Wildlife management is, in our view, as much about education, and managing people's attitudes, as it is about the science of populations of animals. The •successful koala management program for Victoria, outlined by Peter Menkhorst, has only been possible because of his firm grasp, and that of his colleagues, of the divergent attitudes towards koalas. Among the many benefits provided to humans by the wildlife resource, we have tackled just one value in this book- recreational. Wildlife can also cause problems for people. Among the negative values of wildlife, we selected but one topic, namely road kill. The plenary sessions to this forum were filled with interesting details and some provocative challenges, such as that by Des Cooper, "...this discussion is really being conducted with a particular set of assumptions, which are assumptions made by rich, well-to-do people who live in cities..." We need much more of such cut-and-thrust to avoid the narrow viewpoint that is possible from the comfort of mid-city life. On the other hand, do we really think that those in immediate contact with a wildlife problem are always the best informed to manage our wildlife? Arthur White delicately touched a subject that shows just how fast matters are changing. He entitled his paper, "Can I touch that frog?" He asked, "With limited exposure to the natural world will future generations still be prepared to defend global ecosystems?" From the gentle approach of whale-watching and the attention to seals and dolphins, and the careful research that underpinned all the recommendations, to the as yet nearly-impenetrable problem of roadkill, the issue that is central is that of communication. We are not isolated in Australia from world problems, but the converse also applies - our solutions and our communication endeavours can make an international contribution. Harry Recher posed the question in his foreword: "How do you make people care and therefore willing to share with others, and other species?" The authors in this book have made a positive contribution to seeking answers to that question.


Ex parte Young does not represent an exception to ordinary principles of sovereign immunity, it does not employ a legal fiction, it does not imply a novel cause of action under the Constitution or other federal law, and it does not create a paradox by treating officers as state actors for one purpose and private persons for another. All those bits of conventional wisdom are wrong for the same reason: Young was about a traditional tool of equity, the injunction to restrain proceedings at law, or anti-suit injunction. By seeking an anti-suit injunction, a potential defendant at law can become a plaintiff in equity and present a defense in an affirmative posture. Asserting defenses against the government, like the railroads' constitutional defenses at issue in Young, does not offend sovereign immunity, so it does not require a fiction to cover up a violation of sovereign immunity. Anti-suit injunctions have long been a standard tool of equity and so in approving one the Court in Young did not recognize a novel cause of action applicable only to government officers, and for that reason did not encounter a paradox. This article elaborates on the argument just described, discusses the extent to which the opinion in Ex parte Young reflects the fact that it involved an anti-suit injunction, and briefly considers the contemporary implications of this way of understanding this foundational case.


Currently, engineering and computer science programs worldwide face several challenges, on the one hand, high dropout rates still persist in these programs with rates ranging from 30% to 50%. On the other hand, due to this problem, a crisis is looming in the software industry due to the high demand and the shortage of qualified talent in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This is why software development and more specifically learning to program has become a worldwide trend. While gamification-based teaching methodologies and strategies can improve student motivation and engagement during the teaching-learning process, the design and implementation of gamified assessment models remains a largely unmet challenge, due to that most authors apply the use of gamification in virtual learning environments and little in face-to-face activities developed in the classroom. Due to the above, this article proposes a gamified evaluation model aimed at improving the performance of students during an introductory course on algorithms and programming, through permanent feedback, assertive problem solving and mini-lines, and the development of video games to motivate learning by accumulating points or bonuses. With the application of this model, not only will it be possible to improve the motivation, permanence and performance of the students, but also the teachers will be able to maintain an adequate level of demand in each of the proposed evaluative activities and thus achieve greater commitment in the students, motivation and effort to obtain the bonuses and increase the results obtained in each of the course evaluations.


Criminologists in South Africa have been debating the registration of a professional regulatory board for criminologists since 1994 when the then Criminological Society of Southern Africa (CRIMSA) appointed a professionalisation committee to investigate the matter. A survey by this committee found that 91.8% of the respondents surveyed supported mandatory registration on a minimal entry qualification together with a Professional Code of Ethics. The CRIMSA syllabus committee furthermore found that there was over specialisation and a lack of inter-university liaison and that criminology should become more professional. This paper will give an overview of the work of these two committees and the qualifications later developed by the Criminology and Criminal Justice Standards Generating Body. The case for a regulatory body for criminologists will then be assessed in terms of the following :
The need to regulate uniform training standards
The tasks of a professional regulatory board
Protection of society and vulnerable individuals
The types of work performed by criminologists.
The location of a criminology regulatory board will also be briefly debated.


NASFAA JOURNAL OF STUDENT FINANCIAL AID This research used a Web-based survey of students at a Midwest regional university to measure the extent of credit card use by first-year students and seniors. The results indicate that the variables influencing credit card use and the carrying of a balance from one month to the next include the number of cards held by the student, the student's income level, and the presence of educational loans. A significant number of surveyed students at both grade levels are affected by credit card debt, but no specific type of purchases lead to carrying a balance. First-year students and seniors differed significantly in the number of cards they held, the monthly balances they carried, and the ways in which they acquired their cards. Those who acquired their credit cards through on-campus solicitation carried a substantially higher average monthly balance than those students acquiring the cards via other methods. The students' involvement with their parents affected their card balance, but knowledge of interest rates and types of transactions appeared to have no influence.


Memory, especially its loss, plays a prominent role in the work of Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929). The Telling (2000) and Voices (2006), two of Le Guin's most recent works, go into great detail on what happens when a memory is lost or destroyed, usually under duress. The former, the last book in Le Guin's Hainish cycle, deals with a goal to preserve books and learning from a regime that has made it a misguided goal to eradicate all elements of past culture in an effort to modernize the country. In the latter, part of Le Guin's Annals of the Western Shore series, the city of Ansul loses nearly all of its books when the Alds, a people that fears and/or despises written words, overtake the city and order the destruction of books and libraries, deeming them to be a sacrilege and a threat. The destruction of cultural memories in Le Guin's books may be likened to trauma, in that it leads to the separation of people from each other and from their memories of the past, and it leaves a society without roots or resources to draw upon. Le Guin especially uses the motifs of the anthropologist-hero, the secret library and the preservation of books to demonstrate what happens to a society when it is forced to erase its memories. She also delves into the subject of what must be done to preserve those memories, as well as the debate over when it is better to remember and when to forget. This subject is especially critical when it comes to the subject of reconciliation: when bad events in the past should be remembered, and when they should be forgotten or forgiven. We see this topic especially at the end of both books, when the respective characters are trying to determine how to come to terms with past events. This essay examines the use of memory in Le Guin's works of fiction and her nonfiction essays, and how they fit into the subject of memory's loss and redemption in dystopian science fiction in general. The essay also examines real-life incidents in history that bear similarities to the events in her work, such as the destruction of Bosnia's national library, the Cultural Revolution in China and the recent war in Iraq. THE LIBRARY IN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE WRITING ON THE WALL: FRAGMENTED MEMORIES AND CULTURAL AMNESIA IN URSULA K. LE GUIN


This study examined the self-efficacy beliefs of three adults returning to piano study and observed the role of self-efficacy in the students' piano study experiences throughout the course of one semester. Three adult students enrolled in the Community Music School at the University of South Carolina who took lessons as children, but had not taken lessons for the past 20 to 30 years, participated in this study. Data were collected through interviews, observation and interaction, field notes, practice logs, and a self-efficacy self-assessment tool. The investigator found mastery experiences to be the greatest source of selfefficacy among each adult student. Prior mastery experience had a great effect on initial self-efficacy scores. Furthermore, the changes in self-efficacy belief followed a different trajectory for each student, and were related to the students' patterns of learning. Finally, participants displayed more efficacious behaviors when their self-efficacy beliefs were stronger. Further research avenues are suggested for future studies.


We studied the treatment of multiple rib fractures in NIC, comparing ventilatory with nonventilatory methods in 69 patients who were randomly allocated to one of the following two treatments: (1) a CPAP mask combined with regional analgesia (n = 36); or (2) endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation with PEEP (n = 33). Clinical outcome was as follows: mean duration of treatment, 4.5 +/- 2.3 days for the group with CPAP and 7.3 +/- 3.7 days for the intubated group (p = 0.0003); mean number of days spent in intensive care, 5.3 +/- 2.9 days and 9.5 +/- 4.4 days, respectively (p = less than 0.0001); mean period of hospitalization, 8.4 +/- 7.1 days and 14.6 +/- 8.6 days, respectively (p = 0.0019); and patients developing complications: 28 percent (10/36) and 73 percent (24/33), respectively. Infections caused the difference in complications, primarily pneumonias, which occurred in 14 percent (5/36) of the group with CPAP but in 48 percent (16/33) of the intubated group. We conclude that treatment with a CPAP mask combined with regional analgesia can shorten and simplify treatment in these patients, mainly through a decreased infection rate, when compared with intubation and mechanical ventilation, and we recommend this treatment in patients similar to our sample.


Wild orchids bloom in virtually every habitat of every state and province of the continental United States, Canada, and Greenland. Orchid fanciers and collectors - a large and fervent segment of the general public - will welcome Paul Martin Brown's comprehensive, illustrated checklist and field guide to the exotic world of these elegant and intriguing flowers. This annotated guide is packed with up-to-date information and enhanced by stunning color photographs and extraordinary drawings of each species, subspecies, and variety, many highlighting unusual color or growth forms. It provides identification, full distribution range, recent synonyms, and all subspecies varietal and forma information for all 247 taxa as well as comments about the special aspects of each species. Taxonomy and distribution data directly complement information in the Flora of North America project and the parallel dichotomous keys will be useful in the field. The guide covers 223 species, 24 subspecies and varieties, 103 growth and color forms, and 24 hybrids. With its personal checklist and easy-to-read format, Wild Orchids of North America is perfect for the hobbyist, while offering a concise scientific reference for naturalists, botanists, and advanced orchid enthusiasts.


The purpose of this paper is to highlight my fieldwork experience with the County of San Mateo Health System's Health Policy and Planning Unit. Under the guidance of a Community Health Planner, my scope of work was within the area of school wellness, ranging from an adolescent report publication to researching breakfast in the classroom models to attending district wellness policy meetings. The San Mateo County Adolescent Report took precedence over most of the school wellness projects and initiatives because it was seeking to identify the needs of the County's youth using evidence from various data sources and to develop policy recommendations. Although the Adolescent Report highlighted a multitude of youth health concerns, a large focus was on the mental health of youth. Throughout the report, I will provide an in-depth overview of the Health Policy and Planning Unit's role in the development of the Adolescent Report, the implementation process, the findings and application of the results. I will briefly highlight other individual and group projects that I had the opportunity to be involved in and help execute. I will discuss my initial learning objectives, how they altered over time, and my achievements. I will identify which Master of Public Health Program competencies were addressed during the implementation of the Adolescent Report and other projects. Lastly, I will provide a short reflection on my overall field work experience from a personal and professional viewpoint. Introduction San Mateo County Health System has identified the need to release data on the health status of its youth. The development of the Report was a collaborative effort among Health Department employees, the nonprofit organization StarVista, and County Youth Commission. The Report highlights that youth of color and low socioeconomic status experience lower levels


The significance of Libertas, the personification of the concept of libertas (liberty), on the Roman imperial coinage is typically interpreted as a retort to a maligned predecessor and as communicating a more constitutional mode of governance that includes cooperation with the senate (libertas senatoria). Indeed, Libertas often appears on the coinage when there is much contemporary political rhetoric about libertas in the immediate aftermath of the death of an emperor deemed to have been a tyrant, such as Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. Nonetheless, literary texts suggest that libertas need not refer exclusively to political freedoms or freedom from tyranny but could also be used in the context of freedom from financial burdens, especially taxes. Legends on some coins of Caligula and Galba explicitly connect the Libertas personification with freedom from taxes and customs duties. Libertas appears on the coins of Trajan and Hadrian, neither of whom succeeded maligned predecessors, and, as she does so only in specific years after their principates had commenced, her appearance may be linked with certain historical events. The presence of Libertas on the coinage of these emperors coincided with the forgiveness of tax debts and other coins marking the alimenta program, which provided financial support for the upbringing and feeding of the children of Italy.


This environmental assessment (EA) aims at minimizing negative environmental impacts, as a result of the Fortaleza Urban Transport Project, which include construction of access roads, transport corridors, as well as traffic management. However, the report specifically addresses the potential impacts resulting from the construction of the underground subway western line, under the responsibility of Metrofor (Companhia Cearense de Transportes Metropolitanos). It comprises six volumes, i.e., the environmental procedures manual for civil works, the environmental management plan, and annex, studies on urban impacts, progress report, and implementation guidelines. During construction, noise, dust, and light pollution, vibration, and traffic disruption will occur. In addition, spoil arising from excavation will need to be disposed, or reused. Mitigating measures assume: water effluents, and sludge should be treated according to environmental regulations, and, waste disposal collected by the municipal collector agency (EMLURB); provisions regarding safety, call for adequate traffic signaling, and traffic safety measures, and includes the installation of protective barriers; noise abatement measures include construction of sound barriers, and work schedules to be limited to daytime only; landscaping, and vegetation will be actively restored; and, consultation with the community will be pursued.


Information about insurgent groups is a central resource in civil wars: counterinsurgents seek it, insurgents safeguard it, and civilians often trade it. Yet despite its essential role in civil war dynamics, the act of informing is still poorly understood, due mostly to the classified nature of informant "tips." As an alternative research strategy, we use an original 2,700 respondent survey experiment in 100 villages to examine attitudes toward the Guardians of Peace program, a widespread campaign by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to recruit local informants. We find that coethnic bias—the systematic tendency to favor cooperation with coethnics—shapes attitudes about informing and beliefs about retaliation, especially among Tajik respondents. This bias persists even after adjusting for additional explanations and potential confounding variables, suggesting that identity considerations such as coethnicity may influence attitudes toward high-risk behavior in wartime settings.


Process mineralogy is a term well known to the mining industry considering high income products like precious minerals and metals, but for lower income products like industrial minerals the term is not so familiar or commonly used. The purpose has been to apply process mineralogical methodology for characterizing and quantifying granitic pegmatite used for industrial mineral products like quartz, feldspar and muscovite.The first part included the development of Rietveld X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods for quantification of the main mineralogy of granitic pegmatites from two pegmatite deposit areas; Glamsland (Norway) and Limbergsbo (Sweden). This Rietveld XRD method was tested against other known quantification methods like X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and element to mineral conversion based on mineral chemistry data achieved from Electron Probe Micro Analyser (EPMA). The result of the comparison was that Rietveld XRD was an accurate and precise quantification method. Also because the method is mathematically based, the analyses were reproducible and the handling of the method was user friendly not demanding an expert interpretation for every sample analysed.The second part of the project included a characterization of the mineralogy. The methods used were XRF, the newly developed Rietveld XRD methods, Point Counting using an optical microscope (PC), Image Analysis (IA) and Mineral Liberation Analysis (MLA) using the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), and mineral chemistry and element mapping of certain elements using the EPMA. The main perspective was to characterize the mineralogy of the granitic pegmatite from Glamsland and Limbergsbo deposits, with a special focus on feldspar and the defined quality parameters. The quality parameters were different for the two deposit areas. For the Glamsland deposit area the main quality parameter was content of iron (Fe), and also types of feldspar. Quartz was not considered due to documented quality parameters for the products confirming Fe content to be stable and low (0.01 Wt. %). During the analysis it was discovered that the feldspars (microcline and albite) had several inclusions of contaminating minerals, in addition to microtextures like graphic granite, perthites and anti-perthites. The albite investigated was more exposed to alteration than microcline, and had a higher content of contaminating mineral inclusions. For albite and microcline in two of the raw materials investigated elevated levels of Fe2O3 was observed in the mineral chemistry.The reason for this was that Fe was able to enter the crystal lattice in feldspar influencing the chemical assays. For the Limbergsbo deposit the quality parameters covered content of iron (Fe) and also fluorine (F) in the pegmatites. During the analysis it was discovered that content of both Fe and F was present in muscovite, a discovery that lead to further analysis of muscovite. The results of these extra analyses were that at least three types of muscovite were present in the pegmatite, a Fe-rich type, an F-rich type, and more regular muscovite.The methods included in this project have proved to cover several kinds of information of the materials investigated, and in summary provide important chemical, mineralogical and textural knowledge. As process mineralogical methods for exploration, the different methods can be used in combinations well suited for the deposits which are to be investigated. For industrial companies to be able to utilize a deposit in the best way both considering cost efficiency and environmental aspects the most important step is thoroughly exploration of the deposit area before opening. This should be done to reveal the geological settings like structural geology and process mineralogy. Based on the knowledge received from the exploration, it is then possible to develop an enrichment process best fitted for refining of the raw materials. The findings from an exploration can also be used to set up quality control management procedures covering daily quality control of the material and periodically quality controls. These periodically quality controls can reveal changes in the mineralogy and distribution of contaminating elements, an information that can be used to update the methods used for daily quality control management.


Kidnapping has been a neglected crime in criminological research. In fact, there has been a dramatic increase in the yearly numbers of police recorded kidnapping offences in England and Wales in the last 25 years, but this has not been matched by a similar increase in convictions. This study focuses on the official criminal histories of the 7042 males and 545 females who were convicted at least once for kidnapping between 1979 and 2001. Of these, 3.9% of the males and 2.6% of the females had convictions for kidnapping on more than one occasion. We examined two subgroups to ensure long observation periods for prior and subsequent convictions. Of those convicted of kidnapping in 2001, around one-half (51.1%) of the males and around one-third (36.6%) of the females had previous convictions. The previous convictions consist of a wide range of offences, with the most common being theft and violent offences. A 20-year follow-up of those convicted in 1979-81 showed that three in five males and one in three females are subsequently convicted on at least one more occasion for a standard-list offence. An examination of convictions for other offences brought to court at the same time as the kidnap offence enabled a typology of kidnaps to be proposed. Those kidnaps with co-convictions of an acquisitive nature declined over the period, whereas other types, including sexual and violent, showed rises. Changing shifts in the nature of kidnaps have important policy implications.


ABSTRACT The role broad-spectrum antibiotics play in the spread of antimicrobial resistance, coupled with their effect on the healthy microbiome, has led to advances in pathogen-specific approaches for the prevention or treatment of serious bacterial infections. One approach in clinical testing is passive immunization with a monoclonal antibody (MAb) targeting alpha toxin for the prevention or treatment of Staphylococcus aureus pneumonia. Passive immunization with the human anti-alpha toxin MAb, MEDI4893*, has been shown to improve disease outcome in murine S. aureus pneumonia models. The species specificity of some S. aureus toxins necessitates testing anti-S. aureus therapeutics in alternate species. We developed a necrotizing pneumonia model in ferrets and utilized an existing rabbit pneumonia model to characterize MEDI4893* protective activity in species other than mice. MEDI4893* prophylaxis reduced disease severity in ferret and rabbit pneumonia models against both community-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and hospital-associated MRSA strains. In addition, adjunctive treatment of MEDI4893* with either vancomycin or linezolid provided enhanced protection in rabbits relative to the antibiotics alone. These results confirm that MEDI4893 is a promising candidate for immunotherapy against S. aureus pneumonia.


Background: During the last decade overweight has become one of the most common health problems in the world. Several strategies have been tried implemented to counter this development. Exercise groups for overweight children are one example of a potential counter strategy. Children`s own experiences of participating in these exercise groups have however been poorly documented. Purpose: The objective of this study was to document how children, who participate in exercise groups for overweight children, evaluate their experience. Material & methods: Data was collected by participating in an exercise group for overweight children between the ages of 8 to15. Participant observations as well as in-depth interviews of 6 children allowed the researcher to gather important information from the participants. The data was later processed and analyzed in accordance with systematic text condensation and thematic analysis. Results: This study showed that children had an overall pleasant experience when participating in the exercise group. The children indicated general well-being, happiness from making new friends, feelings of accomplishment as well as self-determination. It became evident that the goal of getting in better shape motivated the children to continue exercising on their own free time. It was quite clear that activities which focused on endurance and strength alone did not result in as much engagement as "play-centered" activities. The children were also appreciative when given the opportunity to influence the exercise with activities of their choosing. Conclusion: The participants in the exercise group stated that their experience was positive. The exercise group was an enjoyable arena for workouts, and it provided pleasant side effects such as making new friends. Relevance: The objective of this research was to gain insights in children's experiences when taking part in an exercise group for overweight children. Children's perspectives are known to be poorly documented, it is however important to ask those participating in the groups to reveal how effective they really are. The perspectives of the children can also help when trying to make this type of exercise groups more attractive for other children. There is a need for larger studies within this area to supplement and possibly confirm the results found in this specific study. It is also of major importance that future studies focus on the experience of the children, rather than the adults alone.


In many regions and at the planetary scale, human pressures on the environment exceed levels that natural systems can sustain. These pressures are caused by networks of human activities, which often extend across countries and continents due to global trade. This has led to an increasing requirement for methods that enable absolute environmental sustainability assessment (AESA) of anthropogenic systems and which have a basis in life cycle assessment (LCA). Such methods enable the comparison of environmental impacts of products, companies, nations, etc, with an assigned share of environmental carrying capacity for various impact categories. This study is the first systematic review of LCA-based AESA methods and their applications. After developing a framework for LCA-based AESA methods, we identified 45 relevant studies through an initial survey, database searches and citation analysis. We characterized these studies according to their intended application, impact categories, basis of carrying capacity estimates, spatial differentiation of environmental model and principles for assigning carrying capacity. We then characterized all method applications and synthesized their results. Based on this assessment, we present recommendations to practitioners on the selection and use of existing LCA-based AESA methods, as well as ways to perform assessments and communicate results to decision-makers. Furthermore, we identify future research priorities intended to extend coverage of all components of the proposed method framework, improve modeling and increase the applicability of methods.


I examine the key instrument (German kids on vacation) used by Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf in their analysis of the impact of file-sharing on record sales, published as the lead article in the Feb 2007 JPE. Their measured relationship between the instrument (German students on vacation) and the variable that it is instrumenting for, American downloading, is seen to have outlandish implications in the often overlooked first stage regressions. The coefficient implies that if German secondary students all go to school, American file-sharing would drop to zero. A nonsensical result of this sort indicates an important error somewhere in their data or analysis. The instrument is also shown to be related to American record sales, contrary to the claims of Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, and contrary to the requirements of their analysis. Further, their measurement of downloading varies wildly from week to week and is inconsistent with downloading data from Big Champagne. In addition, their data on file-sharing, which Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf state is representative of worldwide file-sharing, is actually biased according to some of their own statistics which they failed to examine, considerably overstating the share of German files. Finally, I demonstrate that German students on vacation cannot have a measurable impact on American downloading (and thus American record sales) negating its potential usefulness and implying that the approach taken by Professors Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf could never have provided useful information about the impact of file-sharing on record sales.


Indira Gandhi's life (1917-1984) spanned much of the twentieth century. She was Prime Minister of the world's largest democracy for two spells that totaled fifteen years. To this day, her environmental legacy remains one that divides critics from admirers. One sees it as a defense against ecological impoverishment, especially in her initiation of wildlife preservation and environmental conservation. The other views these as thin legitimization for an authoritarian style of functioning. The two are not antithetical, but neither does justice to the subject nor indeed to her times. Drawing on her decades of letter writing to and from her father Jawaharlal Nehru and her speeches, the article also looks in some detail at her executive actions as Prime Minister. Issues of nature can hardly be separated from the political problems that bedeviled India in the late 1960s. Serious food shortages led to increased reliance on US food aid, but the Indian bid for autonomy led to inevitable strains over the issue. The Green Revolution reduced reliance on the West. It was paralleled by a sustained engagement with conservation issues that continued beyond the 1971 war with Pakistan. Here, the Indira period is divided into two broad parts, with a leftward tilt, especially around 1969, and a shift to a more pro-business attitude after 1980. These changes were also evident vis a vis forests and wildlife. Ecological patriotism requires careful attention for saving nature, although statist intervention was a concomitant of India's unique place in the Cold War later. As US contacts thawed; the opening was complemented by shifts in the political economy. Similarly, arbitrary slum demolition and forcible family planning were part of a larger shift to coercive polices during the 18-month long Emergency period. The article ends by asking how to study contemporary politics to better comprehend our ecological dilemmas. Even as ecological processes and economic exchanges unify the world, divisions between and within nation states are central to most issues. By looking at a key figure of the latter half of the twentieth century, the article hopes to shed fresh light on how to look at the relations of nature, science, and power.


Microscope imaging technologies have turned out to yield an indispensable tool in modern biomedical research. Combined with fluorescence labeling techniques they not only provide new perspectives on tissues and cells as a whole, but also on processes at the cellular level, and will be one important experimental technique of systems biology. To handle this steadily increasing amount of image data, in this paper we propose a new and fully automatic approach for neurite segmentation and protein quantification. Our technique combines three phases of automatic neuron cell localization, neurite segmentation and protein analysis. In the second stage active contour models based on hierarchical gradient vector flow fields are employed, enabling precise neurite segmentation despite inhomogeneous texture. Neurite segmentation results as well as protein quantification profiles from a set of test images demonstrate the appropriateness of our approach for practical biomedical research.


Infrastructure managers of medium size bridge stocks are being faced with the task of approximating short, mid to long term financial needs for their infrastructure. This task is particularly demanding due to the lack of relevant information, in particular in forecasting bridge condition and intervention costs. It can, therefore, be beneficial to make cost estimations based on structure types and present condition evaluation. In this article a rational approach for the management of the medium size bridge stock including 654 bridges of a regional road network is presented. The basic methodology is given and it is described how this methodology is adopted considering the available information (data base) on the bridge stock on the structures level. The use of age equivalents is suggested to describe bridge condition and to link directly intervention cost to condition


Abstract. Experience has shown that river floods can significantly hamper the reliability of railway networks and cause extensive structural damage and disruption. As a result, the national railway operator in Austria had to cope with financial losses of more than EUR 100 million due to flooding in recent years. Comprehensive information on potential flood risk hot spots as well as on expected flood damage in Austria is therefore needed for strategic flood risk management. In view of this, the flood damage model RAIL (RAilway Infrastructure Loss) was applied to estimate (1) the expected structural flood damage and (2) the resulting repair costs of railway infrastructure due to a 30-, 100- and 300-year flood in the Austrian Mur River catchment. The results were then used to calculate the expected annual damage of the railway subnetwork and subsequently analysed in terms of their sensitivity to key model assumptions. Additionally, the impact of risk aversion on the estimates was investigated, and the overall results were briefly discussed against the background of climate change and possibly resulting changes in flood risk. The findings indicate that the RAIL model is capable of supporting decision-making in risk management by providing comprehensive risk information on the catchment level. It is furthermore demonstrated that an increased risk aversion of the railway operator has a marked influence on flood damage estimates for the study area and, hence, should be considered with regard to the development of risk management strategies.


Abstract.
 A morphometric study of the Olearia phlogopappa species complex from throughout south-eastern Australia has confirmed species boundaries and resolved the infraspecific taxonomy of two species. It has shown O. phlogopappa (Labill.) DC., O. stellulata (Labill.) DC., O. lirata (Sims) Hutch., O. rugosa (F.Muell. ex W.Archer bis) Hutch. and O. brevipedunculata N.G.Walsh to be non-overlapping entities with unique morphological characters. O. stellulata is circumscribed to include only southern and western Tasmanian populations and those from the Otways and Wilsons Promontory in southern Victoria. O. rugosa is restricted to Victoria and a few isolated populations on Flinders Island and northern Tasmania. Four previously noted variants of O. rugosa from Victoria are here described as subspecies, along with the description of a fifth subspecies from northern Tasmania. Infraspecific boundaries of O. phlogopappa are here revised to include nine subspecies, six of which were previously included as varieties, and descriptions are made of three new subspecies.


Nitrification rate is proposed as a procedure for evaluating nitrogen requirements of soils for the production of corn. By the use of a modified nitrification method the rate of nitrate production was compared with the response of corn to nitrogen fertilizer in a series of experiments conducted in Iowa over a period of seven years. A significant correlation was obtained between nitrification rate and the response of corn to the application of 40 to 60 lbs. of nitrogen per acre. The data serve to stress the influence of plant population density on the magnitude of yield response to nitrogen. At comparable rates of nitrification considerably higher yield responses to fertilization were obtained where the plant population was high than where it was low. In all population groups, however, a profitable yield response to nitrogen fertilization was obtained where the nitrification rate was less than 40 ppm. On fields with thick stands, profitable yield increases were generally obtained when the nitrification rate was less than 50 ppm.


Objective We present first-phase results of a performing arts public health intervention, 'Singing and Dancing for Health,' aiming to promote healthier behaviors in Ghana's impoverished Northern Region. We hypothesize that live music and dance drama provide a powerful technology to overcome barriers such as illiteracy, lack of adequate media access, inadequate health resources, and entrenched sociocultural attitudes. Our research objective is to evaluate this claim. Methods In this first phase, we evaluated the effectiveness of arts interventions in improving knowledge and behaviors associated with reduced incidence of malaria and cholera, focusing on basic information and simple practices, such as proper hand washing. Working with the Youth Home Cultural Group, we codeveloped two 'dance dramas' delivering health messages through dialog, lyrics, and drama, using music and dance to attract spectators, focus attention, infuse emotion, and socialize impact. We also designed knowledge, attitude, and behavior surveys as measurement instruments. Using purposive sampling, we selected three contrasting test villages in the vicinity, contrasting in size and demographics. With cooperation of chiefs, elders, elected officials, and Ghana Health Service officers, we conducted a baseline survey in each village. Next, we performed the interventions, and subsequently conducted follow-up surveys. Using a more qualitative approach, we also tracked a select subgroup, conducted focus group studies, and collected testimonials. Surveys were coded and data were analyzed by Epi Info. Results Both quantitative and qualitative methods indicated that those who attended the dance drama performances were likelier than those who did not attend to list the causal, preventive, and transmission factors of malaria and cholera. Also, the same attendees were likelier than nonattendees to list some activities they do to prevent malaria, cholera, and other sanitation-related diseases, proving that dance dramas were highly effective both in raising awareness and in transforming behaviors. Conclusions As a result of this study, we suggest that where improvements in community health depend primarily on behavioral change, music and associated performing arts – dancing, singing, and drama – presented by a professional troupe offer a powerful social technology for bringing them about. This article is a status report on the results of the project so far. Future research will indicate whether local community–based groups are able to provide equal or better outcomes at lower cost, without outside support, thus providing the capacity for sustainable, localized health promotion.


Background : Highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) reduces  morbidity and mortality in HIV/AIDS infected patients. HAART is used  indefinitely and the regimens are changed over the course of treatment due to resistance, adverse drug reactions or access to drugs. Few studies have been done in resource constrained setting to assess these factors that have a bearing on compliance and success of treatment. Objective : To determine the number of patients who changed HAART regimen and reasons for change, their CD4+ cell counts and clinical events in the course of HAART. Design : A prospective, observational study. Setting : Kisumu District Hospital and Nairobi Rheumatology Clinic. Subjects : Twenty nine of the 101 patients who were on HAART. Main Outcome Measures : Resistance to HAART, adverse drug reactions, change of drugs (HAART) regimen or failed response to HAART regimen. Results : One hundred and one (60 males and 41 females) patients were screened and initiated on HAART. Twenty nine (12 males and 17 females) were included in the study. The mean age was 41.7 years, mean CD4+ cell count prior HAART initiation was 140.8 cells/µl. Thirteen patients developed treatment failure on HAART and their mean CD4+ cell count at the 12th month when the drug were changed was 96.5 cells/µl. Five patients  developed neuropathy, one developed lipodystrophy, one ART related liver injury, three pancreatitis, four changed due to cost and one due to Steven Johnson syndrome. Thirteen patients had resistance to HAART and ten of the 13 had new clinical events: - cryptococcous meningitis, pulmonary tuberculosis, cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes zoster virus (HZV), pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia and chronic diarrhoea. Five patients had a documented high HIV-RNA viral load mean of 619,919.5 copies/ml (5.792 log units) at the time of changing HAART at 12 months. Eight of the 13 did not have HIV-RNA viral load due to high cost. Conclusion : Reasons for Changing HAART included: cost of HAART, Poor tolerability Toxicities (neuropathy, and lipodystrophy, anti-retroviral related liver injury (ARLI), Steven Johnson Syndrome, pancreatitis) and probable failure of to HAART. CD4+ cell count was declining in the HAART resistance group. Failing response to HAART in routine clinical practice is recognised. Effort must be made to put in place resistance surveillance without HAART, CD4+ cell count, HIV viral load and clinical assessment are in patients on parameters to consider when changing treatment.


Subsurface water retention technology (SWRT) is a new, long‐term approach developed to improve water storage capacities of sandy soils for sustainable crop production. It consists of subsurface polyethylene membranes installed within the soil profile that prevent the loss of irrigation water via deep percolation. Our objective was to identify membrane shape and placement to maximize the reduction in irrigation losses. A greenhouse experiment was conducted to measure the distribution of water in a surface‐irrigated sand lysimeter with six membranes of different geometry installed at four depths. The HYDRUS‐2D model was calibrated using soil water content data to estimate water losses from four soils modified with SWRT membranes. Membranes with 2:1, 3:1, and 5:1 aspect ratios installed at the 20‐ and 40‐cm depths in sand, sandy loam, loamy sand, and sandy loam soils were used in the simulations. Different vertical and horizontal alignments were also tested for the 2:1 membrane aspect ratio. The HYDRUS‐2D model adequately described the dynamics of water content measured in the lysimeter experiment. The simulation results showed that the highest reductions in water loss for most studied soil textures were achieved with a 2:1 aspect ratio membrane installed at the 20‐cm depth. The SWRT was sensitive to excessive irrigation, and its performance declined rapidly in response to overirrigation. Our modeling results demonstrated a high potential for the SWRT to reduce water losses from the plant root zone. Further testing of membrane performance is needed for different crops in real soils across a range of different climates.


Current international interest in finding alternative sources of energy to the diminishing supplies of fossil fuels has encouraged research efforts in improving biofuel production technologies. In countries which lack sufficient food, the use of sustainable lignocellulosic feedstocks, for the production of bioethanol, is an attractive option. In the pre-treatment of lignocellulosic feedstocks for ethanol production, various chemicals and/or enzymatic processes are employed. These methods generally result in a range of fermentable sugars, which are subjected to microbial fermentation and distillation to produce bioethanol. However, these methods also produce compounds that are inhibitory to the microbial fermentation process. These compounds include products of sugar dehydration and lignin depolymerisation, such as organic acids, derivatised furaldehydes and phenolic acids. These compounds are known to have a severe negative impact on the ethanologenic microorganisms involved in the fermentation process by compromising the integrity of their cell membranes, inhibiting essential enzymes and negatively interact with their DNA/RNA. It is therefore important to understand the molecular mechanisms of these inhibitions, and the mechanisms by which these microorganisms show increased adaptation to such inhibitors. Presented here is a concise overview of the molecular adaptation mechanisms of ethanologenic bacteria in response to lignocellulose-derived inhibitory compounds. These include general stress response and tolerance mechanisms, which are typically those that maintain intracellular pH homeostasis and cell membrane integrity, activation/regulation of global stress responses and inhibitor substrate-specific degradation pathways. We anticipate that understanding these adaptation responses will be essential in the design of 'intelligent' metabolic engineering strategies for the generation of hyper-tolerant fermentation bacteria strains.


In this study, a new marine urostylid ciliate, Metaurostylopsis antarctica nov. spec. collected from the Antarctic Ocean was investigated using morphological, morphometrical, and molecular methods. Metaurostylopsis antarctica nov. spec. is characterized as follows: slender to ellipsoid form in body shape; two types of cortical granules, ellipsoid large one (type I, yellow-green, 1.5 × 1 μm) in rows along dorsal kineties and cirri, circular small one (type II, colourless, 0.3 μm in diameter) scattered throughout whole body; 19-24 adoral membranelles, 4 frontal cirri, 2-5 frontoterminal cirri, 1 buccal and 2 transverse cirri; 3-5 midventral pairs, 10-15 cirri of midventral row; 1 right and 2 left marginal rows; 3 dorsal kineties; about 43 macronuclear nodules. This new species mainly differs from the congeners by the number of marginal rows (1 vs. 3 or more on right side; 2 vs. 3 or more on left side). In addition, proter's oral primordium developed on the right side of the oral cavity (vs. in center of oral cavity), and the rightmost anlage splits into two parts, namely, the frontoterminal cirri and a transverse cirrus (vs. only frontoterminal cirri). Inter-specific dissimilarities of the SSU rRNA gene between the congeners range from 3.3 to 4.4%.


Solid theological foundations of biblical counseling are clearly presented in contrast to humanistic and secular theories of psychological counseling. A practical, proactive, and relevant book for students, church leaders, and lay people. This collection of writers represents some of America's leading biblical teachers and counselors. Other contributors include: Ken L. Sarles, David Powlison, Douglas Bookman, David B. Maddox, Robert Smith, William W. Goode, and Dennis M. Swanson.


BACKGROUND
This evidence-based practice guideline was developed to update and address new issues in the handling of cytotoxics, including the use of oral cytotoxics; the selection and use of personal protective equipment; and treatment in diverse settings, including the home setting.

METHODS
The guideline was developed primarily from an adaptation and endorsement of an existing guideline and from three systematic reviews. Before publication, the guideline underwent a series of peer and external reviews to gather feedback. All comments were addressed, and the guideline was amended when required. The guideline applies to health care workers who could come into contact with cytotoxic drugs at any point in the medication circuit. The intended users are hospital administrators, educators, and managers; occupational health and safety services; and pharmacy and health care workers.

RESULTS
The recommendations represent a reasonable and practical set of procedures that the intended users of this guideline should implement to minimize opportunities for accidental exposure. They are not limited to just the point of care; they cover the entire chain of cytotoxics handling from the time such agents enter the institution until they leave in the patient or as waste.

CONCLUSIONS
Reducing the likelihood of accidental exposure to cytotoxic agents within the medication circuit is the main objective of this evidenced-based guideline. The recommendations differ slightly from earlier guidelines because of the availability of new evidence.


Biomedical informatics is the science of information, where information is defined as data with meaning. This definition identifies a fundamental challenge for informaticians: connecting with the healthcare team by enabling the acquisition, retrieval, and processing of information within the cognitive capabilities of the human brain. Informaticians can become aware of the constraints involved with cognitive processing and with workplace factors that impact how information is acquired and used to facilitate an improved user interface providing information to healthcare teams. Constraints affecting persons in the work environment include as follows: (1) cognitive processing of information; (2) cognitive load and memory capacity; (3) stress-affecting cognition; (4) cognitive distraction, attention, and multitasking; (5) cognitive bias and flexibility; (6) communication barriers; and (7) workplace environment. The human brain has a finite cognitive load capacity for processing new information. Short-term memory has limited throughput for processing of new informational items, while long-term memory supplies immediate simultaneous access to multiple informational items. Visual long-term memories can be extensive and detailed. Attention may be task dependent and highly variable among persons and requires maintaining control over distracting information. Multitasking reduces the effectiveness of working memory applied to each task. Transfer of information from person to person, or machine to person, is subject to cognitive bias and environmental stressors. High-stress levels increase emotional arousal to reduce memory formation and retrieval. The workplace environment can impact cognitive processes and stress, so maintaining civility augments cognitive abilities. Examples of human-computer interfaces employing principles of cognitive informatics inform design of systems to enhance the user interface.


An experiment was conducted to compare the effect of feeding medicinal weeds namely bandotan, patikan kebo and sidaguri on broiler chicken's performance. The experiment used 100 broiler chicken 3 days of age and were kept for 5 weeks in battery cages. Each cage was 100 x 80 x 60 cm of size and consist 5 chickens. Design of this experiment was assigned to Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 4 treatments and 5 replications. The treatments were R0 (Basal ration without medicinal weed), R1 (95% basal ration + 5% bandotan ( Ageratum conyzoides L)), R2 (95% basal ration + 5% patikan kebo ( Euphorbia hirta L)) dan R3 (95% basal ration + 5% sidaguri ( Sida cordifolia )). Ration and drinking water were ad libitum. Measured parameters were feed consumption, average daily gain and feed conversion ratio. Data were analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the significant effects by Duncan's multilple range test (DMRT). Results of this study showed that feeding 5% of medicinal weeds either bandotan, patikan kebo or sidaguri had similarly effect (P>0,05) on feed consumption, average daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio of broiler chicken. However, bandotan and sidaguri resulted average daily weight gain lower than patikan kebo. It is concluded that medicinal weeds bandotan, patikan kebo and sidagu could be fed to the chicken up to 5% without significant effect on broiler performance. Patikan kebo resulted better broiler performance than that of bandotan and sidaguri. (Animal Production 11(2): 103-108 (2009) Key Words: Ageratum conyzoides, Euphorbia hirta L, sida cordifolia, weeds


The number of workers on farms and in food processing represents about 16 percent of total employment in basic industries in Michigan. Converting farm labor to full time equivalents, however, reduces the proportion to about 11 percent. The industries dependent upon agriculture and food processing enhance the importance of this sector. Adding backward linked industries increases the total employment from about 100 thousand to 200 thousand and output from $15 billion to $27 billion. If Michigan agriculture's share of the forward linked industries of wholesaling and retailing is added, total employment related directly or indirectly to farming and food processing is estimated to be 500 thousand and output to be $37 billion. In terms of employment, this represents a ratio of nearly 10 jobs for every full time equivalent in farming or about 5 jobs for every employee in the combination of agriculture and food processing. The total direct and related employment in agriculture and the food system is about 1 million, about a fourth of total employment in the state. Not only does agriculture and food processing have a major presence in the state, this sector contributes to the stability of an economy heavily dependent on the manufacture of durable goods which are vulnerable to business cycles. Food processing tends to be located near metropolitan areas, facilitating employment shifts. Similarly, the proximity of alternative employment opportunities provides stability for households involved in agriculture and food processing. While gross farm income and expenditures have increased in nominal terms, trends in the 1980s and 1990s have been stable or negative in real terms. Real net farm income declined in the 1990s. However, both nominal and real farmland prices increased in the same period, a paradox reflecting a robust non-farm economy and the close rural-urban interface. Value added by Michigan food processors increased over time in both nominal and real terms until a reversal in the 1990s. Employment in food processing continued a secular decline at the close of the decade.


After three decades of rapid economic growth, environmental degradation is now one of the most significant issues facing the Chinese government. The country's air, water, and land are all heavily polluted. Despite a number of environmental protection initiatives, both at the national and local levels, China ranks poorly when compared with other emerging nations. Formal government institutions have failed to address adequately the people's concerns. Beijing's system of decentralized authoritarianism lacks the political processes and incentives needed to implement meaningful national reform and to encourage local governments and polluting factories to enforce laws and regulations. The Chinese government now faces growing pressure from civil society, as NGOs, Internet activism, and protests compel the government to proactively address environmental issues. Beijing would do well to increase engagement between the government and its citizens, rather than relying on its current crisis management style of environmental governance.


A class of finite discrete dynamical systems, called Sequential Dynamical Systems (SDSs), was introduced in [BR99] as a formal model for analyzing simulation systems. Here, we address the complexity of two basic problems and their generalizations for SDSs.Given an SDS $\mathcal{S}$ and a configuration $\mathcal{C}$, the PREDECESSOR EXISTENCE (or PRE) problem is to determine whether there is a configuration $\mathcal{C}'$ such that $\mathcal{S}$ has a transition from $\mathcal{C}'$ to $\mathcal{C}$. Our results provide separations between efficiently solvable and computationally intractable instances of the PRE problem. For example, we show that the PRE problem can be solved efficiently for SDSs with Boolean state values when the node functions are symmetric and the underlying graph is of bounded tree width. In contrast, we show that allowing just one non-symmetric node function renders the problem $\mathbf{NP}$-complete even when the underlying graph is a star (which has a tree width of 1). Our results extend some of the earlier results by Sutner [Su95] and Green [Gr87] on the complexity of the PREDECESSOR EXISTENCE problem for 1-dimensional cellular automata.Given two configurations $\mathcal{C}$ and $\mathcal{C}'$ of a partial SDS $\mathcal{S}$, the PERMUTATION EXISTENCE (or PME) problem is to determine whether there is a permutation of nodes such that $\mathcal{S}$ has a transition from $\mathcal{C}'$ to $\mathcal{C}$ in one step. We show that the PME problem is $\mathbf{NP}$-complete even when the function associated with each node is a simple-threshold function. We also show that the problem can be solved efficiently for SDSs whose underlying graphs are of bounded degree and bounded tree width. We consider a generalized version (GEN-PME) of the PME problem and show that the problem is $\mathbf{NP}$-complete for SDSs where each node function is NOR and the underlying graph has a maximum node degree of 3. When each node computes the OR function or when each node computes the AND function, we show that the GEN-PME problem is solvable in polynomial time.


Cross-cultural encounters in Europe and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought the potential for bafflement, hostility, and admiration. The court was the crucial site where expanding Eurasian states and empires met and were forced to make sense of one another. By looking at these interactions, Courtly Encounters provides a fresh cross-cultural perspective on the worlds of early modern Islam, Counter-Reformation Catholicism, Protestantism, and a newly emergent Hindu sphere. Both individual agents and objects such as texts and paintings helped mediate encounters between courts, which possessed rules and conventions that required decipherment and translation, whether in words or in pictures. Sanjay Subrahmanyam gives special attention to the depiction of South Asian empires in European visual representations, finding a complex history of cultural exchange: the Mughal paintings that influenced Rembrandt and other seventeenth-century Dutch painters had themselves been earlier influenced by Dutch naturalism. Courtly Encounters provides a rich array of images from Europe, the Islamic world, India, and Southeast Asia as aids for understanding the reciprocal nature of cross-cultural exchanges. It also looks closely at how insults and strategic use of martyrdom figured in courtly encounters. As he sifts through the historical record, Subrahmanyam finds little evidence for the cultural incommensurability many ethnohistorians have insisted on. Most often, he discovers negotiated ways of understanding one another that led to mutual improvisation, borrowing, and eventually change.


The persistence and brutality of contemporary civil wars have left many analysts puzzled. Traditional interpretations describe civil wars as simple confrontations between two sides, as explosions of mindless violence, or as disrupting apparently benevolent development processes within countries. These approaches do not fully take into account the rational economic calculations that drive many civil conflicts in the late twentieth century. This paper argues that, to understand violence in civil wars, we need to understand the economic dimensions underpinning it. Economic activities arising from war fall into seven categories: pillage; extorting protection money; controlling or monopolising trade; exploiting labour; gaining access to land, water and mineral resources; stealing aid supplies; and advantages for the military. If these short-term benefits suggest that there is more to civil wars than simply winning, so too does the prevalence and persistence of behaviour that is, in military terms, counter-productive. This can take two forms: cooperating with the 'enemy'; and mounting attacks that increase, rather than reduce, political and military opposition. This paper describes two forms of economic violence: 'top-down', which is incited by political leaders and entrepreneurs; and 'bottom-up', where violence is actively embraced by 'ordinary' people, either civilians or low-ranking soldiers. Seven conditions can encourage top-down economic violence: a weak state; rebel movements that lack strong external finance or support; an undemocratic or 'exclusive' regime under threat; economic crisis; ethnic divisions that cut across class lines; the existence of valuable commodities; and prolonged conflict. Three conditions are particularly conducive to bottom-up violence: deep social and economic exclusion; the absence of a strong revolutionary organisation; and impunity for violent acts. To achieve more lasting solutions to civil conflicts, it needs to be acknowledged that violence can present economic opportunities. This paper concludes that outside intervention must take into account the political and economic interests of the violent. Intervention must provide realistic economic alternatives to violence, and must handle democratic transitions and the introduction of free markets with sensitivity. This is likely to mean strengthening and improving the institutions of the state, such as schools, social-security systems and establishing a more accountable police force and Army.


The match–mismatch hypothesis, which relates timing of plankton production to recruitment of fish, is difficult to test for a number of reasons, not least of which is lack of adequately resolved spatial and seasonal data for matching information on fish larvae and their food. Spatial, seasonal, and interannual variability of water-column stratification, primary production, and copepod egg production can be modelled, but do such models adequately represent features of interannual variability that affect survival of fish larvae? Information on the timing and location of cod larvae in the Irish Sea and at Iceland is used to identify target areas for which long-term hindcasts of plankton production are made using a one-dimensional model of water-column stratification and production of chlorophyll and copepod eggs, driven by hourly meteorological data. Hindcast spring chlorophyll and nitrate values for Faxa Bay (Iceland) in 1966 correspond well with observations. Hindcast interannual variability in Calanus egg production appears to have a significant effect on cod recruitment in the Irish Sea and at Iceland. While the conclusions from such a limited study must be tentative, they suggest that local meteorological forcing, in areas where cod larvae occur, exerts an effect on their survival, owing to the match between plankton production and larval feeding.


The thesis considers the politics and ideology of Belfast's
Protestant working class (PKC). It is also conceived as a
contribution to discussions concerning the nature and theory of 'ideology' within the Marxist tradition. Traditional Irish Marxism has been dismissive of the PWC reducing their politics to the protection of marginal privelege sustained by Britain's Imperialist presence. This thesis argues that such a perspective is inadequate.
It is essential to move away from the concept of loyalist ideology as a systematised form of false consciousness, rather it is necessary to look at the ideology of Protestant workers at the level of day to day experiences and practices. Such collectively lived experiences give
the-alternative sets of practices embodied in working class culture. It is therefore important to draw on the sociological tradition of the community study. To fully understand PWC images of society it is necessary to construct the relationship between, local ideologies and
the theoretically developed ideologies, generated by national institutions. In order to do this the thesis looks at the social structure and politics of a particular PWC commmity in Belfast. The thesis then outlines by way of case study how the PWC have reacted to the contemporary political and social situation in Northern Ireland. The
thesis draws on interviews with residents, political activists and paramilitary members. In particular it identifies the politics and ideology of those active in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). In overall terms it highlights
the ideology by which Protestant workers make sense of, and give meaning to, their social and political worlds.


A Ship of War is a stunning new maritime adventure from Top Ten bestselling author Sean Thomas Russell, following the great success of A Battle Won and Under Enemy Colours. For fans of Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O'Brian, A Ship of War is the third instalment in the electrifying historical series of Charles Hayden and the Themis. 'Hayden kept his eye fixed upon the chasing ship...The screech of an iron ball passed narrowly by. There was no room now for error' 1794. As the terror rages in France, Captain Charles Hayden leaves Plymouth with orders to gather intelligence from a spy off the Le Havre coast. But the enemy lies in wait. In the foulest of weather, Hayden's seamanship is tested to the limit and a terrifying cat and mouse chase begins. Faced with a powerful French squadron Hayden knows he must elude capture at any cost. In his possession are details of an imminent attack on British soil which must be delivered before all is lost.Ahead lie shipwrecks, storms, battles and dramatic escapes - and at the centre of it all, the courage and heroism of a lone captain...A Ship of War is the brilliant third tale in the epic maritime adventures of Charles Hayden. A masterpiece already rivalling the stories of Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O'Brian. Praise for Sean Thomas Russell: "An unqualified seal of approval. This is gloriously readable stuff". (The Bookseller). "Russell's encyclopaedic command of nautical lore, joined to his rare ability to spin a ripping yarn, combine to place the reader right in the middle of the action, of which there is plenty". (Neal Stephenson (author)). "Well-written, plenty of adventure ...places the reader in the midst of the action of battle". (Marine Society). Sean Thomas Russell is a lifelong sailor whose passion for the sea - and his love of nautical history - inspired the adventures of Charles Hayden. A Ship of War follows bestsellers A Battle Won and Under Enemy Colours. Sean lives on Vancouver Island.


In an effort to extend theory & research on the effect of role stress on individuals and their coping ability, the relationship between Role Stress and Coping with Role Stress among women executives was examined. In today's world more women are taking up managerial responsibilities which require them to balance multiple roles both at work and at home. This automatically gives rise to some amount of stress. In the present study, the sample consists of 200 adult women executives. The research examines the different role stressors encountered by women executives and the coping style used by them, to deal with these stressors. Results showed that executives tend to use more of proactive style of Approach Mode of Coping with Role Stress wherein they deal with Role Stress through own efforts, seeking help from significant others and using organizational resources to reduce role stress.


In a Geographic Information System (GIS), the transformation of geographical data (e.g. actual locations and physical characteristics of objects on the Earth surface) into geographic information dealt with complex series of process and procedures. In hydrologic modelling, streamflow is one of the main physical geographic apprearance within nature of hydrologic cycle. Rapid population growth,constructions, urbanization, and industrialization have increased impervious area causing hazardous impact towards rate of stormwater infiltrated into soil. Thus the overland flow in a post-development area becomes greater than the pre-development area. Within GIS, all stream networks, surface structures and its properties must be assigned and preserved with coordinate systems and map projections respectively known as georeferencing. Hence, any GIS based hydrologic applications need careful understanding in terms of map projections, coordinate systems and its transformations, scales and grid resolutions while entering spatial data. At present, there is still no unifying evidence available that provides a coherent and satisfactory explaination for the integration of the core GIS based saturation excess mechanisms into the streamflow generating process. Concepts of georeferencing need to be applied while performing GIS based saturation mechanism and to sustain the existing spatial properties of soil and land use. This study aims to visualize the effects of georeferencing system towards determine areas and total overland flow volume generated from Saturation Excess Overland Flow (SEOF) process using topographic wetness index (TWI) and antecedent soil-moisture conditions (AMC). Both factors are analysed by focusing on spatial object preservation techniques of conformal based Rectified Skew Orthomophic (RSO) and equidistance based Cassini-Soldner projections. This study is carried out at Sungai Pinang basin, located in North East coast of Penang Island, Malaysia. The areas and discharge from SEOF areas are determined and compared based on the map scale of 1 : 25 000. Digital layers of Sungai Pinang basin are constructed using Autodesk Map 2004 software, while Digital Elevation Models (DEM) construction and SEOF are determined using Spatial Analyst extension within ArcView GIS software. Local authorities could find the results are useful to evaluate the effectiveness of flood management control, sustainability for long-term development purposes, stream restoration, rehabilitation and relocation of construction projects.


Under laboratory conditions swimming behavior of larvae of the infaunal bivalve Sinonovacula constricta was dominated by a vertically oriented helical spiral with intermittent sinking, enabling larvae to regulate their vertical position in the water column. Instantaneous swimming velocities ranged between 0.4 and 0.7 mm S-' for veliger and veliconcha larvae; these values were directly comparable to those recorded for other marine bivalve larvae. Swimming activity due to ciliary beating in the velum represented a negligible fraction of total energy expenditure. Postlarval drifting was first observed on Day 9 after larval metamorphosis and settlement and continued for about 1 mo. A major mechanism underlying postlarval drifting was the secretion of a single byssus thread which was at least 50 times longer than the body size. Calculations Indicated that the viscous drag of the elongated thread was about 6.7 times greater than the viscous drag of the body, thus providing a hydrodynamic basis for postlarvae to remain suspended in the water column. Environmental factors that increased postlarval drifting included lowered temperature, starvation and decreased light ~llumination. There were at least 3 peaks of postlarval drifting, especially on Day 26 after the larval settlement, these data were consistent with direct field observations. Combination of both physical (e.g. tidal current transport) and biological (e.g. byssus thread) processes are critical in determining the secondary pelagic drifting of S. constricta postlarvae.


Some time ago I had a shock. I was reading, in the Mathematical Gazette for March 1931, Sir A. S. Eddington's presidential address to the Mathematical Association in 1930. And quite suddenly I came on the statement that the number of protons in the universe is either 7 or 14 with 78 noughts after it. My breath was taken away. Readers of R. L. Stevenson's story, Providence and the Guitar, will remember the maiden lady who, after hearing what the Commissary said when he was woken up in the night, felt her maiden modesty so outraged that she doubted if she ranked any longer as a maiden lady. I felt just like that. I felt that my philosophic modesty had been so outraged that I doubted if I ranked any longer as a humble student of philosophy. Sir Arthur has certainly not counted them. Then how in the world does he know that they are what he says they are?


Inconsistency management policies allow a relational database user to express customized ways for managing inconsistency according to his need. For each functional dependency, a user has a library of applicable policies, each of them with constraints, requirements, and preferences for their application, that can contradict each other. The problem that we address in this work is that of determining a subset of these policies that are suitable for application w.r.t. the set of constraints and user preferences. We propose a classical logic argumentation-based solution, which is a natural approach given that integrity constraints in databases and data instances are, in general, expressed in first order logic (FOL). An automatic argumentation-based selection process allows to retain some of the characteristics of the kind of reasoning that a human would perform in this situation. Copyright © 2009, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.


The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is responsible for enabling stability in Africa. This implies that peace support and counter terror operations will need to be carried out across the continent. The strategy is for rapid response of a highly mobile force based on contingencies or as problems develop. It is very difficult to train soldiers for these missions due to the variety and infrequency of scenarios. Training is therefore limited to relatively unrealistic scenarios that either don't include live fire or enemy forces, or have only small teams training simultaneously.


For many years, there has been considerable interest in applications of nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques of real-time crack detection. Various authors have suggested different approaches to find a solution to solve the problem of real-time crack detection (Meitzler et al., 2008; Zheng et al., 2008; Berthelot et al.,2000; Tong and Wu, 2001). This paper suggests a soft computing approach using fuzzy logic as an effective technique to solve the problem of real-time crack detection. It is also desirable to develop an integrated-circuit microprocessor chip, which can be used for the detection of cracks. The objectives of this paper are to report on efforts to develop an automated procedure for crack detection and to devise a technique so that the proposed technique can be easily implemented on a microprocessor chip. The developed fuzzy inference system is supported by the rule base which defines the behavior of a crack detection system. A very large-scale integration (VLSI) circuit for crack detection is developed on the basis of the fuzzy logic model and using a hardware description language (HDL). Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation and circuit testing were also performed. KEYWORDS: fuzzy logic, nondestructive testing techniques, crack detection, neuro-fuzzy logic, Mamdani technique, FPGA.


This publication reports beginning research into a noisy communication channel analogy of software development process productivity, in order to establish quantifiable behavior and theoretical bounds. The analogy leads to a fundamental mathematical relationship between human productivity and the amount of information supplied by the developers, the capacity of the human channel for processing and transmitting information, the software product yield (object size), the work effort, requirements efficiency, tool and process efficiency, and programming environment advantage. The publication also derives an upper bound to productivity that shows that software reuse is the only means that can lead to unbounded productivity growth; practical considerations of size and cost of reusable components may reduce this to a finite bound.


The novel sources of CP violation observed in charged χ and λ hyperon decays were investigated. A comparison of the p and p angular distributions in the hyperon decays was made using a subset of the data from the HyperCP experiment (E871) at Fermilab. A possible source of bias was found to be a momentum-dependent differential loss of events due to interactions of the χ- and χ+ decay products. The obtained result was observed to be stable with respect to time, χ momentum, and secondary-beam intensity, The results show that differences between the χ- and χ+ production angles could cause a bias due to production polarization differences.


Wildlife traditionally refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rainforests, plains, grasslands, and other areas, including the most developed urban areas, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that much wildlife is affected by human activities.


State of the art sound event classification relies in neural networks to learn the associations between class labels and audio recordings within a dataset. These datasets typically define an ontology to create a structure that relates these sound classes with more abstract super classes. Hence, the ontology serves as a source of domain knowledge representation of sounds. However, the ontology information is rarely considered, and specially under explored to model neural network architectures. We propose two ontology-based neural network architectures for sound event classification. We defined a framework to design simple network architectures that preserve an ontological structure. The networks are trained and evaluated using two of the most common sound event classification datasets. Results show an improvement in classification performance demonstrating the benefits of including the ontological information.


Abstract. Nighttime chemistry in polluted regions is dominated by the nitrate radical (NO3) including its direct reaction with natural and anthropogenic hydrocarbons, its reaction with NO2 to form N2O5, and subsequent reactions of N2O5 to form HNO3 and chlorine containing photolabile species. We report nighttime measurements of NO3, NO2, and O3, in the polluted marine boundary layer southwest of Vancouver, BC during a three week study in the summer of 2005. The concentration of N2O5 was calculated using the well known equilibrium, NO3+NO2↔N2O5. Median overnight mixing ratios of NO3, N2O5 and NO2 were 10.3 ppt, 122 ppt and 8.3 ppb with median N2O5/NO3 molar ratios of 13.1 and median nocturnal partitioning of 4.9%. Due to the high levels of NO2 that can inhibit approach to steady-state, we use a method for calculating NO3 lifetimes that does not assume the steady-state approximation. Median and average lifetimes of NO3 in the NO3-N2O5 nighttime reservoir were 1.1–2.3 min. We have determined nocturnal profiles of the pseudo first order loss coefficient of NO3 and the first order loss coefficients of N2O5 by regression of the NO3 inverse lifetimes with the [N2O5]/[NO3] ratio. Direct losses of NO3 are highest early in the night, tapering off as the night proceeds. The magnitude of the first order loss coefficient of N2O5 is consistent with, but not verification of, recommended homogeneous rate coefficients for reaction of N2O5 with water vapor early in the night, but increases significantly in the latter part of the night when relative humidity increases beyond 75%, consistent with heterogeneous reactions of N2O5 with aerosols with a rate constant khet=(1.2±0.4)×10−3 s−1−(1.6±0.4)×10−3 s−1. Analysis indicates that a correlation exists between overnight integrated N2O5 concentrations in the marine boundary layer, a surrogate for the accumulation of chlorine containing photolabile species, and maximum 1-h average O3 at stations in the Lower Fraser Valley the next day when there is clear evidence of a sea breeze transporting marine air into the valley. The range of maximum 1-h average O3 increase attributable to the correlation is ΔO3=+1.1 to +8.3 ppb throughout the study for the average of 20 stations, although higher increases are seen for stations far downwind of the coastal urban area. The correlation is still statistically significant on the second day after a nighttime accumulation, but with a different spatial pattern favouring increased O3 at the coastal urban stations, consistent with transport of polluted air back to the coast.


An electrical fixing technique is used to permanently store holograms in a SBN:60 crystal. We have optimized the duration of the light illumination and applied electric field during the writing process. We have observed that the DE could be controlled by a write-reveal grating technique, where high-voltage pulses of opposite polarity are applied to the crystal. By varying the amplitude of electric field we obtained DE from 0 to 70%. The range of chosen applied electric fields depends on the coercive field of the crystal. An increase in the illumination time can also lead to a smaller DE, however, we have found that DE can be dramatically increased by exposing the crystal to several light pulses after the revealing phase. By varying the intensity and the duration of the exposure it is possible to control the DE of the grating.


A considerable amount of studies have shown that sleep facilitates memory consolidation. For procedural memory, some findings support the association with REM sleep but the relationship between memory consolidation and dreaming has been scarcely studied. The present study did not find an effect of direct incorporations of the mirror tracing task into the dream on over-night improvement. On the other hand, bizarre, long, and intense dreams were associated with poorer performance regarding speed but also with decreased amount of errors. Whether this can be explained by altered sleep physiology or negative effects of dreams on mood and performance can not yet been answered. Future research should study more complex and demanding procedural memory tasks and the relationship between dreaming and sleep-dependent consolidation of emotional memories.


CELCIS carried out, on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the first Scotland-wide survey of care experienced students in Scotland's colleges and universities. The research aimed to broaden and deepen understanding of the barriers and enablers that care experienced students encounter in going to, being at and staying at college and university in Scotland. The research took the form of an online survey which was completed by students with care experience who are studying at Scottish colleges and universities. Quantitative and qualitative analysis was carried out which led to 8 key learning points and 18 recommendations being put forward. These learning points aim to focus the attention of practitioners, leaders and policy makers on the challenges and enabling factors which students with care experience encounter before and during study. The recommendations aim to set forth practical, solution focused actions that organisations should take to strengthen existing provision and make improvements in areas that students have identified.


Because the brain is composed of many interconnected cell types in close proximity, it is not easy to determine the precise function of any one class. Existing methods such as lesions or pharmacological inhibition are relatively crude, and their effects cannot reliably be used to eliminate the contribution of one cell type. Even genetic approaches, which can be targeted to certain cells, have only been used to inhibit one receptor subtype, and the deficits are often present throughout development, confounding interpretation. Nakashiba et al. constructed a tetanus-toxin-based triple transgenic mouse that allows reversible inhibition of all the synaptic activity of one type of cell in the hippocampus, the CA3 pyramidal cell. When the CA3 hippocampal cells were silenced, the rats could still learn a spatial task but could not recall certain memories or perform rapid learning tasks. T. Nakashiba, J. Z. Young, T. J. McHugh, D. L. Buhl, S. Tonegawa, Transgenic inhibition of synaptic transmission reveals role of CA3 output in hippocampal learning. Science 319, 1260-1264 (2008). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The concept of species has played a central role in both evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology, and has been the focus of a number of books in recent years. This book differs from other recent collections in two ways. It is more explicitly integrative and analytical, centering on issues of general significance such as pluralism and realism about species. It also draws on a broader range of disciplines and brings neglected cognitive, anthropological, and historical dimensions to philosophical debates over species. The chapters are organized around five themes: unity, integration, and pluralism; species realism; historical dimensions; cognitive underpinnings; and practical import. The contributors include prominent researchers from anthropology, botany, developmental psychology, the philosophy of biology and science, protozoology, and zoology. Contributors: Scott Atran, Richard Boyd, Kevin de Queiroz, John Dupr, Marc Ereshefsky, Paul E. Griffiths, David L. Hull, Frank C. Keil, Brent D. Mishler, David L. Nanney, Daniel C. Richardson, Kim Sterelny, Robert A. Wilson


The role of trust in promoting economic activity and societal development has received considerable academic attention by social scientists. A popular way to measure trust at the individual level is the so-called "investment game" (Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe, 1995). It has been widely noted, however, that risk attitudes can also affect decisions in this game, and thus in principle confound inferences about trust. We provide novel evidence shedding light on the role of risk attitudes for trusting decisions. To the best of our knowledge our data are the first rigorous evidence that (i) aggregate investment distributions differ significantly between trust and risk environments, and (ii) risk attitudes predict individual investment decisions in risk games but not in the corresponding trust games. Our results are convergent evidence that trust decisions are not tightly connected to a person's risk attitudes, and they lend support to the "trust" interpretation of decisions in investment games.


The Semantic Annotation component is a software application that provides support for automated text classification, a process grounded in a cohesion-centered representation of discourse that facilitates topic extraction. The component enables the semantic meta-annotation of text resources, including automated classification, thus facilitating information retrieval within the RAGE ecosystem. It is available in the ReaderBench framework (http://readerbench.com/) which integrates advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. The component makes use of Cohesion Network Analysis (CNA) in order to ensure an in-depth representation of discourse, useful for mining keywords and performing automated text categorization. Our component automatically classifies documents into the categories provided by the ACM Computing Classification System (http://dl.acm.org/ccs_flat.cfm), but also into the categories from a high level serious games categorization provisionally developed by RAGE. English and French languages are already covered by the provided web service, whereas the entire framework can be extended in order to support additional languages.


Until recently, Kenya was considered an icon, a bastion of political stability and economic growth in East Africa and Africa in general. Forty-four years after gaining independence, and fifteen years since the beginning of multiparty democracy, the ruling elite touted this exceptionalism to conceal the historical grievances of marginalized communities. Given this background, the electoral violence experienced between December 2007 and March 2008 came as a surprise to many. Much scholarship on the topic focuses on the immediate triggers such as voting irregularities rather than the underlying conditions that existed prior to the violence. In this study, I attempt to identify the root causes of the electoral violence in Kenya by focusing on two main areas of historical marginalization: class and ethnic marginalization. The Kenyan crisis helps show some lessons for pan-African world.


This dissertation combines an interest in political economy, political theory and cinema to offer an answer about the pace of the Hollywood film business and its general modes of behaviour. More specifically, this dissertation seeks to find out how the largest Hollywood firms attempt to control social creativity such that the art of filmmaking and its related social relations under capitalism do not become financial risks in the pursuit of profit. Controlling the ways people make or watch films, the thesis argues, is an institutional facet of capitalist power. Capitalist power—the ability to control, modify and, sometimes, limit social creation through the rights of ownership—is the foundation of capital accumulation. For the Hollywood film business, capitalist power is about the ability of business concerns to set the terms that mould the future of cinema.

The overall objective of Part I is to outline and rectify some of the methodological problems that obscure our understanding of how capital is accumulated from culture. Marxism stands as the theoretical foil for this argument. Because Marxism defines capital such that only economic activity can create value, it needs to clearly distinguish between economics and politics—yet this is a distinction it is ultimately unable to make. With this backdrop in mind, Part I introduces the capital-as-power approach and uses it as a foundation to an alternative political economic theory of capitalism. The capital-as-power approach views capital not as an economic category, but as a category of power. Consequently, this approach reframes the accumulation of capital as a power process.

Part II focuses on the Hollywood film business. It investigates how and to what extent major filmed entertainment attempts to accumulate capital by lowering its risk. The process of lowering risk—and the central role of capitalist power in this process—has characterized Hollywood's orientation toward the social-historical character of cinema and mass culture. This push to lower risk has been most apparent since the 1980s. In recent decades, major filmed entertainment has used its oligopolistic control of distribution to institute an order of cinema based on several key strategies: saturation booking, blockbuster cinema and high-concept filmmaking.

[This thesis was nominated for the York University Dissertation Prize.]


Making plans that depend on external events can be tricky. For example, an agent considering a partial plan that involves taking a bus must recognize that this partial plan is only viable if completed and selected for execution in time for the agent to arrive at the bus stop. This setting raises the thorny problem of allocating the agent's planning effort across multiple open search nodes, each of which has an expiration time and an expected completion effort in addition to the usual estimated plan cost. This paper formalizes this metareasoning problem, studies its theoretical properties, and presents several algorithms for solving it. Our theoretical results include a surprising connection to job scheduling, as well as to deliberation scheduling in time-dependent planning. Our empirical results indicate that our algorithms are effective in practice. This work advances our understanding of how heuristic search planners might address realistic problem settings.


The backlog in the provision of sport facilities for Mangaung dated back to as early as 1890 when the City Council of Bloemfontein first revealed its unsympathetic and unhelpful attitude towards requests by the residents for sports facilities. The residents soon realized, in the absence of any official policy declarations or legislation, that they were solely responsible for the financing of their sports facilities and the management thereof - a situation that only eased somewhat after the promulgation of the Natives (Urban Areas) Legislation of 1923 and 1945, compelling local authorities to meet their sport obligations towards the black residents under their control.


We present constraints on neutrino masses, the primordial fluctuation spectrum from inflation, and other parameters of the ΛCDM model, using the one-dimensional Lyα-forest power spectrum measured by [1] from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), complemented by Planck 2015 cosmic microwave background (CMB) data and other cosmological probes. This paper improves on the previous analysis by [2] by using a more powerful set of calibrating hydrodynamical simulations that reduces uncertainties associated with resolution and box size, by adopting a more flexible set of nuisance parameters for describing the evolution of the intergalactic medium, by including additional freedom to account for systematic uncertainties, and by using Planck 2015 constraints in place of Planck 2013. Fitting Lyα data alone leads to cosmological parameters in excellent agreement with the values derived independently from CMB data, except for a weak tension on the scalar index ns. Combining BOSS Lyα with Planck CMB constrains the sum of neutrino masses to ∑ mν < 0.12 eV (95% C.L.) including all identified systematic uncertainties, tighter than our previous limit (0.15 eV) and more robust. Adding Lyα data to CMB data reduces the uncertainties on the optical depth to reionization τ, through the correlation of τ with σ8. Similarly, correlations between cosmological parameters help in constraining the tensor-to-scalar ratio of primordial fluctuations r. The tension on ns can be accommodated by allowing for a running dns/d ln k. Allowing running as a free parameter in the fits does not change the limit on ∑ mν. We discuss possible interpretations of these results in the context of slow-roll inflation.


Abstract: Recent years have seen a transformation in Turkish civil-military relations—away from the traditional picture of weak elected officials overseen by a strong military, to one of a strengthened civilian government and a military with decreased influence. This article explores the questions of how this transformation has occurred, whether it will last, and what it indicates about prospects for democratic consolidation in Turkey. It includes suggestions for ensuring the institutionalization of these changes, and discusses possible stumbling blocks to further advancement.