupled approach was used to simulate the birdstrike by using the explicit finite element solver code LS-Dyna.
The second step was the execution of a parametric analysis on the square model to estimate the influence of the target geometry, the impact angle, and the plate curvature on the impact response of the windshield structure. The goal of these numerical simulations was the evaluation of the windshield capability to absorb the impact energy, involving during a birdstrike event, in a safe and efficient way without any damage.
Finally it was developed a numerical simulation of birdstrike event on a full-scale aircraft windshield-surround model. This FE numerical analysis showed the capability of the real innovative windshield to withstand to the impact force transferred by the bird during the impact and permitted the definition of some guidelines to execute a certification test simulation and to give an impact test article proposal, needed for a design of an airplane windshield structure able to resist to a birdstrike event in according with the conditions stated in the CS 25 standard requirements.


American families are experiencing the effects of the "Great Recession." Most of the job losses are accruing to men, so families may find it strategic for wives to enter the labor force, or increase their work hours. We consider this possibility using the May 2008 and 2009 Current Population Survey, and compare findings to May 2004 and 2005 data, a time of relative prosperity. We find that wives of husbands who stopped working during the recession were more likely to increase work hours, and more likely to commence or seek work. During the Great Recession years, the effect for wives entering the labor force is significantly greater than during the earlier years of relative prosperity.


This essay considers the representation of women from around the Baltic sea in three plays, Fair Em , Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes , and Hoffman , and explores how they are framed and conditioned by classical mythology. Unlike the Danish history play, where Danes in general and Danish women in particular are often frightening and alien figures, the Danish romance play gives us resilient, resourceful women who actively deploy stories from classical mythology rather than allowing themselves to be passively inscribed in them, and it also speaks of a continuing and significant connection between Britain and the continent.


Despite the theoretical suggestion that adopting an ERP system could bring about competitive advantage to Family Businesses within a highly competitive market such as the retail industry, a high level of family involvement appears to be a hindrance to the successful adoption. This study focused on understanding how family involvement might influence ERP adoption within UK's retail Small Family Businesses (SFBs). The study is important because some studies posit that family involvement in business could be leveraged for a successful adoption of technology, but others suggest that family involvement could as well be a hindrance to adopting an ERP system.
This is a qualitative study done in two stages; Firstly, through the exploration of the experience of ERP experts (consultants) for retail SMEs to understand ERP adoption and its possible contributions to UK's retail SFBs. Secondly, the findings the characteristics and processes within UK's retail SFBs were investigated through observations and family manager interviews.
Although, some of the cases studied were yet to adopt an ERP system, findings from comparing SFB cases with and without an ERP system shows that the business characteristics and processes might benefit from a successful adoption of the technology in a range of ways such as Managerial, Operational, Strategic and Organisational benefits. Despite the heterogeneity of the families and their businesses, the family managers appear to be the key decision makers and for ERP to be adopted the technology may need to be positively perceived in terms of its contribution to business and family interests. It was also found that due to family cohesion and trust, the business stakeholders irrespective of family affiliation tend to commit to the adoption of an ERP system if the family manager decides the business needs to adopt the technology.
While this study is based on evidences from few ERP consultants and cases of UK retail SFBs, the study has extended existing ERP knowledge in Family Businesses by showing that family involvement can be leveraged in some UK's retail SFBs to successfully adopt the ERP system. The study shows that the technology is capable of effectively benefiting both the business and family interests. A framework was also developed to show how family involvement might bring about ERP adoption in UK's retail SFBs. The study also shows that methodically using expert interviews and case studies is an efficient way to explore family involvement in ERP adoption within SFBs.


The capacitance per unit length of a microstrip transmission line is obtained using a spectral-domain method-of-moments (MoM) formulation. The paper emphasizes this problem as a teaching tool to introduce students of electromagnetics to this technique. Firstly, the derivation of the spectral-domain Green's function is outlined. Using this, the relevant integral equation is derived to which the Galerkin MoM approach is then applied. The MoM problem is solved in the spectral domain by also transforming the expansion and weighting functions. The inverse Fourier transform is then applied to find the spatial-domain charge distribution, and, hence, capacitance. The issues that arise here - both of selecting how much of the spectrum to include, and how to choose the number of integration points - are discussed, and the results of typical numerical experiments are presented. The time required to compute the elements of the immittance matrix is shown to be 0(N/sup 3/); the use of translational symmetry (and thus Toeplitz matrix structure) to reduce this is outlined. Classroom experience with this material is discussed. Finally, a hybrid spectral/spatial-domain formulation, introducing asymptotics, is outlined to accelerate the evaluation of the immittance matrix.


This article points out a struggle of today's societies with the traditional concepts of civil disobedience and stresses the need for reevaluation of the concept of civil disobedience for policy making and public discourse. Starting with a minimal definition of civil disobedience, the article introduces Hannah Arendt's approach for a legitimisation of civil disobedience and discusses her ideas for digital actions, which are increasingly framed as digital forms of civil disobedience. Addressing WikiLeaks as an example of digital civil disobedience, the author problematises the internal secrecy of WikiLeaks and the focus on Julian Assange as a single decision-maker. Both aspects challenge Arendt's understanding of legitimate civil disobedience. Even though traditional criteria of civil disobedience need to be revisited in the digital age, organisations or disobedience actors might themselves in their actions be well-advised to comply with the principles they fight for.


While the debate about the needs and merits of cryptocurrency regulation is ongoing, the unprecedented price hikes of cryptocurrencies towards the end of 2017 triggered a somewhat unexpected sort of regulation in the form of public statements by governments and financial supervisors. It kicked in rather quickly and turned out to be much more effective than imagined. These interventions can be identified as one of the main factors that drove asset prices down, thereby preventing destabilizing bubbles. The experience of the supervisory response to the cryptocurrency bubble of the past months keeps important insights for any prospective regulation of cryptocurrencies. First, public statements are a highly effective regulatory tool in the short term as they manage market expectations, a fact which is well-known as forward guidance in monetary policy. So far, the legal framework in the EU takes insufficient account of the regulatory role of public statements. Second, regulation needs to keep up with the incredible speed of fintech innovations. Some regulators addressed the challenge by adopting a "sandbox" approach. However, the "sandbox" approach clearly calls for international cooperation. To achieve a balance between safety and innovation, international cooperation should emulate the experimental character of sandboxes. One could conceive of a "sandbox for regulators", an arrangement which would facilitate the exchange of information on regulatory initiatives among authorities but also the coordination of communication and forward guidance.


With the growing size and complexity of turbulent flow models, data compression approaches are of the utmost importance to analyze, visualize, or restart the simulations. Recently, in-situ autoencoder-based compression approaches have been proposed and shown to be effective at producing reduced representations of turbulent flow data. However, these approaches focus solely on training the model using point-wise sample reconstruction losses that do not take advantage of the physical properties of turbulent flows. In this paper, we show that training autoencoders with additional physics-informed regularizations, e.g., enforcing incompressibility and preserving enstrophy, improves the compression model in three ways: (i) the compressed data better conform to known physics for homogeneous isotropic turbulence without negatively impacting point-wise reconstruction quality, (ii) inspection of the gradients of the trained model uncovers changes to the learned compression mapping that can facilitate the use of explainability techniques, and (iii) as a performance byproduct, training losses are shown to converge up to 12x faster than the baseline model.


Background: Approximately 60% of adverse events in skilled nursing facilities are likely preventable. This provides an opportunity to improve care and decrease costs for ill, and especially aged, patients. The primary line of defense against adverse events in these facilities are the nurses caring for these patients each day. Nurses are responsible for recognizing early warning signs of illness and preventing falls and other complications. The care of patients with multiple comorbidities requires nurses to attend to an often overwhelming set of interacting details. Objective: Our goal is to operationalize standards of care that can be implemented by nursing staff at skilled nursing and long-term care facilities in a manner complementing their natural workflow and facilitating patient interaction and shift documentation. To improve point of care patient management, nurses require a mobile solution that can guide their patient care unobtrusively. Methods: Nurses at a Boston-area 100-bed skilled nursing/long-term care facility used our solution consisting of an app on a mobile device together with a Web-based administration and reporting system. Our custom software running on an iPod Touch device implements an adaptive methodology for succinctly guiding nurses through a systematic review of systems, a physical exam, a fall risk protocol, and other assessments suitable to their roles in the nursing facility. Dynamically created checklists that prescribe appropriate and immediate nursing interventions are automatically presented to the nurses following each assessment based on the data collected. The software utilizes behavioral "nudges" to nurse-users to minimize errors and improve speed of data entry. Additionally, a custom content creation system allows for high-level abstraction of protocol logic, enabling real-time improvement and customization of complex protocol algorithms without the need for error-prone software programming. These methods facilitate automated reporting that aids the structured thought processes of providers and caregivers. Results: Pilot results were acquired using qualitative surveys and free-form interviews. Nurses reported a high facility after only an initial 15-minute training session. All nurses confirmed that having access to an efficient and mobile care facilitation device improved the likelihood of identifying patient complications. They also felt that a mobile documentation system lowered error rates by encouraging real-time documentation. Furthermore, systematic data gathering provided an improved level of documentation both in terms of comprehensiveness and clarity. Nurses claimed the system increased efficiency and lowered the overall time required for combined patient assessment and documentation. Most importantly, staff satisfaction was highly positive, encouraging continued usage of the intervention. Conclusions: Technological interventions at skilled nursing facilities, when implemented to address the point-of-care needs of nursing personnel, can positively impact quality improvement goals, empower nursing staff, and improve patient care. The suite of tools developed here enables the operationalization of standards of care with sufficient comprehensiveness to address a sufficient portion of the complexity faced in daily nursing duties. We conclude that access to real-time protocols has a highly beneficial effect on nursing care. [iproc 2016;2(1):e31]


As a response to public demand for a well-documented, quality controlled, publically available, global surface ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) data set, the international marine carbon science community developed the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT). The first SOCAT product is a collection of 6.3 million quality controlled surface CO2 data from the global oceans and coastal seas, spanning four decades (1968–2007). The SOCAT gridded data presented here is the second data product to come from the SOCAT project. Recognizing that some groups may have trouble working with millions of measurements, the SOCAT gridded product was generated to provide a robust, regularly spaced CO2 fugacity (fCO2) product with minimal spatial and temporal interpolation, which should be easier to work with for many applications. Gridded SOCAT is rich with information that has not been fully explored yet (e.g., regional differences in the seasonal cycles), but also contains biases and limitations that the user needs to recognize and address (e.g., local influences on values in some coastal regions).


PETER B. LICATA: 21" Century Workforce Readiness SkillsHow Are Students Being Prepared Throughout history, schools have strived to prepare students for future educational and workplace success. This is made evident through the many federal and state policies enacted. While the specific skills required for careers have changed, the goals of the educational system have not. The 21" Century international workplace requires a generation of skilled workers with specific attributes. To prepare students for gainful employment and to combat the high percentage of high school students who drop out of school unprepared for the workforce, school districts across the country have instituted Career and Technical Education and Industry Certification programs. These programs strive to prepare students for both career and college readiness. In The School District of Palm Beach County, Florida, the 1 lth largest school district in the country, each high school offers varying programs to assist students in their preparation for future educational opportunities and successful careers. Through the lens of The Southern Regional Education Board and Steinberg, several of these programs are evaluated. This study replicates and extends research by Tyrone Bennett (2012) and Kane (2012). The study evaluates the effectiveness in preparing students for the 21St Century workforce by interviewing and surveying District leaders, school-based administrators, teachers and employers. Both career specific skills and general skills necessary for workplace success are evaluated. It is the goal of the researcher that the results of this study be used to guide district-wide improvement of programs to prepare students for the 2 1 " Century workforce.


Faustovirus, a new Asfarviridae-related giant virus, was recently isolated in Vermamoeba vermiformis, a protist found in sewage water in various geographical locations and occasionally reported in human eye infection cases. As part of a global metagenomic analysis of viral communities existing in biting midges, we report here for the first time the identification and isolation of a Faustovirus-like virus in hematophagous arthropods and its detection in their animal hosts. The DNA virome analysis of three pools of Culicoides sp., engorged female Culicoides imicola and non-engorged male/female C. imicola biting midges collected in Senegal, revealed the presence of amoeba-infecting giant viruses and, among them, a majority of sequences related to Faustovirus. Phylogenetic analyses conducted on several structural genes of Faustovirus confirmed the clustering of the arthropod-borne Faustovirus with sewage-borne Faustoviruses, with a distinct geographical clustering of Senegalese Faustovirus strains. Transmission electron microscopy identified viral particles with morphologies and diameters which were compatible with Faustovirus. The presence of infectious arthropod-borne Faustovirus was finally confirmed by successful isolation on V. vermiformis amoeba. Global proteomic analysis of biting midges identified that arthropods' blood meal originating from cattle, rodents and humans. Further screening of cattle sera and rodent tissue resulted in prevalence of Faustovirus being estimated at 38% in rodents and 14% in cattle, suggesting a possible origin of Faustovirus presence in arthropods via the ingestion of contaminated blood meal. Viral loads were the highest in rodents' urine and kidney samples, suggesting a possible excretion of viral particles into the environment. Faustovirus DNA polymerase-related sequences were also detected in more than 9 and 11% of febrile patients and healthy Senegalese human sera, respectively. Our study thus, highlights the need to investigate the role of arthropods, wildlife, and domestic animals in the lifecycle of amoeba-infecting giant viruses and, in particular, the environmental cycle of Faustovirus.


Abstract The present review highlights our findings in the field of antitumor gold complexes bearing biologically relevant molecules, such as DNA-bases, amino acids or peptide derivatives. The results show that very active complexes are achieved with this sort of ligands in several cancer cells. In these compounds the gold center is bonded to these biological molecules mainly through a sulfur atom belonging to a cysteine moiety or to a thionicotinic moiety as result of the functionalization of the biological compounds, and additionally phosphines or N-heterocyclic carbenes are present as ancillary ligands. These robust compounds are stable in the biological media and can be transported to their targets without previous deactivation. The presence of these scaffolds represents a good approach to obtain complexes with improved biologically activity, better transport and biodistribution to cancer cells. Thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) has been shown as the main target for these complexes and in some cases, DNA interactions has been also observed.


This study is a description of the meanings pre-service teachers and their instructor (myself) gain in the experience of learning to teach in an Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) . Using stories of teaching, oral and written, we searched together for the essence of teaching in a journey of selfawareness and a journey of discovering what it means to be human . We storied, restoried and reflected on our experiences as we lived our lives and made new meanings about who we are and who we want to be as teachers . In this research project, I present stories given to me by my nine participants (third-year/pre-intern students) in their teaching autobiographies and and our oral storytelling sessions . To describe the knowledge I gained in receiving my students' stories, I combined their individual stories into collective narratives. I lived and relived my students' experiences, as told to me through story, and wrote their stories as collective narratives to represent the collective knowledge we gained as a community . The collective narratives are not meant to romanticize the lives of my students. Theirs are not lives without conflict . I know my students as unique individuals with many different experiences . The collective narratives are descriptions of their collective knowledge as told through story . Storytelling honours the ways of Aboriginal learning. The design of this study was influenced by the belief that all learning begins and ends with the spirit . I honour this tradition by using Cajete's visioning cycle (Look to the mountain: An ecology of Indiqenous education, 1994) as my pathway . Each chapter, one through nine, follows this cycle which begins and ends with a vision, the centering place where the "soul of the dream" is honoured . The visioning cycle is an inward journey and each stage is a step towards learning what it means to be human and the importance of relationship to self, others and the world . Cajete's visioning cycle allowed me to be passionate about my learning, to make meaning through my heart and my mind, to respect the spirit that moves us and to honour and respect the ways of knowing of the people I teach and learn from . In this research, I find a new value for story in teacher education . Through the telling of personal stories of experience, student teachers and their instructors negotiate for new meanings of what it means to teach and new meanings of the qualities they hope to possess as teachers . Nel Noddings, in her research, discusses the power and importance of "relationship" to self and to others. We are who we are in our relations with others . In a journey of selfawareness and in the giving and receiving of stories as pedagogy in teacher training, the importance of compassion, humility, courage, hope and love has new meaning . You, the reader, will bring different experiences and new meanings as you read this research story. Like my students and me, you will create a new collective story .


Volcanism at the western margin of the Pacific Ocean has developed above subducting ocean crust, generating island arcs and spreading basins; however, the controls on magmatism at and before the initiation of subduction are less clear. We present new 40Ar/39Ar data from a 1000 km northwest-southeast line of oceanic plateaus on the Philippine Sea plate demonstrating that they formed as a time-progressive volcanic chain mirrored on either side of the West Philippine Basin backarc spreading center. In the north this chain is bounded by a Mesozoic remnant arc, and in the south by subduction beneath the Philippine arc. Geochemically these oceanic plateaus have an EM-2 (enriched mantle 2) ocean island basalt signature matching the older 45–51 Ma volcanic edifices discovered overlapping the remnant arc and intervening basins. The wide distribution of these edifices could mark the first arrival of upwelling mantle, which also mixed with local mid-oceanic-ridge basalt during contemporaneous West Philippine Basin spreading. These features are consistent with the extension and splitting of the Mesozoic arc terrane, driven by regional upwelling centered on the impact of the Oki-Daito mantle plume at 51 Ma.


Much current work in robotics focuses on the development of robots capable of autonomous unsupervised learning. An essential prerequisite for such learning to be possible is that the agent should be sensitive to the link between its actions and the consequences of its actions, called sensorimotor contingencies. This sensitivity, and more particularly its role as a key drive of development, has been widely studied by developmental psychologists. However, the results of these studies may not necessarily be accessible or intelligible to roboticians. In this paper, we review the main experimental data demonstrating the role of sensitivity to sensorimotor contingencies in infants' acquisition of four fundamental motor and cognitive abilities: body knowledge, memory, generalization, and goal-directedness. We relate this data from developmental psychology to work in robotics, highlighting the links between these two domains of research. In the last part of the article we present a blueprint architecture demonstrating how exploitation of sensitivity to sensorimotor contingencies, combined with the notion of "goal," allows an agent to develop new sensorimotor skills. This architecture can be used to guide the design of specific computational models, and also to possibly envisage new empirical experiments.