The purpose of this thesis is to explore the processes observed in organization-led, reward-based, crowdfunding campaigns towards successful funding outcomes. Prior research has overlooked the processes organizations encounter when planning and executing crowdfunding campaigns that subsequently shape funders' decision-making processes. This qualitative research uses a process-based view and trust theories to understand the crowdfunding processes arising from interactions occurring during temporal organization-led crowdfunding initiatives in the creative industries. The study completed 35 in-depth and open-ended interviews and observations to understand these processes. Additional qualitative data forms enhance the study including digital data sources, screen-based documents and archival documents (675 pages). The study's aim to differentiate between individual-led and organization-led crowdfunding processes becomes the first contribution to the crowdfunding literature. Next, the first two articles contribute individually to distinct and yet, interdependent synergies (i.e., organizational crowdfunding teams and funders). Each article presents its focused inquiry with the goal of understanding different aspects of organization-led crowdfunding campaigns. A third article provides a teaching case. The thesis comprises five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces an overview of the literature, the purpose of the study, the research methodology and the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 presents the first article, 'From Inception to Finalization: Curating campaign processes in organization-led crowdfunding.' This article explores eight cases representing mainstream crowdfunding organizations. Specifically, the study examines the processes crowdfunding organizations teams employ to acquire and assemble the necessary knowledge and skills to stage successful crowdfunding campaigns. The article also addresses context-related challenges such as diverging ideologies and the expectations of multiple internal stakeholders. Key findings demonstrate interdependent trust dimensions rising as synergetic mechanisms leveraging the initialization, the steering and the finalization exchanges affecting the choreographed organizational processes in this context. Chapter 3 submits the second article, 'Capitalizing Relational and Competence Trust: funders' decision processes in organization-led crowdfunding.' This article investigates funders' interactions and reliance on a trusted environment and associations to develop their decisions at distinctive stages of the crowdfunding contribution process. Using data responses from an assortment of funders (e.g., experienced and nascent funders), key findings demonstrate that funders exercise a certain level of sophisticated screening to arrive at their final financing decisions and circulation of campaign information based on their professional experience and social involvement in the creative industries. Chapter 4 offers a published article, 'Crowdfunding and Museums: A Field Trip Exemplar in the UK.' This learning innovation exercise links theory and practical entrepreneurial experiences, including group interfaces and processes, in the preparation of a project-based crowdfunding campaign. The conclusion (Chapter 5) outlines the significant contributions the three articles make to the advancement of our knowledge of the unique processes experienced by crowdfunding organizations and their funders.


Southeast drought conditions have accentuated the demand for irrigation in the face of restricted water supply. For allocating this supply, Georgia held an auction for withdrawing irrigated acreage. This auction withdrew 33,000 acres from irrigation, resulting in a physical estimate of a 399 acre-feet daily increase in water flow. The actual reduction is driven by crop distributional changes on the basis of economic substitution and expansion effects. In contrast to the physical estimates, an econometric model that considers these effects is developed. The differences between the physical and econometric models result in an increase in the estimate of water savings of around 19% to 24%.


NEOPLASMIS OF THE HUMNANTHYROID are a well-studied clinical and pathologic entity. Numerous publications have dealt with their histologic classification and biology. Comparable data concerning thyroid neoplasms in dogs and cats has not been well established, although these tumors have been described in several textbooks and monographs.' 9 The purposes of the present study are to: a) classifv adenomas and carcinomas of the canine and feline thyroid using specimens from a collection of well-documented cases; b) illustrate gross, microscopic, and ultrastructural features of these tumors; c) review and discuss recent data concerning hvperthyroidism in dogs with carcinoma of the thyroid; d) report for the first time on clinical and morphologic findings in proven cases of medullarv carcinoma of the canine thyroid; e) correlate histologic, ultrastructural, and clinical data so that structural functional relationships may be more clearly understood; and f) discuss and compare these findings with features of human thyroid neoplasms. It is hoped that this wvork will provide oncologists with current information concerning the appearance and biology of thyroid tumors in two domestic animals which share man's environment.


STUDY OBJECTIVES
To investigate treatment models using cognitive-behavior therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and positive airway pressure (PAP) for people with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and comorbid insomnia.

METHODS
121 adults with OSA and comorbid insomnia were randomized to receive CBT-I followed by PAP, CBT-I concurrent with PAP, or PAP only. PAP was delivered following standard clinical procedures for in-lab titration and home set-up and CBT-I was delivered in four individual sessions. The primary outcome measure was PAP adherence across the first 90 days, with regular PAP use (≥4 hours on ≥70% of nights during a 30-day period) serving as the clinical endpoint. The secondary outcome measures were the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) with good sleeper (PSQI< 5), remission (ISI< 8), and response (ISI reduction from baseline > 7) serving as the clinical endpoints.

RESULTS
No significant differences were found between the concomitant treatment arms versus PAP only on PAP adherence measures, including the percentage of participants who met the clinical endpoint. Compared to PAP alone, the concomitant treatment arms reported a significantly greater reduction from baseline on the ISI (p=.0009) and had a greater percentage of participants who were good sleepers (p=.044) and remitters (p=.008). No significant differences were found between the sequential versus concurrent treatment models on any outcome measure.

CONCLUSIONS
The findings from this study indicate that combining CBT-I with PAP is superior to PAP alone on insomnia outcomes but does not significantly improve adherence to PAP.


Recommending relevant and novel music to a user is one of the central applied problems in music information research. In the present work we propose three content-based approaches to this task. Starting from an explicit set of music tracks provided by the user as evidence of his/her music preferences, we infer high-level semantic descriptors, covering dierent musical facets, such as genre, culture, moods, instruments, rhythm, and tempo. On this basis, two of the proposed approaches employ a semantic music similarity measure to generate recommendations. The third approach creates a probabilistic model of the user's preference in the semantic domain. We evaluate these approaches against two recommenders using state-of-the-art timbral features, and two contextual baselines, one exploiting simple genre categories, the other using similarity information obtained from collaborative ltering. We conduct a listening experiment to assess familiarity, liking and further listening intentions for the provided recommendations. According to the obtained results, we found our semantic approaches to outperform the low-level timbral baselines together with the genre-based recommender. Though the proposed approaches could not reach a performance comparable to the involved collaborative ltering system, they yielded acceptable results in terms of successful novel recommendations. We conclude that the proposed semantic approaches are suitable for music discovery especially in the long tail.


Context: Time bound increase in the nanohardness of the enamel after remineralization with casein phosphopeptide-amorphous calcium phosphate (CPP-ACP) in a regular interval of 1 h has not been explored in the literature to a greater extent. Aims: To determine and compare the maximum hardness of the remineralized caries-like lesions, in terms of nanohardness and the rate of achieving maximum hardness at 1-h interval, after treatment with artificial saliva and CPP-ACP, over 12 h. Materials and Methods: Fifty longitudinal sections of extracted sound permanent maxillary central, lateral incisors were immersed in demineralizing solution for 4 days. The samples were then randomly divided into three groups, consisting of 12 sections each for soaking them in three different media-isotonic saline, artificial saliva, and CPP-ACP for 12 h. The nanohardness was measured on the labial surface, at baseline, after erosion, and after remineralization at 1-h interval. Statistical Analysis Used: The data was analyzed with paired t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc analysis. Results: CPP-ACP increased the enamel hardness significantly (P < 0.001), at an increased rate, than artificial saliva. Conclusions: This study has provided an insight into the frequency of use of CPP-ACP, once per day, as the nanohardness of enamel samples increased within 1 h of application and remained within the normal limits after 12 h.


Ultraviolet spectroscopy from the Pioneer Venus Orbiter shows a decline in the cloud top abundance of SO2 from about 100 ppb to about 10 ppb in the period 1978-1986. A consistent decline in polar haze has occurred over the same period, with the correlation coefficient between these two observables of r = 0.8. Star calibrations determine the instrument sensitivity to within 10 percent which rules out the possibility that this is an instrumental effect. Systematic errors could increase the SO2 abundance to twice the inferred values in later orbits. Tracking of SO2 features and power spectral analysis give rotation periods for the longer-lived features of 3.6-5.2 days, consistent with cloud-tracked winds observed at other wavelengths. The behavior of SO2 and polar haze can be plausibly explained by episodic injection of SO2 into the cloud top regions, for example, by active volcanism.


The debate between proponents of income taxation and proponents of consumption taxation has focused almost exclusively on the differing treatment of savings under the two tax bases. This is odd, given that income and consumption tax bases also differ in their treatment of debt-financed consumption. This Essay addresses the largely-ignored question of the taxation of debt-financed consumption. It contends that a strong case can be made in favor of a hybrid income-consumption tax base under which taxation is triggered by the earlier of consumption or income, so that both debt-financed consumption and saved income are included in the tax base. The Essay explains how one might reasonably favor consumption tax treatment of consumer debt even if one favors strict accretion-style income taxation on the savings side. It also considers how the case for the proposed tax treatment of debt-financed consumption is strengthened if most life cycle savings are already taxed under a consumption tax model (as is the case under the current federal income tax). Adoption of the proposal would have significant consequences - largely favorable - for many taxpayers. If taxpayers use loans to smooth consumption by shifting spending power from higher-income later years to lower-income earlier years (as in the case of student loans to cover living expenses, and credit card debt incurred during periods of unemployment), then treating those loans as determinative of the timing of taxation will benefit taxpayers by shifting tax base inclusions from higher-bracket years to lower-bracket years. It might also be appropriate to allow the earned income tax credit (EITC) with respect to debt-financed consumption.


The proposed study examined the role of anxiety and risk-taking in driving performance in adolescents. In addition to examining the sample as a whole, gender differences were assessed given earlier reports from our laboratory and others indicating that males and females differ with respect to risky behaviors to driving performance and anxiety. Adolescents' subjective and physiological responses to a driving simulator task were assessed. Anxiety was measured via self report and salivary cortisol. Participants provided a baseline saliva sample and 3 post-task samples for cortisol analysis. Subjective anxiety scores were obtained at both baseline and following the driving stressor. Information concerning impulsivity, as well as other psychological constructs was also collected at baseline. Unlike the pilot study, there were no relationships (with or without respect to gender) between salivary cortisol and both self-reported anxiety (state and trait) or impulsively measures for this sample. These results suggest that this group of adolescents may not have been anxious about the driving task. This discrepancy may stem from error introduced by the smaller sample size obtained from the initial findings or to other factors remaining outside the parameters of the current study. The task did, however, induce a slight hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis response indicating some physiological arousal. Males had significantly higher cortisol levels at baseline than females and at time point 3 while approaching significance at time points 2 and 4. Females possessed significantly higher trait anxiety than males and all post task cortisol levels were positively correlated to age while time points 2 and 4 (with time point 3 approaching significance, p=0.09) were inversely correlated with Self Depreciation scores. Additionally, females had Persecutory Ideas scores that were also negatively correlated with cortisol at time points 3 and 4. For both the entire sample and males only, the correlation between post-task cortisol and driving performance was positive and approached significance (p=0.07 and p=0.08, respectively), suggesting that some HPA activation may be facilitative for successful driving task performance. Correlations between driving performance and psychological constructs were explored and discussed with and without respect to gender.


This paper addresses COVID-19 in India, looking at how the interplay of inequality, vulnerability, and the pandemic has compounded uncertainties for poor and marginalised groups, leading to insecurity, stigma and a severe loss of livelihoods. A strict government lockdown destroyed the incomes of farmers and urban informal workers and triggered an exodus of migrant workers from Indian cities, a mass movement which placed additional pressures on the country's rural communities. Elsewhere in the country, lockdown restrictions and pandemic response have coincided with heatwaves, floods and cyclones, impeding disaster response and relief. At the same time, the pandemic has been politicised to target minority groups (such as Muslims, Dalits), suppress dissent, and undermine constitutional values. The paper focuses on how COVID-19 has intersected with and multiplied existing uncertainties faced by different vulnerable groups and communities in India who have remained largely invisible in India's development story. With the biggest challenge for government now being to mitigate the further fall of millions of people into extreme poverty, the brief also reflects on pathways for recovery and transformation, including opportunities for rural revival, inclusive welfare, and community response. This brief is based on a review of existing published and grey literature, and 23 interviews with experts and practitioners from 12 states in India, including representation from domestic and international NGOs, and local civil society organisations. It was developed for the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) by Justin Pickard, Shilpi Srivastava, Lyla Mehta (IDS), and Mihir R. Bhatt. Some of the cases draw on ongoing research of the TAPESTRY project, which explores bottom-up transformations in marginal environments across India and Bangladesh.


In this paper, following the IT acceptance theory framework, we analyze factors that affect users' acceptance of micro-blogging in a large corporate environment. We categorized users into 4 groups based on their posting and reading behaviors: Actives, Dabblers, Lurkers and Skeptics. Groups show different perceived benefits, cost concerns, and social influence factors. The work can help both practitioners and scholars build an initial understanding of user acceptance of micro-blogging in the Enterprise.


Objective:Restraint stress in rats is known to adversely affect the behavior especially memory dysfunctions in rats. Though there are many factors involved in this stress-induced memory impairment, damage to the antioxidant system in the brain is also known to be a causative factor. Resveratrol is known to exert its neuroprotective potentials by up regulating several antioxidant systems. Hence, the present study was undertaken to evaluate the neuroprotective effect of resveratrol against stress-induced cognitive impairment and involvement of brain antioxidant enzymes.
Methods: Male rats were subjected to restraint stress for 6 hours consecutively for 21 days. Another sets of rats received similar intensity and duration of stress along with either 10 or 20mg/kg dose of resveratrol for 28 days with its administration before a weak of stressing procedure. A control group of rats was also served in the experiment. The behavioural studies include active avoidance and open field tests. Thereafter the rats were sacrificed and the whole brain homogenate was subjected to lipid peroxidation and total antioxidants (TAO)estimation.
Results: Restraint stress has impaired motor activity, learning and memory activities and resveratrol treatment has reversed this cognitive dysfunction. Restraint stress caused an alteration in oxidative stress markers with a significant increase in lipid peroxidation and depletion of total antioxidant activities, which was reversed by resveratrol.
Conclusion: Results of the present study confirm that resveratrol can reverse the stress induced memory dysfunction by exerting its antioxidant potentials.


A high-resolution image of the compressional wave velocity and density structure in the shallow edifice of Mount Vesuvius has been derived from simultaneous inversion of travel times and hypocentral parameters of local earthquakes and from gravity inversion. The robustness of the tomography solution has been improved by adding to the earthquake data a set of land based shots, used for constraining the travel time residuals. The results give a high resolution image of the P-wave velocity structure with details down to 300-500 m. The relocated local seismicity appears to extend down to 5 km depth below the central crater, distributed into two clusters, and separated by an anomalously high Vp region positioned at around 1 km depth. A zone with high Vp/Vs ratio in the upper layers is interpreted as produced by the presence of intense fluid circulation alternatively to the interpretation in terms of a small magma chamber inferred by petrologic studies. In this shallower zone the seismicity has the minimum energy, whilst most of the high-energy quakes (up to Magnitude 3.6) occur in the cluster located at greater depth. The seismicity appears to be located along almost vertical cracks, delimited by a high velocity body located along past intrusive body, corresponding to remnants of Mt. Somma. In this framework a gravity data inversion has been performed to study the shallower part of the volcano. Gravity data have been inverted using a method suitable for the application to scattered data in presence of relevant topography based on a discretization of the investigated medium performed by establishing an approximation of the topography by a triangular mesh. The tomography results, the retrieved density distribution, and the pattern of relocated seismicity exclude the presence of significant shallow magma reservoirs close to the central conduit. These should be located at depth higher than that of the base of the hypocenter volume, as evidenced by previous studies.


The post-rift denudation history of high-elevation divergent continental
margins is central to deciphering source-to-sink systems across
such margins and to unraveling their topographic evolution. We performed
40Ar-39Ar dating of supergene K-Mn oxides from supergene
manganese ore deposits in order to constrain the age of in situ formed
laterites on both the lowland and highland sides of the Western Ghats
Escarpment of Peninsular India. Documentation of laterites as old
as 53 Ma on the highland and 47 Ma at the foot of the escarpment
shows that the escarpment stabilized before 47 Ma (possibly 60 Ma).
The topographic setting of the dated weathering mantles also constrains
denudation of the lowland and the highland since ca. 50 Ma
to maximums of 5 m/m.y. and 15 m/m.y., respectively. Our results
challenge denudation rates derived from apatite fission track thermochronology
by documenting the topography and relief longevity
of the southwest Indian margin and its hinterland. The results preclude
large-magnitude uplift of Peninsular India after the Eocene,
and more generally argue against late Neogene uplift and topographic
rejuvenation of continental shields.


Abstract. Self-sensing cement-based composite was used to monitor the flow of traffic volume. Composite material was prepared with numerous percentages of carbon black (CB) and activated granulated ground blast furnace slag (GGBFS). This economical and concrete friendly material having piezo resistive properties helped to detect the wheel pressure induced by the vehicles passing over it. Initially, the pressure sensitivity of different mix designs was investigated in the laboratory and the samples having more sensitivity to applied load were used on the real road test for vehicle detection. Mechanical and microstructural properties of hydrated cement composite filled with CB and GGBFS as an active filler were also explored. Scanning electron microscopy/Electron dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis were carried out to characterize the microstructure and hydration product development of different specimens at different curing ages. The tested cement composite gives a remarkable response to both compressive and vehicular loading with excellent mechanical and microstructural properties. The results also showed that the self-sensitive cement composite has a great potential to use as a device for traffic monitoring.


The traditional brain-computer interface (BCI) system measures the electroencephalography (EEG) signals by the wet sensors with the conductive gel and skin preparation processes. To overcome the limitations of traditional BCI system with conventional wet sensors, a wireless and wearable multi-channel EEG-based BCI system is proposed in this study, including the wireless EEG data acquisition device, dry spring-loaded sensors, a size-adjustable soft cap. The dry spring-loaded sensors are made of metal conductors, which can measure the EEG signals without skin preparation and conductive gel. In addition, the proposed system provides a size-adjustable soft cap that can be used to fit user's head properly. Indeed, the results are shown that the proposed system can properly and effectively measure the EEG signals with the developed cap and sensors, even under movement. In words, the developed wireless and wearable BCI system is able to be used in cognitive neuroscience applications.


The growing power of parallel supercomputers gives scientists the ability to simulate more complex problems at higher fidelity, leading to many high-impact scientific advances. To maximize the utilization of the vast amount of data generated by these simulations, scientists also need scalable solutions for studying their data to different extents and at different abstraction levels. As we move into peta- and exa-scale computing, simply dumping as much raw simulation data as the storage capacity allows for post-processing analysis and visualization is no longer a viable approach. A common practice is to use a separate parallel computer to prepare data for subsequent analysis and visualization. A naive realization of this strategy not only limits the amount of data that can be saved, but also turns I/O into a performance bottleneck when using a large parallel system. We conjecture that the most plausible solution for the peta- and exa-scale data problem is to reduce or transform the data in-situ as it is being generated, so the amount of data that must be transferred over the network is kept to a minimum. In this paper, we discuss different approaches to in-situ processing and visualization as well as the results of our preliminary study using large-scale simulation codes on massively parallel supercomputers.


Many older adults develop fear of falling (FOF), defined as the level of concern about falling, creating a psychological barrier to performing activities. The negative impact of FOF increases risk of curtailment of activities, future falls, and injury. Bronfenbrenner's Social Ecology Model framed the investigation. The specific aims and hypotheses for this study of high-risk, urban, community-dwelling older adults from one Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) program were to: 1) Describe the relationship between FOF and falls self-efficacy; 2) Examine the variables (participant characteristics, the neighborhood built environment, and self-rated health) and their corresponding explained variance associated with FOF and falls self-efficacy, separately; and 3) Examine the role of falls self-efficacy as a moderator between the set of variables (participant characteristics, the neighborhood built environment, and self-rated health) and participation in physical and social activities. The study included a convenience sample of 107 mostly Black (94%) members from one PACE program. In aim 1, the FOF Likert scale and Falls Self Efficacy ScaleInternational (FES-I) were significantly correlated with Pearson and Spearman correlations of 0.62 (p<0.0001). One-way ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis were highly significant (F-value=22.25, R-squared=0.39, p<0.0001). Aim 2 findings included 10 significant items (age, falls, injury, gender, race, anxiety, mobility, traffic, safety, and crime environment items) associated with FES-I as dependent variable (F-value=9.21, Rsquared=0.49, p<0.0001) compared to four (age, traffic, safety, and crime) with FOF scale as dependent variable (F-value=5.76, R-squared=0.18, p=0.0003) in the final models. In aim 3, there was a significant, negative Pearson correlation of -0.43 (p<0.001) and Spearman correlation of -0.42 (p<0.001) between concern about falling measured by the FES-I and participation in activities measured by the Functional Performance Inventory-Short Form (F-value=23.40, R-squared=0.18, p<0.0001). The greater the difficulty in participation in activities, the higher the concern about falling during activities measured by the FES-I. A weak interaction effect was seen with falls self-efficacy interacting with two traffic-related items measured by the Physical Activity Neighborhood Environment Scale (PANES) and participation in physical and social activities. Future FOF research should focus on mobility and concepts of safety, traffic, and crime perceived by high-risk, urban, community-dwelling older adults. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Nursing First Advisor Pamela Z. Cacchione


Background: Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) has continued to ravage the teeming populations in Nigeria, with disastrous consequences. Despite many studies and progress on HIV/AIDS in Africa, the data on the status of the patients at the commencement of therapy is lacking. Aim: The aim of this study is to determine the demographic, clinical and some laboratory features of adult HIV/AIDS patients, seen at the commencement of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, south-east Nigeria between July 2002 and October 2004. Subjects and Methods: The study was a cross-sectional, descriptive study. Adult patients living with HIV/AIDS were studied using an interview administered questionnaire. Data was analyzed using Epi Info 2008 version 3.5.1. Results: A total of 400 respondents participated in this study. The mean age was 36.8 (8.8) years. Almost 60% patients were married and the HIV concordance rate was 53.3% (136/255). Nearly 30% of the families had at least one child positive for HIV. The most common associated risky behavior was injection administered in patent medicine stores 74.5%(302/400) and the most common clinical symptom was respiratory. Of the 400 patients recruited in this study, 19 (4.8%) were lost to follow-up on the 6 months′ visit, giving a follow-up rate of 95.2% (381/400). There was statistically significant difference in the mean body weight (P = 0.02), mean total white blood cell count (P < 0.001) and mean CD4 + count (P < 0.001) at presentation and after 6 months of ART therapy. Conclusion: HIV/AIDS patients present late and body weight, CD4 + count and total white blood cell count seemed to recover quickly on commencement of ART. The prevalence of concordance among couples and mother to child transmission rates tended to be high. Administration of injectable at patent medicine stores and multiple sexual partners are the most significant risk factors.


Breast papillomas may be single or multiple and associated with atypical ductal or lobular hyperplasias (ADH/ALH). The risk of breast carcinoma development in patients with papillomas, particularly those with multiple or atypical lesions, is incompletely defined. Fibrocystic lesions were histopathologically classified in a benign breast disease cohort of 9155 who underwent biopsy from 1967 to 1991, with papilloma assessment in 9108. Individuals with papillomas (N=480) were classified into 4 groups: single papilloma (SP, N=372), single papilloma with ADH or ALH (SP+A, N=54), multiple (>5) papillomas (MP, N=41), and multiple papillomas with ADH or ALH (MP+A, N=13). Those without papillomas were classified as nonproliferative (NP, N=6053), proliferative without atypia (PDWA, N=2308), and ADH/ALH [atypical hyperplasia (AH), N=267]. The relative risk of cancer development within our cohort was compared to that expected in the general population using standardized incidence ratios. The relative risk of breast cancer development associated with SP [2.04, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.43-2.81] was greater than NP (1.28, 95% CI 1.16-1.42) but similar to PDWA (1.90, 95% CI 1.66-2.16). The risk associated with SP+A (5.11, 95% CI 2.64-8.92) was highly elevated but not substantively different than atypical hyperplasia (4.17, 95% CI 3.10-5.50). Patients with MP are at increased risk compared with PDWA or SP (3.01, 95% CI 1.10-6.55), particularly those with MP+A (7.01, 95% CI 1.91-17.97). There was a marginal increase in breast cancer risk (16%) among patients with proliferative disease if a papilloma was present, but this did not reach statistical significance (P=0.29). The observed frequency of ipsilateral (vs. contralateral) breast cancer development in papilloma subsets was not significantly different than other patient groups. We conclude that SP imparts a cancer risk similar to conventional proliferative fibrocystic change. The presence of papilloma in, or associated with, atypia does not modify the risk connotation of ADH/ALH overall. MP constitutes a proliferative breast disease subset having unique clinical and biologic behavior.


The paper presents the results of the experimental research on the aerodynamic resistance forces of different types of the forest plantations and the types of tree planting under the air mass motion. The results of mathematical modeling of moving a dust cloud filled with different sized particles in a forest massif are shown with account of sizes and the mass of the crown elements, the resistance forces of separate elements of tree crowns. While investigating branch resistances as dimensionless parameters one can separate the two Reynolds numbers: one of them is calculated by the diameter of a needle, the other by the diameter of a branch – base to which the needles are attached. As a method to determine the resistance forces of the treetops, in this paper a hydrodynamic approach is applied where the authors propose to investigate the resistance coefficient of the branch (being investigated) when it is moving in water. On this grounds in order to investigate the resistance coefficients of the woodland a setting was assembled, it was based on the study of falling these elements into a transparent pool of water under the action of gravity produced by special cargoes. It was revealed that the resistance coefficient of the conifer crowns greatly depends on the velocity of a climbing stream. Thus, at high Reynolds numbers a well-known effect of "folding" of the crown elements is observed and the resistance coefficient of the whole crown tends to the resistance coefficient of the needleless branches. With the flows up to 20 m/s the main parameter which determines the flow past the bodies with the predetermined geometry is the Reynolds number. On the basis of the data obtained from the experiment a mathematical modeling of a dust cloud was carried out in a stand of forest. The propagation of the wind in the stand of forest is described by three-dimensional equations of gas dynamics. To describe the dust cloud the continuum model consisting of dust particles was adopted as a mathematical model. It takes into account the forces acting on the particles from the air, as well as the sizes of dust particles and the change of momentum of particles in collisions with the elements of trees. In this case it is assumed that in such collisions a dust mass falls on the trees and it is proportional to the surface of these elements, to the dust flow on them and to a certain coefficient of the particle capture which can vary from zero to unity. The simulation of the dust particles is based on the Eulerian approach, the movement of the mass is modeled in the volume. The influence of different types of forests and forms of the forest plantations on the process of distribution of the dust cloud of particles was also investigated. To protect from a dust cloud a series of computational experiments of comparing the efficiency of certain variants of the forest protection zones has been carried out. The results can be used while designing the measures to protect the settlements from the harmful ejections and emissions of the industrial enterprises. In this paper the results of the parametric investigation for different types of particles have been presented, the conclusions as regards the efficiency of some types of the forest protecting belts have been made. The problem of modeling the distribution of the dust cloud with the account of the viscosity forces recorded in the approximation of the boundary layer in the forest belt has been solved.


Although insufficient software scalability and bad resource management can easily consume any potential savings from cloud deployment, the scalability of software executed on the cloud empowers the software designer, who can fully control the trade-offs between the incurred cost of running an application and the delivered quality-of-service. To capitalize on this control, the designer needs to be able to efficiently make deployment decisions in the software design, which are concerned with the chosen strategies for load balancing and scaling. By executable formal models and associated model-based analysis techniques, we explore and compare deployment strategies analytically in the laboratory during early design phases rather than empirically in the field after the code has been fully developed. We briefly survey ABS, a formal modeling language which integrates the design of services with the modeling of deployment decisions, and illustrate its use by an example of cloud-based workflow processing with autoscaling support.


We show that performance-sensitive debt (PSD) is used to reduce hold-up problems in repeated lending relationships. Using a large sample of bank loans, we find a more frequent use of PSD if hold-up is more likely, e.g. if a longterm lending relationship exists and the borrower has fewer outside financing alternatives. The use of PSD is less likely in syndicated relationship loans, as hold-up is less important in this market. Finally, we find a substitution effect between the use of PSD and the tightness of financial covenants, which is consistent with PSD reducing hold-up problems caused by the use of covenants.


Juries' critics argue that judges should displace juries in setting punitive damages levels. This article, which includes the first study of punitive damages in judge-tried cases, compares judge and jury performance in awarding punitive damages and in setting their levels. Data covering one year of judge and jury trial outcomes from 45 of the nation's largest counties yield no substantial evidence that judges and juries differ in the rate at which they award punitive damages, or in the central relation between the size of punitive awards and compensatory awards. The log transform that describes the relation between punitive and compensatory awards in jury trials also describes the awards' relation in judge trials. For a given level of compensatory award, there is a greater range of punitive awards in jury trials than in judge trials. The greater spread produces trivially few jury awards that are beyond the best estimate of what judges might award in similar cases.


We consider the consequences for monetary policy of the zero floor for nominal interest rates. The zero bound can be a significant constraint on the ability of a central bank to combat deflation. We show, in the context of an intertemporal equilibrium model, that open-market operations, even of unconventional' types, are ineffective if they do not change expectations about the future conduct of policy; in this sense, a liquidity trap' is possible. Nonetheless, a credible commitment to the right sort of history-dependent policy can largely mitigate the distortions created by the zero bound. In our model, optimal policy involves a commitment to adjust interest rates so as to achieve a time-varying price-level target, when this is consistent with the zero bound. We also discuss ways in which other central-bank actions, while irrelevant apart from their effects on expectations, may help to make credible a central bank's commitment to its target, and consider implications for the policy options currently available for overcoming deflation in Japan.


According to the American Heart Association, approximately 166,200 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur each year. It is estimated that a victim's chances of survival are reduced by 7-10 percent for every minute that passes without treatment. Obviously, time is very critical in such situations. In most cardiac arrest cases, there is little to no warning to the victim that their heart has stopped and thus no time to notify others that emergency care is immediately required. To help alert the victim and others that a cardiac arrest episode has occurred, an ambulatory alarm and notification system has been built for individuals at high risk of cardiac arrest. The cardiac arrest alert system uses a ring-style photoplethysmograph that is connected to an armband unit which performs signal processing and wireless transmission and possesses an audible alarm. A wristband interface provides visual and tactile warnings, a reset button and a threshold adjuster. If the user's heart rate goes outside the preset range or is not detected by the system, a visual and tactile warning notifies the user of the situation. If the device is not reset or the problem not rectified within several seconds, the device then goes into full activation mode and sounds a loud alarm to notify nearby individuals who may be able to provide emergency assistance to the user. In full activation mode, the device also wirelessly transmits a signal to a central unit that, when signaled, automatically calls 911 and plays a pre-recorded message that states the incident and specifies the location. An additional phone number can also be stored so that another notification call is automatically performed. The central unit has a speaker so that the notification message is locally audible as well. In emergency situations, the cardiac arrest alert system will provide a life-saving service by rapidly alerting the user as well as nearby individuals and emergency respondents who can provide immediate assistance.


There is a need in the neuromodulation industry for a very energy-efficient pulse generator. Little data is observed in literature to develop a power efficient pulse generator that can deliver the required stimulus. A typical stimulator has a boost stage, a low-dropout (LDO) stage and an analog circuit that delivers the stimulus in the form of a pulse to the patient. Such a system is found to be ~ 40% efficient. There are two new methods that can improve this efficiency rating significantly. (1) A modification to existing pulse generator by adding microprocessors to control the output voltages of boost and LDO in the circuit, as proposed by the manufacturer; (2) a Single-Ended Primary Inductance Converter (SEPIC) based design proposed by the authors, with the input connected to a battery and the output to electrodes. Comparing with existing design, the modification offered a consistent 75% efficiency for output voltages from 3.9V to 6.6V. SEPIC had an efficiency rating of 80% to 86% across the same voltage range.


Standing Room Only: Why Fourth Amendment Exclusion and Standing Can No Longer Logically Coexist argues that the Fourth Amendment standing doctrine is fundamentally incompatible with the existing Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule. Fourth Amendment standing provides that only a person who has suffered an invasion of her own normatively reasonable expectations of privacy, given the facts about her situation that police may not even know (including whether she owns the property searched), may suppress evidence that police turned up through a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Meanwhile, the existing exclusionary rule doctrine maintains that the sole objective of Fourth Amendment suppression is to motivate police officers, given facts available to them (such as whether they have probable cause), to conform their conduct to the law prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures. This Article proposes that by taking into account the actual facts about the defendant's situation in assessing her standing to bring a suppression motion, it is arbitrary to consider the fact that she did (or did not) have an ownership right in the property where the search occurred, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that she was engaged in criminal activity within that property. This Article accordingly concludes that the ex ante perspective involved in determining whether the police have misbehaved (and thus need to be deterred through exclusion), is logically at odds with the ex post perspective involved in assessing whether the person seeking suppression was in fact entitled to remain free of the search that uncovered evidence against her. The Article takes a close look at the case of Minnesota v. Carter as a perfect illustration of this doctrinal incoherence.


In this paper, we propose a novel spatial autocorrelation model of the shadow fading process in urban macro environments. The proposed model is based on the empirical results obtained from extensive wideband radio channel measurement campaigns at 2.35 GHz in an urban area of a typical medium-sized Chinese city. The shadow fading component was extracted assuming a single-slope log-distance path loss model. The consistency with the level crossing theory of Gaussian processes is achieved by an implicit constraint on the parameters of the model. The proposed model gives a better fit to the empirical results in individual measurement routes than the widely reported exponential and double exponential models. An heuristic explanation of the proposed autocorrelation property is also presented.


Since regenerated bamboo fibres (also referred to as bamboo viscose) became commercially available in 2006, consumers have been bombarded with contradictory information regarding products made of these fibres, their potential end-uses and their properties. On the one hand, manufacturers and marketers make broad claims about the antimicrobial and environmentally friendly characteristics of products made of regenerated bamboo, while, on the other hand, there is an outcry from consumer watchdogs that many of these claims are false and have not been properly proven. Very little information is available about the validation of these properties through scientific research studies. It is also evident that information about natural bamboo and regenerated bamboo fibre products is often confusing. Regenerated bamboo (also referred to as bamboo viscose or bamboo rayon) is manufactured from natural bamboo fibres in a regeneration process by which bamboo pulp is refined from the stems of the bamboo plant in a process similar to that used to manufacture viscose rayon fibres. The severity of this process has led to scepticism as to whether the antimicrobial properties of the bamboo kun remain unchanged in regenerated bamboo fibres. The question has been raised as to whether residual chemicals on the spun fibres could be the cause of antimicrobial properties.   The main objective of this study was to investigate the claim that regenerated bamboo fibres have inherent antimicrobial properties as a result of the bamboo kun present in the raw material from which the fibres are regenerated. For this purpose, the antimicrobial properties of regenerated bamboo fabric were compared to those of viscose rayon and cotton fabrics. The results confirmed that cotton fabric (used as a control) exhibited no antimicrobial activity. However, the antimicrobial effect of the regenerated bamboo and viscose rayon samples was significantly higher than that of the cotton sample, for both Gram-positive bacteria and Gram-negative bacteria. The claims made concerning the bacteriostatic or antimicrobial properties of regenerated bamboo could thus not be proven as false. Statistically, the regenerated bamboo fabrics did not perform better than the viscose rayon fabrics in our tests and did not kill all the bacteria in the solution. No evidence was found that regenerated bamboo fibre fabrics are superior to other regenerated cellulose fibres such as viscose rayon, nor that the antimicrobial properties of natural bamboo remain unchanged in regenerated bamboo fibres.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
The role of human leukocyte antigen class II molecules on nonantigen-presenting cells has been a matter of controversy. We previously reported that human leukocyte antigen class II molecules on human gingival fibroblasts do not present antigens, but transduce signals into the cells by making a complex with antigenic peptide T-cell receptor or by stimulating cell surface human leukocyte antigen-DR molecules with human leukocyte antigen-DR antibody (L243), which mimics the formation of the human leukocyte antigen class II-antigenic peptide T-cell receptor complex, resulting in the expression of several cytokines. The aim of this study was to detect human leukocyte antigen class II-associated molecules mediating human leukocyte antigen class II-induced signals into the cells.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Antibody-based protein-microarray analysis was performed to detect activated signaling molecules in gingival fibroblasts stimulated via human leukocyte antigen class II molecules. Then, we examined if these molecules structurally associate with human leukocyte antigen class II and actually transduce signals into the cells.

RESULTS
Stimulation of human leukocyte antigen class II on gingival fibroblasts by L243 resulted in enhanced phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase. Focal adhesion kinase was co-immunoprecipitated with human leukocyte antigen-DR by L243. Stimulation of gingival fibroblasts with L243 induced phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase. Luteolin, a putative focal adhesion kinase inhibitor, suppressed phosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase and dose dependently inhibited human leukocyte antigen class II-induced cytokine production.

CONCLUSION
Focal adhesion kinase is structurally associated with human leukocyte antigen-DR and mediates human leukocyte antigen class II-induced signals in gingival fibroblasts.


The aim of this study was to estimate the costs and the health benefits of the following interventions: increasing access to improved water supply and sanitation facilities, increasing access to in house piped water and sewerage connection, and providing household water treatment, in ten WHO sub-regions. The cost-effectiveness of each intervention was assessed in terms of US dollars per disability adjusted life year (DALY) averted. This analysis found that almost all interventions were cost-effective, especially in developing countries with high mortality rates. The estimated cost-effectiveness ratio (CER) varied between US$20 per DALY averted for disinfection at point of use to US$13,000 per DALY averted for improved water and sanitation facilities. While increasing access to piped water supply and sewage connections on plot was the intervention that had the largest health impact across all sub-regions, household water treatment was found to be the most cost-effective intervention. A policy shift to include better household water quality management to complement the continuing expansion of coverage and upgrading of services would appear to be a cost-effective health intervention in many developing countries.


Biological intelligences often consist of many different, complex systems working together, rather than a single mechanism capable of solving every problem. It may be that artificial intelligence requires a composition of multiple, diverse systems; perhaps more than any one individual or one research group can create or even
understand.

This dissertation presents an architecture for hosting and efficiently running user-submitted programs (minds) intended to solve particular problems (worlds), and
to facilitate the assembly of these problem-solving minds into larger scale systems of hybrid minds which query an existing set of minds (which we call subminds) for their suggested actions. These subminds may be hosted on the same machine or remotely, across the Internet. They may have been written by many different authors, with each program intended either as a complete solution to the problem, or with an eye toward its re-use in a modular fashion. Even if a program is written and intended as a complete, independent solution to the problem, that need not preclude its inclusion in a larger, hierarchical hybrid program. In other words, the architecture
presented forms a platform for building hybrid artificial intelligence systems using other people's code.

The dissertation also presents and evaluates a method for automatically combining minds (which may have been written by different authors) for use in a hybrid mind, by performing a statistical analysis of the observed performance of each mind program in a collection of minds submitted by third parties competing to solve two different types of problem.


Eating disorders such as bulimia nervosa can have a significant impact on the structure of the teeth. Gastric acid not only causes enamel and dentin to dissolve but also causes a progressive deterioration of dental health, which leads to functional esthetic and biological consequences. According to the classic concepts of restorative dentistry, the rehabilitation of such clinical cases will involve numerous full crowns and root canal treatments, a process which is expensive financially, biologically, and in terms of time. However, the development of resin composite and adhesive systems has made it possible, today, to reconstruct teeth with minimal dental preparation. This article will look at the dental treatment of a bulimic patient who had numerous serious erosions with a significant loss of dental tissue. All teeth were reconstructed with a nano-hybrid resin composite and, as very little preparation was necessary, the teeth's vitality was maintained and did not require laboratory collaboration. Furthermore, all biological, functional, and esthetic requisites were successfully met in a very short period of time.


Scaffolding is often an essential step in a genome assembly process, in which contigs are ordered and oriented using read pairs from a combination of paired-ends libraries and longer-range mate-pair libraries. Although a simple idea, scaffolding is unfortunately hard to get right in practice. One source of problem is so-called PE-contamination in mate-pair libraries, in which a non-negligible fraction of the read pairs get the wrong orientation and a much smaller insert size than what is expected. This contamination has been discussed in previous work on integrated scaffolders in end-to-end assemblers such as Allpaths-LG and MaSuRCA but the methods relies on the fact that the orientation is observable, e.g., by finding the junction adapter sequence in the reads. This is not always the case, making orientation and insert size of a read pair stochastic. Furthermore, work on modeling PE-contamination has so far been disregarded in stand-alone scaffolders and the effect that PE-contamination has on scaffolding quality has not been examined before. We have addressed PE-contamination in an update of our scaffolder BESST. We formulate the problem as an Integer Linear Program (ILP) and use characteristics of the problem, such as contig lengths and insert size, to efficiently solve the ILP using a linear amount (with respect to the number of contigs) of Linear Programs. Our results show significant improvement over both integrated and standalone scaffolders. The impact of modeling PE-contamination is quantified by comparison with the previous BESST model. We also show how other scaffolders are vulnerable to PE-contaminated libraries, resulting in increased number of misassemblies, more conservative scaffolding, and inflated assembly sizes. The model is implemented in BESST. Source code and usage instructions are found at https://github.com/ksahlin/BESST. BESST can also be downloaded using PyPI.


During French colonial rule in Louisiana, nuns from the French Company of Saint Ursula came to New Orleans, where they educated women and girls of European, Indian, and African descent, enslaved and free, in literacy, numeracy, and the Catholic faith. Although religious women had gained acceptance and authority in seventeenth-century France, the New World was less welcoming. Emily Clark explores the transformations required of the Ursulines as their distinctive female piety collided with slave society, Spanish colonial rule, and Protestant hostility. The Ursulines gained prominence in New Orleans through the social services they provided - schooling, an orphanage, and refuge for abused and widowed women - which also allowed them a self-sustaining level of corporate wealth. Clark traces the conflicts the Ursulines encountered through Spanish colonial rule (1767-1803) and after the Louisiana Purchase, as Protestants poured into Louisiana and were dismayed to find a powerful community of self-supporting women and a church congregation dominated by African Americans. The unmarried nuns contravened both the patriarchal order of the slaveholding American South and the Protestant construction of femininity that supported it. By incorporating their story into the history of early America, "Masterless Mistresses" exposes the limits of the republican model of national unity.


ALBERT EINSTEIN WAS DIFFERENT. He was aloof; in the popular image, he was the definition of a dweller in the Ivory Tower. He was socially and politically concerned, but only occasionally became involved. He was not a seeker of companions, personal or scientific, yet his writings show deep insights into the psychology of other people; his technical communications, both papers and personal letters, were voluminous. There might be room for a reasonable person to disagree with his social and political opinions, but they cannot be dismissed as naive or shallow. Einstein's physics was different, too. It may not always seem so because his work is woven into just about all of modern physics, but there is a thread of the truly different running through his many and varied technical contributions. Einstein never followed the crowd, and the crowd, even while incorporating many of his results directly into the main stream, never really followed him. This paper explores one of the reasons for the unique quality of Einstein's contributions to physics. I will try to show that he had a unique take on fundamental problems, and that this unique approach resulted in answers that, time and again, were so profound as to be the final word on the topic, at least for the last 100 years or so. Einstein had an ability to focus on problems that were sometimes simple but always profound. He could identify and hold to elementary governing principles that, when applied, drove the answers to contain an uncommon degree of universality. Albert Einstein approached many of his key problems as if he had seen the underlying situation in a dream, with all of a dream's vibrant reality and stark simplicity. I do not maintain that he always had such dreams but rather that the dream metaphor is a useful way of describing this element of his unique approach to physics. What I will discuss are particularly vibrant examples of Einstein's gedankenexperiments, or thought-experiments, a technique that permeated much of his work. Most of Einstein's thought-experiments were emphatically not dreamlike; these were always intricate and usually required long and hard effort to devise. Many of his attempts at formulating counter-examples to quantum mechanics were in this category. (1) Although the two images I will focus on are certainly examples of gedankenexperiments Einstein reported them both to have arisen as dreams, or at least as daydreams. In each of these dreams of Albert Einstein, some central part of the problem was depicted in a simple and elegant way. These images made it profoundly obvious that there were assertions that must be true for any solution to the problem. In the cases I will describe, Einstein held to his dream throughout the process of finding the answer, bringing the dream image into reality as a piece of physical theory while maintaining the truth of the associated assertions. My two shining examples of Einstein's dreams concern the Special Theory of Relativity, completed in 1905, and the General Theory of Relativity, which reached final form in 1915. I will also discuss his search for a unified theory of the gravitational and electromagnetic fields, a search that is notable for its lack of a keynote dream, and one in which he was unsuccessful. I Special Relativity and Einstein's Annus Mirabilis. Einstein's physics career had a rocky start. He completed his formal training in 1900, but in spite of great academic accomplishment, he left a universally bad impression on his professors. For that reason, Einstein was unable to obtain the references and other support needed to obtain an entry-level university appointment. He made do with temporary work and freelance tutoring until he obtained a position in the Swiss patent office in 1902. He began his physics research in this period, focusing on statistical mechanics and publishing several papers. His independent researches intensified once he had settled in at the patent office. …


The simplification of perovskite solar cells (PSCs), by replacing the mesoporous electron selective layer (ESL) with a planar one, is advantageous for large-scale manufacturing. PSCs with a planar TiO2 ESL have been demonstrated, but these exhibit unstabilized power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). Herein we show that planar PSCs using TiO2 are inherently limited due to conduction band misalignment and demonstrate, with a variety of characterization techniques, for the first time that SnO2 achieves a barrier-free energetic configuration, obtaining almost hysteresis-free PCEs of over 18% with record high voltages of up to 1.19 V.


This report provides the current findings on nonfatal and fatal violent crimes committed against females. Data are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 1993 to 2008, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting Program's (UCR) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), 1993 to 2007 (the most recent data available). The report focuses on nonfatal intimate partner violence (IPV), fatal IPV, rape and sexual assault, and stalking. It includes estimates of the extent of crimes against females and the characteristics of crimes and victims. Crime trends are also presented, along with comparative estimates of crimes against males.


One of the original goals of computer vision was to fully understand a natural scene. This requires solving several sub-problems simultaneously, including object detection, region labeling, and geometric reasoning. The last few decades have seen great progress in tackling each of these problems in isolation. Only recently have researchers returned to the difficult task of considering them jointly. In this work, we consider learning a set of related models in such that they both solve their own problem and help each other. We develop a framework called Cascaded Classification Models (CCM), where repeated instantiations of these classifiers are coupled by their input/output variables in a cascade that improves performance at each level. Our method requires only a limited "black box" interface with the models, allowing us to use very sophisticated, state-of-the-art classifiers without having to look under the hood. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on a large set of natural images by combining the subtasks of scene categorization, object detection, multiclass image segmentation, and 3d reconstruction.


OBJECTIVES
Previous studies have shown that fluoride mouthrinsing programmes are effective in reducing caries among children and adolescents. National surveys of child dental health in the UK confirm that there is variation in oral health. In particular, children of low socioeconomic status in Scotland have a disproportionately high share of dental disease. This study aimed to evaluate an existing school-based fluoride mouthrinsing programme on dental caries in populations stratified by socioeconomic status.

METHODS
A random sample of 1333 children surveyed by the National Dental Inspection Programme with average age 11.4 years was included in the study. Caries prevalence data were collected for the 661 rinsers and 672 nonrinsers. Chi-squared tests and t-tests were carried out to test differences in proportion and in mean D(3)MFT, respectively. The data were modelled using multilevel logistic regression, adjusting for age, sex, deprivation and rinse status.

RESULTS
There is a strong negative association between deprivation and prevalence of D(3)MFT = 0. There is no significant difference in prevalence of D(3)MFT between rinsers and nonrinsers, however, mean D(3)MFT is greater for nonrinsers within each deprivation category. After adjusting for age, sex and deprivation, the odds of a tooth being decayed missing or filled for a child who rinsed are 0.79 (0.64, 0.98) compared with those of a child who did not.

CONCLUSIONS
Fluoride rinsing can be effectively targeted at children from deprived areas through school-based initiatives. There are some difficulties in recruiting all children from the more deprived backgrounds, but overall reductions in D(3)MFT were observed.


Separated cycling infrastructure that removes interaction between cars and cyclists is assumed to reduce risk of collision. However, the potential for separated infrastructure to act against other mechanisms also assumed to contribute to cyclist safety has not been empirically explored. We constructed an agent-based model to investigate the potential effects of introducing separated cycling infrastructure to a transportation network. Results suggest that in transportation networks where behavioural adaptation among drivers is assumed to be active, low levels of separated infrastructure that reduces exposure of drivers to cyclists while providing incomplete origindestination coverage may provide little or no overall safety benefit.


Abstract. In this work, recent advances on the study of reconnection in turbulence are reviewed. Using direct numerical simulations of decaying incompressible two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), it was found that in fully developed turbulence complex processes of reconnection locally occur (Servidio et al., 2009, 2010a). In this complex scenario, reconnection is spontaneous but locally driven by the fields, with the boundary conditions provided by the turbulence. Matching classical turbulence analysis with a generalized Sweet-Parker theory, the statistical features of these multiple-reconnection events have been identified. A discussion on the accuracy of our algorithms is provided, highlighting the necessity of adequate spatial resolution. Applications to the study of solar wind discontinuities are reviewed, comparing simulations to spacecraft observations. New results are shown, studying the time evolution of these local reconnection events. A preliminary study on the comparison between MHD and Hall MHD is reported. Our new approach to the study of reconnection as an element of turbulence has broad applications to space plasmas, shedding a new light on the study of magnetic reconnection in nature.


The objective of this research was to conduct a field trial to evaluate the marking performance of different combinations of pavement marking materials and installation practices on challenging surfaces. The trial included a range of pavement marking products over varied roadway characteristics to assess the performance of different marking materials over different challenging surfaces by product, thickness, bead package, and whether or not a primer was applied. The research team worked with the technical advisory panel (TAP) to document pavement marking performance on several municipal roadways within the city of Eden Prairie and to organize and prepare for field testing of different marking materials on both a seal coat and micro surface roadway. These projects provide pavement marking performance on challenging surfaces information over different conditions (traffic levels and line types) apart from the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) research test deck scenarios. These results provide MnDOT with a basis to consider pavement marking striping practices on challenging surfaces in terms of performance and cost. The high-build materials (primer plus VISILOK) and epoxies showed similar performance, which provides a good basis for material selection.


Introduction and aims of the research Nitric oxide (NO) and endocannabinoids (eCBs) are major retrograde messengers, involved in synaptic plasticity (long-term potentiation, LTP, and long-term depression, LTD) in many brain areas (including hippocampus and neocortex), as well as in learning and memory processes. NO is synthesized by NO synthase (NOS) in response to increased cytosolic Ca2+ and mainly exerts its functions through soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) and cGMP production. The main target of cGMP is the cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG). Activity-dependent release of eCBs in the CNS leads to the activation of the Gαi/o-coupled cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1) at both glutamatergic and inhibitory synapses. The perirhinal cortex (Prh) is a multimodal associative cortex of the temporal lobe, critically involved in visual recognition memory. LTD is proposed to be the cellular correlate underlying this form of memory. Cholinergic neurotransmission has been shown to play a critical role in both visual recognition memory and LTD in Prh. Moreover, visual recognition memory is one of the main cognitive functions impaired in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The main aim of my research was to investigate the role of NO and ECBs in synaptic plasticity in rat Prh and in visual recognition memory. Part of this research was dedicated to the study of synaptic transmission and plasticity in a murine model (Tg2576) of Alzheimer's disease.
Methods Field potential recordings. Extracellular field potential recordings were carried out in horizontal Prh slices from Sprague-Dawley or Dark Agouti juvenile (p21-35) rats. LTD was induced with a single train of 3000 pulses delivered at 5 Hz (10 min), or via bath application of carbachol (Cch; 50 μM) for 10 min. LTP was induced by theta-burst stimulation (TBS). In addition, input/output curves and 5Hz-LTD were carried out in Prh slices from 3 month-old Tg2576 mice and littermate controls.
Behavioural experiments. The spontaneous novel object exploration task was performed in intra-Prh bilaterally cannulated adult Dark Agouti rats. Drugs or vehicle (saline) were directly infused into the Prh 15 min before training to verify the role of nNOS and CB1 in visual recognition memory acquisition. Object recognition memory was tested at 20 min and 24h after the end of the training phase.
Results Electrophysiological experiments in Prh slices from juvenile rats showed that 5Hz-LTD is due to the activation of the NOS/sGC/PKG pathway, whereas Cch-LTD relies on NOS/sGC but not PKG activation. By contrast, NO does not appear to be involved in LTP in this preparation. Furthermore, I found that eCBs are involved in LTP induction, but not in basal synaptic transmission, 5Hz-LTD and Cch-LTD. Behavioural experiments demonstrated that the blockade of nNOS impairs rat visual recognition memory tested at 24 hours, but not at 20 min; however, the blockade of CB1 did not affect visual recognition memory acquisition tested at both time points specified.
In three month-old Tg2576 mice, deficits in basal synaptic transmission and 5Hz-LTD were observed compared to littermate controls.
Conclusions The results obtained in Prh slices from juvenile rats indicate that NO and CB1 play a role in the induction of LTD and LTP, respectively. These results are confirmed by the observation that nNOS, but not CB1, is involved in visual recognition memory acquisition. The preliminary results obtained in the murine model of Alzheimer's disease indicate that deficits in synaptic transmission and plasticity occur very early in Prh; further investigations are required to characterize the molecular mechanisms underlying these deficits.


Modern takaful practices have evolved in response to reservations against conventional insurance that trades in risk; where operations involve excessive uncertainty (gharar) that is prohibited in shari'ah; and where investments are made in interest bearing instruments and activities that are generally harmful for society and the environment. The chapter discusses the inspirations and factors behind the development of takaful as an alternate mechanism for social protection. It analyses various takaful models that have been developed in response to market needs and shari'ah compliance preference. It also discusses the challenges associated with these models in view of the practical realities where takaful businesses are mostly publically quoted entities and required to bring risk-based capital to support participants' risk pools. Finally, the chapter analyses some of the key challenges impeding the growth and development of takaful and offers suggestions that can help overcome these challenges.


In De l'Amour (1822) Stendhal elaborated his idea of the "crystallization" process in which the distant beloved assumes qualities of ideal beauty in the imagination of the male lover. He also states that "the habit of listening to music and the state of reverie connected with it prepare one for falling in love" and, furthermore, that "perfect music has the same effect on the heart as the presence of the beloved. It gives, in fact, apparently more intense pleasure than anything else on earth." These erotic pleasures he identified most consistently and enthusiastically with the music of Rossini. This article takes Stendhal's related notions of love and the sensual immediacy of musical pleasures as models to develop an analytical and hermeneutic approach to musical examples of amour passion . This allows a new reassessment of Rossini's supposed predicament on the "Other" side of Dahlhaus's "unbridgeable rift" from the music of Beethoven and provides a critique of the relationship between the "heroic" male subject with his inspirational beloved. Examples are drawn from Rossini's Tancredi (1813) and William Tell (1829), and Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte (1810), Fidelio , and "Les Adieux," Piano Sonata, op. 81a (1807).


The population of nearby dwarf galaxies in the Local Group constitutes a complete galactic environment, perfect suited for studying the connection between stellar populations and galaxy evolution. In this study, we are conducting an optical monitoring survey of the majority of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group, with the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT), to identify long period variable stars (LPVs). These stars are at the end points of their evolution and therefore their luminosity can be directly translated into their birth masses; this enables us to reconstruct the star formation history. By the end of the monitoring survey, we will have performed observations over ten epochs, spaced approximately three months apart, and identified long-period, dust-producing AGB stars; five epochs of data have been obtained already. LPVs are also the main source of dust; in combination with Spitzer Space Telescope images at mid-IR wavelengths we will quantify the mass loss, and provide a detailed map of the mass feedback into the interstellar medium. We will also use the amplitudes in different optical passbands to determine the radius variations of the stars, and relate this to their mass loss.


The reasons criminal lawyers so often fail to provide adequate legal representation to indigent defendants are well-known: severe underfunding, excessive workloads and other disincentives for competent representation work together to encourage quick disposition of cases, with little regard for the quality of legal services that are provided. Yet, largely overlooked in this equation is whether defense lawyers who provide subpar representation are aware of their own shortcomings. To answer this question, this article focuses on the psychology of ethical decision-making. Relying on research that reveals the subtle ways that self-interest can cause people to overlook unethical behavior, it argues that defense lawyers will tend to be "ethically blind" to their own poor performance. Concluding that lawyers who suffer from ethical blindness cannot be expected to improve the quality of legal representation on their own, it recommends ways to reduce psychological barriers to competent representation that have proven successful in other contexts.


Owls provide ecosystem services and play crucial roles in the environment making them important to monitor and study. However, standardized methods for most species do not exist, and we lack understanding of the effects of many environmental variables and playbacks on detection probability of owls. We performed a multispecies occupancy analysis on owl monitoring data collected from 2004 – 2013 across the state of Maine, to examine the effects of environmental variables, conspecific and heterospecific playback on detection, and general survey protocols for three forest owls: Northern Saw-whet Owl ( Aegolius acadicus ), Barred Owl ( Strix varia ), and Great Horned Owl ( Bubo virginianus ). We found that environmental variables such as cloud cover, precipitation, temperature, time of night, and wind have species-specific results, but noise resulted in decreased detection probability for all species. We did not find support for effects of snow cover or latitude on detection of any species. We also found that conspecific playback increased the detection of that species, and heterospecific playback had variable effects. Specifically, we found that Long-eared and Barred Owl playback increased the detection of Northern Saw-whet Owl, and our results suggest additional heterospecific effects may exist. Our study showed that compared to the Maine Owl Monitoring Program, surveys examining all three of our focal species can increase efficiency and lower disturbance by only broadcasting Long-eared and Barred Owl playbacks during a 10-minute survey. We recommend that future owl surveys take into account species-specific effects of conspecific and heterospecific playback, and use our results when designing survey protocols that include one or more of our focal species.


Chromosome 7 abnormalities are associated with poor prognosis in myeloid leukaemia. The pathogenetic mechanisms that arise from chromosome 7 rearrangements and lead to malignancy are still poorly understood. The use of leukaemiaderived cell lines might be a useful tool to shed some light on these mechanisms. The cytogenetic characterisation of these cell lines is therefore important for the understanding of the genetic alterations leading to the disease. We carried out fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) on three different myeloid leukaemia-derived cell lines (GDM-1, GF-D8 and K562). These were selected on the basis of harbouring rearrangements of chromosome 7. The probes used in these experiments were whole and partial chromosome paints, Multiplex-fluorescence in situ hybridisation (M-FISH) probes as well as locus specific probes for the 7q22, 7q31 and 7q36 regions. Our study confirmed the chromosome 7 abnormalities previously reported in the cell lines GDM-1 and GF-D8. We refined one of the rearrangements of chromosome 7 in the K562 cell line and reported some discrepancies with the data published in earlier reports. With this study, we confirm the importance of using a series of FISH probes to characterise chromosomal abnormalities in detail, as some rearrangements might go under-detected or mis-interpreted. Moreover, we highlight the importance of monitoring cell lines broadly used in research, as these can lose or acquire characteristics as they evolve in time in different laboratories.


The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008/09 highlighted the impact that household debt and leverage have on consumption, above and beyond the important role of wealth emphasized by classical theories of consumer behaviour (Fisher, 1930; Modigliani and Brumberg, 1954; Friedman, 1957). In this paper, we study the role of household indebtedness in transmitting housing wealth shocks to consumption empirically. Housing wealth and mortgage leverage take center stage of the recent literature on consumption partly because housing wealth accounts for the lion's share of household wealth in most advanced economies and partly because of the prominent role played by house price dynamics and mortgage debt accumulation in the years preceding the Great Recession. We use microdata from New Zealand Household Economic Survey (HES) to study the housing wealth effect on consumption while controlling for household leverage. House price dynamics in New Zealand represent an interesting contrast to the US: While the US economy experienced a severe housing market downturn after the GFC, house prices and household leverage in New Zealand have been persistently rising over the last decade. Empirical studies focusing on this period for the US show that household leverage amplified the housing wealth effect on consumption through the collateral channel (Kiyotaki and Moore, 1997 and Iacoviello, 2005). Our main empirical finding is that, on average, the elasticity of the consumption growth to housing price changes is 0.22%. This corresponds to 3 cents out of one dollar in terms of marginal propensity of consume out of housing wealth. In addition, we find that the housing wealth effect is asymmetric with respect to positive and negative housing wealth shocks. The housing wealth elasticity is 0.23 for negative shocks, as compared to 0.13 in response to positive changes in housing wealth. We contribute the asymmetric housing wealth effect to the influence of household indebtedness. The intuition of the finding is that leveraged gains might mostly be used to pay down debt (precautionary saving effect), whereas leveraged losses have a more direct bearing on consumption (collateral effect). This finding is based on further investigating the role played by household indebtedness in accounting for the asymmetric housing wealth effect. First, we find that, on average, measures of indebtedness negatively impact on the consumption growth. When we separate positive and negative housing wealth shocks, we find evidence showing that the collateral effect is significant only with negative shocks, while the precautionary saving effect is significant only with positive housing wealth shocks. This empirical finding implies that the precautionary savings effect and the collateral effect work in the different phases of housing cycles. In a housing boom the precautionary savings motive dominates and high leverage weakens the reaction of consumption spending to housing wealth increases. In a housing downturn the collateral channel dominates and high leverage strengthens the reaction of consumption to housing wealth decreases. In another words, the household leverage reinforces the housing wealth effect in a bust, but dampens the housing wealth effect in a boom. The asymmetric transmission mechanism through household indebtedness explains the asymmetric housing wealth effect that we find in the data without controlling leverage explicitly.


South Africa has the busiest ports in Africa but the ships that call here are not registered in South Africa, nor are the owners of the ships South African companies. There are no South African ships to carry South African cargoes and only very rarely are South African registered companies the contractual carriers of cargo. So what remedies are available to South African maritime interests when claims arise in respect of damaged cargo or when ship-owners fail to pay for services rendered to their ships?


Context. The measurement of α -element abundances provides a powerful tool for placing constraints on the chemical evolution and star formation history of galaxies. The majority of studies on the α -element sulfur (S) are focused on local stars, making S behavior in other environments an astronomical topic that is yet to be explored in detail. Aims. The investigation of S in the Galactic bulge was recently considered for the first time. This work aims to improve our knowledge on S behavior in this component of the Milky Way. Methods. We present the S abundances of 74 dwarf and sub-giant stars in the Galactic bulge, along with 21 and 30 F and G thick- and thin-disk stars, respectively. We performed a local thermodynamic equilibrium analysis and applied corrections for non-LTE on high resolution and high signal-to-noise UVES spectra. S abundances were derived from multiplets 1, 6, and 8 in the metallicity range of − 2 < [Fe/H] < 0.6, by spectrosynthesis or line equivalent widths. Results. We confirm that the behavior of S resembles that of an α -element within the Galactic bulge. In the [S/Fe] versus [Fe/H] diagram, S presents a plateau at low metallicity, followed by a decreasing of [S/Fe] with the increasing of [Fe/H], before reaching [S/Fe] ∼ 0 at a super-solar metallicity. We found that the Galactic bulge is S-rich with respect to both the thick- and thin-disks at − 1 < [Fe/H] < 0 . 3, supporting a scenario of more rapid formation and chemical evolution in the Galactic bulge than in the disk.


Video and pdf overview of the talk given by Thorsten Schumm

The radio isotope Thorium-229 is expected to present a remarkably low-energy excited (isomer) state of the nucleus which is expected around 10 eV. It might hence be possible to directly excite the atomic nucleus with UV (laser) radiation, creating a bridge between atomic and nuclear physics. The (expected) narrow line width of the transition and the intrinsic robustness of nuclear transitions to external fields makes it a promising candidate for a new frequency standard - a "nuclear clock".  In this presentation we will review the current state of knowledge on the low-energy nuclear transition in Thorium-229 and the ongoing quest to measure it's exact energy.


Despite evidence that information technology (IT) has recently become a productive investment for a large cross-section of firms, a number of questions remain. Some of these issues can be addressed by extending the basic production function approach that was applied in earlier work. Specifically, in this short paper we 1) control for individual firm differences in productivity by employing a "firm effects" specification, 2) consider the more flexible translog specification instead of only the Cobb-Douglas specification, and 3) allow all parameters to vary between various subsectors of the economy. We find that while "firm effects" may account for as much as half of the productivity benefits imputed to IT in earlier studies, the elasticity of IT remains positive and statistically significant. We also find that the estimates of IT elasticity and marginal product are little-changed when the less restrictive translog production function is employed. Finally, we find only limited evidence of differences in IT's marginal product between manufacturing and services and between the "measurable" and "unmeasurable" sectors of the economy. Surprisingly, we find that the marginal product of IT is at least as high in firms that did not grow during 1988-1992 sample period as it is in firms that grew.


'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...' Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use. Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language.


Bioinformatics is the recording, annotation, storage, analysis, and searching/retrieval of nucleic acid sequence (genes and RNAs), protein sequence and structural information. This includes databases of the sequences and structural information as well methods to access, search, visualize and retrieve the information. Bioinformatics concern the creation and maintenance of databases of biological information whereby researchers can both access existing information and submit new entries.


This paper presents a system to manipulate 3D objects or navigate through 3D models by detecting the gestures and the movements of the hands of a user in front of a camera mounted on top of a screen. This paper more particularly introduces an improved skin color segmentation algorithm which combines an online and an offline model; and a Haarlet-based hand gesture recognition system, where the Haarlets are trained based on Average Neighborhood Margin Maximization (ANMM). The result is a real-time marker-less interaction system which is applied to two applications, one for manipulating 3D objects, and the other for navigating through a 3D model.


Assembling large-scale phenotypic datasets for evolutionary and biodiversity studies of plants can be extremely difficult and time consuming. New semi-automated Natural Language Processing (NLP) pipelines can extract phenotypic data from taxonomic descriptions, and their performance can be enhanced by incorporating information from ontologies, like the Plant Ontology (PO) and the Plant Trait Ontology (TO). These ontologies are powerful tools for comparing phenotypes across taxa for large-scale evolutionary and ecological analyses, but they are largely focused on terms associated with flowering plants. We describe a bottom-up approach to identify terms from flagellate plants (including bryophytes, lycophytes, ferns, and gymnosperms) that can be added to existing plant ontologies. We first parsed a large corpus of electronic taxonomic descriptions using the Explorer of Taxon Concepts tool (http://taxonconceptexplorer.org/) and identified flagellate plant specific terms that were missing from the existing ontologies. We extracted new structure and trait terms, and we are currently incorporating the missing structure terms to the PO and modifying the definitions of existing terms to expand their coverage to flagellate plants. We will incorporate trait terms to the TO in the near future. Keywords—Natural Language Processing; Plant Ontology; Plant Trait Ontology; taxonomic descriptions; flagellate plants; phenotypic traits; matrices; phylogeny


In this paper, Al matrix composites reinforced with Al-Ti intermetallics/Ti metal compound spherical agents were successfully fabricated through powder metallurgy way. Al-Ti intermetallic including Al3Ti and TiAl phases are main reinforcements and inner Ti metal could not only play reinforce role but also reduce the crack sensitivity of Al-Ti intermetallics. This kind of reinforcements bonded strongly with Al matrix. As expected, the resultant composites exhibit promising mechanical properties at ambient temperature. And the mechanical property could be improved through regulating the relative thickness of the Al-Ti intermetallics and Ti metal layers.


Summary Forest health surveillance (FHS) of hardwood plantations commenced in Queensland in 1997 as plantations expanded following a state government planting initiative arising from the national 2020 forest policy vision. The estate was initially characterised by a large number of small plantations (10–50 ha), although this has changed more recently with the concentration of larger plantations in the central coast and South Burnett regions. Due to the disparate nature of the resource, drive- and walkthrough surveys of subsets of plantations have been undertaken in preference to aerial surveys. FHS has been effective in detecting a number of new hardwood pests in Queensland including erinose mites (Rhombacus and Acalox spp.), western white gum plate galler (Ophelimus sp.), Creiis psyllid and bronzing bug (Thaumastocoris sp.), in evaluating their potential impact and assisting in focussing future research efforts. Since 2003 there has been an increased emphasis on training operational staff to take a greater role in identifying and reporting on forest health issues. This has increased their awareness of forest health issues, but their limited time to specifically survey and report on pests and diseases, and high rates of staff turnover, necessitate frequent ongoing training. Consequently, common and widespread problems such as quambalaria shoot blight (Quambalaria pitereka), chrysomelid leaf beetles (mainly Paropsis atomaria) and erinose mites may be under-reported or not reported, and absence data may often not be recorded at all. Comment is made on the future directions that FHS may take in hardwood plantations in Queensland.


An analysis of the impact of institutional factors on the U.S./GVN response in Vietnam. Essentially both governments attempted to handle an atypical conflict situation by means of institutions designed for other purposes. Such constraints as institutional inertia — the inherent reluctance of organizations to change operational methods except slowly and incrementally — influenced not only the decisions made but what was actually done in the field. These constraints helped lead to (1) an overly militarized response; (2) diffusion of authority and fragmentation of command; (3) hesitation to change the traditional relationship of civilian to military leadership; and (4) agency reluctance to violate the conventional lines dividing responsibilities. The conclusion is that atypical problems demand special solutions. Policymakers must be sure the institutions carrying out the policy can execute it as intended. Adequate follow-through machinery must exist at all levels, to force adaptation if necessary. Where the United States is supporting an enfeebled ally, effective means of stimulating optimum indigenous performance are essential.


Many businesses have started engaging in electronic transactions in a Web-centric environment. This includes various parties, such as the e-commerce company, its client and a bank. Confidentiality and security are two of the essential building blocks in merging the business processes of this extended enterprise with the supporting technological processes, which further adds to the complexity of the Web-centric environment. Despite having security policies and procedures in place to control access to database information, unauthorized intrusion still occurs. The objective of this study was to identify the main hacker risks and to address them by identifying the components of control that should be in place to prevent such risks. Microsoft's SQL Server was chosen as an example of a database system that is used to manage confidential information. It is suggested that the best way to reduce hacker intrusion risks to an acceptable level is to implement a three-level control system. This system should firstly include a control framework with control objectives to manage systems, business risks and internal controls, secondly a control model for the design, implementation and maintenance of the risk management system and thirdly appropriate preventative, detective and remedial control techniques to address the stated business and control objectives.


The paper presents a critical review of the pioneer thoughts and theories of Entrepreneurial Emergence and their validity for today's entrepreneur. Three major strands of the pioneer theories were examined. These include the Sociological factors' theory by Max Weber; Psychological factors' theory by David McClelland; and Economic factors' theory by Joseph Schumpeter. A critique of the theories showed their strengths and weaknesses and hence the extent of their validity both in the old society and in contemporary society. The Nigerian society and entrepreneur were used as references for the arguments in the paper. From the facts observed about today's entrepreneurial motivation vis-à-vis the postulations of the vanguards of the pioneer theories, it is evident that these theories are to a very large extent valid and relevant in today's entrepreneurial motivation. However, the analysis of entrepreneurial emergence in today's Nigeria was seen as a function of not one set of factors but a combination of the sets of factors provided in all the three theories reviewed. Essentially the paper concludes that the contemporary theories of entrepreneurial emergence are off-shoots and more or less sub-themes of these three traditional theories. It therefore recommends that rather than create a jungle of theories of entrepreneurial emergence, attempt should be made to prune and harmonize these theories into a few ones that will embrace all the relevant factors.


This paper discusses the development of a pedagogical model entitled "Network oriented study with simulations". This model supports teaching and learning in technology education particularly in the laboratory setting using a computer-based tool, termed the web-orientation agent (WOA). The aim of this research is to examine the pedagogy of technology education in order to establish a model for such pedagogy so that appropriate tools can be developed and implemented to support it. In essence, the WOA is a software-based tool, providing a supportive and interactive learning environment that makes use of local applications, in this work, an electronic circuit design and simulation application. We introduce some preliminary research findings with our university level student group (N=9), all males, using qualitative design based action research (e.g. Hannafin 2004; c.p. Carr & Kemmis 1989). The methods are based on simultaneous video, stimulated recall and group interviews data. It has yielded valuable information to develop the described pedagogical model further on how study using simulation tools and network applications that support these and how more traditional media can be appropriately organized to be closely linked with modern media to support learning. This study describes also the "Network-Based Mental Tools in Technology Education" case research, which made it possible to test the theoretical bases described in this paper. Evaluation of the preliminary conclusions, the future development of the WOA will be targeted at least to developing a more interactive and adaptive user interface and using a variety of media types (gif/flash animation, streaming movie clips, sound e.g. as a parallel information channel and as a part of a supplementary edutainment-oriented solution.