Tobacco dependence is a serious and deadly problem for patients in treatment for alcohol and other drug (AOD) dependence. Such patients have increased mortality rates compared with the general population, and more than half die from tobacco-caused illnesses (Hurt et al. 1996). The majority of patients seeking treatment for substance use disorders state that cigarettes would be at least as hard or harder to quit compared with their primary problem substance (Kozlowski et al. 1989). Despite clear evidence of tobacco addiction, and major tobacco-caused health consequences among substance users, tobacco use traditionally has been minimized or ignored as an issue in addictions treatment settings. For example, AOD treatment facilities in the United States routinely ban alcohol and illicit drug use and drug dealing on their grounds; however, fewer than 1 in 10 ban tobacco use (Richter et al. 2005). These systems issues, in addition to biological, psychological, and other social factors, have resulted in extremely high tobacco use among patients in treatment for substance use disorders in the United States (70 to 95 percent), whereas smoking prevalence in the general population has fallen to less than 21 percent (CDC 2005). New Jersey was the first State to require that all residential addiction treatment programs assess and treat patients for tobacco dependence and maintain tobacco-free facilities (including grounds). An evaluation of this policy change found that tobacco dependence treatment can be successfully integrated into residential substance abuse treatment programs through policy regulation, training, and the provision of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) (Williams et al. 2005). Many other addiction treatment agencies (both residential and outpatient) around the country now have implemented or are planning to implement similar policies to ensure that their patients receive appropriate assessment and treatment of their tobacco dependence while receiving treatment for addiction to other substances. This paper aims to summarize the lessons learned from the experience in New Jersey. History Numerous agencies and individuals were involved in the preliminary work that led to the New Jersey policy change. Starting in 1991, the late Professor John Slade led a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called, "Addressing Tobacco in the Treatment of Other Addictions." This project trained New Jersey's addiction providers in tobacco treatment and provided the rationale that tobacco should be treated on par with other addictive substances in these settings. Many treatment providers were influenced by the project, and the Division of Addiction Services at the New Jersey State Department of Health and Senior Services provided additional funding. During the mid-1990s, addiction providers, the Division of Addiction Services, and individuals from the "Addressing Tobacco" project discussed the integration of tobacco into the division's licensure standards. In 1999 the State of New Jersey passed licensure standards that required residential addiction treatment providers to assess and treat patients for tobacco dependence and maintain tobacco-free grounds at all residential treatment sites (with this later requirement phased in by November of 2001). By 2000 the Division was receiving funding for tobacco control from New Jersey's Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs; some of this funding provided training and free NRT for residential addiction treatment providers to help implement the standards. The Tobacco Dependence Program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) School of Public Health administered the training and NRT. The key ingredients for policy development and implementation in New Jersey were (1) a committed leader to "champion" this issue, (2) initial "buy-in" training to convince treatment providers that treating tobacco is the right thing to do, (3) willingness on the part of the State Division of Addiction Services to include the policy within the licensure standards for providers, (4) funding for training and NRT, and (5) availability of expertise in tobacco treatment and training. …


Objective: to assess the absolute and relative risk (RR) of developing cervical cancer (CC) at individual and population level following different age specific prevention strategies (vaccination and/or screening) in France. Method: because CC is a very long lasting disease with different identifiable disease stages a lifetime Markov process model with an annual cycle length was selected as model structure to replicate the natural history of oncogenic Human Papilloma Virus (onc-HPV) infection to cancer using 9 specific stages: No-HPV; onc-HPV; Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN1 and CIN23); persistent CIN23; CC; cured CC; CC death; and overall death. A screening module (organised and/or opportunistic), was integrated into the natural history model structure to indicates early detection and treatment of CIN and cancer lesions therefore reducing the natural progression of the disease. A vaccination module was also added to the model to integrate the reduction of age-specific HPV infection rate based on the latest clinical trial results of a bi-valent HPV vaccine. All other data used as model input came from literature further validated by a clinicians and epidemiologists expert group. The model follows a cohort of 11 years old young girls over life-time each exposed or not to the vaccine and/or the screening program in place (every 3 years from 20 to 65 years of age). Base case analysis at the population level, assumes a 100% vaccine coverage and 60% following the screening program. Lifetime risk assessment of developing CC selecting different ages of vaccination with or without screening programs are computed by dividing the cumulative incident number of CC over life-time by the number of subjects alive at the selected age. Results: at the individual level the model predicts a lifetime absolute CC risk at the age of 11 of 1.80% without screening and vaccination and 0.07% with both vaccination and screening (RR-reduction of 25.7). At the age of 30 these risks were respectively: 1.75% and 0.09% (RR-reduction of 19.4). At the age of 50 we have 0.98% and 0.08% (RR-reduction of 12.3). At the population level, given the vaccination coverage, the risk differs however significantly for screening with vaccination strategies. At the age of 11 for the base case the population risk was 0.19% (RR-reduction of 9.4); at the age of 30 0.44% (RR-reduction of 3.9) and at the age of 50 0.32% (RR-reduction of 3.1). Conclusion: lifetime CC risk impact of implementing vaccination will be dependent on the current screening program put into place: the younger the vaccination age and the lower the screening program pressure, the higher the vaccination benefit. However at any age-group selected -from 11 to 50 years- a dramatic risk reduction is seen when combining screening with vaccination. A lifetime Markov process model is a very helpful tool to assess the different risk estimates of cc prevention strategies.


Background Integrative analysis between dynamical modeling of metabolic networks and data obtained from high throughput technology represents a worthy effort toward a holistic understanding of the link among phenotype and dynamical response. Even though the theoretical foundation for modeling metabolic network has been extensively treated elsewhere, the lack of kinetic information has limited the analysis in most of the cases. To overcome this constraint, we present and illustrate a new statistical approach that has two purposes: integrate high throughput data and survey the general dynamical mechanisms emerging for a slightly perturbed metabolic network. Methodology/Principal Findings This paper presents a statistic framework capable to study how and how fast the metabolites participating in a perturbed metabolic network reach a steady-state. Instead of requiring accurate kinetic information, this approach uses high throughput metabolome technology to define a feasible kinetic library, which constitutes the base for identifying, statistical and dynamical properties during the relaxation. For the sake of illustration we have applied this approach to the human Red blood cell metabolism (hRBC) and its capacity to predict temporal phenomena was evaluated. Remarkable, the main dynamical properties obtained from a detailed kinetic model in hRBC were recovered by our statistical approach. Furthermore, robust properties in time scale and metabolite organization were identify and one concluded that they are a consequence of the combined performance of redundancies and variability in metabolite participation. Conclusions/Significance In this work we present an approach that integrates high throughput metabolome data to define the dynamic behavior of a slightly perturbed metabolic network where kinetic information is lacking. Having information of metabolite concentrations at steady-state, this method has significant relevance due its potential scope to analyze others genome scale metabolic reconstructions. Thus, I expect this approach will significantly contribute to explore the relationship between dynamic and physiology in other metabolic reconstructions, particularly those whose kinetic information is practically nulls. For instances, I envisage that this approach can be useful in genomic medicine or pharmacogenomics, where the estimation of time scales and the identification of metabolite organization may be crucial to characterize and identify (dis)functional stages.


N(6)-Threonylcarbamoyladenosine (t(6)A) is a modified tRNA base required for accuracy in translation. Qri7 is localized in yeast mitochondria and is involved in t(6)A biosynthesis. In t(6)A biosynthesis, threonylcarbamoyl-adenylate (TCA) is synthesized from threonine, bicarbonate and ATP, and the threonyl-carbamoyl group is transferred to adenine 37 of tRNA by Qri7. Qri7 alone is sufficient to catalyze the second step of the reaction, whereas the Qri7 homologues YgjD (in bacteria) and Kae1 (in archaea and eukaryotes) function as parts of multi-protein complexes. In this study, the crystal structure of Qri7 complexed with AMP (a part of TCA) has been determined at 2.94 Å resolution in a new crystal form. The manner of AMP recognition is similar, with some minor variations, among the Qri7/Kae1/YgjD family proteins. The previously reported dimer formation was also observed in this new crystal form. Furthermore, a comparison with the structure of TobZ, which catalyzes a similar reaction to t(6)A biosynthesis, revealed the presence of a flexible loop that may be involved in tRNA binding.


Automatic data extraction from semistructured sources such as HTML pages is rapidly growing into a problem of significant importance, spurred by the growing popularity of the so called "shopbots" that enable end users to compare prices of goods and other services at various web sites without having to manually browse and fill out forms at each one of these sites.
The main problem one has to contend with when designing data extraction techniques is that the contents of a web page changes frequently, either because its data is generated dynamically, in response to filling out a form, or because of changes to its presentation format. This makes the problem of data extraction particularly challenging, since a desirable requirement of any data extraction technique is that it be "resilient", i.e., using it we should always be able to locate the object of interest in a page (such as a form or an element in a table generated by a form fill-out) in spite of changes to the page's ntent and layout.
In this paper we propose a formal computation model for developing resilient data extraction techniques from semistructured sources. Specifically we formalize the problem of data extraction as one of generating unambiguous extraction expressions, which are regular expressions with some additional structure. The problem of resilience is then formalized as one of generating a maximal extraction expression of this kind. We present characterization theorems for maximal extraction expressions, complexity results for testing them, and algorithms for synthesizing them.


Aims: To identify factors, which were related to being smoke-free and snus-free, respectively, among adolescents in relation to adolescents who were smoking and/or using snus, and determine if there were any sex differences. Methods: A questionnaire study was performed among students in year two in upper secondary schools (17-years-old) in southern Sweden in 2009. More than 2200 students completed the questionnaire regarding health and living habits anonymously. The variables were tested by χ2-test, before selection into the logistic model. Because of the salutogenic approach in the study, the results of the logistic regression analyses were expressed as Positive Odds Ratio (POR). Results: The prevalence of being smoke- free was 75.6 percent for girls and 70.2 percent for boys, whilst the prevalence of being snus- free was 95.1 percent for girls and 70.2 percent for boys. Having a tobacco-free best friend was the most important factor that correlated with being smoke- and snus-free as an adolescent, for both boys and girls. Good living habits, such as drinking less alcohol, were also central to being smoke-free and snus-free. Conclusions: The results show that a tobacco-free environment has a great influence on whether or not adolescents stay tobacco-free. As the environment has a big impact, the school has a big challenge to work with the school environment and policies but also with family responsibility, norms and attitudes to tobacco.


This thesis is an investigation of Britain's negotiations of its EU budget rebate. It attempts to answer the main question of why Britain decided to reduce its rebate in the 2005 financial negotiation for the financial perspective for 2007-2013, instead of defending the rebate. What motivated Britain's behaviours in the rebate negotiations? Drawing upon European integration theories, particularly Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI), this thesis challenges LI's lack of explanation of the role of domestic political parties in shaping the formation of a national preference, member states' behaviours in inter-state bargaining, and the role of the presidency of the Council in EU institutions. This thesis emphasises the role of domestic political parties in shaping member states' approach on European integration which affects member states' behaviours within decision-making. In Britain, the governing parties' ideologies are not only a lens to evaluate European integration but also bring about intra-party factions and cross-party factions in shaping Britain's approach. In contrast to LI's explanation of member states' behaviours, this thesis adopts the constructivists' argument of a 'logic of expected consequentialism' and a 'logic of appropriateness' in order to explain Britain's behaviours in financial negotiations and argues that the governing party's attitude is a decisive factor for Britain in choosing its behaviour from the two logics above. In addition, with regard to the debate between rational choice institutionalists and sociological institutionalists on the role of the presidency of the Council in EU decision-making, Britain is able to choose its behaviour in the role of the presidency as decided by the governing party's approach. When Britain has pro-European approach and its preferences are a central issue in blocking a financial agreement, it may be that the UK presidency's appropriate behaviour makes extraordinary concessions on their preferences to secure deals that will enhance their reputation as presidency. Since the time of Britain's initial membership negotiations, this behavioural logic has been evident in the EU's budgetary decision-making. In the 2005 financial negotiation, the UK presidency's pro-European approach recognized that its rebate was a central issue in blocking the negotiation. Consequently, after lengthy and difficult negotiations, the UK presidency decided to make a concession about the reduction of the rebate in order to achieve the financial agreement.


This article traces the historical development of the nature of the claim for holding over in South African law and analyses the effect of the Constitution and the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act 19 of 1998 on such a claim. Case law shows that although the courts have recognised the possibility of exemplary damages, such an order has never been granted. The courts have been more inclined to grant orders for rent, damages or both, basing the claim on breach of contract. Nevertheless, there has also been support for a claim for unjust enrichment and a claim for damages based on delict. It is in the latter area that the Constitution and recent legislation play a role and appear to have a limiting effect.


The session Poverty and Shared Prosperity in Russia was held on April 8, 2015 at the XVI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development organized by the National Research University Higher School of Economics with support of the World Bank in Moscow. Situated within the broader field of social policy, the session explored the impact of various factors such as non-market income, taxation, institutional context, geographic position, educational level and composition of the labor market on inequality and poverty in Russia. The presented reports were based on the Poverty and Shared Prosperity in Russia project undertaken by the World Bank in partnership with the Higher School of Economics (Russia) and Tulane University (USA) in order to assess how different micro and macro factors can explain the capacity of the bottom 40 percent of the population to contribute to economic growth in the country.The research was conducted using the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) methodological tool developed by Nora Lustig and her team at Tulane University. The session focused on three aspects of the bottom 40 percent income in Russia which are (1) the role of non-market income and the incidence of the fiscal system; (2) income inequality and the decomposition of the distribution of wages; (3) productivity and sustainability of wage dynamics. The keynote speakers of the session were Vladimir Gimpelson (HSE), Luis F. Lopez-Calva (World Bank) and Daria Popova (HSE). Irina Denisova (World Bank) and Carolina Sanchez-Paramo (World Bank) acted as lead moderators. The session attracted a wide audience, including Russian and foreign researchers from various academic fields.


BACKGROUND
CD52 is a small glycoprotein with a GPI anchor at its C-terminus. CD52 is expressed by Normal and malignant T and B lymphocytes and monocytes. There are detectable amounts of soluble CD52 in plasma of patients with CLL and could be used as a tumor marker. Although the biological function of CD52 is unknown but it seems that CD52 may be involved in migration and activation of T-cells .The aim of this study was to clone and express human CD52 gene in CHO cell line and studying its function in more details.

METHODS
Based on GenBank databases two specific primers were designed for amplification of cd52 gene. Total RNA was extracted from Raji cell line and cDNA synthesized. Amplified fragment was cloned in pBudCE4.1 vector. The new construct was transfected to CHO-K1 cell line using electroporation method. Expression of recombinant CD52 protein was evaluated by Real time PCR and flow cytometry methods.

RESULTS
Amplification of CD52 gene using specific primers on Raji cDNA showed a 209 bp band. New construct was confirmed by PCR and restriction pattern and sequence analysis. The new construct was designated as pBudKT1. RT-PCR analysis detected cd52 mRNAs in transfected cells and Flow cytometry Results showed that 78.4 % of cells represented CD52 in their surfaces.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we established a human CD52 positive cell line, CHO-CD52, and the protein was expressed on the membrane. Cloning of the CD52 gene could be the first step for the production of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and detection systems for soluble CD52 in biological fluids.


Large-scale urban WASH programming requires different approaches to those normally employed in Oxfam emergency response activities. This paper examines the lessons learned from the WASH response to the Haiti earthquake in January 2010. The paper also gives practical case studies of some of the success and failures from the WASH activities, undertaken in a very high-density urban/peri-urban context.


Hydrogen has been championed as a vital player in the future energy mix needed to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. The deployment of hydrogen at an industrial scale will require pipelines for transportation, and given the many obstacles to new pipeline construction, it appears inevitable that a large proportion of the future hydrogen pipeline network will consist of repurposed existing infrastructure.
 Conversion strategies require that retrofit pipelines remain operationally safe under the new mode of transportation. From an integrity perspective, the conversion exercise will require understanding the line pipe material's "DNA" (e.g. grades, hard spots) and assessing the impact of hydrogen on key pipeline mechanical properties (e.g. fracture toughness) and on the tolerance of integrity threats. These threats include those that may already exist from previous hydrocarbon service (e.g. stress-corrosion cracking), those that are directly related to the conversion to hydrogen (e.g. fatigue) and those that are an integral part of a pipeline life cycle (e.g. third-party damages, geohazards). There is currently a lack of clarity within the industry about how to quantify and manage these threats to hydrogen pipelines. How, if at all, should an integrity management strategy for a hydrogen pipeline differ from that of a natural gas pipeline?
 In order to define the boundaries of the existing North American pipeline network and the starting point for conversion, this paper will conduct an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) of (i) the pipeline network's "DNA" (e.g. diameters, thicknesses, grades, fracture toughness, hard spots, age), and (ii) the pipeline threat and condition attributes (e.g. pre-existing crack threats, crack distribution). This paper will take advantage of the knowledge derived from the ROSEN Integrity Data Warehouse (IDW), a global repository of ILI results and Integrity Management, in order to quantify the characteristics specific to North America.
 A pragmatic approach to safely repurposing existing pipelines to hydrogen service will be then presented in recognition of the identified regional 'DNA' and integrity peculiarities, and in respect to applicable local codes and regulations.


federal agencies that manage the multi-billion-dollar federal budgets for scientific research. Private markets for research and development (R&D) have some inefficiencies, termed market failures, because some of the benefits spill over to third parties that do not pay the R&D cost. Government-sponsored R&D, however, has its own set of problems. Whereas private markets underinvest in R&D programs that have a high public payoff, government overinvests in R&D programs with a low public payoff. The R&D market requires choosing between imperfect alternatives. DOE's energy programs in particular have serious problems. First, existing public policy objectives are largely unrelated to correcting market failures. The market does not "fail" to deliver energy supply, energy efficiency, or energy security—the chief objectives of DOE's R&D activities. Second, there is insufficient competition among potential research communities—for example, universities—to obtain DOE funding for research and scientific facilities. As a consequence, energy R&D programs are unlikely to ever provide net benefits to taxpayers. Third, the incentives inherent in government-managed R&D are seldom compatible with the public interest. The problems surrounding existing energy R&D programs are, unfortunately, a consequence of the normal functioning of government. Accordingly, simply improving the budget process will not improve matters. Taxpayers would obtain a higher return on their R&D investments if Congress merged energy programs into a larger budget for scientific R&D or, even better, if Congress eliminated those programs altogether and established in their place tax allowances to supplement private-sector R&D. Time to Overhaul Federal Energy R&D


The 2001 Census revealed that roughly 78% of the South African population claimed to be of a certain religious standing, namely Christian (Statistics South Africa: 2001). One can assume that many Christians are exposed to, and partake in, the growing trend of complementary medicine. Aim The aim of this study was to determine the perceptions of homeopathy amongst Christian Church members in the Berea North area of Durban and assess how similar they are to the perceptions of certain Christian authors holding the view that homoeopathy is incompatible with Christianity. Methodology A survey method with self-administered questionnaires was employed. A total of 365 questionnaires were distributed and 174 completed questionnaires were returned (47.40%). The questionnaire consisted of 30 questions that were divided into 4 sections. The first section consisted of demographic questions while the remaining sections were related to the perception of homoeopathy. For most of the questions, possible alternative answers were given. A few of the questions allowed open ended answers. Data was analyzed by means of the SPSS (v.13) program. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for analysis and interpretation. More specifically, the Chi square test was used to determine relationships between certain qualitative variables. iii Results The majority of respondents (63.2%) perceived that homoeopathy is compatible with Christianity, with more females than males agreeing with that statement. Only 10.3% said it is not, and 24.1% were undecided. A similar majority (64.9%) answered "Yes" regarding whether Christians should use homoeopathy or not. The results showed that respondents who have made use of some form of complementary medicine e.g. reflexology, herbal medicine and acupuncture, are more likely to condone the use of homoeopathy amongst Christians. The overwhelming majority of respondents categorize homoeopathy as either natural (54%) or complementary (30%) medicine. Slightly more respondents categorize it as Eastern (8%) rather than New Age medicine (5%). Only 2 respondents (1%) categorized homoeopathy as occult. The results of the study showed that slightly more than half of the respondents perceive homoeopathy as operating on scientific principles (52.9%), and only 13.2% perceive that it does not with 32.8% undecided. 92.8% of respondents have a matric or higher level of education. Despite the high education level of respondents, 47.1% of respondents indicated that they only know something about homoeopathy and 25% indicated that they have either never heard of it or have only heard of it. The majority of respondents indicated that their knowledge of homoeopathy is inadequate (69%) but showed a desire to know more about homoeopathy (72.4%). iv Conclusion The conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that the majority of Christians surveyed did not share the views of the Christian authors who regard homoeopathy as incompatible with Christianity. On the contrary, the majority supported the use of homoeopathy, and were interested to find out more about it.


This article introduces Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concepts of smooth and striated space and couples these with the realms of art and technology. In doing so, and by analysing a case study, the dynamic natures and complex mixtures of art and technology are discussed. As a result, a perspective through which art and technology work together to enable new experiences opens up. The case study consists of Anja Hertenberger's work entitled InBetween — an ongoing performance project in which she examines the reactions of people to her wearing an item of clothing which features a miniature camera on the front and a screen at the back. The article concludes by arguing that although Hertenberger's performance concerns mediation, it mainly brings about immediate experiences that can be regarded as 'imaginings' rather than imaginations.


Changes in written communications brought about by technology have led to a revolution in the concepts of literacy and, as a result, in students' educational needs. However, teenagers appear to use technologies that involve new channels and text genres in the digital environment much more than in their everyday life than in an academic environment, because there is still too much distance between what schools offer students and their own reality. This article shows part of the findings of ethnographic and qualitative research in the line of new studies on teenagers' critical literacy and vernacular writing practices in the asynchronous communication spaces online. The idea is to offer data and ideas to help overcome the current inertia and distance between some educational activities and young people's communicative needs


This thesis addresses the problem of how to examine a metabolic pathway and identify
what are the key elements, specifically with respect to rate-limitation. The aim is to be
able to analyze a pathway, identify the bottlenecks and implement genetic modifications
to remove these bottlenecks. This is done by defining the system of interest and
developing a predictive model using kinetic data. The model predictions can then be
verified using fermentation data and genetic techniques to make the appropriate changes
for improved performance.
The test system chosen for this study was the TOL meta-cleavage pathway for the
degradation of benzoate. This system was chosen on the basis of the application of
pathway engineering principles to other systems. The modelling strategy and software
was developed using principles from metabolic control theory and biochemical systems
theory. By applying this to the TOL pathway using kinetic data, the control coefficients
for the pathway were obtained as well as the system parameters required for the
optimization of the pathway.
The simulated results obtained from this model must be validated by experiment. Errors
can arise both from incorrect assumptions in the model and from the fact that the
kinetic data taken from individual in vitro experiments may not be applicable to the in
vivo system. The effect of the presence of the TOL pathway on the behaviour of E.coli
JM107 during fermentation was investigated and the transient concentration data
necessary to identify the bottlenecks in the pathway measured.
This data is then used to calculate the flux control coefficients for the TOL pathway.
The predictive results were verified by the fermentation data which identified the first
two enzymes in the pathway as having significant flux control coefficients.
This final chapter also addresses the issue of flux analysis, that is, the calculation of the
fluxes in the system to determine where fluxes to unwanted by-products occur and to
indicate points of control. A graphical user interface is used to provide a user-friendly
and intuitive means of building and customising metabolic pathways which can then be
interfaced with instrumentation to provide on-line flux analysis.


This research was aimed to increase growth and yield of peanut through the provision of dolomite and phosphate fertilizer. This research was conducted at the experiment land of Agriculture Faculty University of Riau, Pekan baru from June 2014 to September 2014. This research used factorial completely randomized design (CRD) consisted of two factors and three replications. As for the treatment are: factor 1 is dolomite dose consist of three level 0,00 kg/m2,0,62 kg/m2 and 1,24 kg/m2. Factor 2 is phosphate fertilizer consist of three level 0,00 g/m2, 14,40 g/m2 and 28,80 g/m2. The results of this research showed that the combination of dolomite dose of 0,62 kg/m2 with phosphate fertilizer 28,80 g/m2 provide the best growth and yield of the plant height parameters, number of seeds/plant and dry weight of seeds/1,44 m2. The best results obtained 543,33 g/m2 (3,77 ton/ha) through combination of dolomite dose of 6,20ton/ha with phosphate dose of 0,20 ton/ha.


The challenges associated with climate change in local governments are growing daily. One such challenge is water security, an aspect that draws us to the subject matter of climate change adaptation. This article discusses findings about institutional complexities surrounding Day Zero, a concept associated with water taps running dry because of drought conditions as aggravated by climate change in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. The thrust on institutional complexities is deliberate, as this affects how crisis situations like Day Zero were handled. The data were generated mainly from the actor–actant–network theory, events study as well as document and discourse analysis methods. The actor–actant–network theory is used widely to trace how actors (humans) and actants (non-human phenomena) interact in space and time through their networks, following narratives like Day Zero, and act on climate-related matters. The analysis applied elements of grounded theory, resulting in categories and themes emerging for discussion. The article found that narratives surrounding Day Zero were embedded in both political and administrative dilemmas and red tape. Despite these challenges, the article concludes that Day Zero remains one of the landmark learning points for climate change adaptation and water security in Cape Town, South Africa, and in other cities across the world. The article recommends that Day Zero experiences continue to be embraced positively and documented further to enhance local government climate adaptation for water security currently and into the future as well.


This article proposed a modified AM estimation procedure. The procedure uses the grouping estimators iteratively after dividing the sample into clus- ters. Then, the grouping AM procedure used to fit the structural relationship with measurement error considering there is no equation error model. The performance of the iterative grouping estimator is compared with the tra- ditional two group estimators. Simulation study showed that in terms of mean square error the proposed estimator is robustify the traditional two group estimator. A real data analysis for studying the relationships between happiness rate and the corruption perceptions index in the Arabs states is discussed.


Background:  At the dawn of the 21st century, Zimbabwe started moving towards dangerous levels of the infamous hyperinflation trajectory that made management of businesses a nightmare. Many businesses failed. Aim:  This study seeks to explore if entrepreneurship, and in particular the aspects of risk-taking and tolerance of failure, could have saved the few companies that survived the menace that ravaged the insurance industries among many other sectors of the economy. Setting:  The study looks at this particular entrepreneurial behaviour of risk-taking among insurance companies in Zimbabwe during the hyperinflationary environment that ravaged and defied economic logic and fundamentals. Savings were being eroded at a pace faster than anywhere in the world ever before, taking a toll on businesses as they struggled to survive. Methods:  Using a survey sample of insurance companies in Zimbabwe, a quantitative approach was adopted. Questionnaires were used to extract data from participants to establish the nature and extent of risk-taking, and in particular tolerance for failure during this period. Therefore, tolerance of failure in corporate entities is discussed in this article as a critical aspect of risk-taking that enhances entrepreneurial innovation and ultimate prospects of corporate prosperity among insurance companies. A measure is developed to gauge the extent of tolerance of failure from the perspective of employees in the insurance industry in Zimbabwe. Results:  The benefit of tolerance of failure or the lack thereof was measured on the dimension of profitability and growth. Results revealed that tolerance of failure is a necessary entrepreneurial virtue that encourages knowledge acquisition by both experimental and experiential learning – a risk element that also spurs entrepreneurial innovation and ultimately encourages both profitability and growth of the business entity, if well managed. Conclusion:  The study concluded that firms that tolerate failure are more likely to be entrepreneurially innovative and perform better than those that are risk-averse and do not tolerate failure.


Intellectual Property Law examines emerging intellectual property (IP) issues through the bifocal lens of both economic analysis and individual or social justice theories. This study considers restraints on IP rights both internal and external to IP law and explores rights disequilibria from the perspective of both the rationale of IP law and the interface with competition law. The expert contributors discuss the phenomenon in various contexts of patent, trade secret; and copyright, each a tool to incentivize the growth of knowledge beyond innovation and creativity.


The promotion of new approaches to the development of knowledge and the production of education services, which respect the Europe 2020 strategies, is the precondition for the economic development of the entire country, upholding the principles of inclusion and sustainability. The scarcity of resources earmarked for the education system and the very complexity of learning needs suggest forms of institutional cooperation between schools and their stakeholders, which can only be achieved through networks of relationships. This article aims to highlight the conditions at the base of: the building and development of a network of relationships between the school and the community, so as to meet ever more complex educational needs; the maintenance and enhancement of relations in the network, with the aim of ensuring an effective system of educational services; the definition of responsibilities, structures and processes of school governance for the human capital's growth as part of the sustainable development of a local community.


The purposes of this action research were to study the process of implementing contemplative education in the Assessment and Evaluation of Young Children course and to investigate students' learning experiences in the awareness of self, others, and the profession. The research sample was 32 graduate students with a study duration of 16 weeks. Data was collected by using participatory observation, students' journal writing and final examination, as well as focus group interviews. Data was verified throughout the study by means of peer review with co-lecturer and triangulation in multiple data collection and then analyzed using content analysis. The research findings revealed that there were three main steps in implementing contemplative education as follows: 1) Planning: Course curriculum was
designed based on contemplative education which comprised of four main components, namely (1) the course concepts focusing on three aspects of knowledge, (2) the course structure focusing on three contemplative education practices, (3) the course contents composed of early childhood assessment integrated with contemplative education,
and (4) learning activities emphasizing three modes of learning. 2) Action: Lesson plans were designed. Then six steps of instruction were carried out, namely (1) setting the stage of serenity for learning readiness, (2) practicing the creation process through artistic work, (3) practicing contemplative observation, (4) learning the concepts of assessment, (5) sharing space through dialogue, and (6) self-reflection through journal writing. Finally, lesson plans
were reviewed and adjusted. 3) Evaluation: Students' knowledge and competency in applying concepts of assessment and contemplative education were gathered and evaluated. After implementation, students reflected on their learning experiences as follows: (1) Awareness of self: Students' reflection showed evidence of clearer self-understanding, open-mindedness, self-appreciation, self-improvement, careful observation, optimism and happiness, being nonjudgmental and effectively learning. (2) Awareness of others: Students' reflection showed evidence of understanding and acceptance of others, viewing things as they were, having sympathy for others, and valuing others. (3) Awareness of the profession: Students' reflection showed evidence of understanding children as they were, teaching in accordance with the nature of children, being aware of oneself, self-improving, caring for children, and valuing the
teaching profession.


Stratocumulus clouds have a distinctive structure composed of a combination of lumpy cellular structures and thin elongated regions, resembling canyons or slits. The elongated slits are referred to as "spiderweb" structure to emphasize their interconnected nature. Using very high resolution large-eddy simulations (LES), it is shown that the spiderweb structure is generated by cloud-top evaporative cooling. Analysis of liquid water path (LWP) and cloud liquid water content shows that cloud-top evaporative cooling generates relatively shallow slits near the cloud top. Most of liquid water mass is concentrated near the cloud top, thus cloud-top slits of clear air have a large impact on the entire-column LWP. When evaporative cooling is suppressed in the LES, LWP exhibits cellular lumpy structure without the elongated low-LWP regions. Even though the spiderweb signature on the LWP distribution is negligible, the cloud-top evaporative cooling process significantly affects integral boundary layer quantities, such as the vertically integrated turbulent kinetic energy, mean liquid water path, and entrainment rate. In a pair of simulations driven only by cloud-top radiative cooling, evaporative cooling nearly doubles the entrainment rate.


("Tencent") regarding Tencent's alleged abuse of market dominance was the first antitrust case ever tried by the China Supreme People's Court ("CSPC") and was also the longest-ever hearing held by CSPC so far, lasting for over 28 hours. CSPC issued a 113-page, 74,000-character, "textbook-like" ruling ("3Q War final ruling"). In this judgment, CSPC made a pithy exposition on relevant market definition, market dominance identification, and the relationship between the two. As the attorneys representing Tencent in the appeal and in the hearing, we would like to, incorporating both domestic and overseas relevant findings, provide an elaboration and necessary summarization of the following issues referred to in this ruling: the allocation of evidence adducing burden in relevant market definition, the role of "Hypothetical Monopolist Test" ("HMT") in relevant market definition, the "Most and Important Rule" necessarily applied in Substitution Analysis, and the accurate view on the role of market share in finding market dominance from a dynamic competition perspective.


In the analog VLSI implementation of neural systems, it is sometimes convenient to build lateral inhibition networks by using a locally connected on-chip resistive grid. A serious problem of unwanted spontaneous oscillation often arises with these circuits and renders them unusable in practice. This paper reports a design approach that guarantees such a system will be stable, even though the values of designed elements and parasitic elements in the resistive grid may be unknown. The method is based on a rigorous, somewhat novel mathematical analysis using Tellegen's theorem and the idea of Popov multipliers from control theory. It is thoroughly practical because the criteria are local in the sense that no overall analysis of the interconnected system is required, empirical in the sense that they involve only measurable frequency response data on the individual cells, and robust in the sense that unmodelled parasitic resistances and capacitances in the interconnection network cannot affect the analysis.


A method for improving accuracy of object detection or recognition in an annotation system while minimizing human effort is disclosed. This system runs an already trained detector on unannotated data for detecting objects from data such as image or video. Decisions are availed from human annotation only as the detected object is correct or incorrect. Images confirmed as not containing the object are then fed as 'negative' data. Images confirmed as containing the object can be further annotated for the exact bounding box, and then fed as 'positive' data to the machine learning algorithm. The process of presenting data to the algorithm can be iterated until the detector accuracy saturates. The advantages of using the method include improved object detection accuracy with minimal human effort.


This article addresses a research lacuna in the literature with regard to determinants of attitudes and adoption of an innovation Facebook in the SMEs sector in emerging economies with particular reference to Indonesia. To this end, five support dimensions: government support, management support, motivational support, technological support and training support were developed basing on existing literature and the established theories in the relevant field. The impact of these support dimensions on managerial attitudes and adoption of innovation were then examined in an organizational setting. Data was collected from a sample of senior managers representing Indonesian SMEs through a structured questionnaire and analyzed using multivariate statistical tools, such as multiple regression analysis. The research revealed significant effects of government support, management support, technological support and training support dimensions on the managerial perception of innovation and direct effects of management and training support on the adoption of innovation. Interestingly, government support dimensions have significant impacted the commitment of SMEs to innovation but not on the adoption behavior of innovation, suggesting that governments' main role would be to ensure commitment of SMEs. This is because commitment is a crucial precondition of adoption behavior. Furthermore, managers' physical maturity age was found to moderate the relationship between government support and the perception of innovation. The implications of these interesting findings for SMEs and for the governments in emerging economies to designing an appropriate strategy for effective implementation of social media as an innovation are highlighted in this article.


For much of the twentieth century, the discipline of literary studies has grappled with the question of how its generally sotto voce activity responds to a history that calls loudly for action. This essay treats the question of literature's quietism in relation to the problem of literature's modernity and temporality. The turn away from the noise of the world at the beginning of the century has been criticized as the motivation for and the effect of modernism's obsession with time. But the modernist "time cult" did not simply withdraw into the space of the internal and eternal. By examining T. S. Eliot's complaint against time in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and engaging theoretical critiques of the desire to be modern, this essay argues that modernism explored alternatives to the static, quieted present, and that contemporary American time-travel narratives continue this exploration. Rather than see postmodernism as the inheritor of modernism's silent and disengaged moments, the essay concludes that both seek to examine the disquieting multiplicity of times and the denser, more complicated versions of the present that they engender.


Foodborne illness caused by Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) and Shigella remain a public health issue in developed countries. The current microbiological methods for detecting EHEC and Shigella typically involve an enrichment step that aims to amplify the pathogenic organisms relative to the background bacteria flora present in foods. Following enrichment, there is a screening step to identify pathogens based on presence of virulence genes (ex. stx and eae for EHEC). False-positive detection of EHEC can occur if virulence targets are present within the population of bacteria found in foods, but not in any single organism. In this study, a Multiplexed Single Intact Cell ddPCR (MuSIC ddPCR) was developed to reduce the false-positives in the EHEC method. During enrichment, EHEC and Shigella are often outcompeted by non-target bacteria. The role of microbial antagonism of non-target bacteria in preventing growth of EHEC and Shigella in enrichment culture was also investigated.


The extracellular environment of the central nervous system (CNS) through which neuritic processes must traverse during development or after injury is complex, and may vary from stabile conditions to a milieu favorable for neural plasticity and growth. The extracellular space in the CNS accounts for about 20% of brain volume and is composed of aggregating complexes of several different extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules. The ECM supports neural networks and acts as a barrier for neurite extention, depending on the type of molecules involved and the various signals they induce. One mechansim that may produce an environment favoring plasticity is the proteolytic cleavage of ECM. Brevican belongs to the lectican family of aggregating, chondroitin sulfate-containing proteoglycans (CSPGs) and is abundant in brain ECM complexes. It is localized peri-synaptically, inhibits neurite outgrowth, and is thought to stabilize synaptic networks in the adult.
Interestingly, a significant proportion of brevican in the CNS is observed as a fragment of the protein core formed by proteolytic cleavage. Endogenous matrix-degrading proteinases, such as the MMPs (matrix metalloproteinases) and ADAMTS (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs), cleave brevican and other lecticans potentially promoting neural plasticity. Cleavage of brevican and similar lectican family members may "loosen" the aggregated complexes and change the extracellular environment to one that is more permissive toward neural plasticity. After injury, during inflammation or with disease, alterations in the ECM may influence development and/or progression of neurological disease.
The purpose of these studies was to investigate the catabolism of brevican in the ECM and its potential role in neural plasticity under each of these influences, taking an in depth look at how brevican is processed after (1) undergoing a classical model of neural plasticity, the entorhinal cortex lesion (ECL); (2) a disease state that is thought to have dysregulated neural and synaptic plasticity; and (3) how brevican catabolism and neural plasticity is effected by deleting the protease responsible for the cleavage of lecticans in a mouse model. Overall, these experiments provide evidence that the proteolytic cleavage of brevican, and lecticans in general, may play an important role in the regulation of neural plasticity.


Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) allows the world to use a technology for event
supervision for several applications like military and civilian applications. Network
privacy remained a prime concern in WSNs. Privacy of Source location is
assumed to be one of the main un-tackled issues in privacy ofWSNs. Privacy of the
source location is vital and highly jeopardized with the use of wireless communications.
For WSNs, privacy of source location is become more complex by the fact
that sensor nodes are low cost and energy efficient radio devices. So, use of computation
intensive encryption methods and large scale broadcasting based algorithms
are found to be unsuitable for WSNs. Several schemes have been proposed to ensure
privacy of source location in WSNs. But, most of existing schemes depends
on public-key cryptosystems, while others are either energy inefficient or have certain
security flaws like leakage of information using directional attacks or traffic
analysis attacks.
In this thesis, we propose a novel dynamic routing based approach for preserving
privacy of source location in WSNs, which injects fake packets in network
and switches the real packet information among different routing patterns. It addresses
the privacy of source location by considering the limited features of WSNs.
Major contributions of this work includes two aspects. Firstly, different from the
existing approaches, the proposed approach considers enhancing the security of
nodes with minimal transmission delay and consumes power with minimum effect
on the lifetime of the network. Secondly, the proposed approach is designed
to defend many attacks like hop by hop, directional attacks by choosing a suitable
path to send information from node to BS dynamically without affecting network
life significantly. Thus, it becomes difficult for the attacker to find the exact path,
and hence the original location of node. The proposed approach is implemented
and validated by comparing its results with that of the existing approaches in the
field of source location privacy in terms of Power consumption, Transmission delay,
Safety period, and network lifetime. The analysis of comparative results indicates
that the proposed approach is superior to the existing approaches in preserving the
source location privacy.


This paper describes the development of an experimental interactive installation, a so-called "experience cylinder", intended as a travelogue and developed specifically to provide a narrative about the Viking ship Sea Stallion's voyage from Roskilde to Dublin and back. The installation provides a framework for individual experience of the Sea Stallion's voyage, where a user among the audience interacts with the installation. Interaction is mainly by position and gesture tracking and feedback is by selection and projection of objects, such as photos, videos, background images, synthesized sound and recited stories. All combine to provide an individual path of choice through a coherent story told by means of a cylindrical screen, enclosing a space providing 3D positional sound following the interacting user and exploiting data such as wind, wave and weather logs through 3D sound effects. While being intended to tell a story about a certain voyage the resulting installation has been developed as an open interactive platform suitable for story-telling/travelogue. First and foremost the platform provides an approach to easy and intuitive navigation within heterogeneous media material comprising a large number of media objects.


Sinclair Lewis , a novelist of not e, especially in the 11 Roaring Twenties, 11 was a controversial writer in a period of American history -when the nation was to pass through such crises as the depression of the thirties and World War II . Lewis considered the typical American a smug individual who was indifferent to the problems -which surrounded him. As far as Lewis was concerned, these indifferent Americans were characterized by an interest in bootleg whiskey, speakeasies, and stock market speculation. The reading of Babbitt was the first step to a desire for further knowledge of his creator. Main Street compelled the writer to study that person -who could so skillfully tongue-lash staid American institutions . Since Lewis I s subjects touched so many American sore spots, critics found fertile soil for criticism. That criticism put forth by leading critics is of prime interest in this study. The writer sought answers to many questions. Why did Lewis write five great novels in the twenties and then fail to get a favorable reaction from the readers of the thirties and forties? Did he merely "run out," or did social conditions in the United States change so t hat his work was no longer timely? Was he a realist or a romanticist? Were his characters true to life or merely caricatures? What was the quality of Lewis's satire? The writer also desired to determine Sinclair Lewis ' s status in the minds of his contemporaries and his place in the literary world.


The real disposable income of private households in Germany, accounting for inflation, rose by 12 percent between 1991 and 2014. This is what the present study based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) has shown. However, the trends varied greatly depending on income group. While the middle income segment rose by more than eight percent, the highest income segment increased by up to 26 percent. The lower income segment, on the contrary, declined in real terms. Consequently, income inequality has increased overall, especially in the first half of the 1990s, in the period from 1999 to 2005, and after 2009. It stagnated or even decreased in the interim periods. The proportion of people at risk of poverty has recently become greater again. Gainful employment still provides the most effective protection against income poverty, but more and more employed persons are at risk of becoming poor. Containment of the low wage sector, by revoking the privileged status of mini-jobs, for example, could counteract this effect. And single parents should no longer be fiscally disadvantaged in comparison to childless coupled households – this could also reduce the number of children at risk of poverty.


We present a novel approach to 6DOF pose estimation and segmentation of rigid 3D objects using a single monocular RGB camera based on temporally consistent, local color histograms. We show that this approach outperforms previous methods in cases of cluttered backgrounds, heterogenous objects, and occlusions. The proposed histograms can be used as statistical object descriptors within a template matching strategy for pose recovery after temporary tracking loss e.g. caused by massive occlusion or if the object leaves the camera's field of view. The descriptors can be trained online within a couple of seconds moving a handheld object in front of a camera. During the training stage, our approach is already capable to recover from accidental tracking loss. We demonstrate the performance of our method in comparison to the state of the art in different challenging experiments including a popular public data set.


Intrusion detection system (IDS) was designed to monitor the network activity and it identifies the normal and abnormal behavioral pattern in the network. If there was any abnormal pattern, it indicates the system is in attack by compromising the confidentiality, availability or integrity of the computer system. IDS perform three functions namely monitoring, detecting and responding for malicious activity. Experiment is based on kdd99 dataset to categorize normal and abnormal pattern. Goal of this paper is to compare three classification techniques by considering two classifiers from each technique and find out the best one based on the true positive, false positive and average accuracy.


Mathematical modeling of focal axonal swellings arising in traumatic brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases. Pedro Doria Maia Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. J. Nathan Kutz Department of Applied Mathematics There is a broad need in the neuroscience, neurological and biomedical engineering communities to better classify, quantify and diagnose Focal Axonal Swellings (FAS) and their impact on cognitive deficits and/or neural functionality. FAS is a critical biomarker in several leading neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis, and others. They are also a hallmark feature of concussions and Traumatic Brain Injuries – the leading cause of death among youngsters worldwide and a lightning rod issue in contact sports. In this work, we discuss how different shapes of FAS can affect neuronal signaling and degrade the information encoded in spike trains. We adapted theoretical estimates, derived in idealized axonal geometry settings, to real axons with much more challenging structures. Our methods highlight potential trouble spots of axonal morphology and provide a starting point for novel FAS diagnosis. Finally, we discuss the collective effects of FAS in neuronal networks, where stable response patterns are lost, jeopardizing the system's ability to transmit information. A better understanding of the macroscopic effects of FAS pathologies – that occur at a cellular level– can shine new light onto the cognitive, behavioral, perceptual and sensory-motor impairments resulting from such disorders.


There is a distinctive difference in hydraulic properties between the upper horizons of Scandinavian till soil and the deeper C-horizon. The hydraulic conductivity has been studied in different soil profile types, mainly Podzolic variants. In the topsoil there are correlations from grain size and porosity to hydraulic conductivity. Both porosity and hydraulic conductivity are stratified with depth. Often high conductivity appears in the upper soil horizons decreasing with depth to low values at about one metre. This pattern varies with soil type. The soils vary with topographic location as does the groundwater level.

Published data on hydraulic conductivity in the C-horizon of sandy-silty tills in Scandinavia covers a wide range, from about 5 × 10−9 m/s to 5 × 10−4 m/s, with a mean of 3 × 10−6 m/s. The correlation between porosity and hydraulic conductivity, as well as between mean grain size and hydraulic conductivity, is weak in the C-horizon. It is concluded that the sediment structure has a decisive influence on the hydraulic conductivity of till. A model of the relationship between fabric (in relation to water flow direction), the porosity in the poresize interval 30-95 μm and the hydraulic conductivity is presented.


National drinking water programs seek to address monitoring challenges that include self-reporting, data sampling, data consistency and quality, and sufficient frequency to assess the sustainability of water systems. India stands out for its comprehensive rural water database known as Integrated Management Information System (IMIS), which conducts annual monitoring of drinking water coverage, water quality, and related program components from the habitation level to the district, state, and national levels. The objective of this paper is to evaluate IMIS as a national rural water supply monitoring platform. This is important because IMIS is the official government database for rural water in India, and it is used to allocate resources and track the results of government policies. After putting India9s IMIS database in an international context, the paper describes its detailed structure and content. It then illustrates the geographic patterns of water supply and water quality that IMIS can present, as well as data analysis issues that were identified. In particular, the fifth section of the paper identifies limitations on the use of state-level data for explanatory regression analysis. These limitations lead to recommendations for improving data analysis to support national rural water monitoring and evaluation, along with strategic approaches to data quality assurance, data access, and database functionality.


Mining for frequent subgraphs in a graph database has become a popular topic in the last years. Algorithms to solve this problem are used in chemoinformatics to find common molecular fragments in a database of molecules represented as two-dimensional graphs. However, the search process in arbitrary graph structures includes costly graph and subgraph isomorphism tests. In our ParMol package we have implemented four of the most popular frequent subgraph miners using a common infrastructure: MoFa, gSpan, FFSM, and Gaston. Besides the pure re-implementation, we have added additional functionality to some of the algorithms like parallel search, mining directed graphs, and mining in one big graph instead of a graph database. Also a 2D-visualizer for molecules has been integrated.


The π phase jump generated spontaneously in stimulated Raman scattering, which is the origin of Raman soliton formation, has been investigated. The probability of Raman soliton generation is measured as a function of the pressure of the Raman medium and the pump intensity. The relation between the soliton's shape and the magnitude of the phase jump has been revealed by homodyne phase detection of the Stokes phase. These results are compared with numerical calculation, and qualitative agreement is obtained. The stochastic nature of Raman soliton generation is discussed in terms of the phase jump's magnitude and evolution through the Raman medium.


Photometry has traditionally been conceptualized primarily in terms of measuring light sources. However, all units of photometry can also refer to measurements of light as it is received. A description of how to measure incident light is developed from the basis that light forming an image is just the reverse of light emitted from a source. The incident approach to photometry reveals how to derive luminance from a measure of illuminance and how to correctly calculate the illumination of an image. It is further recommended that photometric specification of incident light be accompanied by a description of its effectiveness relative to the receiver threshold.


Three trends are important both in sheet-fed and web fed printing : machines must be fast, productive, environmentally-friendly and economic. Web print systems have to compete with increasingly faster and wider sheet-fed presses and smaller sheet-fed machines are losing market share to digital printers. All industry segments strive to achieve fully-automated production. The trend towards added value solutions has also emerged as a way of differentiating printers from the competition.


Abstract Mogollon voles (Microtus mogollonensis) live in grassy areas primarily in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. We evaluated effectiveness of measuring visual evidence of Mogollon voles to monitor their populations. We used presence of five types of visual evidence and a combined measure (Index of Visual Evidence) to examine relationships between rate of capture of voles, presence, and visual evidence. We conducted our study in six meadows in ponderosa pine forests in northern Arizona, comparing evidence of presence of voles and rate of capture in an area with high density to an area with low density of voles in each meadow. We used linear regression to determine associations between visual evidence of voles and rate of capture, and we used logistic regression to investigate which visual evidence of voles were best predictors of presence. Relative abundance of voles was correlated with all types of visual evidence of voles. Relative density of fresh feces was the best predictor of rate of capture, but the Index of Visual Evidence was the best predictor of presence of voles. To monitor Mogollon voles, resource managers could use the Index of Visual Evidence, or search for fresh fecal material on runways.


The personnel policy program for the employees in studied municipality includes guidelines for the working environment, saying that health promoting activities is offered to all employees. Objective: To investigate how these activities were used and how the staff perceived the activities offered. The aim was also to find out how well the information about current health promotion efforts reached the staff.Method: A qualitative approach was used in the form of interviews. The sample consisted of municipal employees from seven different work sites. A total of 12 women aged 32-52 years participated. The interviews were recorded and a hermeneutic theory was used to interpret the results.Results: The results showed that most informants used some form of fitness activity. In most cases health care-time was used for anything from walking to organized workouts. The great barrier was lack of information and lack of trained and dedicated health motivators. In several cases, informants had no knowledge about what a health motivator is supposed to do. The informants own suggestions for health promotion interventions included stress management and foot care.Conclusion: The survey showed that respondents were poorly informed about which wellness activities the municipality offered. The result could also be interpreted as a communication gap between the local authority, health motivators and the employees. A request for group activities was detected.


This Practical Guide is designed to provide means to strengthen social dialogue in the reform of public services, particularly between policy-makers on one side and government workers and their representatives on the other side. The Practical Guide explains the concept of Social Dialogue and provides case studies of best practices in selected countries. In addition, it outlines practical steps and provides checklists for strengthening social dialogue, and thus can be a valuable tool for employers and workers engaged in the management and delivery of public services, as well as the users of public services and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) which seek to improve public service delivery.


Over the past several years there has been a considerable research investment into learning-based approaches to industrial assembly, but despite significant progress these techniques have yet to be adopted by industry. We argue that it is the prohibitively large design space for Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), rather than algorithmic limitations per se, that are truly responsible for this lack of adoption. Pushing these techniques into the industrial mainstream requires an industry-oriented paradigm which differs significantly from the academic mindset. In this paper we define criteria for industry-oriented DRL, and perform a thorough comparison according to these criteria of one family of learning approaches, DRL from demonstration, against a professional industrial integrator on the recently established NIST assembly benchmark. We explain the design choices, representing several years of investigation, which enabled our DRL system to consistently outperform the integrator baseline in terms of both speed and reliability. Finally, we conclude with a competition between our DRL system and a human on a challenge task of insertion into a randomly moving target. This study suggests that DRL is capable of outperforming not only established engineered approaches, but the human motor system as well, and that there remains significant room for improvement. Videos can be found on our project website: https://sites.google.com/view/shield-nist.


The past decade has witnessed a growing number of business models that facilitate economic exchanges between individuals with limited institutional mediation. One of the important innovative business models is online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, which has received widely attention from government, industry, investors, and researchers. Based on dual system framework and two-factor theory, this research proposes a research model to investigate the role of various signals from the P2P platform in affecting lender's investment decisions. With data collected from PPDAI, a popular Chinese P2P lending site, we test the proposed model with logistic regression and hierarchical linear model. The results reveal that most of the factors perform significantly in lenders' decision making. We also find the specific information of an auction itself is more important than borrower's characteristics to a large degree. Finally, the research emphasizes that bid number performs well in moderating most of the relationships between variables.


Background: Total body CT scanning is the diagnostic method in polytrauma patients.
 The guideline suggested that rapid scanning will improve mortality rates in polytrauma
 patients. Our aim is to determine the time to do CT for severe polytrauma patients
 presenting to King Saud University Hospital Medical City (KSUMC) in Riyadh, Saudi
 Arabia.
 Methods: Retrospective study for 9 months, all dates were reviewed for all
 polytrauma patients who underwent pan CT scanning and managed in the Emergency
 Department at KSUMC. Trauma registry dates were collected for all eligible patients,
 including arrival time, pan CT scan order Time, pan CT scanning time, time until CT
 imaging completed, time until CT image reporting, final transfer to surgery wards or
 SICU, also the type and severity score of the injury, based on ISS. Subgroup analyses
 were performed to differentiate between the severities of any type of injury. Excluding
 criteria was: Pregnancy, Children less than 14 years old, trauma patients with isolated
 penetrating injury to one region (not including gunshot wounds), or patient underwent
 CPR, or need an immediate operation.
 Results: 114 eligible patients included in the
 study population. The mean age was 32. RTA was the most cause of injury with a
 range of GCS 3-15. The mean length of stay was 12 days. CT acquisition times were
 median 130 mins to completion. Time to completion was faster for multiple-body area
 injuries, intubated patients and those which caused by RTA.
Conclusion: The 130 min
 to completion of trauma CT scans comparable with some international reports that
 were ranged from 93 to 102. Our results will serve a baseline to improve our center.


Since the mid-1980s, more regional trade arrangements (RTAs) have arisen between developing and developed countries than before. The evidence shows that MNCs are the major driving force of the new regionalism. The puzzle presented in this paper is why MNCs would like to propel new RTAs between developing and developed countries. The paper believes that the emergence and development of new regionalism is, to a great extent, related to the situation that MNCs wish to enter into developing countries markets. However, it is not easy for MNCs to access to this developing market. MNCs still have to be faced with challenges brought about by both their more and more public-good-like ownership advantages and the increasing cost of producing ownership advantages. If MNCs did not extend their market to the developing countries, they would not spread the cost of producing ownership advantages. However, if they did, they would face the risk that their property of public goods is freely ridden by developing countries due to no effective intellectual property protection (IPP). Therefore, MNCs have to produce much demand for building up new RTAs including developing countries to protect their ownership advantages, especially when they meet the difficulties in multinational negotiation in IPP.


Interoperability and effective maintenance and maintainability are necessary for the European rail network, in order to obtain cost effective operation along corridors. The European rail sector is regulated through directives such as the Interoperability Directive 2008/57/EC and national regulations. In a requirement process for cross border maintainability and maintenance operations including renewal, it is important that the infrastructure managers gain an overview of all applicable regulations and are able to extract relevant requirements regarding maintainability and maintenance. Current practice is expensive due to different requirements and methods in the different countries along a corridor. As an aid to achieve an overview of all requirements, we have developed the CoVeR method (CoVeR all Requirements). The CoVeR method ensures that all the regulatory requirements are extracted, adapted and that the result from the work can be reused. As a means for implementing the CoVeR method for cross border maintainability and maintenance operations, two commercial tools have been utilized: IBM Rational DOORS and Microsoft Excel, these are referenced as "Tools" throughout the paper The main results presented within this paper are: adaptation of the CoVeR method within a new domain (maintainability and maintenance). The adapted CoVeR method is suitable as we have succeeded in making a Conformity Verification Specification (CVS) for the maintenance and maintainability requirements [17].; all the relevant requirements for 2 European Directives, 7 TSIs (Technical Specifications for Interoperability) and 4 standards that can be used for both, Suppliers (manufacturers) and Infrastructure managers are included in the requirement Tools.; established guidelines to extract and export relevant maintainability and maintenance requirements to two suitable requirements handling Tools,; an evaluation of and comparison between two popular tools used for requirement handling when using the CoVeR method. Using the Tools has improved the method by providing sorting, filtering, linking and link traceability. The tools also, especially DOORS manage different versions and changes. Further work will include analysis of empirical data from the implementation and the use of the CoVeR method. This future work will also include national regulations and exports of the CVS to other tools.


An optimal training strategy is devised for the linearly decoded orthogonal space-time block coded (OSTBC) wireless systems in quasi-static fading channel, based on the performance analysis using pairwise error probability (PEP) and symbol error probability (SEP). The PEP/SEP analyses allow us to find a generic expression for the performance improvement due to optimal training compared to the conventional case for OSTBC system equipped with any number of transmit and receive antennas and any linear modulation scheme. It is observed that the linear processing in the receiver, the most attractive feature of OSTBC, although destroys the orthogonality in the presence of channel estimation error, does not reduce diversity, but causes performance penalty as a loss of signal-to-noise ratio (LoSNR) due to training. This loss is quantified analytically and minimised by optimal allocation of power between training and data symbols. The performance of optimal power allocation improves with the higher number of space-time blocks in a frame. Furthermore, the LoSNR depends only on the OSTBC and is independent of any modulation scheme and the full rate Alamouti and other high rate OSTBCs suffer more in terms of performance due to training compared to the lower rate OSTBC.


While technology scaling enables increased density for memory cells, the intrinsic high leakage power of conventional CMOS technology and the demand for reduced energy consumption inspires the use of emerging technology alternatives such as eDRAM and Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) including STT-MRAM, PCM, and RRAM. The utilization of emerging technology in Last Level Cache (LLC) designs which occupies a significant fraction of total die area in Chip Multi Processors (CMPs) introduces new dimensions of vulnerability, energy consumption, and performance delivery. To be specific, a part of this research focuses on eDRAM Bit Upset Vulnerability Factor (BUVF) to assess vulnerable portion of the eDRAM refresh cycle where the critical charge varies depending on the write voltage, storage and bit-line capacitance. This dissertation broaden the study on vulnerability assessment of LLC through investigating the impact of Process Variations (PV) on narrow resistive sensing margins in high-density NVM arrays, including on-chip cache and primary memory. Large-latency and power-hungry Sense Amplifiers (SAs) have been adapted to combat PV in the past. Herein, a novel approach is proposed to leverage the PV in NVM arrays using Self-Organized Sub-bank (SOS) design. SOS engages the preferred SA alternative based on the intrinsic as-built behavior of the resistive sensing timing margin to reduce the latency and power consumption while maintaining acceptable access time. On the other hand, this dissertation investigates a novel technique to prioritize the service to 1) Extensive Read Reused Accessed blocks of the LLC that are silently dropped from higher levels of cache, and 2) the portion of the working set that may exhibit distant re-reference interval in L2. In particular, we develop a lightweight Multi-level Access History Profiler to efficiently identify ERRA blocks through aggregating the LLC block addresses tagged with identical Most Significant Bits into a single entry. Experimental results indicate that the proposed technique can reduce the L2 read miss ratio by 51.7% on average across PARSEC and SPEC2006 workloads. iii In addition, this dissertation will broaden and apply advancements in theories of subspace recovery to pioneer computationally-aware in-situ operand reconstruction via the novel Logic In Interconnect (LI2) scheme. LI2 will be developed, validated, and refined both theoretically and experimentally to realize a radically different approach to post-Moore's Law computing by leveraging low-rank matrices features offering data reconstruction instead of fetching data from main memory to reduce energy/latency cost per data movement. We propose LI2 enhancement to attain high performance delivery in the post-Moore's Law era through equipping the contemporary microarchitecture design with a customized memory controller which orchestrates the memory request for fetching low-rank matrices to customized Fine Grain Reconfigurable Accelerator (FGRA) for reconstruction while the other memory requests are serviced as before. The goal of LI2 is to conquer the high latency/energy required to traverse main memory arrays in the case of Last Level Cache (LLC) miss, by using in-situ construction of the requested data dealing with low-rank matrices. Thus, LI2 exchanges a high volume of data transfers with a novel lightweight reconstruction method under specific conditions using a cross-layer hardware/algorithm approach.


We present here flat flexible audio speaker surface arrays, which are transparent, formed to various environments, and allow for user interaction. These speaker arrays provide an alternative to traditional models of sound reproduction, which often involve discreet point source systems and bulky hardware passively received by the user. The surface array system opens up new possibilities for acoustic spaces, creativity, and sound interactivity.


Summary Study aim: the aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of a contactless photoplethysmographic mobile application (CPA) to record post-exercise heart rate and estimate maximal aerobic capacity after the Queen's College Step Test. It was hypothesised that the CPA may present a cost effective heart rate measurement tool for educators and practitioners with limited access to specialised laboratory equipment. Materials and Methods: seventeen participants (eleven males and six females, 28 ± 9 years, 75.5 ± 15.5 kg, 173.6 ± 9.8 cm) had their heart rate measured immediately after the 3-min test simultaneously using the CPA, a wireless heart rate monitor (HRM) and manually via palpation of the radial artery (MAN). Results: both the CPA and MAN measurements had high variance compared to the HRM (CV = 31 and 11% respectively, ES = 1.79 and 0.65 respectively), and there were no significant correlations between the methods. Maximal oxygen consumption was estimated 17% higher in CPA compared to HRM (p < 0.001). Conclusions: in conclusion it is recommended that field practitioners should exercise caution and assess the accuracy of new freely available technologies if they are to be used in practice.


This paper reports on a project (funded by a small Australian Research Council grant) investigating levels of metalinguistic knowledge of English and other languages amongst first-year undergraduate learners of French, Chinese and Italian and the relationship between this knowledge and success in studying a language at university. The study is a partial replication of research undertaken by Alderson, Clapham and Steel (1977) in relation to learners studying French at a number of British universities. The findings offer no support for the widely-held view that there is a strong connection between learners' knowledge about language and their success in foreign language study. Results show that, while undergraduate language learners have serious lacunae in their knowledge about language, those who have studied a language other than English (LOTE) at school do better on some measures of metalinguistic knowledge than those who are beginning language study from scratch. However, the results also show that for all three languages there is a weak relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and second language ability. The study points to areas of further research, including a more detailed examination of the relationship between metalinguistic awareness in L1 and L2 and an investigation of those areas of grammar that may be more amenable to explicit grammar teaching.


Unlike other forms of intellectual property, patents are universally justified on utilitarian grounds alone. Valuable inventions and discoveries, bearing the characteristics of public goods, are easily appropriated by third parties. Since much technological innovation occurs pursuant to significant expenditure - both in terms of upfront research and subsequent commercialization costs - inventors must be permitted to extract at least part of the social gain associated with their technological contributions. Absent some form of proprietary control or alternative reward system, economics predicts that suboptimal capital will be devoted to the innovative process. This widely accepted principle comes with an important corollary: namely, that canons of patent law should accurately reflect the subject's utilitarian foundation. The most important principle under this rubric is denying proprietary rights in "self-realizing" inventions - those for which sufficient incentives to invent and commercialize exist independent of the patent system. The law's principal means of excluding such inevitable discoveries is through the non-obviousness doctrine. Yet that doctrine fails to achieve this task. Two classes of invention may be deemed "self-realizing" - inventions that are axiomatic (and useful) to those skilled in the art and innovations that provide utility to the relevant inventors because they consume the inventions themselves. While the non-obviousness doctrine excludes the former class of innovative activity, it utterly fails to eliminate the latter. This regrettable phenomenon results in social welfare losses and belies the policy foundation of the patent system. This particularly startling disconnect between theory and practice begs the question of whether we can do better. We conclude that the courts should turn to an often neglected but fundamental tenet of patent law: the patentable subject matter inquiry. In doing so, we identify a variety of "self-realizing" innovative activity but find that a well-crafted patent system must tolerate the inclusion of certain "inevitable" inventions. We conclude, however, that one sphere of innovation that can reliably be regarded as inevitable by a priori assumption involves non-public, or "internal," business methods. Given free market competition, companies have ample incentives to develop internal business processes that reduce costs and/or increase consumer demand, even if these processes cannot be patented. And because these inventions are suitable for trade secret protection, inventors who seek patents on internal business methods presumably do so to raise rivals' costs. Unfortunately, the patentable subject matter inquiry has thus far been wholly unsatisfactory in denying patent protection to undeserving processes. In late 2008, the Federal Circuit's deficient "useful, concrete, and tangible result" test in State Street Bank was jettisoned in favor of a "machine-or-transformation" test in In re Bilski. While this new standard may limit the patentability of certain undeserving processes, it rests on a strained interpretation of Supreme Court precedent. More fundamentally, the logic employed bears scant relation to the utilitarian underpinning of the patent system, as enshrined in the Patent Act and the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court has now granted certiorari in Bilski. This Article calls for the Court to use this opportunity to reconcile the patentable subject matter inquiry with its utilitarian roots, particularly in the context of business method patents.


The myExperiment virtual research environment supports the sharing of research objects used by scientists, such as scientific workflows. For researchers it is both a social infrastructure that encourages sharing and a platform for conducting research, through familiar user interfaces. For developers it provides an open, extensible and participative environment. We describe the design, implementation and deployment of myExperiment and suggest that its four capabilities - research objects, social model, open environment and actioning research - are necessary characteristics of an effective Virtual Research Environment for e-research and open science.


In this paper we present Aino 3.0, the latest vintage of the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model used at the Bank of Finland for policy analysis. Aino 3.0 is a small-open economy DSGE model at the intersection of the recent literatures on so-called TANK ("Two-Agent New Keynesian") and MONK ("Mortgages in New Keynesian") models. It aims at capturing the most relevant macro-financial linkages in the Finnish economy and provides a rich laboratory for the analysis of various macroeconomic and macroprudential policies. We show how the availability of a durable consumption good (housing), on the one hand, and the presence of credit-constrained households, on the other hand, affect the transmission of key macroeconomic and financial shocks. We also illustrate how these new transmission channels affect model dynamics compared to the previous model vintage (the Aino 2.0 model of Kilponen et al., 2016).


Variable life insurance and annuity contracts are susceptible to being marketed and sold to taxpayers for whom such contracts are unsuitable and to being used in wraparound insurance shelters. As a method of addressing these problems, I propose current taxation for the risky returns on these contracts but continued deferral for a deemed, risk-free return amount. The increased transparency resulting from the forced separate tax accounting of contract components should improve consumers' ability to receive adequate suitability evaluations and may also lead to lower fees. Current taxation of risk-related returns removes an apparently key shelter incentive and should make it possible to eliminate costs imposed as a result of the government's response to the wraparound shelter. This last point requires further elaboration in light of the literature on the taxation of risk (Domar-Musgrave). This literature posits that, given certain preconditions, taxpayers effectively do not pay tax on risky returns under a normative, flat-rate income tax. Because of the problems associated with pinning down the real-world implications of Domar-Musgrave, using it to inform incremental reform proposals remains unusual. Yet, tax shelter reform seems particularly ripe for examination in light of Domar-Musgrave since shelters are generally marketed to the group of taxpayers most likely to be able to satisfy the preconditions necessary for the non-taxation of risk. The details of my proposal are guided by the view that, to the extent possible, incremental reform should adhere to a normative income tax, which (in theory) would have the further effect of facilitating Domar-Musgrave results. The details of my proposal accommodate, however, a range of views as to the real-world implications of Domar-Musgrave. Thus, if one assumes that risky returns are meaningfully taxed under our current system, my proposal removes a shelter incentive - the promise of a lower tax on risky returns than that which is available outside variable insurance contracts. If, on the other hand, one assumes that risky returns are largely untaxed, my proposal provides a politically feasible way of removing unnecessary anti-shelter provisions while not substantially affecting taxpayers' ability to reach Domar-Musgrave results.


It is fairly common practice for subject experts, with or without teaching experience, to be responsible for the planning of teaching methods, the selection of media, the role of the media, and the actual writing of the materials. Such work requires knowledge and creative ability with communication, teaching methods and media; none of which may be part of the subject expert's qual i fications. It is equally common for the designer working in education to be unfamiliar with the various educational considerations inherent in the work they are doing. In the field of education, interpretation, and training there is a need for people who can combine analytical a b ilities and knowledge of educational concepts with imagination and vision in design. Such people could make very effective contributions, both to the planning and writing of teaching materials and to the physical designing of them. There are very few designers like this. A national survey (Wright 1973) showed considerable need for people able to combine creative ability in design with a sensitive awareness of the conditions which lead to learning. The 'Design for Learning' course at Manchester Polytechnic was developed to educate such people.


With recent immigration enforcement efforts, we have created a completely new paradigm of moving borders: laws, enacted at all levels of government, that require proof of legal immigration status in order to obtain a driver's license, a job, rental housing, government need-based assistance, and numerous other essential benefits. Unlike the fixed physical border, these laws require proof of immigration status at multiple, moving points within the country's interior and are triggered through everyday transactions; if unable to prove her legal status, a person is denied the restricted benefit. If a person is denied access to multiple essential benefits, then she is effectively denied the ability to live in the United States.What is the significance of the moving border paradigm? Why are federal, state, and local governments, in so many different parts of the country, enacting these laws? To answer these questions, this Article explores the formation of moving border laws and the policies driving the growth of moving border laws: to reinforce our physical borders, to preserve resources (particularly government-funded resources) for those lawfully present, and to communicate symbolic messages including prejudice toward immigrants and certain ethnic groups identified as immigrants.Yet, to truly understand the significance of moving border laws, we need to understand how these laws have influenced our notions of national membership. Now more than ever, legal immigration status has become the threshold characteristic when defining our national community. Thus, in an effort to emphasize legal status, undocumented immigrants have been pushed from the periphery, where they once exercised limited but real rights, to outside the boundaries of our national membership. However, in trying to elevate lawful immigration status, moving border laws have had the ironic and unintended effect of devaluing all forms of legal status. Stated simply, the enforcement of moving border laws increases racial and ethnic profiling against Latinos and others who don't "look American," even if they have legal status or even citizenship. For them, the laws create permanent borders of discrimination.


Epidermal inclusion cysts, also called keratin or epithelial cysts, are benign lumps that develop beneath the skin. They are the most common cutaneous cysts and can be found anywhere on the body, with the face, neck, and trunk being the most common locations. Epidermal inclusion cysts are caused by a build-up of keratin due to obstruction or disruption of the skin or skin follicle. It presents as a slow-growing, painless lump, usually with a punctum in the middle that represents the blockage of keratin excretion. No treatment is usually necessary unless they cause pain, cosmetic concerns, or become infected. Surgical excision appears to be the mainstay of treatment, which prevents cyst recurrence. Here, we present the case of a 64-year-old male with a mass on his upper back. The mass was noted to be gradually enlarging, and thus excision was performed in order to prevent further growth and infection.


Recent consolidation in the financial services industry and the decision by many financial services executives to focus on their core competencies have led to these firms forming business networks. These networks face numerous challenges ensuring that their member companies serve their customers well, and in an integrated manner, using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. This article describes our analysis of six financial services companies in different financial services networks – one of which illustrates best practice. The six main challenges these networks faced were: creating a joint strategy; rationalizing their distributed core competencies; integrating their CRM processes of marketing, sales, and service; being able to exchange knowledge 2 about customers; adhering to data privacy laws; and integrating their CRM systems. Based on our observations of these financial services networks, we recommend five steps for creating successful joint CRM in a business network: (1) Define integrated CRM processes, (2) establish a joint customer data model, (3) establish a central customer database for customer master data, (4) link distributed CRM and transaction systems to the central customer database, and (5) integrate customer-oriented systems via views (portals). 3


This research uses descriptive analysis method. The descriptive method of analysis is
strengthened by observation and survey. This research uses non probability sampling sampling
method, that is judgment sampling. The sampling technique was chosen to obtain sampling units
that had the desired characteristics and snowball sampling aimed to determine the information
of the respondents. Data analysis techniques using Linear Interactive and Discrete Optimize
(LINDO). Linear Interactive and Discrete Optimizer is an interactive programming package
of linear, quadratic and integral programs. The results showed that : Based on the calculation
of sensitivity analysis using LINDO, the allocation of rice from the sender to RTC Market,
wholesalers in Market of Lama, big trader of Kec Cipocok and big traders of Kec Walantaka
will not experience any change in allocations even though the costs required to supply rice have
increased, The highest coefficient on the LINDO result is in variable X2,9 of Rp. 400, - with the
aim of supply, a wholesaler of RTC Market - the retailer of Serang District. The lowest coefficient
is in variable X4,15 of Rp. 93, - occurred at the destination supply of large traders Cipocok
District - retailer Cipocok