In Yankee Moderns, Michael Hoberman explores the convergence of folk regional identity a culturally based sense of place with the social, economic, and psychic pressures that have come with modernity. Focusing on the oral traditions of a small place, the Sawmill Valley of western Massachusetts, he finds that the folklife of apparently isolated rural communities is far more dynamic and adaptable to change than is popularly supposed. Deftly intertwining anecdote and analysis, Hoberman draws largely upon interviews he conducted with older residents of the Sawmill Valley. He uses their words to paint a vivid picture of everyday life there during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a time when small-scale farming and lumbering began to give way to the newer economic forces of industrialization and tourism. As he studied these oral traditions, Hoberman discovered a high degree of self-consciousness and social tension, which he attributes to the region s post-agricultural economic woes and to its somewhat reluctant proximity to several Connecticut Valley immigrant enclaves. Yet, he asserts, even as their old agrarian ideals and one-time cultural uniformity became matters of distant memory, the residents of Sawmill Valley recognized these facts and coped quite competently with the changing conditions of their lives. Rural New Englanders, Hoberman suggests, have too long been portrayed as backward-looking and dangerously homogenous in their makeup crotchety exceptions to modernity s nearly worldwide sweep. This insightful work, with its emphasis on instability and adaptation as persistent features of the folk region, does much to lay that stereotype to rest. The Author: Michael Hoberman teaches English at Greenfield Community College in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and also works as a visiting lecturer in American Studiesat Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "


Soy protein and isoflavones (phytoestrogens) have gained considerable attention for their potential role in improving risk factors for cardiovascular disease. This scientific advisory assesses the more recent work published on soy protein and its component isoflavones. In the majority of 22 randomized trials, isolated soy protein with isoflavones, as compared with milk or other proteins, decreased LDL cholesterol concentrations; the average effect was ≈3%. This reduction is very small relative to the large amount of soy protein tested in these studies, averaging 50 g, about half the usual total daily protein intake. No significant effects on HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, lipoprotein(a), or blood pressure were evident. Among 19 studies of soy isoflavones, the average effect on LDL cholesterol and other lipid risk factors was nil. Soy protein and isoflavones have not been shown to lessen vasomotor symptoms of menopause, and results are mixed with regard to soy's ability to slow postmenopausal bone loss. The efficacy and safety of soy isoflavones for preventing or treating cancer of the breast, endometrium, and prostate are not established; evidence from clinical trials is meager and cautionary with regard to a possible adverse effect. For this reason, use of isoflavone supplements in food or pills is not recommended. Thus, earlier research indicating that soy protein has clinically important favorable effects as compared with other proteins has not been confirmed. In contrast, many soy products should be beneficial to cardiovascular and overall health because of their high content of polyunsaturated fats, fiber, vitamins, and minerals and low content of saturated fat.


Storage of information into long-term memory (LTM) usually requires at least two waves of transcription in many species. However, there is no clear evidence of this phenomenon in insects, which are influential models for memory studies. We measured retention in honeybees after injecting a transcription inhibitor at different times before and after conditioning. We identified two separate time windows during which the transcription blockade impairs memory quantitatively and qualitatively, suggesting the occurrence of an early transcription wave (triggered during conditioning) and a later one (starting several hours after learning). Hence insects, like other species, would require two transcription waves for LTM formation.


[1] Radio science tracking of Mars Express (MaRS experiment) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter produced high resolution Martian gravity data. Applying localized spectral analysis on the new gravity data sets, we study the surface density and lithospheric elastic thickness in the Tharsis province. The gravity signal is predicted with geophysical models either including bottom loading (top/bottom model) or taking into account the loading history (top/top model). Volcanic shields are mainly composed of high-density lava but their construction could have begun with lower density lava, with the exception of Ascraeus Mons which has a top of lower density. Buoyant bottom loading may have been present in the form of a mantle plume under Olympus Mons. The elastic thickness was much larger at Olympus Mons than at other volcanoes, suggesting large spatial variations of heat flux during the Hesperian. Alternatively, small elastic thicknesses could be artifacts reflecting the presence of very localized high-density crustal intrusions beneath the volcanoes. Thaumasia highlands were probably supported by a mantle plume at the time of formation. In Valles Marineris, top/bottom models predict low densities and large elastic thicknesses, in conflict with the basaltic rock composition and Hesperian age of the valley. Dense mafic dikes underlie the western part of the valley. The top/top model serves to test another scenario in which the trough is formed with sedimentary infilling removed much later by erosion, the elastic thickness increasing in between. At the large volcanoes, the relation between gravity and topography is anisotropic probably because of density variations.


Significance Parental health and diet at the time of conception determine the development and life-long disease risk of their offspring. While the association between poor maternal diet and offspring health is well established, the underlying mechanisms linking paternal diet with offspring health are poorly defined. Possible programming pathways include changes in testicular and sperm epigenetic regulation and status, seminal plasma composition, and maternal reproductive tract responses regulating early embryo development. In this study, we demonstrate that paternal low-protein diet induces sperm-DNA hypomethylation in conjunction with blunted female reproductive tract embryotrophic, immunological, and vascular remodeling responses. Furthermore, we identify sperm- and seminal plasma-specific programming effects of paternal diet with elevated offspring adiposity, metabolic dysfunction, and altered gut microbiota. The association between poor paternal diet, perturbed embryonic development, and adult offspring ill health represents a new focus for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis. However, our understanding of the underlying mechanisms remains ill-defined. We have developed a mouse paternal low-protein diet (LPD) model to determine its impact on semen quality, maternal uterine physiology, and adult offspring health. We observed that sperm from LPD-fed male mice displayed global hypomethylation associated with reduced testicular expression of DNA methylation and folate-cycle regulators compared with normal protein diet (NPD) fed males. Furthermore, females mated with LPD males display blunted preimplantation uterine immunological, cell signaling, and vascular remodeling responses compared to controls. These data indicate paternal diet impacts on offspring health through both sperm genomic (epigenetic) and seminal plasma (maternal uterine environment) mechanisms. Extending our model, we defined sperm- and seminal plasma-specific effects on offspring health by combining artificial insemination with vasectomized male mating of dietary-manipulated males. All offspring derived from LPD sperm and/or seminal plasma became heavier with increased adiposity, glucose intolerance, perturbed hepatic gene expression symptomatic of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and altered gut bacterial profiles. These data provide insight into programming mechanisms linking poor paternal diet with semen quality and offspring health.


The GREAT LAKES HISTORICAL SOCIETY, organized on April 27, 1944, maintains the Inland Seas Maritime Museum, the largest and oldest marine museum on the Great Lakes. The society was founded at a meeting at the CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY by Frederick Wakefield, A. A. Mastics, Milton N. Gallup, and William Stage "to promote interest in the collection and preservation of written material and objects dealing with the history, geology, and folklore of the Great Lakes." The society has consistently been governed by a Board of Trustees (in 2007 a Board of Directors). The original officers were ALVA BRADLEY, president; Clarence S. Metcalf, vice-president; Louis C. Sabin, Donna L. Root, Leo P. Johnson, and A. A. Mastics. Captain H. Chesley Inches was museum director from 1958-1970 and was succeeded by Alexander Cook as museum curator. The society originally housed its collections at the Cleveland Public Library. In 1953, it established a museum in Wakefield's mansion in Vermilion, Ohio, and was known for a time as the Wakefield Nautical Museum. In 1968, a $250,000 addition was built, later dedicated to Captain Inches. The museum holds the largest collection of ship models of any marine museum on the Great Lakes and features interactive historical displays such as ships' engines, tools used to construct wooden ships, and a simulated ship's bridge. The society contains the Clarence S. Metcalf Great Lakes Maritime Research Library, which currently holds over 125 linear feet of manuscript materials, including diaries, journals, and ships' logs. It also has an extensive collection of photographs, postcards, ship plans, and books related to Great Lakes history.In 1999, the society purchased property located behind the museum and opened the Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Center in June 2000. The center serves as headquarters for the Maritime Archaeological Survey Team, Inc., as well as a research facility containing information on over 2,200 shipwrecks from Lake Erie, the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair, and the St. Clair River. The society publishes a quarterly journal, Inland Seas, and, in 2007, was in the process of planning a move to a new facility in Lorain, Ohio. In 2007, the Executive Director was Christopher Gillcrist. See also STEAMSHIP WM. G. MATHER; LIBRARIES; ARCHIVES & HISTORICAL SOCIETIES


irtual Anxiety examines the fears and hopes surrounding imaging, information and reproductive technologies. It offers a gendered and contextualised reading which is critical of the trend towards technological determinism and the new biology of machines, and addresses the relationship between photography and the new imaging technologies in general. Concentrating on the contexts of medicine and law Virtual anxiety contains new research on body scanners and criminal identification technologies, as well as studies on the visible human project and the murder of James Bulger. The book also draws on the monster myths of Frankenstein and Dracula to expose and parody the masculine unconscious in contemporary reproductive and information technologies; science is arguably fathering itself, and the distinction between life and information has collapsed and created a new generation of undead.


This article examines the performance of a poverty alleviation policy in Thailand known as the Small and Micro Community Enterprises (SMCEs) programme. It investigates provincial determinants affecting the establishments of the SMCEs and assesses the effects of the programme on household income and out-migration by using panel data analysis and propensity score matching model. The research findings indicated that such enterprises have spread widely. Average household expenditure, the rate of poverty, and agricultural output were significant predictors of SMCE establishments. However, the research did not find any concrete evidence to support the claim that this policy helped reduce poverty or out-migration.


Clothing manufacturers and distributors in the current business climate need to become more flexible and willing to adapt to consumers' changing needs and preferences in order to satisfy the market (Kincade, 1995). Clothing consumers who have special needs, such as working women with physical disabilities, comprise a group who would benefit from research into specialized products focused on a small target market (Reich & Otten, 1991). However, research shows that consumers with physical disabilities do not want to be treated as a specialized group, but the same as any other consumer group (Freeman, Kaiser & Wingate, 1986). The concept of Universal Design, typically applied to spatial and product design, provides a framework within which an item of clothing could be produced to satisfy many consumers, regardless of their physical ability. If a universally-designed clothing product can be successfully produced and marketed to many types of consumers, potential benefits could exist for manufacturers, distributors and consumers. The dissertation topic originated from the researcher's questioning the lack of easily accessible ready-to-wear clothing for consumers with physical disabilities, and was based on preliminary conversations with a few working women who encountered difficulty finding business clothing that was both functional and visually appealing. Considerable needs assessment research had already been completed in the clothing/disability area using data collected from small samples of subjects with disabilities similar in nature, but none had extended the research to include the opinions of clothing manufacturers and distributors of enduse products. The researcher envisioned a study that would encompass all parties involved in decision-making processes for a clothing product. The qualitative research process employed multiple data collection and analysis strategies in two Phases. In Phase A, detailed information was obtained about the physical limitations, clothing needs and preferences, and clothing acquisition preferences from a group of nine working women with various upper body limitations. A prototype for an upper body garment suitable for working situations was developed and wear-tested with the original group, and with a group of working women (n=6) without any known physical limitations. The second part of the study, Phase B, consisted of semi-structured interviews with clothing industry personnel (n=6) relating to issues involved in manufacturing and distributing the prototype within the existing ready-to-wear system. A framework for manufacturing clothing for a specific target market was explored and revised in the study. The framework demonstrated the need for in-depth user information to generate ideas for the study, and included an industry feasibility component in order to assess not only consumer but also industry issues. Both the principles of Universal Design and a framework for systemic change in the current business methodology acted as guideposts at various steps of the process. Results indicated that (a) a clinical definition of disability is not needed to collect user information for clothing product development, rather a categorization of disability's effect on the body can be used; (b) working women with a variety of disabilities can have similar clothing needs and preferences; (c) Universal Design can be a successful strategy for clothing product development; (d) constricting styles and fastenings present the greatest clothing problems regardless of subjects' disabilities; (e) a universally-designed clothing product can be visually appealing, functional, and easily manufactured within the existing clothing system; (f) marketing the product will prove to be the most challenging aspect of putting this product into the ready-to-wear system; and (g) although other distribution channels exist, consumers with physical disabilities prefer to use existing 'brick-and-mortar' retail stores to shop for their clothing. The researcher concluded that although the product development process used in this study was successful, more work could be done with clothing manufacturers and distributors to encourage them to consider this target market, and to use Universal Design as a strategy that can be applicable to all consumers, regardless of their physical abilities.


The advances in memory technology concerning performance have not been able to keep pace with those in processor technology. Processors clocked with hundreds of megahertz exceed the speed of affordable memory by factors. Caches can decouple the speed of the processing unit from the speed of the memory system if applications show a high locality of reference. Unfortunately, operations on data streams – frequently found in soft real-time multimedia applications – do not show this benign behavior. Thus, applications working on data streams rely heavily upon a guaranteed memory bandwidth to meet specific timing requirements. In multiprocessor systems the available memory bandwidth is shared by all processing units and DMA devices. Consequently, the processing units can interfere and slow each other down when accessing memory. Up to now, this effect, called memory preemption, is not covered by realtime operating systems using timer and I/O related information. Our novel approach to resource management is based on knowledge derived from counters in the memory subsystem. We demonstrate that the use of information related to cacheand mainmemory access opens new dimensions of resource management in shared-memory architectures. The introduction of memory-bandwidth guarantees adds a further resource to capacityreservation models and therefore enhances the quality of service. Soft real-time processes can request memory bandwidth guarantees. Processes without guarantees are throttled, so that they do not withhold valuable main memory bandwidth from real-time applications. To dynamically slow down processes that exceed a certain number of main memory operations per time frame, the TLB-miss handler executes additional NOP instructions. Thus, the TLB-fill will be delayed, fewer memory pages can be touched and fewer cache misses per time frame will occur. This new mechanism, called Process Cruise Control, maintains the execution speed of soft real-time applications in a multiprocessor environment. Applications of other scheduling classes (e.g., Time-Sharing), which operate with low memory demands, run at full speed, whereas applications with high memory demands will be throttled in their speed of execution and executed with lower priority. Measurements conducted on a prototype implementation using the Solaris operating system clearly demonstrate the benefit of the memory throttle for a video conferencing application running in a multiprogrammed multiprocessor environment.


Large proportions of the Australian and New Zealand road tolls are pedestrians (around 13 per cent in Australia and 10 per cent in New Zealand) and pedestrians make up a much larger proportion of the global road toll, with many countries recording over half their toll as pedestrians (e.g., Peru 78 per cent, Mozambique 68 per cent, Congo 59 per cent, Bangladesh 54 per cent). Furthermore, pedestrians are not as readily addressed within the safe systems approach as are vehicle occupants, because of the lack of physical protection and consequently much lower impact speeds at which death or serious injury are likely. This paper considers the barriers to more effective management of pedestrian safety and amenity. These include: (1) the lroads are built for carsr mentality; (2) perceived costs of pedestrian safety treatments versus economic gains of vehicular traffic movement; (3) the absence of consideration of pedestrian waiting time in benefit cost analyses of road management policy; (4) ongoing expansion of vehicle capacity on roads; (5) victim blaming; and (6) data collection problems created in the likely scenario of interviewing an uninjured driver able to put his/her point of view versus a deceased or severely injured pedestrian unable to speak. Solutions are offered in terms of focused research, policy changes, reconsideration of benefits cost ratio factors, better speed management and engineering of roads and roadsides to accommodate pedestrians.


Flamenco singing is a highly expressive improvisational artform characterized by its deviation from the Western tonal system, freedom in rhythmic interpretation and a high amount of melodic ornamentation. Consequently, a singing performance represents a fusion of style-related constraints and the individual spontaneous interpretation. This study focuses on the description of the characteristics of a particular singer. In order to find suitable feature sets, a genre-specific automatic singer identification is implemented. For Western classical and popular music, related approaches have mainly relied on the extraction of timbre-based features to automatically recognize a singer by analyzing audio recordings. However, a classification solely based on spectral descriptors is prone to errors for low quality audio recordings. In order to obtain a more robust approach, low-level timbre features are combined with vibratoand performance-related descriptors. Furthermore, differences among interpretations within a style are analyzed: Versions of the same a cappella cante have a common melodic skeleton which is subject to strong, individually determined melodic and rhythmic modifications. Similarity among such performances is modeled by applying dynamic time-warping to align automatic transcriptions and extracting performance-related descriptors. Resulting distances are evaluated by analyzing their correlation to human ratings. Computing Reviews (1998)


In this policy brief, Allan Odden argues that it may be time to redesign state and district school finance systems to align them more closely to the standards-based education reform movement and the national goal of teaching all students to rigorous performance standards. Historically, a major focus of the school finance policy debate was the fiscal disparities across school districts within states. These disparities in per-pupil spending were inversely linked to tax efforts and strongly linked to the size of the local property tax base per pupil. Although the strength of the connection between spending and education quality was debated, most policymakers admitted some connection and viewed the overall structure as unfair. Low-property wealth districts were doubly disadvantaged—they not only had high tax rates but also had low education expenditures and a lower quality education program. On the other hand, high-property wealth districts were doubly advantaged—they had both low tax rates and high education expenditures and, in most cases, higher quality education programs. But most efforts to offset these disparities with state aid were only modestly successful over time. It became apparent that additional strategies were necessary to reduce spending differences. As research by Evans, Murray, and Schwab (1997) shows, many states have undergone court-ordered school finance reform in the past 30 years, which has had limited success in reducing fiscal inequality. Indeed, whether or not the reform was court-ordered, policymakers in most states developed strategies that attempted to reduce spending differences across districts, including flat grants, minimum foundation programs, guaranteed tax base and percentage equalizing formulas, and full state funding. But for the most part, these formulas have fallen far short of reducing fiscal disparities. Although these reforms managed to reverse the trends in tax rates between highand low-property wealth districts in many states (so low wealth districts tend to have low tax rates and high wealth districts tend to have high tax rates), they still left spending per pupil highly associated with property wealth. With the national emphasis on teaching students to higher standards, however, it is becoming clear that this question of fiscal fairness, while important, does not address the more fundamental question of what resources are necessary to reach those high standards. Therefore, the traditional focus on equitable distribution of resources is giving way or expanding to a new focus: ensuring that school finance policy can facilitate the goal of teaching students to higher standards. As Clune (1994a, 1994b) argues, this requires a shift in school finance thinking from equity to adequacy. Such a shift challenges policymakers to identify a new school finance structure that is more directly linked to strategies that raise levels of student achievement. Disciplines Education Economics | Education Policy Comments View on the CPRE website. This policy brief is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cpre_policybriefs/13


This paper will describe a new approach to source apportionment of transport emissions that moves away from traditional approaches which have allocated emissions to point of use, or by journey purpose. Instead, emissions will be attributed spatially to the people responsible for cars that cause the emissions, highlighting how both structural features (such as poor accessibility) or lifestyle choices (such as a preference for large vehicles) impact on air pollution.
In 2010, the UK Department for Transport began making available data from the motor vehicle test (MOT) database. This data provides information on vehicles under 3.5 tonnes, including: make, model, engine size, fuel type and a date and odometer reading for when the test was undertaken. From these last two, it is possible to estimate an annual mileage for nearly every motor vehicle in Great Britain. Using this data it is possible to create both an emissions profile for each individual vehicle, and subsequently an estimate of the total emissions over a year. This data is then linked with a privileged-access dataset from the UK Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) to allow privately owned vehicles to be separated from commercial vehicles, and then to link vehicles to the location of the registered keeper via small area census geographies (~700 households, ~1600 people).
Using this data, we undertake an analysis of variations in responsibility for motor vehicle emissions both spatially, in terms of geographic spread and level of urbanisation, and socially, through income data and social profiles, created by the UK Office for National Statistics, for each area.


Abstract The aims of the study were to characterize shoreline soil development and evolution and to determine land use changes (19th to 20th centuries) in the direct catchment of the completely vanished Gardeja lake. The study was based on pedological research and analysis of cartographic materials. The main factor determining the current development of shoreline zone soil cover at the former Gardeja lake was human activity (lake dewatering, further drainage and human-induced erosion). Studied soil profiles were developed from mineral, non-lacustrine materials (upper parts of the slopes) and lacustrine sediments covered with colluvium. The analyzed soil catenas are representative for the undulated young glacial landscape of Northern Poland. The biggest changes of the land use were observed for the class of grasslands that is combined with shrubs (increase of cover area).


PURPOSE To describe a newly designed bifurcated modular stent-graft and assess the feasibility and safety of its use in the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA). METHODS Thirteen patients (10 men; mean age 61.2+/-16 years, range 57-78) with AAAs underwent treatment with a bifurcated stent-graft consisting of 4 components: an unsupported bifurcated stent-graft, an inner bare stent, and 2 stent-grafts. The system was placed sequentially through a percutaneously introduced 12-F sheath; the preloaded bifurcated main body of the stent-graft was deployed first, followed by the inner bare stent and individual stent-graft limbs through separate 10-F sheaths. Spiral computed tomography (CT) was performed before treatment and at 1 week, 3 months, and then at 6-month intervals. RESULTS The stent-grafts were successfully deployed in all patients, although 3 types of procedure-related adverse events occurred: left limb kinking in 1, postimplantation syndrome (fever, leukocytosis, and decreased platelet count) in 5, and a small access site arteriovenous fistula in 1. Postprocedural angiography and 1-week follow-up CT scanning did not identify any endoleaks. At a mean 9.2+/-4.6-month follow-up, all devices were intact, with complete exclusion of the aneurysms and no endoleaks. CONCLUSIONS This newly designed bifurcated modular stent-graft appears to be effective for percutaneous AAA repair; further investigation is warranted.


Abstract—Urbanization remains one of the unique predominant factors which is linked to the destruction of urban environment and its associated cases of soil contamination by heavy metals through the natural and anthropogenic activities. These activities are important sources of toxic heavy metals such as arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), and lead (Pb), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn). Often, these heavy metals lead to increased levels in some areas due to the impact of atmospheric deposition caused by their proximity to industrial plants or the indiscriminately burning of substances. Information gathered on potentially hazardous levels of these heavy metals in soils leads to establish serious health and urban agriculture implications. However, characterization of spatial variations of soil contamination by heavy metals in Ghana is limited. Kumasi is a Metropolitan city in Ghana, West Africa and is challenged with the recent spate of deteriorating soil quality due to rapid economic development and other human activities such as "Galamsey", illegal mining operations within the metropolis. The paper seeks to use both univariate and multivariate geostatistical techniques to assess the spatial distribution of heavy metals in soils and the potential risk associated with ingestion of sources of soil contamination in the Metropolis. Geostatistical tools have the ability to detect changes in correlation structure and how a good knowledge of the study area can help to explain the different scales of variation detected. To achieve this task, point referenced data on heavy metals measured from topsoil samples in a previous study, were collected at various locations. Linear models of regionalisation and coregionalisation were fitted to all experimental semivariograms to describe the spatial dependence between the topsoil heavy metals at different spatial scales, which led to ordinary kriging and cokriging at unsampled locations and production of risk maps of soil contamination by these heavy metals. Results obtained from both the univariate and multivariate semivariogram models showed strong spatial dependence with range of autocorrelations ranging from 100 to 300 meters. The risk maps produced show strong spatial heterogeneity for almost all the soil heavy metals with extremely risk of contamination found close to areas with commercial and industrial activities. Hence, ongoing pollution interventions should be geared towards these highly risk areas for efficient management of soil contamination to avert further pollution in the metropolis.


Acclimatization and growth of in vitro-derived apple shoots of two apple scion apple cultivars were compared under fogged conditions in a greenhouse and in a commercial growth cabinet (Phototron). Plant survival rates of microcuttings of 'Royal Gala' and 'Jonagold' were significantly better when maintained in the Phototron units than when grown in a greenhouse under fog. The number and length of roots on microcuttings was significantly higher in the Phototron than under fog. In the present study, we demonstrated that the Phototron environment was better than a fogged greenhouse for establishing apple shoots ex vitro. However, the Phototron units are so small that they hold no more than 100 to 120 plants at a time. Therefore, the units will be of most value to growers or individuals in laboratories who do not have a constant need for acclimatization facilities. Growers who acclimatize many plants should continue to use fogging or misting facilities.


Emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) contribute to formation of particulate matter and ozone, and also to acidification of the environment. The electricity sector is responsible for about 20% of NOx emissions in the United States, and the sector has been the target of both prescriptive (command-and-control) and flexible (cap-and-trade) approaches to regulation. The paper summarises the major NOx control policies affecting this sector in the USA, and provides some perspectives as to their effectiveness. While both prescriptive and flexible approaches continue to play an important role, significant new proposals have wholly embraced a cap-and-trade approach. 20 refs., 7 figs., 2 tabs.


ABSTRACT The basic concept of immunotherapy in cancer is to enable the immune system to identify neoplastic cells. Research on tumour associated antigens has identified a large collection of peptide epitopes that have been and are being used for vaccination of cancer patients. Several potential advantages of using peptide-based vaccines include 1) easy and relatively inexpensive production of synthetic peptides; 2) the easy administration of peptides in a clinical setting; 3) the possibility of treating only those patients whose tumours over-express the target antigens and 4) the availability of in vitro or ex vivo assays that can assess patients' immune response to vaccine epitopes. An ideal and successful vaccine should have: a target antigen on tumour cells to direct the immune response; a platform to present the vaccine-derived antigen to immune system; an adjuvant to enhance immune stimulation, and appropriate monitoring techniques. The design of a clinical trial in patient with breast cancer should identify the better population candidate to a vaccine trial and, primarily, the better antigen. In order to design a 'second generation' immunotherapy protocols we should highlight 3 issues: (a) the ability to initiate tumour-specific immunity, either directly by providing tumour associated antigens or indirectly, by favoring the cross-presentation of endogenous tumour antigens; (b) the capacity to recruit effector immune cells within the tumour site, by increasing tumour visibility; (c) the ability to preserve immune cell functionality within the tumour microenvironment through the subversion of immune-escape mechanisms. Cancer takes advantage of this ability to hide from the immune system by exploiting a series of immune escape mechanisms that were developed to avoid autoimmunity. Among these mechanisms are the hijacking of immune-cell–intrinsic checkpoints that are induced on T-cell activation. Blockade of one of these checkpoints, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) or the programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor, recently provided the first evidence of activity of an immune-modulation approach in the treatment of a solid tumour. The immune system remembers what it targets, so once the system is correctly activated, it may mediate a durable tumour response Disclosure: The author has declared no conflicts of interest.


Abstract This paper presents an analysis of the qualitative data collected for a study investigating the effect of the Working for Families policy on Māori families' self-reported whānau ora (family wellbeing). Data are drawn from a discrete set of 30 qualitative interviews undertaken with Māori whānau involved in the Te Hoe Nuku Roa Longitudinal Study. Whānau perceptions about how the Working for Families policy has impacted on their lives and the contribution the policy has made towards their family's wellbeing is presented. The paper discusses how the Working for Families policy appears to have become an integral component of household income for many low-to-middle-income whānau and reflects on how this policy, conceived and designed (amongst other things) to alleviate and redress child poverty, is contributing towards supporting family wellbeing or 'whānau ora'.


Abstract. Maps and visual representations in general are powerful tools of propaganda and construction of the "other" that perpetrators of genocide employ in different ways and in different contexts and depending on audience, purpose, and stage of genocide. Maps and visual representations are also powerful tools to denounce genocide and are used by the victims to relate, remember, and communicate their experience. These topics will be discussed in the context of the Holocaust and focusing specifically on cartographic design. The role of propaganda, semiotics, the concept of "myth," and iconography will be briefly discussed to frame the theoretical context of the presentation. These topics are part of a broader research agenda on the geographies and cartographies of genocide that I have been engaged in for several years. In particular, I am interested in how cartography, geography and GIScience may contribute to defining, studying, and understanding past genocides, and, hopefully, help preventing future ones. As the majority of my past and current research has been on the Holocaust, the examples discussed in my presentation are relative to that specific genocide. To start with, it is useful to review and define what genocide is and who its perpetrators are. Genocide has been defined in various ways. According to the United Nations (1951), genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. This definition stresses the physical destruction of the group targeted by direct or indirect methods, such as the prevention of births by members of the group or the forcible transfer of children from the targeted group to another group. Harff and Gurr (1988) highlight the role of the State and the policy dimensions of genocide: "by our definition, genocide… is the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents which result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group." Katz (1994) remarks the fact that it is the perpetrator that defines who the targeted victims and groups: "...the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in its totality any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means." However defined, genocide is carried out in stages that may vary temporally and geographically, as well as in the methods used to commit it, and this is especially the case when acts of genocide are committed over a long period of time and over a large area, as the Holocaust as well as the Armenian genocide, on which I have also worked, show well. Hampton (1986) has proposed a model of the stages of genocide – later modified and redefined, by Stanton (2013) and others – that identifies eight steps, more or less in succession, that include classification ("us vs them"), symbolization ("Jews", "Germans", "Tutsi", swastikas, yellow stars), dehumanization (one group denies the humanity of members of another group and calls them "vermin," rats," or "cockroaches"), organization (as a group crime, as opposed to an individual act, genocide needs to be organized, usually by the State), polarization (this is when rhetoric is ramped up, legislation is introduced, extremists emerge, and political moderates are silenced), preparation (victims are forced to wear identifying symbols, lists are made, victims separated from rest of population, for example in ghettos), extermination (words such as "extermination" or "cleansing" are typically used since the victims are explicitly defined as not fully humans by the perpetrators), and denial (this is always present and starts as soon as during and immediately after the extermination stage, and can outlive the perpetrators themselves; denial includes the destruction of evidence, the destruction of the reputation and credibility of the survivors or witnesses, the claim that deaths were due to famine, migration, disease or, as in the Armenian genocide, all of the above plus the effects of WW1, and – as an ultimate insult – the blaming of the victims themselves). Once genocide is defined and its stages are identified, a third element is crucial to its understanding: why people commit genocide. Doing so is needed to determine what role maps play in genocide from the perspective of both perpetrators and victims. Several models have been proposed to try and explain why seemingly normal individuals engage in genocide, and models have even been proposed to estimate the likelihood of genocide happening in a given society at a certain time. Waller's model (2005) is perhaps the most influential and, in my opinion, the most convincing. I will discuss Waller's work in more detail during my presentation; here, let just say that the model identifies "ultimate influences" (human nature) as well as "proximate influences" as the reasons why people commit genocide. Most interesting in the context of my research are the "proximate influences," which include the cultural construction of worldviews, the psychological construction of the "other," and the social construction of cruelty. In turn, these "proximate influences" are historicized, i.e., they take different forms in different places at different times depending on the specific context. Thus, the indoctrination of SS members during the Holocaust included collectivistic values, authority orientation, and social dominance (cultural influences); "us vs. them" mentality, moral disengagement, and the blaming of the victims (psychological influences); professional socialization, group identification, and the identification of binding factors for the group (social influences). Maps, and images in general (including posters, paintings, movies and other forms of mass communications), can and do play a role in all of the "proximate stages" in Waller's model. In my presentation, as an illustration and for brevity, I will show examples of psychological proximate influences, including the construction of the "other," and in particular I will discuss strategies for the definition, communication, and mass diffusion of an "us vs. them" mentality, the gradual construction and spreading of "moral disengagement" among the perpetrators, and, also among the perpetrators (but also among the bystanders of genocide), the gradual development of a "blaming the victim" mentality to justify active participation, or at least acquiescence, to genocide. In general, to understand the role maps play in this context it is useful to refer to the literature on propaganda and on semiotics, and cartographers have traditionally written about these topics. Perhaps less studied, although not less useful general and specifically in the context of genocide and the definition of the "other," is an iconographical (or iconological) approach; borrowed from art history, this is an especially complex and difficult technique to apply to the interpretation and study of maps, but a promising one. In my presentation I will touch on semiotics, propaganda, and iconography as well as reference and discuss Roland Barthes and his definition of the concept of "myth," which I believe play a central role, one that overlaps all "proximate influences" as defined above, to explain how maps and images relate to genocide. In the final part of my presentation, I will show examples of the use of maps by perpetrators and victims of genocide. From the perpetrators' perspective, myth and propaganda work together in the service of the State; crucial to the effectiveness of genocide, propaganda and the creation of myths have to be monopolies of the State or they will not work effectively. Nazi Germany was especially effective and efficient from this point of view, with a body of work that I will introduce that include both images and writings from Nazi leaders and propagandists. Referring back to the stages of genocide discussed above, I will make the case that different cartographic design principles are applied for the first six stages (classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, and preparation) of genocide – as well as the psychological construction of the "other" – as opposed to the seventh (extermination) stage. Interestingly, from the point of view of cartographic design, there is a distinct similarity between the maps and images produced by the victims and those produced by the perpetrators, at least as far as the first six stages of genocide are concerned. As I will show in the presentation, this argument is better made via examples, tables, and direct comparisons of design elements, but to briefly summarize my point, depending on their purpose and audience, genocide maps are intended to be alternatively unambiguous or euphemistic, for the masses or for the military and/or political elites, impressionistic or emotional rather than rational and scientific, for public consumption or for private and secret use. In terms of specific elements of design, it is possible to identify the intended audience, purpose, and genocide stage in terms of the use of muted vs. saturated colors, the presence or absence of a legend, the use or not use of graduated symbols and arrows, the scale of the map, how visual contrast is employed to highlight certain elements, the use of black and white, etc. As concerns more specifically the seventh stage of genocide – extermination – this is when the application of the methods and tools of scientific cartography become the urgent p


In ovarian carcinoma, acquisition of invasiveness is accompanied by the loss of the epithelial features and the gain of a mesenchymal phenotype, a process known as epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The endothelin A receptor (ETAR)/endothelin-1 (ET-1) axis is overexpressed in primary and metastatic ovarian carcinoma. In this tumor type, the ET-1/ETAR axis has a critical role in ovarian carcinoma progression by inducing proliferation, survival, neoangiogenesis, loss of intercellular communication and invasion. Recently, we demonstrated that the ET-1/ETAR autocrine pathway drives EMT in ovarian tumor cells by inducing an invasive phenotype through downregulation of E-cadherin, increased levels of β-catenin, Snail and other mesenchymal markers, and suppression of E-cadherin promoter activity. Activation of ETAR by ET-1 triggers a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-dependent integrin-linked kinase (ILK)-mediated signaling pathway leading to glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) inhibition, Snail and β-catenin stabilization andtranscriptional programs that control EMT. Transfection of dominant negative ILK or exposure to an ILK inhibitor suppresses the ET-1-induced phosphorylation of GSK-3β as well as Snail and β-catenin protein stability, transcriptional activity and invasiveness, indicating that ET-1/ETAR-induced EMT depends on ILK activity. ETAR blockade by specific antagonists, or reduction by ETAR RNA interference, reverses EMT and cell invasion by inhibiting autocrine signaling pathways. In ovarian carcinoma xenografts, the specific ETAR antagonist ABT-627 suppresses EMT determinants and tumor growth. In human ovarian cancers, ETAR expression is associated with E-cadherin downregulation, N-cadherin expression and tumor grade. In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that ETAR activation by ET-1 is a key mechanism of the complex signaling network that promotes EMT as well as ovarian cancer cell invasion. The small molecule ETAR antagonist achieves concomitant suppression of tumor growth and EMT effectors, providing a new opportunity for therapeutic intervention in which targeting ILK pathway and the related Snail and β-catenin signaling cascade via ETAR blockade may be advantageous in the treatment of ovarian cancer.


[Abstract]Within the Australian marketplace there is often considerable similarity between competing products and services. The need for all firms to develop a competitive advantage in this market is pressing. Franchises are a growing competitive business sector in Australia, with an annual growth rate in excess of 12%. Franchised business units are no different from other firms in that they need to develop a competitive advantage. Within this current fast changing business environment there has not been any research published on how owners and operators within franchised business units in Australia use organisational learning strategies to develop their strategic capability with a view to gaining a competitive advantage.

Many firms have adopted traditional training approaches in organisational learning to develop their firm's strategic capability believing this strategy to be in line with best practice. This narrow training view of organisational learning involves key employees within a firm identifying skill gaps between where the firm needs to be and the current competencies of their staff. The gap is then bridged by traditional training methods that extend staff competencies to meet the firm's requirements. These traditional training approaches separate learning from the work context and have been identified by many researchers over the years as an inefficient practice.

This study was undertaken using a case study approach based on semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding on how franchised business units in Australia used a range of organisational learning strategies to develop their strategic capability. People were interviewed from various organisational levels at five major franchises. The study found that strategic capability is enhanced by developing a learning environment that integrated both operational and strategic learning strategies. Based on the research findings, a franchised business unit's strategic capability will, in many cases, determine the difference between the franchise's performance in the marketplace and that of its competitors, hence, developing organisational learning strategies to gain and apply these capabilities are of a critical importance in a franchised business unit gaining a competitive advantage.

The study found a number of key ingredients in organisational learning strategy that built a firm's capability. These key ingredients include adopting a work-based learning strategy which incorporates learning activities such as listening and observing others in the workplace; regular internal training; access to external courses; controlled on-the-job training and supporting individuals and groups within their normal work; developing and implementing accredited in-house learning which would include opportunities for staff to develop both operational and strategic levels of learning; formal and informal mentoring for developing the skills of individuals and groups; participation in higher education; and the use of internal state and national franchise conferences as a tool in developing staff and to provide a work environment where empowerment of staff at all levels is encouraged, accepted and supported by the required learning strategies to make it successful.

For franchised businesses within Australia aspiring to gain or build on competitive advantage, it is envisaged that the findings of this research will foster the implementation of a combination of organisational learning strategies that encompass both operational and strategic learning, and include learning for both the individual and collective groups.


Consuming foods rich in anthocyanins like blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum), can help prevent various diseases due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory capacity. Being a perishable fruit and no significant exportable surpluses, an alternative use and consumption would be by making wine. However, low sugar content can limit vinification, having to supplement it with exogenous sugars, known as chaptalization procedure, which also can improve the extraction of anthocyanins due to its high solubility in ethanol. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of chaptalization on the colorimetric parameters of blueberry wine. Blueberry juice (10 °Brix, must control) was supplemented with grapemust and sucrose to reach 17 °Brix (must AUS). After fermentation the alcohol content was determined, besides, the color intensity (CI) and hue were compared with a commercial red wine. Chaptalization allowed to increase the alcohol content of 6.25 to 10.10% v / v, and greatly improve the extraction of anthocyanins, with IC and hue values of 5.11 and 5.70, and 0.78 and 0.83 for control and AUS wines, respectively; AUS even approaching the commercial red wine used as a reference (CI: 5.98, hue: 0.83). Whereupon, the extraction of anthocyanins in blueberry wine is improved, thus being able to reap the benefits of these pigments in the prevention of various diseases


Safe biodegradable "green" alternatives with minimal environmental and health risks have received widespread research interest. Thirty different kinds of bio-based flocculants (modified starches, modified celluloses, native chitosan, and lignin-based flocculant) were pre-tested using a simple jar test for the examination of the applicability of new organic flocculants in papermaking and in conditioning of waste activated sludge from the pulp and paper industry. Three starch-based and two cellulose-based polymers were chosen for further flocculation and filtrations tests. Key optimization parameters for the polymer were identified as the increasing of molecular weight and nitrogen content. The starch-based polymer had the best performance in both applications, but in neither of the cases did it function as well as the commercial polyacrylamide-based polymers. The importance of the molecular weight came up in the experiments. The developed starch-based polymer was cationic and had the charge density used in industry. On the other hand, although cationic flocculants are the most used in sludge conditioning, also anionic and non-ionic polymers are needed, depending on the characteristics of the sludge to be flocculated. Overall action of the tailored polymers was also studied in order to predict their potential as papermaking retention and dewatering aids.


This paper aims at filling some gaps in the mainstream debate on automation, the introduction of new technologies at the workplace and the future of work. This debate has concentrated, so far, on how many jobs will be lost as a consequence of technological innovation. This paper examines instead issues related to the quality of jobs in future labour markets. It addresses the detrimental effects on workers of awarding legal capacity and rights and obligation to robots. It examines the implications of practices such as People Analytics and the use of big data and artificial intelligence to manage the workforce. It stresses on an oft-neglected feature of the contract of employment, namely the fact that it vests the employer with authority and managerial prerogatives over workers. It points out that a vital function of labour law is to limit these authority and prerogatives to protect the human dignity of workers. In light of this, it argues that even if a Universal Basic Income were introduced, the existence of managerial prerogatives would still warrant the existence of labour regulation since this regulation is about much more than protecting workers' income. It then highlights the benefits of human-rights based approaches to labour regulation to protect workers' privacy against invasive electronic monitoring. It concludes by highlighting the crucial role of collective regulation and social partners in governing automation and the impact of technology at the workplace. It stresses that collective dismissal regulation and the involvement of workers' representatives in managing and preventing job losses is crucial and that collective actors should actively participate in the governance of technology-enhanced management systems, to ensure a vital "human-in-command" approach.


This thesis reports the results of photoconductivity experiments on films of the conjugated polymers poly(2-methoxy-5- (2'ethylhexyloxy)-l,4-phenylene vinylene) (MEH-PPV), poly(2,5-pyridinediyl) (PPY) and poly(9,9-bis(2-ethyl hexyl)fluorene-2,7-diyl) (PF2/6) sandwiched between gold and indium tin oxide on a glass substrate. The methods used to fabricate the sandwich structures, the photoconductivity methods used and the procedures used to normalise the data are described. Results indicate that, at photon energies appropriate to the fundamental absorption of the particular polymer, the absorption of photons leads to the formation of excitons. These excitons can be extrinsically dissociated at an electrode to give free charge carriers. These free charge carriers then give rise to a photocurrent. At photon energies above the fundamental absorption of the conjugated polymer, free charge carriers are intrinsically generated in the bulk polymer. The polymer film thickness and the relative mobilities of electrons and holes in the conjugated polymers influence the spectral response of the photocurrent In MEH-PPV, the hole mobility is one order of magnitude greater than the electron mobility. The effects of charge carrier mobility explain the temperature dependence of the photocurrent spectra for MEH-PPV samples. The charge carrier generation mechanism explains the electric field dependence of the photocurrent spectra for MEH-PPV samples. The electron mobility is greater than the hole mobility in PPY and this is confirmed by photoconductivity experiments. A comparison of the spectra obtained from photoconductivity experiments in PF2/6 and PPY suggest that excitations involving the nitrogen atom in the PPY molecule occur producing additional features in the photocurrent spectra


Zackiewicz, Curt Stephen. M.S.Egr, Department of Electrical Engineering, Wright State University, 2011. DC-DC Power Converter Design for a Portable Affordable Welder System Arc welding machines are typically large, heavy devices that transform an alternating current (AC) input into a low-voltage, direct current (DC) output. Traditionally these high power devices have required steel and copper transformers that account for their bulky size and weight. While the cost of raw materials in electromagnetic components has been increasing the cost of high-power silicon devices has been decreasing. This disparity creates an opportunity for a cost-effective DC-DC switching welder in the consumer market. While DC-DC power electronics are not new to the welding industry, this study, under the commission of a welding equipment manufacturer, aims to develop and prototype a design specifically for an affordable and portable battery-powered welding machine. By eliminating the need for electromagnetic components for isolation and voltage regulation, and focusing on a DC-DC battery-powered device, a unique opportunity exists to create a high-feature product with a minimalist design. The design is implemented with a high-current voltage chopping circuit as well as an assortment of feedback, control, and safety circuitry necessary to complete the machine. By combining simulation, prototype validation and real-world cost limitations, this project outlines the development of a new product for the welding equipment market.


As an excellent bandgap-engineering material, the Cd(1-x)Zn(x)S solid solution, is found to be an efficient visible light response photocatalyst for water splitting, but few theoretical studies have been performed on it. A better characterization of the composition dependence of the physical and optical properties of this material and a thorough understanding of the bandgap-variation mechanism are necessary to optimize the design of high-efficience photocatalysts. In order to get an insight into these problems, we systematically investigated the crystal structure, the phase stability, and the electronic structures of the Cd(1-x)Zn(x)S solid solution by means of density functional theory calculations. The most energetically favorable arrangement of the Cd, Zn, S atoms and the structural disorder of the solid solution are revealed. The phase diagram of the Cd(1-x)Zn(x)S solid solution is calculated based on regular-solution model and compared with the experimental data. This is the first report on the calculated phase diagram of this solid solution, and can give guidance for the experimental synthesis of this material. Furthermore, the variation of the electronic structures versus x and its mechanism are elaborated in detail, and the experimental bandgap as a function of x is well predicted. Our findings provide important insights into the experimentally observed structural and electronic properties, and can give theoretical guidelines for the further design of the Cd(1-x)Zn(x)S solid solution.


The aim of this article is to shed light on the conditions under which the funerary management of human remains was carried out by the French authorities during the early years of the First World War. It seeks to understand how the urgent need to clear the battlefield as quickly as possible came into conflict with the aspiration to give all deceased an individualised, or at the very least dignified, burial. Old military funerary practices were overturned and reconfigured to incorporate an ideal that sought the individual identification of citizen soldiers. The years 1914–15 were thus profoundly marked by a clash between the pragmatism of public health authorities obsessed with hygiene, the infancy of emerging forensic science, the aching desire of the nation to see its children buried individually and various political and military imperatives related to the conduct of the war.


BACKGROUND
Contour integration (CI) is a visual process that combines spatially aligned edge elements into unified boundaries or shapes. We have shown that CI is compromised in chronic schizophrenia, especially for higher spatial frequency displays, but it remains unclear when this dysfunction arises in the illness.

METHODS
To consider the issue, we behaviorally compared chronic schizophrenia patients (SZs; N=25), healthy controls (N=24), and first episode psychosis patients (FEs; N=19) on a CI task. Groups were well-matched on a number of variables including visual acuity and gender. On each trial, subjects identified the screen quadrant thought to contain an integrated target shape, and task difficulty depended on the number of randomly oriented noise elements that were co-presented with the target. Spatial frequency was modulated by scaling the entire screen display (4 or 12 cycles/deg). To consider possible group differences in attention or motivation, certain "catch" trials were presented in which the target was shown by itself without any noise.

RESULTS
For catch trials, the FE group did not differ from the controls or schizophrenia group, and all subject groups performed above 95% accuracy. Replicating our earlier study, controls integrated contours under noisier conditions than SZs and this effect was strongest at 12 cycles/deg (ps< .002). The FE group integrated marginally better than the chronic SZ group (p=.06), and significantly worse than the control group (p=.02). The FE group differences did not depend on spatial frequency, although there was a trend for SZs to become worse relative to FEs at 12 cycles/deg (p=.07).

CONCLUSIONS
Contour integration dysfunction arises by the first episode of psychosis and may worsen as schizophrenia unfolds over time, especially for high spatial frequency displays. Schizophrenia gradually alters the mechanisms underlying fine-grained perceptual organization, perhaps via changes in V1/V2 connectivity. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


Geogrids are well known for improving the performance of unbound aggregate layers in transportation applications by providing confinement and restraining movement through interlock between individual aggregate particles and geogrid apertures. Geogrid reinforcement offers an effective remedial measure when railroad track structures are susceptible to track geometry defects resulting from excessive movement and particle reorientation within the ballast layer. This paper presents findings from an ongoing research study at the University of Illinois aimed at quantifying the effects of geogrid reinforcement on the shear strength behavior of railroad ballast. The effects of two geogrid types on ballast shear strength were evaluated through laboratory testing and numerical modeling. An imaging-based discrete element method (DEM) modeling approach was used to identify the optimal position for geogrid reinforcement to achieve the maximum shear strength gain in cylindrical triaxial specimens. Geogrids were installed at five depths within the cylindrical specimen and tested for shear strength properties with a large-scale triaxial test setup to evaluate the effectiveness of both geogrid aperture shape and reinforcement depth. Placing two layers of geogrids in the middle of the specimen was found to result in the maximum shear strength gain. Such placement of the geogrid ensured the intersection of the shear failure plane with the reinforcement layer, ultimately leading to significant shear strength gains. The DEM simulations were observed to capture accurately the ballast shear strength behavior with and without geogrid reinforcement.


"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between I If the past is another country where they do things differently, are we doubly abroad if we visit, say, Poland of the late eighteenth century? In 1788, Stanislaw Kublicki, a member of the Polish Parliament, (1) announced in the preface to his drama, The Defense of Trembowla, or the Manly Courage of Mrs. Chrzanowska (Obrona Trembowli, czyli Mestwo Chrzanowskiej, 1788), that the play's purpose was to teach both sexes due equality. A regard for great figures of history is the foundation of patriotic morality, he argued, and there is a story to be told about men and women who distinguished themselves in the course of Polish history. But why, he asked, does the history of Poland remain a story of male heroic endeavor? Is I am a Polish man the same kind of declaration as I am a Polish woman? These questions do not sound alien to us today. However, reading historical accounts of Kublicki s eponymous protagonist, the seventeenth-century patriotic heroine Zofia Chrzanowska, (2) against the play shows just how radical his ideas about gender (be it masculine or feminine) were for his time and place. His Chrzanowska emerges as the heroine of the hour, yet her patriotism has a transgressive facet. Sashaying through the play like a breath of fresh air, she demonstrates that gender is an oddly fungible category--less a stable and fixed essence than a complex process. Kublicki's Chrzanowska is a woman who invents herself--not freely or fantastically, but in a concrete historical situation. Kublicki's woman, then, is realistically ambiguous, a sex-gender amphibian, subject both to natural laws and to the human production of meaning. As a result, his play not only advocates gender equality, but also urges Polish culture's receptivity to the fluidity of gender. For the play to have proved effective, audiences would have had to conceive of gender as something provisional, as a kind of performance in its own right.'(3) Yes, the past is another country. When I first discovered Kublicki s play in a theater archive, I was so far lost in that other country, the past, without a reliable map that I could not proceed with my research project until I knew what Kublicki's contemporaries were writing about gender. The Defense of Trembowla was an invitation to search for missing pieces of the puzzle, long hidden in libraries and theater archives. I found myself dealing with a fractal narrative, with buried anxieties, censored traumas, forbidden passions, haunting "shadow" themes, thickening layers of significance, endlessly multiplying connotations, and no clear sense of closure. (4) Madness may lie in that direction, but so too might a richer sense of the history of how gender has been constructed and read in Polish culture. (5) A historicized approach to gender in the Polish cultural tradition has much to recommend it. It is tempting to insist that one should seek to understand the historical complexities of gender in Polish culture, to bring these complexities into conversation with other aspects of Polish culture, and to examine unanticipated lessons that Polish gender studies could contribute to gender studies in general. Granted, gender studies have entered an age of internationalism during the past two decades, as is evident in the wider range of cultural and national traditions now included in historical and literary scholarship on gender. Yet Eastern Europe, particularly East Central Europe, is one of the regions that remain on the margins of gender studies in the American academia. For example, women from Belarus, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine do not appear either as authors or subjects in anthologies of feminist thinking and criticism published in English, unless the topic is specifically Eastern Europe. The work of critics and scholars such as Grazyna Borkowska, Maria Janion, Ewa Kraskowska, and Joanna Partyka (6) (to cite only Polish authors) has yet to be fully acknowledged or documented in feminist publications in this country. …


Session 2

Since the size and complexity of scientific datasets is growing at a very high rate, people are working on developing techniques to effectively depict and visualize them. However, frequently it is not sufficient to just produce a single static visualization but instead we have to support scientists in discovering aspects about the data that they did not know about it. That means that we have to develop effective interactive visualization tools that support scientists in exploring their data.

In my talk I will address the problem of interactively visualizing data that has an inherent mapping to the 3D spatial domain such as MRI scans, physical simulations, or molecular models. Specifically, I use interfaces on large, touch-sensitive displays because they tend to give people the feeling of "being in control of their data." That means we face the problem of providing input on a two-dimensional surface which needs to be mapped to manipulations of the three-dimensional data space. I will talk about FI3D, a technique to navigate in 3D datasets and control 7 degrees of freedom with only one or two fingers being used simultaneously. Next, I will discuss the problem of spatial data selection which is fundamental to further data analysis and also requires to define a 3D selection space with only input on a 2D plane. Finally, I discuss a case study in which we integrated several different interaction techniques into a tool for fluid mechanics experts to explore their data. I will end my talk by pointing out some open problems and research challenges that we are currently facing.


In coastal foredunes, the cyst nematode Heterodera arenaria has been supposed to play a role in degeneration of the pioneer grass Ammophila arenaria (marram grass). However, recent field surveys and field inoculation experiments suggested that the abundance of this cyst nematode is controlled by the host plant. Here, we test pathogenicity of H. arenaria by inoculating a range of densities of second-stage juveniles (J2) onto A. arenaria in sterilised soil. Plant root biomass was reduced after 6 weeks of growth, but not after 13 weeks, when cyst formation was completed. Shoot biomass was not influenced. In the field, H. arenaria occurred in sand and on roots of Elymus farctus and A. arenaria in mobile dunes, but not on A. arenaria in stable dunes. Although we observed Heterodera cysts and juveniles in later succession stages, this cyst nematode appeared to be H. hordecalis. In a host suitability test, H. arenaria produced cysts on E. farctus and A. arenaria, while there were almost no cysts produced when J2 had been added to the later succession species Festuca rubra ssp. arenaria, Carex arenaria, Elymus athericus and Calamagrostis epigejos. Heterodera arenaria did not negatively affect its natural host plants. However, H. arenaria reduced root growth of one later succession plant species, E. athericus, which was a poor host for H. arenaria. The effects of H. arenaria inoculation on plant biomass production did not differ when J2 were added to plants growing in non-sterilised soil. We conclude that H. arenaria is specialised on the pioneer grasses E. farctus and A. arenaria, and also on mobile dunes as a habitat. Our results confirm recent suggestions that H. arenaria may cause little direct growth reduction to its natural host plants.


Quality of life becomes an emphasis in the process to reach vision 2020. However, the loitering culture among Malaysians as early as in the primary school until the higher level institution is still be a critical issue. Therefore, this paper aimed to investigate the factors that influenced secondary school students to loitering. This research involved 261 students from two daily schools in Pahang. Among them, 159 involved in loitering activities by which it means in every 10 students, six loiter. The finding shows that the main factor for them to do loitering is to release tension, and then followed by no activity to do, having fun with friends plus no complete recreational facilities around the community. These four factors may contribute to social problems such as vandalism, young smokers and baby dumping because negative attitude will occur among them whereby, they are starting to smoke and getting involved in other negative values. Besides that, family background and school also contribute to students to start loitering. Thus, the finding of this study is hoped to provide useful information in improving the quality of life especially in the rural area whereby the number of crimes among youngsters is increasing. Keywords : loitering culture; quality of life; social problems; student.


"This dissertation is a study of how two elementary principals work within their school, assess the culture, and implement change. It is situated within the body of current research on school culture and change, but makes a unique contribution because it gives first hand accounts of leaders at the elementary level as they implement change in particular settings. The experiences of the subjects in this dissertation will assist other administrators as they take on the challenge of school leadership. This study contributes to those seeking to create positive change in settings in which they are in charge by giving concrete examples of principal leaders working within the culture and setting of their respective schools. My research interest involves how principals understand and work within the school culture. An additional area of interest is the process an effective leader uses as he or she enters a situation, assesses the positive and negative qualities of the setting, and goes about making changes based on his or her leadership behaviors. An elementary school principal in a newly assigned school or an administrator in a long held position must assess the culture of the school, work within and understand the culture, and make appropriate changes related to his or her leadership attributes and vision for the school. Based on an extensive review of literature and the focus on school culture and change, there are several research questions that this study addresses. The central research questions are: How do principals assess the culture of their school? How do principals plan and implement change? What leadership thoughts and practices aid in leading change conducive to improving teaching and learning? And what forms of community currently exist and are evolving? The study informs school administrators that value the significance of culture in their school and strive to build a sense of community among their students and staff. Although the subjects and focus of the dissertation are practicing in elementary schools, the concepts of school culture, the change process, and community addressed in the research also apply to administrators at the secondary level. As the nature of school leadership is people centered, concepts in the findings of this study transcend prescribed grade levels and are applicable to many leadership situations."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


This paper presents a 500-750 GHz waveguide based single-pole single-throw (SPST) switch achieving a 40% bandwidth. It is the first ever RF MEMS switch reported to be operating above 220 GHz. The switch is based on a MEMS-reconfigurable surface which can block the wave propagation in the waveguide by short-circuiting the electrical field lines of the TE10 mode. The switch is designed for optimized isolation in the blocking state and for optimized insertion loss in the non-blocking state. The measurement results of the first prototypes show better than 15 dB isolation in the blocking state and better than 3 dB insertion loss in the non-blocking state for 500-750 GHz. The higher insertion loss is mainly attributed to the insufficient metal thickness and surface roughness on the waveguide sidewalls. Two switch designs with different number of blocking elements are fabricated and compared. The overall switch bandwidth is limited by the waveguide only and not by the switch technology itself.


If you strike steel, pull back. If you strike mush, push forward.-VI. Lenin It is the last [20] minutes of negotiation that counts.-Andrei Gromyko In general, it may be a bad practice to take a sledgehammer to swat a fly. With the Russians it is sometimes necessary.-George F. Kennan COLONEL Colin Dunn, U.S. Army, is credited with saying that every meeting that involves strategic leaders is a negotiation.1 By extension, each time a strategic leader encounters a foreign counterpart, he is involved in an international negotiation of sorts. Because strategy is contingent on the situation, there is no single best way to negotiate. The United States had a long rivalry and rich history of bilateral negotiations with Moscow during the Cold War. Contact continues on a regular basis with representatives from the Russian Federation at multiple levels on numerous topics such as arms control, security cooperation, coalition operations, the Global War on Terrorism, and peacekeeping. But 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soviet culture still strongly influences Eurasian officers. This tradition is actively promoted by Cold War-era educational institutions that suffer from arrested development and outdated Soviet doctrine. Especially in Russia, there has been disappointingly little opportunity to interact with U.S. officers. Post-Soviet military officers are often surprised by the basic premise of the U.S. negotiating model, which requires building credibility, finding shared interests, learning the other side's position in depth, and sharing information to persuade an opponent to agree to an outcome favorable to both sides.2 America's approach to negotiations often fails to recognize Russia's struggle of domination over submission. The Russians will often scorn and try to exploit American negotiators they perceive to be confused, weak, vacillating, or uncertain.3 Russians use obfuscation and deceit extensively to compensate for their own feelings of inferiority and weakness. Negotiators also must understand the Russian tendency to test authority. In practice and theory, post-Soviet military officers view effective negotiations differently. U.S. military leaders must study and apply effective negotiation principles and techniques. Power in negotiations is the ability to get what is wanted from a dispute or having a claim granted or a rejection upheld.4 Unfortunately, most published information describes negotiations conducted only at the highest levels. Negotiators involved in the normal bureaucratic process of government are not encouraged to record their views.5 The absence of such records dooms many officers to committing mistakes they could have easily avoided if they had learned from others' experiences. Failing to employ effective negotiation principles can have devastating consequences. Although the U.S. is the world's only remaining superpower, weaker states can often achieve victory through superior negotiation skills.6 A negotiator can become effective through training and practice. The Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) recognizes the importance of negotiation skills for strategic leaders and devotes special attention to their development.7 Cultural Context The cultural context in which U.S. negotiators operate and are taught negotiation strategies assumes like-minded individuals will be sitting across the table.8 But, whether dealing with Arabs, Chinese, or Russians, each officer must understand how bargaining culture plays a role in developing negotiating strategy and tactics. Negotiators from hierarchical cultures spend proportionally more time discussing power when resolving disputes and making deals than negotiators from egalitarian cultures.9 Culture, emotion, and strategy are three reasons why disputants focus on power in negotiation. Great negotiators make skilled use of explicit and implicit threats.10 Regardless of culture, when one negotiator focuses on power, the other is likely to reciprocate. …


This thesis provides novel insights in the molecular mechanism of action of antagonists for the chemokine receptor CCR2. CCR2 belongs to the protein family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). It is involved in several inflammatory diseases and therefore many small molecule antagonists targeting this receptor have been developed over the years. Unfortunately all clinical candidates tested so far appeared to lack efficacy in man, which stresses the need for a better understanding of their mechanism of action. This thesis revealed three separate binding pockets throughout the transmembrane receptor domain via which CCR2 can be pharmacologically modulated. Different routes towards insurmountable antagonism of CCR2 were described, either via noncompetitive or via long residence time antagonists. These results may allow a more rational design of future antagonists, and are equally important to understand the outcomes of studies with existing CCR2 antagonists. In concert with the currently expanding insight in the structure and signalling capacities of GPCRs, the data presented in this thesis allow to better fine-tune the pharmacological modulation of the chemokine receptor CCR2, and GPCRs in general


The objective of this research was to determine the extent to which the employees of the South African Police Service participate in religion, and their opinion regarding the value it added to their lives. The range of religions and the various Christian denominations represented was determined. No sampling strategy was used, as all available employees were included in the study (N = 37 816). The survey instrument was administered by Employee Assistance Services professionals. The results of the study indicated that religion played an important role at individual, group, organisational and community level. The majority of the participants in the study (79.4%) were Christian, 15.9% followed by African spirituality, 0.9% were Hindu, and 0.4% were Muslim. An analysis was conducted of the distribution of the religions represented within the nine provinces of South Africa (and Head Office as a collective), and across the four race groups. The Christian denominations best represented in the study were the Dutch Reformed (12.7%), Methodist (6.0%), Roman Catholic (5.8%) and Anglican (5.0%).


Transmissive displays dominate the current portable display marketplace. However, there is significant room for improvement, because the average transmission efficiency of the leading commercial liquid crystal displays is less than 10%. We introduce a reflector technique for increasing the transmission performance of back-lit electrowetting displays. The combination of the high efficiency reflector and electrowetting light valve can lead to transmission efficiencies exceeding 80%. Presented here is a transmissive display technology utilizing electrowetting. Electrowetting is an electrical induced change in materials' wettability and has presented attractive application in display technology. In this thesis three generations of standard electrowetting displays have been developed. Contact angle measurements are performed for various thicknesses of hydrophobic fluoropolymer surface corresponding to different materials to optimize the best performance of electrowetting displays. Furthermore, electrowetting displays on thin film transistor and flexible substrates are also demonstrated. The novel technique presented here utilizes integrated reflectors and results show that this reflector enhanced electrowetting displays can boost the effective transmission up to 10X that of a commercial liquid crystal display. This technology could be a viable solution for future battery-powered, high-brightness, sunlight-legible displays.


British imperialism helped shaped the modern world order. This same imperialism created modern Singapore, controlling its colonial development and influencing its post-colonial orientation. Winston Churchill was British imperialism's most significant twentieth century statesman. He never visited Singapore, but his story and that of the city-state are deeply intertwined. Singapore became a symbol of British imperial power in Asia to Churchill, while Singaporeans came to see him as symbolizing that power. The fall of Singapore to Japanese conquest in 1942 was a low point in Churchill's war leadership, one he forever labeled by calling it 'the worst disaster in British military history.' It was also a tragedy for Singapore, ushering in three years of harsh military occupation. But the interplay between these three historical forces, Churchill, Empire, and Singapore, extended well beyond this dramatic conjuncture. The Last Lion and the Lion City provides a critical examination of that longer interplay through an analysis of Churchill's understanding of empire, his perceptions of Singapore and its imperial role, his direction of affairs regarding Singapore and the Empire, and his influence on the subsequent relationship between Britain and Singapore.


Peroxide or ultraviolet radiation triggered cell death and stimulated the translocation of a reporter of phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P2] to the cytosol, indicating that PI(4,5)P2 was depleted in the cells. When overexpressed in HeLa cells, murine phosphatidylinositol phosphate 5 kinase α (PIP5Kα, which is homologous to human PIP5Kβ) prevented the decrease in PI(4,5)P2 abundance and increase in apoptosis caused by oxidative stress. Overexpression of PIP5Kα was associated with an increase in extracellular signal–regulated kinase 1 and 2 (ERK1/2) phosphorylation. Pharmacological inhibition of ERK activation sensitized cells to peroxide-induced apoptosis and prevented overexpressed PIP5Kα from increasing cell survival. Peroxide transiently inhibited the activity of PIP5K; however, peroxide triggered a sustained translocation (lasting hours) of a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged PIP5Kα away from the plasma membrane to the cytosol, which would take the enzyme away from its substrate. Peroxide stimulated the tyrosine phosphorylation of PIP5Kα, and this was prevented if the Src family of kinases was inhibited. The authors suggest that oxidative stress or ultraviolet radiation activates Src, which leads to the tyrosine phosphorylation of PIP5Kα and translocation of the enzyme away from the plasma membrane and thereby prevents the regeneration of PI(4,5)P2, which is necessary for activation of survival signals mediated by the ERK pathway. J. R. Halstead, J. van Rheenen, M. H. J. Snel, S. Meeuws, S. Mohammed, C. S. D'Santos, A. J. Heck, K. Jalink, N. Divecha, A role for PtdIns(4,5)P2 and PIP5Kα in regulating stress-induced apoptosis. Curr. Biol. 16, 1850-1856 (2006). [Online Journal]


The method of measuring birefringence properties using a quarterwave plate and an analyzer is examined, and explicit equations are derived for the case of a linear retarder and for a retarder–rotator system. These equations have been tested empirically by characterizing some previously known birefringent elements. In the case of a pure retarder agreement is generally better than 1°, while for retarder–rotator systems errors were typically 2° for retardation and between 1° and 2° for rotation. Possible sources of these errors are discussed.


The University of New Hampshire is studying CO2 gas exchange, ocean acidification, air-sea dynamics, and associated biological processes in the western Gulf of Maine. Three buoys and shipboard cruises have provided data to support these studies. The first, a CO2 monitoring buoy, is deployed jointly with NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and has been moored in 70 m of water northeast of the Isles of Shoals off the Maine coast during the last 4 years. The second, Jeffrey's Ledge Moored Observatory, is a development mooring testing new techniques and is deployed east of Gloucester, MA near our third platform, a dedicated 2D wave measurement buoy. The Jeffrey's Ledge mooring is testing the direct measurement of the wind stress from a discus buoy using a 3-D sonic anemometer along with a motion package to remove buoy motion effects. A fast-rate atmospheric CO2 sensor is mounted next to the anemometer to evaluate the potential for direct covariance gas flux measurements. Both discus buoys have additional meteorological and oceanographic sensors to provide key supporting measurements and to augment our regional ocean observing system. Long-term data from the CO2 buoy have helped to quantify the seasonal air-sea flux cycle of CO2 in the Gulf of Maine, and this buoy site is now the central node for near-term Carbon cycle process control experiments and longer term ocean acidification monitoring in this region. Jeffrey's Ledge buoy momentum flux estimation results indicate reasonable first-order buoy motion corrections, likely flow disturbance leading to a non-zero mean vertical velocity, and possible artifacts due to large azimuthal rotations of the buoy. All aspects are under study. The paired sonic anemometer and open-path CO2 sensor package shows promise for long-term measurements using solar power. Ten-minute resolution vertical water column oxygen profiles from this mooring show phytoplankton bloom signatures and permit robust net community production estimates in summer and fall 2009. Finally, all three buoys are providing information on mooring response, platform survival/servicing, sensor biofouling, and low-power data system and telemetry issues in the Gulf of Maine region.


paper presents a case study from a western country (UK) and an Arab country (Oman) to extract the views of Web designers in both countries regarding web usability. The purpose is to determine the most important issues that should be considered when designing for a particular culture. To obtain a deeper and more detailed knowledge on how designers work in each country, it necessitated that the researchers get closer to the designers environment. In such a way the researchers can enquire, observe and converse with them in an open-ended style of discussion. This can best be done through a case study in each of the two countries (Oman and UK). The specific aims of conducting these case studies in the two selected countries were to: 1) investigate the extent of the usage of the published usability guidelines and tools in the design of the user interface of a website; 2) Explore the differences and similarities in designing websites for each of the two cultures; 3) Discover whether they design for different cultures; if they do what considerations they take into account when designing for different cultures? and 4) Investigate whether the designers in both countries consider using Cultural User Interface (CUI) profile or something similar to capture the target culture preferences and expectations, and whether it would fit into the way they normally do business. The data collection instrument consisted questionnaire for the designers and in many cases, this was followed with an interview or an email to the surveyed design companies to clarify their responses. In addition to the questionnaire, the researchers made use of available documentation or archival data that could provide any help to the current research. The researchers also investigated the usability tools and guidelines used as well as other specific design tools which the company found helpful in designing usable websites. The main outcome of this study was that the designers in both countries believed that although the users share similar preferences and perceptions about many website usability issues, however, they differ in the importance they give to certain usability elements such as the adherence to local language, culture and religious beliefs. The results of this study proved that one- size-for-all is not the right approach for a successful website. It highlighted the need to consider the customers' cultural background and their real world experience.


How important are local newspapers for disseminating information during election campaigns? A large body of literature theorizes that they should have very little effect on political behavior since the electorate is largely immune to any media influence. To what lengths would the average citizen go to obtain information about candidates should a media source suddenly be suspended during an election? Most of the literature argues that the average citizen would not seek out any additional information to supplement what they passively acquire. A newspaper strike in Pittsburgh during the 1992 elections afforded Jeffery J. Mondak an unparalleled opportunity to test these assumptions--and to prove them both wrong. "Nothing to Read" compares the information gathering and voting behavior of residents in Pittsburgh and Cleveland during the 1992 campaign season. Comparable in demographics and political behavior, the only significant difference between the two cities was the availability of local newspapers. Using a research design that combines elements of the opinion survey and the laboratory experiment, the author exploited this situation to produce an unusually sound and thorough examination of media effects on voters. The results are startling. First and foremost, "Nothing to Read" reasserts the role of the newspaper in the dissemination of information acquisition. It is the only media source that can rival television in the electoral arena, and it is often more important to voters as a source for local information, including information about U.S. House races. Nothing to Read also shows that voters are more active in seeking out information than typically postulated. Indeed, many voters even differentiate between media sources for information about Senate and House contests and sources for the presidential campaign. Within limits, the electorate is clearly not a passive news audience. Nothing to Read provides a wealth of information on such related topics as the relationship between partisanship and media influence, the interplay between media exposure and interpersonal political conversations and other social interaction, and newspapers' effect on coattail voting. A unique book, Mondak's important study lays a solid foundation for all future work on the relationship between American media and politics. Jeffery J. Mondak is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.


Moisture is a driving factor in the long-term mechanical deterioration of canvas paintings, as well as for a number of physico–chemical degradation processes. Since the 1990s a number of publications have addressed the equilibrium hygroscopic uptake and the hygro-mechanical deformation of linen canvas, oil paint, animal glue, and ground paint. In order to visualise and quantify the dynamic behaviour of these materials combined in a painting mock-up or reconstruction, we have performed custom-designed experiments with neutron radiography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging. This paper reports how both techniques were used to obtain spatially and temporally resolved information on moisture content, during alternate exposure to high and low relative humidity, or in contact with liquids of varying water activities. We observed how the canvas, which is the dominant component in terms of volumetric moisture uptake, absorbs and dries rapidly, and, due to its low vapour resistance, allows for vapour transfer towards the ground layer. Moisture desorption was generally found to be faster than absorption. The presence of sizing glue leads to a local increase of moisture content. It was observed that lining a painting with an extra canvas results in a damping effect: i.e. absorption and drying are significantly slowed down. The results obtained by NMR are complementary to neutron radiography in that they allow accurate monitoring of water ingress in contact with a liquid reservoir. Quantitative results are in good agreement with adsorption isotherms. The findings can be used for risk analysis of paintings exposed to changing micro-climates or subjected to conservation treatments using water. Future studies addressing moisture-driven deformation of paintings can make use of the proposed experimental techniques.