While for much of the world globalisation is associated with growing interdependence and the spread of 'zones of peace', in the Middle East the decade of globalisation was ushered in by war, was marked by intrusive US hegemony, renewed economic dependency on the core and continuing insecurity, and ended with yet another round of war in 2001. In the early 1990s, prospects looked different to some observers: the end of the Cold War, the second Gulf War, and the advance of economic globalisation seemed to provide a unique opportunity to incorporate the area into a 'New World Order' in which the struggle for power would be superseded by the features of the pluralist model – complex interdependence, democratic peace. The defeat and discrediting of Iraq's militaristic Arab nationalism, the beginnings of the Arab–Israeli peace negotiations, and a Washington-imposed Pax Americana were to facilitate creation of the co-operative security arrangements needed to tame the power struggle. The consequent dilution of insecurity, together with the exhaustion of economies from arms races, would allow economic development to push military ambitions off state foreign policy agendas. Access to the global market and investment would both require and encourage policies of peace (Solingen 1998) which, in turn, would foster regional economic interdependence and co-operation in resolving common problems such as water scarcity. This would create vested interests in peace, while public opinion, exhausted by war and acquiring enhanced weight from democratisation, would restrain state leaders. In consequence, the regional system would move, in Korany's words, 'from warfare to welfare'. The final displacement of Pan-Arabism by the doctrine of state sovereignty would allow 'normal' state-to-state


The comparable measurement of educational attainment is a challenge for all comparative surveys and cross-national data analyses. While education is an important predictor or control variable in many research contexts, it is particularly important when studying education and education-related outcomes such as skills or labor market chances. This study evaluates the cross-nationally comparable measurement of education in OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, PIAAC, in terms of its construct validity when predicting general basic skills. In order to do so, the predictive power of country-specific (i.e. non-comparable) education variables is compared to the predictive power of different cross-nationally harmonized variables, namely the detailed ISCED-based coding scheme used in PIAAC, ISCED 2011 and 1997 levels, the broad education levels 'low, medium, high', ES-ISCED, as well as years of education. The analyses consist in sets of country-wise linear regressions, taking PIAAC's plausible values and complex sampling into account, and use adjusted R2 as the indicator for predictive power and validity. The results show that while harmonization into a detailed coding scheme such as the most detailed comparable variable available in PIAAC does not entail large losses of information, the way this variable is further simplified plays a major role for validity. The paper also highlights shortcomings of the detailed variable from a theoretical point of view, such as the lack of differentiation of vocational and general education and other markers of educational content and quality, which are important aspects both for skill development  as well as the labor market outcomes of education, and of the country-specific measures of education, which may make the detailed PIAAC education variable look better than it actually is. The Online Appendix is available in the section "Supplementary Files" on the right side.


The diagnostic survey conducted in 2001 into the Federal Government public procurement revealed that Nigeria lost several hundred billions of Naira over the last few decades due of flagrant abuse of procedures, lack of transparency and merit in the award of contracts in the public sector. Measures like legislative committees, financial audit, ministerial control, judicial reviews, anticorruption agencies, advisory committees, parliamentary questions and public hearing to ensure accountability in the public sector as in developed countries were adopted yet no tangible result has been achieved. This study investigated accountability in the Nigerian Public Sector. The population of the study is Nigeria public sector and the sample frames was drawn from Ministry of Finance, Presidency, Ministry of Works, and National Assembly. Source of data was primary and were collected through structured questionnaire which was distributed to 100 management staff of the above organizations at random. Data were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation with the aid of SPSS. The result showed that there is weak accountability in Nigeria due to weak accounting infrastructure, poor regulatory framework and attitude of government officials. It was recommended that the government, professional accounting bodies and citizens should work together to have a meaningful resolution on this issue as a matter of urgency Key words: Accountability, Accounting infrastructure, Public Sector, Economic Retrogression


The key to a successful future mobile communication system lies in the design of its radio scheduler. One of the key challenges of the radio scheduler is how to provide the right balance between Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees and the overall system performance. Yasir Zaki proposes innovative solutions for the design of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio scheduler and presents several LTE radio scheduler analytical models that can be used as efficient tools for radio dimensioning. The author also introduces a novel wireless network virtualization framework and highlights the potential gains of using this framework for the future network operators. This framework enables the operators to share their resources and reduce their cost, thus achieving a better overall system performance and radio resource utilization.


Currently, implementation research in the field of forensic risk assessment is limited and consensus on "implementation success" is lacking. This study applies outcomes of success from implementation science to the implementation evaluation of the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability: Adolescent Version (START:AV) in a residential youth care facility in the Netherlands. Staff perceptions on the implementation and the instrument were assessed using 5 implementation outcomes in a longitudinal multimethod design: acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, feasibility, and penetration. As anticipated, the majority of staff perceived START:AV core constructs as useful for treatment (appropriateness). However, satisfaction with the instrument decreased over time (acceptability). This was likely due to an increased workload (feasibility). Despite this dissatisfaction, the completion rate was acceptable (adoption). Lastly, staff reported a lack of integration of the START:AV findings in clinical case conferences (penetration). The implementation outcomes aid in identifying areas for improvement, which in turn can lead to an increased and more consistent uptake of structured risk assessment into routine practice


Introducing robotics to undergraduates is a challenging problem from an educational standpoint. The overlap to numerous areas of applied computer science, and the number of difficult subproblems that must be dealt with in any nontrivial robotics application (e.g., vision, path planning, real-time computing), easily overwhelm students at the undergraduate level. We have been employing robotic soccer as a vehicle to motivate undergraduate students in robotics, in order to provide students with an interesting domain that embodies significant research challenges in artificial intelligence. In order to manage the complexity of the domain, we employ software agents in several key components in our approach, and as a methodology for student implementations. This paper describes our strategies for introducing the elements of soccer playing to undergraduate robotics students, and the agent-based approach we employ.


The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to generate a functional-fitness profile for older women from the south of Brazil and to compare their functional profile with an age-matched cohort of American women. The Fullerton Functional Fitness Test (body-mass index, 6-min-walk test, chair sit-and-reach, chair stand, arm curl, and 8-ft up-and-go) was administered to 1,033 participants. Z scores indicate that older American women performed better in all functional tests than age-matched Brazilians. This fact could be explained by the delayed establishment of specific health policies for older adults in Brazil. In conclusion, the findings provide guidelines about the normal variation of functional fitness in older women from the southern region of Brazil. In addition, these data can be used to help identify older women with functional losses, thereby assisting in the diagnosis of early disability.


Abstract : Supply Chain Management has become an important part of the business environment and the U.S. economy. The move towards improved efficiency and effectiveness for businesses, organizations, and process owners has forced many managers to think beyond traditional management techniques utilized in typical functional paradigms. As these supply chain process have become more streamlined the issue of increased risk and uncertainty has become ever more important. Many methods of controlling risk have been introduced and utilized by the research and practitioner fields, however, few provide a holistic view of what causes uncertainty, methods of dealing with that uncertainty, and how these methods are adopted by an organization. This dissertation research effort incorporates three distinct efforts combined under a single umbrella topic. The first paper focuses on the underlying cause of uncertainty by proposing multiple levels of interdependence experienced by organizations within a hypothetical supply chain. Coordination strategies are then identified as coping mechanisms for interdependence issues. The second paper in this series focuses on one specific method of coordination, the contingency planning process. Characteristics of a contingency planning process are identified and their relationship to organizational flexibility is measured utilizing a regression technique. The third portion of the umbrella research effort addresses contingency planning as an innovation. Based on the research in paper two, contingency planning is a useful coordination technique for dealing with supply chain disruptions. This paper explores the attributes of a planning process that will most likely lead to successful innovation adoption. Each model presents broad perspective based on current literature and, hopefully, provides the foundation for many future research efforts.


Foliar oils, particularly monoterpenes, can influence the susceptibility of plants to herbivory. In plants, including eucalypts, monoterpenes are often associated with plant defence. A recent analysis revealed an increase in foliar oil content with increasing latitudinal endemism, and we tested this pattern using three eucalypt taxa comprising a latitudinal replacement cline. We also examined the relative concentrations of two monoterpenes (alpha-pinene and 1,8-cineole), for which meta-analyses also showed latitudinal variation, using hybrids of these three taxa with Corymbia torelliana. These, and pure C. torelliana, were then assessed in common-garden field plots for the abundance and distribution of herbivory by four distinct herbivore taxa. Differing feeding strategies among these herbivores allowed us to test hypotheses regarding heritability of susceptibility and relationships to alpha-pinene and 1,8-cineole. We found no support for an increase in foliar oil content with increasing latitude, nor did our analysis support predictions for consistent variation in alpha-pinene and 1,8-cineole contents with latitude. However, herbivore species showed differential responses to different taxa and monoterpene contents. For example, eriophyid mites, the most monophagous of our censused herbivores, avoided the pure species, but fed on hybrid taxa, supporting hypotheses on hybrid susceptibility. The most polyphagous herbivore (leaf blister sawfly Phylacteophaga froggatti) showed no evidence of response to plant secondary metabolites, while the distribution and abundance patterns of Paropsis atomaria showed some relationship to monoterpene yields.


ABSTRACT Man-In-The-Middle attack is the major attack on SSL. Some of the major attacks on SSL are ARP poisoning and the phishing attack. Phishing is the social engineering attack to steal the credential information from the user using either fake certificates or fake web-pages. Same in the case of ARP Poisoning, where in the attacker act as middle-man in the client-server communication channel. MITM attack makes the users difficult to understand that whether they are connected to original secured connection or not. Since the certificate that is being passed during the connection setup is insecure, attacker can easily modify the information in the certificate and leave the approval of the certificate to the user. Since many users are not well educated about the whereabouts of the forged certificates and their corresponding attacks, they accept the certificates making way for the attackers to implement the attack. To deal with such attacks, two approaches have been proposed: one for the ARP poisoning; and other for phishing attack.


This article identifies a U.S.-based podcasting ecology as public media and then examines the threats to its future. It first identifies characteristics of a set of podcasts in the United States that allow them to be usefully described as public podcasting . Second, it looks at current business trends in podcasting as platformization proceeds. Third, it identifies threats to public podcasting's current business practices. Finally, it analyzes responses within public podcasting to the potential threats. The article concludes that currently, the public podcast ecology in the United States maintains some immunity from the most immediate threats, but there are also underappreciated threats to it, both internally and externally.


Since the recognition of youth as a social category, several approaches to youth ministry developed. One of the approaches, namely the inclusive congregational approach to youth ministry, will be critically reflected on in this article. The aim of this article is to indicate what the implications of this approach are for congregational ministry. It is argued that the inclusive congregational approach to youth ministry could lead to certain creative tensions in youth ministry as an integral part of congregational ministry. Therefore the article identifies and discusses specific creative tensions that could be present in youth ministry where the inclusive congregational approach to youth ministry is taken as the point of departure. Creative tension is here understood as a source of creative energy that informs and guides ministry. Although the different tensions may cause uneasiness, with the spontaneous response to release them, it is argued that it should rather be kept intact in order to inform and maintain a creative process of ministry.


Ionic liquids incorporating a polymerizable anion were prepared in a facile manner and used to fabricate stable titania nanoparticle films. The nanotitania was directly patterned by UV imprinting using micrometer size test structures in a polydimethylsiloxane mold. The resulting resist microstructures are resistant to cracking with only slight shrinkage observed for the system made using a hydrophobic ionic liquid. Because ionic liquids with a plethora of different physical and chemical properties can be made (designed) in a facile manner their application in this facile process instead of organic solvents could lead to many new types of functional materials.


Behavior recognition and predicting the activities of people in public areas are still a major concern in image processing and artificial intelligence science. Artificial intelligence systems are widely used to extract and analyze the complicated human actions through logical and mathematical rules.
This study has explored an intelligent video surveillance system, presented by real time moving detection, object classification and interpreting the activity of the people by employing image segmentation and new approach in artificial intelligence called artificial immune system. The new system was compared with the previous methods in two level processing such as preprocessing for pixel manipulation and high level processing for behavior description. It was discovered that the new system required less processing time to apply filters in pixel level and higher data accuracy with less time complexity to generate training data and monitoring phase. This study further improved the performance of object tracking. The improvement was achieved by simplifying the previous algorithm without applying mathematical or probabilistically formulas and selects the effective filters to create a clearer foreground pixel map. Also, the robust algorithm with hands of artificial immune system rules like binary hamming shape-space and advance detector structure with fast decision making to detect three abnormal behaviors such as entering the forbidden area, standing more than threshold and running was implemented
The result obtained showed the improvement in the duration for each phase when compared with previous methods in image segmentation like mixture of Gaussian and behavior recognition like and/Or tree or neural networks.


Continuous processes are highly attractive and their advantages are textbook knowledge. However, for small-scale chemical production (typically up to 100 t per year) batch processes are the predominant application. Why this is the case and what factors dominate the decision is analyzed. Apart from technological reasons, socioeconomic, as well as human factors have to be accounted for.


Demographic variables have long been known to exert effects on psychological testing. Variables such as age, education, and gender have been thoroughly researched, and their effects are well documented. Other demographic variables such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, native language, and acculturation are less well researched within the field of neuropsychology. Research that has been produced to date has demonstrated that each of these variables does indeed wield some effect on neuropsychological test performance. Therefore, it is important that these variables be reported in the literature so that neuropsychologists are able to generalize research findings to their everyday practice with patients from diverse backgrounds. With this in mind, the current study was undertaken in order to determine the frequency with which a range of demographic variables are being reported in current neuropsychological research journals. Publications from 1995 to 2000 in five of the most frequently utilized neuropsychology journals were reviewed. Results showed that while age, education, and gender are frequently reported, information on race, ethnicity, native language, and acculturation are rarely, if ever, reported. These results show that even though great strides have been taken in the burgeoning field of cross-cultural neuropsychology, current trends need to be changed in order for progress to continue.


Kyi, Tanya Lloyd. The Lowdown on Denim . Illus. Clayton Hanmer. Toronto: Annick Press, 2011. Print. It's springtime: time to pick up a pair of the latest blue jeans for the new season. This year, however, thanks to The Lowdown on Denim, young fashionistas can also read about their pants, and consider the cultural, economic, political, and environmental issues surrounding them. The Lowdown on Denim provides an entertaining introduction to how jeans have evolved, who makes them, and what they've meant throughout the world. Author Tanya Lloyd Kyi , based in British Columbia, has created a wide variety of curiosity-sparking non-fiction titles; including 50 Underwear Questions ( reviewed by T. Chatterley in this issue ) and 50 Poisonous Questions ( reviewed by K. Frail in Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 ) . Here, she applies an unobtrusive narrative frame; protagonists JD and Shred are sent to detention, having been caught blue-handed running their teacher's jeans up the school flagpole. In detention, JD and Shred are tasked with writing a report on the history of jeans, which, as Shred points out, "have been around way longer than Google". Kyi takes her protagonists on a tour of jeans beginning in the mid-19 th century, and illustrator Clayton Hanmer carries the reader along by placing JD and Shred in each time and place along the way. They begin by panning for gold in California in garments woefully lacking in ruggedness. They go on to explore wartime periods, the cold war, rock'n'roll, disco, punk, hip hop, and more. Throughout, Kyi and Hanmer also touch upon issues including trade globalization, factory working conditions, marketing strategies, gender norms, and pesticide-intensive cotton. Hanmer's award-winning illustrations are well-known thanks to publications such as OWL Magazine, National Geographic Kids, and The Globe & Mail, as well as several books. Here he effectively captures JD and Shred's bewilderment at their whirlwind tour, while highlighting key moments of insight. The Lowdown on Denim is unfortunately mistitled. Kyi and Hanmer have actually given us The Lowdown on Jeans Beginning with Levi Strauss. Readers may unfortunately be left with the impression that jeans were a solely American invention; denim fabric's European origins, for example, go unmentioned. Despite this, The Lowdown on Denim is a detailed, readable, engaging commodity history. It will draw in pre-teen and early teen readers, and could serve as a great launching point for a variety of classroom discussions and projects. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sarah Polkinghorne Sarah is a Public Services Librarian at the University of Alberta. She enjoys all sorts of books.


Rapidly rotating neutron stars blow a relativistic, magnetized wind mainly composed of electron-positron pairs. The free expansion of the wind terminates far from the neutron star where a weakly magnetized pulsar wind nebula forms, implying efficient magnetic dissipation somewhere upstream. The wind current sheet that separates the two magnetic polarities is usually considered as the most natural place for magnetic dissipation via relativistic reconnection, but its efficiency remains an open question. Here, the goal of this work is to revisit this issue in light of the most recent progress in the understanding of reconnection and pulsar electrodynamics. We perform large two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of the oblique rotator to capture the multi-scale evolution of the wind. We find that the current sheet breaks up into a dynamical chain of magnetic islands separated by secondary thin current sheets. The sheet thickness increases linearly with radius while the Poynting flux decreases monotonically as reconnection proceeds. The radius of complete annihilation of the stripes is given by the plasma multiplicity parameter at the light cylinder. Current starvation within the sheets does not occur before complete dissipation as long as there is enough charges where the sheets form. Particles are efficiently heated up to a characteristic energy set by the magnetization parameter at the light cylinder. Energetic pulsed synchrotron emission peaks close to the light cylinder, and presents sub-pulse variability associated with the formation of plasmoids in the sheet. This study suggests that the striped component of the wind dissipates far before reaching the termination shock in isolated pulsars, even in very-high-multiplicity systems such as the Crab pulsar. Pulsars in binary systems may provide the best environments to study magnetic dissipation in the wind.


This paper examines the morpho-syntactic properties of elements that realize adverbial meanings in Isbukun Bunun
 and investigates how its adverbs are syntactically represented. I show that most adverbial meanings are realized as verbs in this
 language, with only a few adverbial expressions realized as adverbs in the traditional sense. Specifically, the adverbial verbs,
 just like typical verbs, have to occur sentence-initially, take inflectional morphology and attract cliticization, whereas the
 genuine adverbs are invariable in form and exhibit relatively free distribution. The paper also presents evidence which bears on
 the debate concerning the syntax of adverbials and shows that a hybrid treatment is needed in which phrasal adverbs are adjoined
 to clauses while adverbial verbs are located in strictly-ordered functional projections in the backbone of the clause.


UNDERSTANDING AND IMPROVING MOMENT METHOD SCATTERING SOLUTIONS Clayton P. Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Master of Science The accuracy of moment method solutions to electromagnetic scattering problems has been studied by many researchers. Error bounds for the moment method have been obtained in terms of Sobolev norms of the current solution. Motivated by the historical origins of Sobolev spaces as energy spaces, it is shown that the Sobolev norm used in these bounds is equivalent to the forward scattering amplitude, for the case of 2D scattering from a PEC circular cylinder. A slightly weaker relationship is obtained for 3D scattering from a PEC sphere. These results provide a physical meaning for abstract solution error bounds in terms of the power radiated by the error in the current solution. It is further shown that bounds on the Sobolev norm of the current error imply a bound on the error in the computed backscattering amplitude. Since Sobolev-based error bounds do not provide the actual error in a solution nor identify its source, the error in typical moment method scattering solutions for smooth cylindrical geometries is analyzed. To quantify the impact of mesh element size, approximate integration of moment matrix elements, and geometrical discretization error on the accuracy of computed surface currents and scattering amplitudes, error estimates are derived analytically for the circular cylinder. These results for the circular cylinder are empirically compared to computed error values for other smooth scatterer geometries, with consistent results obtained. It is observed that moment method solutions to the magnetic field integral equation are often less accurate for a given grid than corresponding solutions to the electric field integral equation. Building from the error analysis, the cause of this observation is proposed to be the identity operator in the magnetic formulation. A regularization of the identity operator is then derived that increases the convergence rate of the discretized 2D magnetic field integral equation by three orders.


A ten-year linear programming model of a representative dryland crop farm in North Central Kansas is used to develop and illustrate procedures for analyzing economic impacts of the elimination of one or more pesticides on an individual farm. Atrazine is used as an example pesticide because of its widespread use and because concerns about atrazine have been expressed in the United States and in other countries. An important outcome is that impacts on grain sorghum would likely be greater than impacts on corn because more alternative and effective herbicides are available for corn.


The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) assumes either that all asset returns are normally distributed or that investors have mean-variance preferences. Given empirical observations of asset returns, which document evidence of skewness and kurtosis, both assumptions are suspect. While several studies have investigated incorporating higher moments into asset pricing models using equity data, literature on the contribution of the third and fourth moments in explaining the return-generating process in options markets is sparse. Using a two-pass methodology we investigate an asset pricing model that allows moments of higher order than two using European style exercise (ESX) equity index option data from the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE). Our empirical investigation shows that ESX option contracts appear to be overpriced and that on average almost all puts and calls earn negative daily returns during our ten-year sample period. Furthermore, our regression results show that systematic variance has a significant role in explaining the cross-section of option returns and that the role of systematic skewness and systematic kurtosis throughout the sample period is less clear.


We develop an approach for water quality time series monitoring and contamination event detection. The approach combines affine projection algorithms and an autoregressive (AR) model to predict water quality time series. Then, we apply online change-point detection methods to the estimated residuals to determine the presence, or not, of contamination events. Particularly, we compare the performance of four change-point detection methods, namely, sequential probability ratio test (SPRT), cumulative sum (CUSUM), binomial event discriminator (BED), and online Bayesian change-point detection (OBCPD), by using residuals obtained from four water quality time series, chlorine, conductivity, total organic carbon, and turbidity. Our fundamental criterion for the performance evaluation of the four change-point detection methods is given by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve which is characterized by the true positive rate as a function of the false positive rate. We highlight with detailed experiments that OBCPD provides the best performance for large contamination events, and we also provide insight on the choice of change-point detection algorithms to consider for designing efficient contamination detection schemes.


Debate continues about the environment of Antarctica during intervals in the Pliocene (5.2-1.8 Ma), particularly during the Late Pliocene (3.5-1.8 Ma). Two schools of thought - dynamic versus stable ice sheet - have developed. One hypothesis calls for the Antarctic ice sheet to vary dramatically, for Antarctica at times to be vegetated and for circum-antarctic waters to be significandywarmer than at present.
The other calls for a stable ice sheet, no vegetation and water temperatures much less varied. During 1995, the two sides converged by recognising that the change to conditions suitable for vegetation may not have been as marked as originally thought, and that oxygen isotope data may contain scope for more flexibility in interpretation than the stabilist view has supported. New data and new participants
have emerged, but there is a long way to go in resolving the issue.
The key issue remains the age of the Sirius Group in the Transantarctic Mountains and the source of its contained diatoms. Diatoms of Pliocene age have been recovered from the Sirius Group but also from modern ice, and this raises the question of whether the Sirius Group diatoms are actually in situ.
New data and re-evaluation of existing data are necessary. Ocean Drilling Program activity, particularly in the Prydz Bay region, and analysis of samples from the Prince Charles Mountains can be expected to contribute significantly to a solution, by providing more information on past temperatures and evidence of possible terrestrial vegetation.


Electronic word of mouth communication (eWOM) and the emergence of web 2.0 tools have influenced search and consumption behaviour when considering a purchase of a product or service. The increase in social media platforms such as facebook and travel review websites such as TripAdvisor now allow consumers to share their opinions, views, add media, and converse with other consumers online. Previous literature assessed in this research paper has focused on varied approaches in trying to decipher what factors drive decision and influence in consumers when reading online guest reviews ranging from review valence (positive vs. negative review content), numerical factors such as review score/rank and credibility of the reviewer and/or website. Specific in-review and in-profile content however has not been thoroughly investigated to the extent of how each factor rates among one another and as to what content is most important or noticed first e.g. What is the first piece of content or what part of the review profile is viewed by the consumer first? What in-review content is most important to the reader of the review? This study investigates these factors and the relevance of electronic word of mouth eWOM in the travel industry. Further to this, the effect of hotel management responses to online reviews are evaluated. Credibility of the reviewer is also assessed from a grammatical and demographical perspective, due to the limited research in this area. Finally, participants of this study were also asked to rate their trust in online reviews versus personal recommendations to challenge current literature trends in that eWOM is as equally as trustworthy as personal recommendations. The primary data was obtained with the distribution of an online questionnaire which was completed by 256 respondents. The research highlights several in-review and in-profile factors that play an important role in the consumer decision-making process and in the credibility assessment of online reviews. A key limitation of this research was that respondents are predominantly female. The researcher aimed to have a fifty-fifty split on male and female consumers but given limited access to additional male respondents in the sample set this was not possible.


An elementary System Oriented Event Analysis (SOEA) model was developed as an innovative method addressing serious limitations of the traditional root cause analysis (RCA) in healthcare. The SOEA has three distinctive capabilities beyond RCA: multiple events analysis, systems thinking, risk control formulation and alignment. It was applicable to events arising within strict sequential processes. However, for wider application to nonsequential, network system flows, the model needed to be redesigned. The engineering concepts of verification and validation were adopted as guides for the redesign. Patient falls in three differently sized hospitals were used to verify the applicability of the redesigned model. The resulting enriched SOEA model (enSOEA) was later applied in a scabies outbreak case as a validation test of success. This paper aims to describe how the elementary SOEA model was redesigned to achieve the enriched SOEA that is applicable beyond the sequential process, and provides key lessons learned from the tests for promoting its application. ©2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 16


WiMAX is one of the broadband wireless access networks with promising technology for providing better coverage and quality of service (QoS) to subscribers in the network. It supports different scheduling services with different QoS requirements the challenge here is how to efficiently scheduling the packets of subscribers having different QoS queuing in different buffers? We proposed a new algorithm capable of scheduling of all service flows type considering the nature of the wireless link, delay and buffer size. Performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by computer simulations it showed that the algorithm developed has achieved high throughput and good frame utilization.


In an optically preamplified differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) receiver with Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) demodulation, it is essential to couple free space light into a single-mode fiber, by which the received optical signal can be guided into the amplifier and MZI. Random angular jitter has a profound impact on fiber coupling efficiency, in that it would significantly deteriorate the receiver performance. In this paper, the average bit error rate (BER) of fiber-coupled DPSK receivers is obtained in the presence of random angular jitter. It is shown that the degradation is significant when the random angular jitter normalized by the mode field radius is larger than 0.3. We further analyze the impact of other factors, including central obstruction and optical filter transfer functions. Our results show that the super-Gaussian filter outperforms other filters and leads to lower average BER at a fixed optical signal-to-noise ratio. This work can be used to improve the design of fiber-coupled DPSK receivers.


The primary theme of this thesis was to investigate in vivo ciliary muscle morphology in refractive error, and how ciliary muscle parameters are linked with accommodative function in a young adult population. Anterior segment optical coherence tomography was utilised for all ciliary muscle image acquisition to examine morphological differences between eyes. High levels of inter-ocular ciliary muscle symmetry were shown in emmetropes and myopes. Whilst the myopic ciliary muscle was longer and thicker than in emmetropes for both eyes, ciliary muscle length and thickness were linked with axial length in both cohorts. In amblyopes and anisometropes, high levels of inter-eye ciliary muscle symmetry were observed. The ciliary muscle in amblyopic eyes appear to grow in accordance with the axial length of the non-amblyopic eye (P = 0.022, r2 = 0.438). The possibility of diurnal variation in accommodative axial elongation and accommodative error was explored in emmetropes and myopes. Daily stability in these accommodative functions were shown, and between groups there was no difference in accommodative axial elongation (P = 0.884) or accommodative error (P = 0.098). It was demonstrated that ciliary muscle morphology is not linked with accommodative function, disputing the theory that the thickened ciliary muscle has reduced contractility, which initiates hyperopic defocus in myopigenesis. In emmetropes, males had significantly longer ciliary muscle lengths (P = 0.031) and axial length (P = 0.001) compared with females. Novel parameters to analyse the ciliary muscle were investigated; both inner apical angle and ciliary muscle cross-sectional area measures were linked to axial length, as were the area and apical angle. Both measures are highly effective ciliary muscle analysis parameters which demonstrated high repeatability. The studies detailed demonstrated normal ciliary muscle growth with ocular development in myopia, and indicated that the ciliary muscle is not a crucial causative myopigenesis factor.


There are many cases in which, by making some great sacrifice, you could bring about either a good outcome or a very good outcome. In some of these cases, it seems wrong for you to bring about the good outcome, since you could bring about the very good outcome with no additional sacrifice. It also seems permissible for you not to make the sacrifice, and bring about neither outcome. But together, these claims seem to imply that you ought to bring about neither outcome rather than the good outcome. And that seems very counterintuitive. In this paper, I develop this problem, propose a solution, and then draw out some implications both for how we should understand supererogation and for how we should approach charitable giving.


Title of Document: EVALUATION OF SWAT MODEL APPLICABILITY FOR WATERBODY IMPAIRMENT IDENTIFICATION AND TMDL ANALYSIS Aisha Michel Sexton, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor, Adel Shirmohammadi, Fischell Department of Bioengineering The U.S. EPA's Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program has encountered hindrances in its implementation partly because of its strong dependence on mathematical models to set limitations on the release of impairing substances. The uncertainty associated with predictions of such models is often not formally quantified and typically assigned as an arbitrary safety factor to the margin of safety (MOS) portion of TMDL allocations. AVSWAT-X, a semi-distributed, watershed-scale model, was evaluated to determine its applicability to identify the impairment status and tabulate a nutrient TMDL for a waterbody located in the Piedmont physiographic region of Maryland. The methodology for tabulating the nutrient TMDL is an enhancement over current methods used in Maryland. The mean-value first-order reliability method (MFORM) was used to calculate variance in output variables with respect to input parameter variance and the MOS value was derived based on the level confidence in meeting the water quality standard. A calibration, validation and an uncertainty analysis was conducted on the AVSWAT-X model. Monthly results indicated that AVSWAT-X is a good predictor of streamflow, a moderate (at best) predictor of nutrient loading and a poor predictor of sediment loading. Improved performance was observed on an annual basis for nitrate and sediment loadings, indicating the most appropriate use of SWAT for longterm simulations. The most pronounced reason for discrepancies in model performance was the use of the SCS curve number method to tabulate surface runoff. Uncertainty results indicated that input parameters that are highly sensitive may not necessarily contribute the largest amount of uncertainty to model output. The largest amount of variance in output variables occurred during wet periods. Predicted sediment output had the largest amount of variability around its mean, followed by nitrate, phosphate, and streamflow as indicated by average annual coefficients of variation of 28%, 19%, 17%, and 15%, respectively. The methodology used in this study to quantify the nitrate TMDL and the MOS associated with it, was a useful tool and an improvement over current methods of nutrient TMDL analysis in Maryland. Overall, AVSWAT-X is a moderate to good model for estimating waterbody impairment and conducting TMDL analysis of waterbodies impaired by nutrients.


Signal processing is a mathematical way of manipulating the signal for useful purpose. It may be for the purpose of transferring the signal from transmitter to receiver side, in which case the processing system is referred to as communication system. Signal processing in a communication system for example, involves limiting the base band signal with respect to frequency and amplitude within certain range, modulating the base band signal using a carrier signal and demodulating the same at the receiving end, improving the quality of weak signal received at the receiving end, selection of one channel out of multiple channels and so on. Complexity of signal processing varies and many algorithms have evolved to reduce the complexity. While repetitiveness in the operations is exploited to reduce the complexity of signal processing, change in domain of processing also has been known to reduce the complexity of processing the signal. Original domain, for example, for speech signal is time domain in which it is represented in time-amplitude form, while original domain for image is spatial domain in which intensity level in image is represented a as function of two spatial coordinates. Representation of the signal in its original domain is not always the best representation of the signal for most of the signal processing applications. Changing the representation of the signal from one form to another form by applying mathematical transformations is referred to as transform. In some applications original domain best suits for signal manipulation and in some other applications, the transform domain best suits the processing. For non stationary signal processing, time-frequency domain representation sometimes best suits in signal processing applications. In this invited paper, an attempt is made to discuss various transforms, time-frequency representations and their advantages in signal processing applications.


The current proliferation of the number of business forms has become a source of increasing confusion. The situation is worsened by virtue of the significant differences among state business organization statutes. Uniform and Model Acts have generally been drawn up on a form-by-form basis, and attempts at promulgation have resulted in spotty and non-uniform adoption by the states, resulting in possible traps for the unwary. In response to this problem, this article proposes a unified business code that would harmonize in a hub administration portions of various business organization statutes, while maintaining essential distinctive elements of the various forms in spoke sections. Despite the many difficulties involved, including a necessary high degree of cooperation between the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, the American and state bar associations, and state and tax officials, the author concludes that the goal of a unified business organizations code is a worthy pursuit.


Adverse drug reactions (ADR) pose significant health-related problems for the older person. Many studies from around the world report a significant incidence of ADR in general and in elderly people in particular, resulting in an increase in drug-related morbidity and mortality. Older people appear to be particularly at risk of experiencing an ADR due to a range of factors, which include polypharmacy, altered drug pharmacokinetic profiles and pharmacodynamic responses, drug interactions and cognitive problems that increase the risk in this patient group. Certain drug classes, such as hypoglycaemic agents and cardiovascular active medicines, have been identified as common causes of ADR. Many studies suggest that the majority of ADR are preventable, so that several different approaches have been tried in an attempt to limit this problem, such as the use of computerized systems to communicate routine issues of patient care, interventions made by pharmacists, spontaneous reporting and continuous education of health care professionals. Whilst all have been shown to reduce drug-related events, identifying individuals at high risk of developing ADR at the point of prescribing by using a risk stratification model could improve the identification and prevention of ADR. This article discusses the clinical impact of ADR in older people and the relative merits of the various approaches tested to date before suggesting areas that require further research.


Little is known about the self-managed and controlled Aboriginal Organisations in Central Australia. In fact, until recently, outside the Northern Territory many Australians had no idea that these organisations existed. Yet they have been described as 'among the most influential, important and innovative Aboriginal Organisations in Australia'. To date there has been little research on how Aboriginal cultural traditions impact on the way Aboriginal controlled organisations are managed in modem Australia, nor on those who manage them. Representations of Aboriginal organisations in the popular Australian media rarely move beyond the superficial view, depicting Aboriginal organisations as all the same, and frequently in a negative light. Very little attention is paid to the reality of those who manage these organisations, nor of the value of the essential services they provide. Both of these are something which this paper sets out to address. This paper presents a profile of the Aboriginal and Non Aboriginal managers in the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of Central Australia. It was developed as part of a research project conducted in 1990 and 1995, designed to establish the training needs of the managers of these organisations. The results were translated into a curriculum for an Associate Diploma in Business (Aboriginal Organisations Management) and a Certificate in Vocational Studies, now accredited by the national training authority in Australia and offered to employees in these and other organisations in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and other remote communities by the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD). Follow-up research was conducted in 1995 as part of the process of course re-accreditation and decision-making on future directions.


When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, it was woefully unprepared to wage a modern war. Whereas their European counterparts already had three years of experience in using code and cipher systems in the war, American cryptologists had to help in the building of a military intelligence unit from scratch. This book relates the personal experiences of one such character, providing a uniquely American perspective on the Great War. It is a story of spies, coded letters, plots to blow up ships and munitions plants, secret inks, arms smuggling, treason, and desperate battlefield messages. Yet it all begins with a college English professor and Chaucer scholar named John Mathews Manly. In 1927, John Manly wrote a series of articles on his service in the Code and Cipher Section (MI-8) of the U.S. Armys Military Intelligence Division (MID) during World War I. Published here for the first time, enhanced with references and annotations for additional context, these articles form the basis of an exciting exploration of American military intelligence and counter-espionage in 1917-1918. Illustrating the thoughts of prisoners of war, draftees, German spies, and ordinary Americans with secrets to hide, the messages deciphered by Manly provide a fascinating insight into the state of mind of a nation at war.


Featuring interactive performance lectures, screenings and debate, this dynamic half-day symposium examined the integration of the digital in the construction of the 'self', asking how this has complicated our experience of material reality. With the merging of the 'real' with the virtual on and off-line, 'play' with the creation of multiple 'selves' is now commonplace. This offers limitless opportunities for impersonation, deception and fakery; useful tools for political counter-strategies, but also the roots for anxieties regarding loss of control over issues of 'real' identity. So what are the implications for the material realities of the body in the mangled and mutable unreal 'real' of the virtual, digital realm?

Featuring presentations from Dr Shehnaz Suterwalla, Noam Toran, Onkar Kular, Ben Dalton and Leslie Kulesh, participants used the term 'authenticity' as a prism through which to explore and challenge questions regarding impersonation, politics and gendered resistance, addressing the question of whether the faked, forged, inauthentic multitude-identities afforded by the digital era are a cause for panic, or a point of potential?


Parents of children with a chronic disease are usually highly involved in their child's treatment and may be affected by the heavy demands and constant stress. This can increase the risk of developing burnout, which is an individual reaction to long-term stress consisting of symptoms associated with emotional exhaustion, as well as physical and cognitive fatigue. The overall aim was to estimate the prevalence of burnout in parents of children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (paper I), identify the risk factors associated with parenting a child with T1DM (paper II), explore how mothers suffering from burnout describe their mothering of a child with diabetes, with special focus on their need for control and Performance-based self-esteem (PBSE) (paper IV), and to evaluate the effect of a group intervention aimed at reducing stress-related symptoms (paper III). A total of 251 parents of children with T1DM, 38 parents of children with IBD and 124 parents of healthy children participated in a population-based study (I, II). The validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Questionnaire (SMBQ) was used to assess burnout. 16 parents (SMBQ ≥3.75) participated in a group intervention and were evaluated for changes in SMBQ and PBSE (III). A total of 21 mothers of children with T1DM who scored for clinical burnout (SMBQ) participated in a qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and Inductive content analysis was used (IV). In the study group 36.0% parents of children with a chronic disease scored for clinical burnout (SMBQ ≥3.75) compared to 20.2% of the reference parents (p=0.001) with a preponderance of mothers compared to fathers, 42% vs. 20.5% (p=0.001), respectively (I). Less support from the social network, sleep disturbances and lack of personal leisure time and recovery seem to be important risk factors for clinical burnout in parents of children with T1DM, especially mothers (II). Mothers' experiences of mothering a child with T1DM were interpreted as one theme; Mission impossible, illustrating the extremely difficult circumstances under which they bring up the child with diabetes to adulthood (IV). Parents' subjective evaluation of the intervention group was mainly positive and SMBQ (p=0.01) and PBSE scale (p= 0.04) measurements were significantly reduced 6 months after completion of the intervention (III). It is important to pay attention to how parents and especially mothers experience their daily life in order to support those who are at risk of developing burnout.


Online access to medical records and linked services, including requesting repeat prescriptions and booking appointments, enables patients to personalize their access to care. However, online access creates opportunities and challenges for both health professionals and their patients, in practices and in research. The challenges for practice are the impact of online services on workload and the quality and safety of health care. Health professionals are concerned about the impact on workload, especially from email or other online enquiry systems, as well as risks to privacy. Patients report how online access provides a convenient means through which to access their health provider and may offer greater satisfaction if they get a timely response from a clinician. Online access and services may also result in unforeseen consequences and may change the nature of the patient-clinician interaction. Research challenges include: (1) Ensuring privacy, including how to control inappropriate carer and guardian access to medical records; (2) Whether online access to records improves patient safety and health outcomes; (3) Whether record access increases disparities across social classes and between genders; and (4) Improving efficiency. The challenges for practice are: (1) How to incorporate online access into clinical workflow; (2) The need for a business model to fund the additional time taken. Creating a sustainable business model for a safe, private, informative, more equitable online service is needed if online access to records is to be provided outside of pay-for-service systems.


This brief reviews the state of the transport corridor which runs from the port of Lobito and the city of Benguela through the hinterland of Angola before it connects with the mineral rich regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. The once important Benguela railway was destroyed during the war and has not been in use since 1975. With Chinese assistance the railway has now been rebuilt from Lobito to the border with Congo. Minerals are yet to be transported to the port, but the corridor is already having an impact on the lives of the communities living along the corridor and is contributing to social and economic transformation.


Upon transfer into a mineral NO2- medium, the activity of the NO2--oxidizing system in cells of N. agilis K1 is dependent on the conditions of the previous heterotrophic growth. The NO2--oxidizing system is inducible. The PHB [poly(b-hydroxybutyric acid)] content depends on the exogenous N source. Cells grown with NO3- possess a high, with NO3- an intermediate, and with NH3, a low content of PHB. The activity of the NO2- oxidn. in heterotrophically grown cells also varies with the exogenous N source. In comparison with the activity of lithoautotrophically grown cells (100%), yeast ext.-peptone-grown cells possess 28, NO3- cells 20, and NH3 cells 2% of the NO2- oxidn. activity. The time for max. induction of the NO2- oxidizing system varies in a similar way when cells are grown in medium with NO3-, NO2-, and (NH4)2SO4. The highest activity is measured after 27, 33, and 120 h, resp. Induced cells degrade PHB and cellular protein.


For decades, legal attacks on partisan gerrymanders have foundered on a manageability dilemma: doctrinal standards the Supreme Court has regarded as judicially discoverable have been rejected as unmanageable, whereas the more manageable standards on offer have been dismissed as insufficiently tethered to the Constitution, that is, as undiscoverable. This Article contends that a solution to the dilemma may be found in a seemingly unlikely place: the body of state constitutional law concerned with the adequacy of state systems of public education. The justiciability barriers to partisan gerrymandering claims have near analogues in educational adequacy cases, yet only a minority of the state courts have deemed educational adequacy claims nonjusticiable. Other courts have dealt with putatively standardless education claims by holding that the legislature must adopt educational standards, together with a system of testing, school-finance, and accountability reasonably designed to realize those standards. If the legislature drags its feet, courts have issued provisional remedies, which the legislature is free to update or replace. I explain how the same strategy could be adapted for a new generation of "representational adequacy" claims under broadly worded provisions found in many state constitutions, and possibly under Article I or the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I also suggest that by anchoring claims to the generally-worded provisions about representation found in state constitutions and Article I, litigants can mitigate the substantial downside risk of success under the Equal Protection Clause — namely, the inducement of responsiveness-dampening bipartisan gerrymanders. The Appendix provides a state-by-state breakdown of constitutional provisions and relevant precedents, highlighting twenty-two states that appear ripe for representational-adequacy litigation.


Seagrass meadows rank among the most significant organic carbon (Corg) sinks on earth. We examined the variability in seagrass soil Corg stocks and composition across Australia and identified the main drivers of variability, applying a spatially hierarchical approach that incorporates bioregions and geomorphic settings. Top 30 cm soil Corg stocks were similar across bioregions and geomorphic settings (min‐max: 20–26 Mg Corg ha−1), but meadows formed by large species (i.e., Amphibolis spp. and Posidonia spp.) showed higher stocks (24–29 Mg Corg ha−1) than those formed by smaller species (e.g., Halodule, Halophila, Ruppia, Zostera, Cymodocea, and Syringodium; 12–21 Mg Corg ha−1). In temperate coastal meadows dominated by large species, soil Corg stocks mainly derived from seagrass Corg (72 ± 2%), while allochthonous Corg dominated soil Corg stocks in meadows formed by small species in temperate and tropical estuarine meadows (64 ± 5%). In temperate coastal meadows, soil Corg stocks were enhanced by low hydrodynamic exposure associated with high mud and seagrass Corg contents. In temperate estuarine meadows, soil Corg stocks were enhanced by high contributions of seagrass Corg, low to moderate solar radiation, and low human pressure. In tropical estuarine meadows formed by small species, large soil Corg stocks were mainly associated with low hydrodynamic energy, low rainfall, and high solar radiation. These results showcase that bioregion and geomorphic setting are not necessarily good predictors of soil Corg stocks and that site‐specific estimates based on local environmental factors are needed for Blue Carbon projects and greenhouse gases accounting purposes.


Although ecologists have long considered morphology and life history to be important determinants of the distribution, abundance, and dynamics of plants in nature, this book contains the first theory to predict explicitly both the evolution of plant traits and the effects of these traits on plant community structure and dynamics. David Tilman focuses on the universal requirement of terrestrial plants for both below-ground and above-ground resources. The physical separation of these resources means that plants face an unavoidable tradeoff. To obtain a higher proportion of one resource, a plant must allocate more of its growth to the structures involved in its acquisition, and thus necessarily obtain a lower proportion of another resource. Professor Tilman presents a simple theory that includes this constraint and tradeoff, and uses the theory to explore the evolution of plant life histories and morphologies along productivity and disturbance gradients. The book shows that relative growth rate, which is predicted to be strongly influenced by a plant's proportional allocation to leaves, is a major determinant of the transient dynamics of competition. These dynamics may explain the differences between successions on poor versus rich soils and suggest that most field experiments performed to date have been of too short a duration to allow unambiguous interpretation of their results.


Election databases are the main elements of a recently introduced framework that aims to create bridges between the computational social choice and the data management communities. An election database consists of incomplete information about the preferences of voters, in the form of partial orders, alongside with standard database relations that provide contextual information. Earlier work in computational social choice focused on the computation of possible winners and necessary winners that are determined by the available incomplete information and the voting rule at hand. The presence of the relational context, however, permits the formulation of sophisticated queries about voting rules, candidates, potential winners, issues, and positions on issues. Such queries can be given possible answer semantics and necessary answer semantics on an election database, where the former means that the query is true on some completion of the given partial orders and the latter means that the query is true on every such completion. %In this paper, łooseness = -1 We carry out a systematic investigation of query evaluation on election databases by analyzing how the interaction between the partial preferences, the voting rules and the relational context impacts on the complexity of query evaluation. To this effect, we focus on positional scoring rules and unions of conjunctive queries. We establish a number of results that delineate the complexity of the possible answers and of the necessary answers for different positional scoring rules and for various classes of unions of conjunctive queries. Furthermore, we show that query evaluation is fixed-parameter tractable, where the parameter is the number of candidates in the election.


OF DISSERTATION ANALYSTS' EPS FORECAST REVISIONS AFTER REPURCHASE ANNOUNCEMENTS Analysts' earnings per share (EPS) forecasts are one of the most widely used indicators of firm performance by market participants and firm executives. There are two components in EPS forecasts, but prior literature almost invariably focuses on the net income component (numerator) and ignores the shares outstanding component (denominator). Changes in shares outstanding mechanically alter EPS forecasts due to a changed denominator. These mechanical changes in EPS forecasts, however, do not reflect a firm's real performance. Therefore, it is important to understand analysts' share adjustment behaviors in order to better interpret analysts' EPS revisions after share changing events. This paper uses the setting of open market repurchase (OMR) announcements to explore analysts' share adjustment behaviors. The main findings include that, first, when analysts revise EPS forecasts after repurchase announcements, they adjust the denominator downward based on their estimates of the number of shares to be repurchased by the firms; and the number of days that analysts follow the repurchase firms and the uncertainties of repurchase announcements influence analysts' share adjustment behaviors. Second, the numerator-driven EPS forecast revisions, which remove the mechanical denominator-driven revisions, are more predictive of a firm's future operating performance than the actual EPS forecast revisions as reported by analysts. Lastly, market participants fail to process the implications of the denominator-driven EPS forecast revisions.


Cluster analysis is one of the most important and useful data mining techniques, and there are many applications of cluster analysis in pattern extraction, information retrieval, summarization, compression and other areas. The focus of this thesis is on clustering categorical and sequence data. Clustering categorical and sequence data is much more challenging than clustering numeric data because there is no inherently meaningful measure of similarity between the categorical objects and sequences. In this thesis, we design novel efficient and effective clustering algorithms for clustering categorical data and sequence respectively, and we perform extensive experiments to demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed algorithm. We also explore the extent to which the use of the proposed clustering algorithms can help to solve the personal bankruptcy prediction problem.
Clustering categorical data poses two challenges: defining an inherently meaningful similarity measure, and effectively dealing with clusters which are often embedded in different subspaces. In this thesis, we view the task of clustering categorical data from an optimization perspective and propose a novel objective function. Based on the new formulation, we design a divisive hierarchical clustering algorithm for categorical data, named DHCC. In the bisection procedure of DHCC, the initialization of the splitting is based on multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). We devise a strategy for dealing with the key issue in the divisive approach, namely, when to terminate the splitting process. The proposed algorithm is parameter-free, independent of the order in which the data is processed, scalable to large data sets and capable of seamlessly discovering clusters embedded in subspaces.
The prior knowledge about the data can be incorporated into the clustering process, which is known as semi-supervised clustering, to produce considerable improvement in learning accuracy. In this thesis, we view semi-supervised clustering of categorical data as an optimization problem with extra instance-level constraints, and propose a systematic and fully automated approach to guide the optimization process to a better solution in terms of satisfying the constraints, which would also be beneficial to the unconstrained objects. The proposed semi-supervised divisive hierarchical clustering algorithm for categorical data, named SDHCC, is parameter-free, fully automatic and effective in taking advantage of instance-level constraint background knowledge to improve the quality of the resultant dendrogram.
Many existing sequence clustering algorithms rely on a pair-wise measure of similarity between sequences. Usually, such a measure is effective if there are significantly informative patterns in the sequences. However, it is difficult to define a meaningful pair-wise similarity measure if sequences are short and contain noise. In this thesis, we circumvent the obstacle of defining the pairwise similarity by defining the similarity between an individual sequence and a set of sequences. Based on the new similarity measure, which is based on the conditional probability distribution (CPD) model, we design a novel model-based K-means clustering algorithm for sequence clustering, which works in a similar way to the traditional K-means on vectorial data.
Finally, we develop a personal bankruptcy prediction system whose predictors are mainly the bankruptcy features discovered by the clustering techniques proposed in this thesis. The mined bankruptcy features are represented in low-dimensional vector space. From the new feature space, which can be extended with some existing prediction-capable features (e.g., credit score), a support vector machine (SVM) classifier is built to combine these mined and already existing features. Our system is readily comprehensible and demonstrates promising prediction performance.


Abstract. The rheology of lower crust and its transient behavior in active strike-slip plate boundaries remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we analyzed a suite of granulite and lherzolite xenoliths from the upper Pleistocene–Holocene San Quintin volcanic field of northern Baja California, Mexico. The San Quintin volcanic field is located 20 km east of the Baja California shear zone, which accommodates the relative movement between the Pacific plate and Baja California microplate. The development of a strong foliation in both the mafic granulites and lherzolites, suggests that a lithospheric-scale shear zone exists beneath the San Quintin volcanic field. Combining microstructural observations, geothermometry, and phase equilibria modeling, we estimated that crystal-plastic deformation took place at temperatures of 750–890 °C and pressures of 400–560 MPa, corresponding to 15–22 km depth. A hot crustal geotherm of 40 ° C km−1 is required to explain the estimated deformation conditions. Infrared spectroscopy shows that plagioclase in the mafic granulites is relatively dry. Microstructures are interpreted to show that deformation in both the uppermost lower crust and upper mantle was accommodated by a combination of dislocation creep and grain-size-sensitive creep. Recrystallized grain size paleopiezometry yields low differential stresses of 12–33 and 17 MPa for plagioclase and olivine, respectively. The lower range of stresses (12–17 MPa) in the mafic granulite and lherzolite xenoliths is interpreted to be associated with transient deformation under decreasing stress conditions, following an event of stress increase. Using flow laws for dry plagioclase, we estimated a low viscosity of 1.1–1.3×1020 Pa ⋅ s for the high temperature conditions (890 °C) in the lower crust. Significantly lower viscosities in the range of 1016–1019 Pa ⋅ s, were estimated using flow laws for wet plagioclase. The shallow upper mantle has a low viscosity of 5.7×1019 Pa ⋅ s, which indicates the lack of an upper-mantle lid beneath northern Baja California. Our data show that during post-seismic transients, the upper mantle and the lower crust in the Pacific–Baja California plate boundary are characterized by similar and low differential stress. Transient viscosity of the lower crust is similar to the viscosity of the upper mantle.


Plutonic bodies of the Central and Southern Vosges Mts can be assigned to two major early Carboniferous magmatic events: a Visean Mg–K event (c. 345 and 340–336 Ma) and a younger S-type event (329–322 Ma). New petrological, geochemical and Sr–Nd isotopic data highlight the existence of two groups of Mg–K intrusions that might be related to the nature of their primary magma sources; that is, CHUR-like and enriched mantle, which interacted with juvenile and mature crustal material, respectively. The differences between these two groups are explained by a geodynamic scenario involving deep subduction and relamination of the Saxothuringian continental crust under the Moldanubian continent. The relaminated radiogenic Saxothuringian material is thought to have been responsible for dehydration melting of both subducted crust and underlying metasomatized mantle, thereby generating the Mg–K magma subsequently emplaced at middle crustal depth. During their ascent, the mafic magmas interacted with crustally derived felsic melts. Significantly later (c. 10–15 myr) a widespread mid-crustal anatexis occurred, generating voluminous granite intrusions from mixed crustal sources (paragneisses and/or immature felsic–intermediate metaigneous rocks mixed with Mg–K plutons). The principal heat source for such a major melting event is related to the presence of Mg–K plutons rich in heat-producing elements, which were responsible, after the time lag specified, for a temperature increase at mid-crustal levels by in situ radiogenic heat production. The current study underlines the importance of deep continental crust subduction and relamination for the magmatism and development of collisional orogens. Supplementary material: Analytical methods and data, and supplementary figures, are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18795.


Crisis communication research has primarily focused on universal models guiding managers of various organisations in times of crisis. Even though this is about to change, a tendency remains for research in the field to overlook the impact of structural conditions on organisation's crisis communication. In order to add to the emergent discussion on new theoretical and empirical venues within the field of crisis communication, this paper proposes a framework based on new institutional theory for analysing crisis communication practices as a societal phenomenon. New institutionalism is advocated due to its ability to shift the focus from agency to structure and in doing so emphasise the social preconditions for organisational activities. In line with this, this conceptual paper discusses crisis communication as an institution, i.e., as a set of more or less conscious ideas about formats (the organisational structures developed for crisis communication work), contents (the content of organisations' communication in times of crisis) and contexts (the situations during which organisations are expected to perform crisis communication). Moreover, we discuss how these ideas become translated (i.e., modified) as they travel (i.e., become legitimate, popular and get widely spread) across organisational and institutional contexts. In order to illustrate the framework described above, the Swedish authorities' communication in connection to the A/H1N1 outbreak is used as a case study.


Abstract. Soil respiration rates were measured along different parts of a slope in (a) an evergreen forest with common brown forest soil and (b) a deciduous forest with immature soil. The effects of soil temperature, soil moisture and soil properties were estimated individually, and the magnitudes of these effects in the deciduous and evergreen forests were compared. In the evergreen forest with common brown forest soil, soil properties had the greatest effect on soil respiration rates, followed by soil moisture and soil temperature. These results may be explained by the fact that different soil properties matured within different environments. It can be argued that the low soil respiration rates in the low parts of the slope in the evergreen forest resulted from soil properties and not from wet soil conditions. In the deciduous forest, soil respiration rates were more strongly affected by soil moisture and soil temperature than by soil properties. These effects were likely due to the immaturity of the forest soil.


1. The available data related to the activity energetics of lizards in the field were collated with respect to three indices of activity energetics: the ecological cost of transport (ECT) expressed as a percentage of the total energy, the proportion of total energy used in all forms of activity (%AR), and the sustained metabolic scope (SusMS), defined as the ratio of the total energy expenditure to the total resting metabolism. 2. The ECT values of lizards ranged from 3 to 36% with five of 11 species having values >20%. The percentage AR ranged from 23 to 80% for lizards during active seasons, with most species having values > 50%. The SusMS ranged from 1.1 to 5.1. 3. Values of ECT are higher for lizards than for mammals, in part because the costs of maintenance metabolism are higher in mammals. 4. The percentage AR and SusMS values of mammals are higher than those of lizards. 5. It follows from the previous two points that the proportion of the total daily energy that is expended in non-locomotory activities is disproportionately higher in mammals compared with lizards. 6. The energy expended in locomotion is a significant portion of the energy budget of lizards. This is generally true for all seasons in which there is activity.


An electrospinning technique coupled with sol–gel chemistry is applied for the one‐pot preparation of macroporous–mesoporous titanium dioxide nanofibrous mats embedded with Au nanoparticles. This facile approach produces nanofibers that are thermally treated to simultaneously 1) remove the organics, 2) reduce AuIII to Au0 to form Au nanoparticles, and 3) crystallize titania to the anatase phase. This methodology allows high‐temperature treatment (650 °C) for well‐crystallized titania without agglomeration of the nanoparticulate Au (13±3 nm), which thereby significantly advances the existing methods for the synthesis of Au/TiO2 materials for which multiple steps are required. Additionally, high Au yields (≈100 %) were achieved in the final structure, which demonstrates another merit of this technique. The X‐ray diffraction patterns of the nanofibers were monitored by using a synchrotron beamline as the sample was heated to determine the optimum calcination temperature required to maximize the anatase phase and minimize the formation of rutile. Both the material properties (which include morphology, pore size distribution, surface area, Au particle size, and TiO2 crystal phase and size) and photocatalytic activity can be readily tuned as a function of the calcination temperature and Au content. The material calcined at 550 °C with 2.0 wt % Au shows the highest photocatalytic activity. This material is anatase in phase (which maximizes the electron‐transfer activity) and has the highest loading of small Au nanoparticles (which act as electron sinks to decrease the recombination of photo‐excited electrons and holes). These Au/TiO2 nanofibrous mats have the advantage of easy recovery and, therefore, reuse after the photocatalytic reaction, which addresses the issue of photocatalyst separation when using nanoparticulate powders as photocatalysts.


Viral vectors are powerful tools for a steadily increasing number of applications in gene therapy and basic research. In recent years, many proof-of-concept studies and clinical trials resulted in important progress and benefit for patients. Strategies to customize viral vectors will be key to their future success. This thesis deals with viral vectors that were engineered to use a cell surface receptor of choice for cell entry. Such vectors can mediate a restricted gene delivery to a cell type defined by the targeted receptor. The first part of this thesis investigates lentiviral vectors (LVs) carrying engineered glycoproteins of measles virus (MV) to better understand the molecular events during particle cell entry that proceeds via membrane fusion. The second part focuses on adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV) which are non-enveloped particles. AAVs were engineered to assess their potential in detecting rare epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM)-positive tumor cells.
The first step of MV infection is attachment mediated by the hemagglutinin (H) to one of its receptors which is thought to produce conformational changes in the membrane fusion protein (F) that trigger insertion of its fusion peptide into the target cell membrane. This fusion triggering model was challenged in this thesis by uncoupling the receptor attachment and the fusion-helper function of H by introducing mutations that made it blind to its normal receptors. An artificial receptor attachment protein specific for Her2/neu was incorporated into the membranes of pseudotyped lentiviral particles as a separate transmembrane protein along with H and F. Surprisingly, these particles entered efficiently into Her2/neu-positive SK-OV-3 as well as CHO-Her2 cells. Cell entry was pH-independent, required high-affinity receptor binding and was strictly dependent on the presence of H and F. H-specific monoclonal antibodies as well as mutations in H interfering with H/F interactions blocked cell entry. The vector particles mediated stable and specific transfer of reporter genes into Her2/neu-positive human tumor cells also in vivo, while exhibiting improved infectivity and higher titers as compared to conventional Her2/neu-targeted vectors displaying the targeting ligand on H. Additionally, several other targeting ligands were tested in this setting. Extending the current model of MV cell entry, the data suggest that receptor binding of H is not required for its fusion-helper function but particle-cell contact in general may be sufficient to induce the conformational changes in the H/F complex and to activate membrane fusion.
Towards applying AAV targeting technology for the detection, modification or elimination of rare cells expressing EpCAM, which is a marker of circulating tumor cells (CTC), AAVs displaying designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins) specific for EpCAM were generated. The DARPin Ec1 was displayed on the particle surface and mediated EpCAM-specific gene transfer into receptor-positive cell lines which was further confirmed by competition experiments with the extracellular domain of EpCAM. Transduction was clearly receptor density-dependent and non-malignant EpCAM-positive primary cells were only poorly transducable ex vivo and in vivo. Performance of vector particles was further enhanced by ion metal affinity chromatography purification. To assess the potency of EpCAM-AAV in detecting rare EpCAM-positive tumor cells, low amounts of MDA-MB-453 tumor cells were mixed with isolated human PBMC. EpCAM-AAV tracked basically all of the tumor cells, even when these made up only 0.3% of the cell mixture. In a next step, the conditions of circulating tumor cells in whole blood were mimicked. As few as 150 tumor cells present in 7.5 milliliters of human blood were readily detected by EpCAM-AAV suggesting that targeted AAVs form a new tool for the detection of rare tumor cells.
The work of this thesis clearly demonstrates that receptor targeting of enveloped and non-enveloped viral vectors is a flexible and versatile technique. Highlighting that both LVs and AAVs can be used not only as gene therapy vectors but also in virological research and diagnostics, these targeting systems open up new possibilities for a broad spectrum of applications.


We examined the possible role of CD4 molecules during in vivo and in vitro fetal thymic development. Our results show that fetal thymi treated with intact anti-CD4 mAbs fail to generate CD4 single-positive T cells, while the generation of the other phenotypes remains unchanged. Most importantly, the use of F(ab')2 and Fab anti-CD4 mAb gave identical results, i.e., failure to generate CD4+/CD8- T cells, with no effect on the generation of CD4+/CD8+ T cells. Since F(ab')2 and Fab anti-CD4 fail to deplete CD4+/CD8- in adult mice, these results strongly argue that the absence of CD4+/CD8- T cells is not due to depletion, but rather, is caused by a lack of positive selection, attributable to an obstructed CD4-MHC class II interaction. Furthermore, we also observed an increase in TCR/CD3 expression after anti-CD4 (divalent or monovalent) mAb treatment. The TCR/CD3 upregulation occurs in the double-positive population, and may result from CD4 signaling after mAb engagement, or may be a consequence of the blocked CD4-class II interactions. One proposed model argues that the CD3 upregulation occurs in an effort to compensate for the reduction in avidity or signaling that is normally provided by the interaction of the CD4 accessory molecule and its ligand. As a whole, our findings advocate that CD4 molecules play a decisive role in the differentiation of thymocytes.


Soil and environmental studies in the vadose zone are often restricted by the lack of equipment that can measure the variation of soil physical parameters in space and time. In this paper we demonstrate that thermo‐time domain reflectometry (thermo‐TDR) can be used for a wide range of soil physical measurements. The thermo‐TDR probe combines TDR and heat‐pulse technologies into a single probe. It allows measurements of volumetric soil water content (θ), temperature (T), electrical conductivity (EC), thermal conductivity (λ), thermal diffusivity (α), and volumetric heat capacity (ρc) at the same sampling positions simultaneously. Furthermore, other soil physical parameters, such as bulk density (ρb), air‐filled porosity (na), and degree of saturation (S), can be determined from their relationships with ρc and θ. We examined the performance of the thermo‐TDR using both published data and laboratory measurements on packed columns and intact cores from six soils of varying texture. The results show that the thermo‐TDR provides reliable measurements of θ, EC, ρc, λ, na, and S, but relatively large errors exist in ρb The average standard error between thermo‐TDR measurements and gravimetric measurements is 0.026 m3 m−3 for θ, 0.050 m3 m−3 for na, 0.069 for S, and 0.134 Mg m−3 for ρb The standard error between thermo‐TDR measurements and theoretical predictions of ρc is 0.134 MJ m−3 K−1 These promising findings coupled with the characteristics of small probe size and easy automation make the thermo‐TDR sensor an ideal tool for studying coupled flow processes in the vadose zone. Further improvements in probe design, waveform interpretation, and determination of effective probe length are also noted as steps toward improving accuracy and precision of future thermo‐TDR measurements.


Background: While effects of occupational and environmental air pollution exposure on inflammation-related cardiopulmonary impairment are well documented, the association linking long-term air pollution exposure and osteoporosis risk is still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate effects of long-term air pollution exposure on the risk of osteoporosis in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Methods: We collected 70 retired workers' data from the pulmonary outpatient unit of a medical center in Taiwan and air pollution data from the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration. Associations of 1-year averaged criteria air pollutants [particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters <10 μm (PM10), ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon monoxide (CO)] with the risk of osteoporosis were explored by generalized additive models. Effect modification by inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) usage was also assessed in the model. Results: After controlling for age, sex, body mass index, current smoking, drinking, ICS usage, six-minute walk distance, global initiative for chronic obstructive and smooth functions of interview date and yearly temperature, we observed that increased 1-year averaged NO2 was significantly associated with 45% higher odds of osteoporosis (odds ratio=1.451 [95% confidence interval=1.124 to 1.778]). Retired workers with ICS usage showed 44% higher odds of osteoporosis associated with increased NO2. Conclusions: The risk of developing osteoporosis among retired workers with COPD was positively associated with long-term exposure to 1-year averaged NO2. ICS usage can modify the effect of NO2 on osteoporosis risk.


This paper proposes a general methodology for building a soft ware tool to aid in the design and performance modeling of local computer networks. At the core of the modeling approach lies a distributed view of the network consisting of independently modeled network functional components—protocols, nodes, and resources. The network components communicate through model defined or user provided interfaces. As a consequence, the effect of network changes, component deletions, or addi tions are localized and the network model can be easily altered to highlight certain components while reducing others as re quired in different design phases. The result is that long simula tion runs of a large and fully detailed model are replaced by shorter runs of several smaller "function oriented" network models. The inherent partitioning of the system model into relatively independent functional units makes it also a poten tial candidate for a distributed simulation implementation. The given methodology is exemplified with an actual implemen tation of an Ethernet* based system configuring tool. The methodology can also be applied to other distributed systems to build efficient modular simulator programs.


textabstractTeachers can be influential in shaping the aspirations of rural children, directly (by talking to them about possible future careers and lifestyles, both within and outside the classroom setting) and indirectly (as rare representatives of educated people in a rural setting). However, many teachers in remote rural settings demonstrate little commitment to their charges and are frequently absent, in part because they lack conviction that they can make a difference in children's lives. Teachers need preparation, support and supervision to become better facilitators of learning, sources of information about potential career pathways and as embodied signifiers of education in a rural community.


Bohemia has been variously defined as a mythical country, a state of mind, a tavern by the wayside on the road of life. The editors of this volume prefer a leaner definition: an attitude of dissent from the prevailing values of middle-class society, one dependent on the existence of caf life. But whatever definition is preferred, this rich and long overdue collective portrait of Bohemian life in a large variety of settings is certain to engage and even entrance readers of all types: from the student of culture to social researchers and literary figures n search of their ancestral roots. The work is international in scope and social scientific in conception. But because of the special nature of the Bohemian fascination, the volume is also graced by an unusually larger number of exquisite literary essays. Hence, one will find in this anthology writings by Malcolm Cowely, Norman Podhoretz, Norman Mailer, Theophile Gautier, Honore de Balzac, Mary Austin, Stefan Zweig, Nadine Gordimer, and Ernest Hemingway. Social scientists are well represented by Cesar Grana, Ephraim Mizruchi, W.I. Thomas, Florian Znaniecki, Harvey Zorbaugh, John R. Howard, and G. William Domhoff, among others. The volume is sectioned into major themes in the history of Bohemia: social and literary origins, testimony by the participants, analysis by critics of and crusaders for the bohemian life, the ideological characteristics of the bohemians, and the long term prospect as well as retrospect for bohemenianism as a system, culture and ideology. The editors have provided a framework for examining some fundamental themes in social structure and social deviance: What are the levels of toleration within a society? Do artists deserve and receive special treatment by the powers that be? And what are the connections between bohemian life-styles and political protest movements? This is an anthology and not a treatise, so the reader is free to pick and choose not only what to read, but what sort of general patterns are essential and which are transitional. This collection, initiated by the late Cesar Grana, has been completed and brought to fruition by his wife Marigay Grana. Cesar Grana was, prior to his death, professor of sociology at the University of California in San Diego. Among his major books is "Meaning and Authenticity," also available from Transaction. Marigay Grana was formerly an urban planner and designer in San Diego. She now is a free-lance editor living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


Lukas Muntingh reveals that South Africa ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) in 1998 and that its Initial Report, which was due a year later, was only submitted in 2005 and assessed by the UN Committee against Torture in November 2006.

The Initial Report was incomplete, deviated from the guidelines and dealt superficially with obligations under CAT. In response to the Initial Report, six civil society organisations made written and oral submissions to the UN Committee against Torture during its 37th Session. This enabled the Committee to obtain a more informed view of steps taken, or not taken, by South Africa to give effect to its obligations under CAT. Many of the concerns raised by the civil society organisations found their way into the Committee's Concluding Remarks on the Initial Report. The overall impression remains that the South African government has to date not regarded its obligations under CAT as a priority.


This paper reviews existing quantitative research on the relationship between institutions and economic growth in general, and pro-poor growth in particular. The tools proposed by the Operationalising Pro-Poor Growth (OPPG) programme are extremely useful in generating stylized facts about pro-poor growth; however, the OPPG tools in most part do not provide an analysis of the determinants of pro-poor growth. Cross-country econometric methods, which have been the dominant approach in the literature, suffer from weak instrument problems that make it difficult to interpret the role of institutions in economic growth as causal; furthermore, cross-country regression analysis is based on the implicit assumption of 'homogeneity' in the observed relationship across countries, an assumption which seems untenable when considering the context-specificity of the impact of institutions on economic growth. Further quantitative research on institutions and pro-poor growth should address the determinants of the form and functioning of economic institutions and their impact on pro-poor growth, using sub-national units (region/state/ village), households and firms as units of analysis.


Soliton propagation is modeled in a tapered photonic crystal fiber for various taper profiles with the purpose of optimizing the soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) in such geometries. An optimal degree of tapering is found to exist for tapers with an axially uniform waist. In the case of axially nonuniform waists, an additional enhancement of the SSFS is achieved by varying the taper waist diameter along its length in a carefully designed fashion in order to present an optimal level of group-velocity dispersion to the soliton at each point, thus avoiding the spectral recoil due to the emission of dispersive waves. In doing so, the increased nonlinearity and dispersion engineering afforded by the reduction of the core size are exploited while circumventing the limitation imposed on the soliton redshift by the associated shortening of the red zero-dispersion wavelength.


Analysis of variance type models are considered for a regression function or for the logarithm of a probability function, conditional probability function, density function, conditional density function, hazard function, conditional hazard function or spectral density function. Polynomial splines are used to model the main effects, and their tensor products are used to model any interaction components that are included. In the special context of survival analysis, the baseline hazard function is modeled and nonproportionality is allowed. In general, the theory involves the $L_2$ rate of convergence for the fitted model and its components. The methodology involves least squares and maximum likelihood estimation, stepwise addition of basis functions using Rao statistics, stepwise deletion using Wald statistics and model selection using the Bayesian information criterion, cross-validation or an independent test set. Publicly available software, written in C and interfaced to S/S-PLUS, is used to apply this methodology to real data.


In this paper we propose a framework for trajectory planning and control of tracked vehicles for rescue environments, based on Augmented Reality (AR). The framework provides the human operator with an AR-based interface that facilitates both 3D path planning and obstacle negotiation. The interface converts the 3D movements of a marker pen, handheld by the operator, into trajectories feasible for the tracked vehicle. The framework implements a trajectory tracking controller to allow the tracked vehicle to autonomously follow the trajectories, decided by the operator. This controller relies on a localization system which provides, at real-time, position feedback. The localization system exploits the performance of a Dead Reckoning System together with the accuracy of an ICP-based SLAM in pose estimation, to determine the pose of the tracked vehicle within the 3D map. We demonstrate the application of the planning framework in autonomous robot navigation for evaluating the robot capabilities in rescue environments. Our experiments show the effectiveness of the trajectory tracking control method.


In this study we demonstrate the suitability of Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers (HC-PCF) for multiwatt average power pulse compression. We spectrally broadened picosecond pulses from a SESAM mode-locked thin disk laser in a xenon gas filled Kagome-type HC-PCF and compressed these pulses to below 250 fs with a hypocycloid-core fiber and 470 fs with a single cell core defect fiber. The compressed average output power of 7.2 W and 10.2 W at a pulse repetition rate of approximately 10 MHz corresponds to pulse energies of 0.7 µJ and 1 µJ and to peak powers of 1.6 MW and 1.7 MW, respectively. Further optimization of the fiber parameters should enable pulse compression to below 50 fs duration at substantially higher pulse energies.


In conjunction with the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund in New Delhi, Oxford proudly announces the reissue of Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India, two famous works by Jawaharlal Nehru. One of modern day's most articulate statesmen, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote a on a wide variety of subjects. Describing himself as "a dabbler in many things," he committed his life not only to politics but also to nature and wild life, drama, poetry, history, and science, as well as many other fields. These two volumes help to illuminate the depth of his interests and knowledge and the skill and elegance with which he treated the written word.