Offering character animation functionality previously only available in programs costing two to three times as much, 3ds max 7 is everything you've dreamed of in a 3D modeling program-and more! Here to get you hands-on fast is a project-based guide from one of Discreet's own carefully chosen authorized training specialists, Ted Boardman. Completely updated with brand new tutorials, real-world projects, easy to understand explanations and a CD that includes all the files you need to complete the books many projects, Ted shows you how to maximize the program's potential in virtually any application or industry. You'll quickly learn the basics of modeling, applying materials and maps, applying lighting, and integrating animation before moving on to more advanced topics. You'll also find plenty of coverage of the bells and whistles new to 3ds max 7: Normal Mapping, the Parameter Editor, Paint Selections, as well as the award-winning character animation system, character studio(r).


This volume interrogates and theorises various forms of fundamentalism and fetishism that impinge on Africa and the African people. The book valiantly rethinks and unpacks these forms of fundamentalisms and fetishisms, offering in the process critical vistas for students, scholars and activists on matters of decoloniality and transformation. By meticulously and painstakingly unpacking pertinent issues, the book provides unparalleled intellectual milestones and platforms for the oncoming revolution and quest for justice in the form of decoloniality and transformation. Drawing from several disciplinary domains such as Development Studies, Security Studies, Political Anthropology and Sociology, Economic Anthropology and Social studies, English Studies, History, Philosophy and Religious Studies, and drawing from scholars from across different universities in the Southern African region, the book provides multiple lenses from which to understand the complex goings on in a continent that can no longer afford to simply fold hands and watch while its citizens suffer multiple forms of coloniality, fetishisms and fundamentalisms.


Electronic health records (EHRs) have the potential to increase the quality and decrease the cost of cancer care. These twin goals can only be met by a fully functional oncology EHR, which includes at a minimum: searchable data repositories, clinical decision support (CDS), the ability to electronically order chemotherapeutic medications, and the ability to interface with patients via a patient portal. Such fully functional EHRs not only offer patients the best potential for high-quality care, they enable retrospective analysis to answer a wide variety of comparative effectiveness and quality improvement questions. The significant barriers of cost, time pressures, aversion to CDS, and interoperability will need to be overcome if EHRs are to be meaningfully used by the majority of oncologists.


This Article develops normative and doctrinal innovations to cope with a pivotal yet undertheorized question in most proposed class actions: assuming that a class has adequate representatives, how much variance among class members' circumstances should courts tolerate? Class actions seeking monetary damages would be much less controversial if all class members were identically situated. In an imagined world of perfect homogeneity, shifting from an individualized to an aggregative mode of adjudication would promote efficiency, mitigate collective action problems, and counterbalance defendants' inherent economies-of-scale without sacrificing accuracy or redistributing entitlements among class members. In the real world, however, most classes encompass at least partially heterogeneous claims spread across a spectrum of merit and economic value. This diversity creates opportunities for strategic behavior that can distort the outcome of trials or of settlements negotiated in the shadow of trial. The Article defines three phenomena that create such distortions: cherry-picking, claim fusion, and ad-hoc lawmaking. The potentially mischievous consequences of heterogeneity in class actions suggest that courts should have a normative theory and doctrinal mechanism to distinguish between acceptable and excessive diversity among proposed class members. The Article addresses the normative question by introducing and justifying three principles to structure certification criteria: finality, fidelity, and feasibility. The Article then applies these principles to assess the forty-year-old predominance standard that currently governs how courts decide whether to certify diverse damages classes. This analysis reveals that the predominance standard is conceptually incoherent and that widely-cited doctrine applying it is normatively unsound. To fill the gatekeeping function that the predominance standard ineffectively attempts, the Article proposes a new resolvability test for courts to apply when deciding if a class action would be an appropriate procedural vehicle for adjudicating diverse claims and defenses. The proposed test would permit certification of class actions seeking money damages only when: The court has a feasible plan to answer all disputed questions of law and fact that must be resolved before entering judgment for or against class members under the law governing each class member's claim and applicable defenses. The Article then discusses broader implications of its proposal that highlight a dynamic relationship between substantive and procedural constraints on regulation of mass risks.


In Charlton, Massachusetts, the current open-space subdivision option doesn't work well for the benefit of people or wildlife, but rather allows the developer to cut costs without giving a more beneficial design in return. Open space "islands" are being created that have no connectivity with one another, making them little more than buffers of undisturbed land within and among developments. While these buffers are somewhat useful from an aesthetic perspective, better regulations and design guidelines would be helpful in creating more useable "corridors" for wildlife and trails for people, which in return will help to preserve wildlife biodiversity and provide meaningful recreational opportunities for residents. Fragmentation of contiguous wildlife habitat is a major cause of local declines in wildlife species. Continuing along with the status quo would perpetuate inefficient stewardship of natural resources, continue the building of subdivisions where people are separated from nature, and force local wildlife into either finding new habitat or into facing decline and eventual extinction through genetic degeneration. This study utilizes a multi-layered methodology to understand the issues: casestudies of existing open-space developments in the town of Charlton; the latest research from the preservation of biological diversity; an adapted Ian McHarg environmental overlay analysis method; and the Conservation-Subdivision design method recently put forward by Randall Arendt. These methods are then used in concert to look at a current Charlton subdivision project, Schofield Heights, to field-test the learnings from the project. Feedback is then utilized from the new designs to compare Charlton's existing open-space development regulations with the theoretical knowledge having been gained, whereby final recommendations for Charlton's regulations are made. The study concludes that if support from the local Planning and Conservation offices is provided to ease the extra design work inherent in these projects, that the benefits derived from this type of open-space subdivision planning exceed the costs for all involved.


Blockchain technology continues to grow and extend into more areas with great success, which highlights the importance of studying the fields that have been, and have yet to be, fundamentally changed by its entrance. In particular, blockchain technology has been shown to be increasingly relevant in the field of transportation systems. More studies continue to be conducted relating to both fields of study and their integration. It is anticipated that their existing relationships will be greatly improved in the near future, as more research is conducted and applications are better understood. Because blockchain technology is still relatively new as compared to older, more well-used methods, many of its future capabilities are still very much unknown. However, before they can be discovered, we need to fully understand past and current developments, as well as expert observations, in applying blockchain technology to the autonomous vehicle field. From an understanding and discussion of the current and potential future capabilities of blockchain technology, as provided through this survey, advancements can be made to create solutions to problems that are inherent in autonomous vehicle systems today. The focus of this paper is mainly on the potential applications of blockchain in the future of transportation systems to be integrated with connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) to provide a broad overview on the current related literature and research studies in this field.


Since the early 1990s, UK social care policy has committed to supporting carers. Legislation (England and Wales) over this time period has recognised the importance of separate carer assessments that take into account an individual's ability and willingness to care. This paper considers carer assessment from the perspective of social care practitioners. It reports on qualitative data from a carer research programme that spans over 20 years (1993 to present) and includes 383 in-depth interviews with social care practitioners across England and Wales. Offering unique longitudinal insights, we identify some persistent tensions associated with the translation of UK carer assessment policy into social care practice. We explore practitioners' long-standing ambivalence towards carer assessment and their reluctance to evidence carer need via a separate assessment process. Deficits relating to the conduct of carer assessment are identified. For example, the reliance on structured, problem-focused assessment protocols that restrict discussions to the personal care aspects of caring and fail to capture the complex, diverse lives that carers lead. Carer assessments do not reflect the reciprocal nature of many caring relationships, as a one-way direction of care is assumed. They do not take into account the broader support network of individuals who may be involved in helping someone with complex care needs. Carer willingness to care continues to be taken for granted and planning for the future is a significant gap in carer assessment practice. The proposed changes to the social care systems across England and Wales provide a timely opportunity to review the process and conduct of carer assessment. Policy guidance needs to clarify the links between service user and carer assessments and the way these align within broader assessment and care management frameworks. Assessment tools that encourage a narrative approach to carer assessment and capture the affective aspects of care-giving could benefit future practice.


Active context-free games are two-player games on strings over finite alphabets with one player trying to rewrite the input string to match a target specification. These games have been investigated in the context of exchanging Active XML (AXML) data. While it was known that the rewriting problem is undecidable in general, it is shown here that it is EXPSPACE-complete to decide for a given context-free game, whether all safely rewritable strings can be safely rewritten in a left-to-right manner, a problem that was previously considered by Abiteboul et al. Furthermore, it is shown that the corresponding problem for games with finite replacement languages is EXPTIME-complete.


For several years now, China has implemented policies to promote the international use of its national currency, the Renminbi (RMB). As part of these efforts, the People's Bank of China (PBC) has negotiated 25 bilateral currency swap agreements (BSAs) with foreign central banks. These make it easier for firms in both China and its partner countries to settle cross-border trade and direct investment in RMB. We seek to explain why China and these countries cooperate via BSAs. We theorize that trade and direct investment interdependence relate to dyadic BSA cooperation via two mechanisms: financing insulation from international liquidity shocks and reduced transaction costs of cross-border exchange for local firms. Additionally, we expect the presence of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) will increase the probability of dyadic BSA cooperation. BSAs are natural extensions of these existing agreements. They represent an additional layer of state-level formal cooperation that further reduces barriers to cross-border trade and direct investment. Our empirical analysis finds that both de facto trade interdependence and de jure economic integration via PTAs and BITs increase the probability of BSA cooperation between China and partners.


In today's increasingly intercultural workplace setting, an individual's ability to function effectively in culturally diverse situations is paramount for the success of the organisation. The main purpose of this study is to examine and understand the intercultural communication between Australian hospital workers (nurse managers, nurses and Patient Care Assistants and volunteers) through the theoretical lens of Cultural Intelligence (CQ).

A mixed method approach was employed to collect data from multiple sources including the use of questionnaires and interviews. Items for the questionnaires and interviews were drawn from the literature on cultural intelligence. The questionnaire included 20 Likert scale items which were developed by the Centre for Cultural Intelligence based in the United States and Singapore. In addition there were six Likert scale items developed by the researcher on intercultural experiences to gauge satisfaction levels in interactions. Another seven Likert scale items were drawn from the Ali Individualism Scale to understand how culture type influenced CQ and intercultural interactions. The interview included six open-ended questions related to cultural intelligence, English language proficiency and a critical incident scenario. The interviews were used to provide detail on the cultural intelligence questionnaire statements.

A Western Australian private hospital was selected for the study where 400 questionnaires were distributed. Out of these 157 returned questionnaires, 15 voluntary interviewees were chosen based on their job roles and culture type to be interviewed. The study found that overall the hospital workers had a high level of cultural intelligence. There were two cultural intelligence factors that were low: Cognitive CQ, involving knowledge of other cultures, and Behavioural CQ, involving the ability to provide the appropriate cultural response during intercultural interactions. The study found that those with higher levels of CQ enjoyed meeting people of different cultures and had more satisfactory relationships. Those with lower levels of CQ seemed to have more challenging intercultural interactions.

This thesis concluded by recommending that the hospital provide intercultural awareness training to all staff and some form of technical training relating to introduction of common terms used in a hospital setting for employees who have lower levels of English proficiency. It was also recommended that the hospital include CQ as part of their Human Resources systems, such as recruitment, appraisals and competency assessments.


Pin is a bawdy, adolescent cobbler's assistant, both arrogant and insecure who - while the Second World War rages - sings songs and tells jokes to endear himself to the grown-ups of his town - particularly jokes about his sister, who they all know as the town's 'mattress'. Among those his sister sleeps with is a German sailor, and Pin dares to steal his pistol, hiding it among the spiders' nests in an act of rebellion that entangles him in the adults' war. Italo Calvino, one of Italy's finest postwar writers, has delighted readers around the world with his deceptively simple, fable-like stories. He was born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy; he fought for the Italian Resistance from 1943-45. His major works include "Cosmicomics" (1968), "Invisible Cities" (1972), and "If on a winter's night a traveler" (1979). He died in Siena in 1985. Martin L. McLaughlin is Professor of Italian and Fiat-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford where he is a Fellow of Magdalen College. In addition to his published academic works he is the English translator of Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino among many others.


A sociocultural study hypothesised Chinese parents in Canada would express values informed by filial piety. The extent to which filial piety characteristics informed parenting values, the extent to which family characteristics related to parenting values and the extent to which families felt their values were reflected in Canadain pareting literature were explored. Questions were asked to highlight the problematic nature of Developmentally Appropriate Practice's universalistic approach to development.

Survey research involved 30 participants' questionnaire responses. Results were mixed. Parents expressed an independent orientation regarding goals; whereas, values were consistent with filial piety. Agreement with parenting literature was marginal. Most research is needed to examine whether a hegemonic ideology contributes to Chinese parents goals; Chinese parents reported values informed by filial piety. No previous studies were found specifically investigating Canadian parents of Chinese origin. Potential benefits include indentifying barriers to partnership and opportunities to develop awareness of global parenting goals.


A 63-year-old Chinese gentleman, a non-smoker with less than 5 units of alcohol intake per week, presented with persistent progressive odynophagia for 1 year with sudden onset of hoarseness for 1 month. Oral and neck examinations were normal. Flexible laryngoscopy showed left false cord fullness with reduced mobility of left vocal cord. Considering the risk factors and suggestive symptoms, a laryngeal malignancy was suspected. Contrasted-enhanced CT scan of the neck revealed a linear hyperdensed lesion measuring 3.0 cm x 0.2 cm at the left paralaryngeal space between the left vocal cord and thyroid cartilage. Further questioning revealed a positive history of fish bone ingestion 1 year prior to this presentation. He was advised for an external approach neck exploration for foreign body removal. However, with high risk of recurrent laryngeal nerve injury and possible incomplete removal of foreign body due to fibrosis, the patient opted for watchful waiting.


We present the abundance analysis for a sample of 7 red giant branch stars in the metal-poor globular cluster NGC 4372 based on UVES spectra acquired as part of the Gaia-ESO Survey. This is the first extensive study of this cluster from high-resolution spectroscopy. We derive abundances of O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, Fe, Cr, Ni, Y, Ba, and La. We find a metallicity of [Fe/H] = -2.19 +/- 0.03 and find no evidence of any metallicity spread. This metallicity makes NGC 4372 one of the most metal-poor Galactic globular clusters. We also find an a-enhancement typical of halo globular clusters at this metallicity. Significant spreads are observed in the abundances of light elements. In particular, we find a Na-O anticorrelation. Abundances of O are relatively high compared with other globular clusters. This could indicate that NGC 4372 was formed in an environment with high O for its metallicity. A Mg-Al spread is also present that spans a range of more than 0.5 dex in Al abundances. Na is correlated with Al and Mg abundances at a lower significance level. This pattern suggests that the Mg-Al burning cycle is active. This behavior can also be seen in giant stars of other massive, metal-poor clusters. A relation between light and heavy s-process elements has been identified.


Through New York state legislation, localities are afforded broad authority adopt green building standards that reach beyond those imposed by state law. As localities begin to undertake the challenge of implementing green building initiatives, many legal questions arise. This article examines several instances of green local action and provides examples of successful local projects, as well as local mistakes. The municipalities mentioned include a broad spectrum of communities, from small municipalities such as Mount Kisko, to some of the larger cities in the state such as New York City and Syracuse.


Abstract Attachment security was assessed in children who had spent at least 8 months in a Romanian orphanage (RO) and two comparison groups of children: a Canadian-born, nonadopted comparison group (CB) and a comparison group adopted from Romania before the age of 4 months (RC). We also assessed differences in displays of indiscriminately friendly behavior between the two adopted groups of children. Attachment security was assessed using parent report on a questionnaire comprised of the 23 items with the highest and lowest loadings on the Waters and Deane (1985) attachment Q-sort. Indiscriminately friendly behavior was assessed using parents' responses to five questions about their children's behavior with new adults. Children's attachment security scores were also compared to parents' scores on the parent attachment subscale of the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1990). RO children scored significantly lower on security of attachment than did either the RC or CB children. RC and CB children did not differ on attachment security. Based on their parents' reports, RO children displayed significantly more indiscriminately friendly behaviors than did RC children, but such behaviors were not correlated with security of attachment. Children's attachment security scores were related to their parents attachment scores only in the RO group. It is suggested that RO children's experience of extreme neglect contributed to their low attachment-security scores, and that indiscriminate friendliness may be an important behavior to consider in the study of attachment in institutionalized children.


Previous studies have demonstrated variability in the phenotype of rat C6 glioma cells. In the present study, we compared morphology, growth rate, and β‐adrenergic regulation of gene expression in early (P39–47) and late (P55–90) passage C6 cells. Morphological changes were observed in five independently derived, late passage populations. In four of the five, the untreated cells were more polygonal than the fibroblast‐like parental cells, and only a small fraction exhibited process outgrowth after dbcAMP treatment. Untreated cells from the fifth late passage population had longer cytoplasmic processes than parental cells and responded to dbcAMP with further process outgrowth. All late passage populations had shorter generation times than the parental cells. In early passage cells, treatment with the β‐adrenergic agonist, isoproterenol (IPR), resulted in an increase in c‐fos mRNA and a decrease in c‐jun mRNA (Gubits RM, Yu H: J Neurosci Res, 30:625–630, 1991). Both of these immediate early gene responses were irreversibly lost between P50 and P55. Additional differences in basal or IPR‐induced mRNA levels were observed for β‐APP, GFAP, NGF, and PPE, but not for a number of other mRNAs. These results are discussed in relationship to previously described differences in the ability of early and late passage C6 cells to accumulate cAMP (Mallorga P, et al.: Biochim Biophys Acta 678:221–229, 1981). © Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Human pluripotent stem cells are known to have the capacity to renew indefinitely, being intrinsically able to differentiate into many different cell types. These characteristics have generated tremendous enthusiasm about the potential applications of these cells in regenerative medicine. However, major challenges remain with the development and testing of novel experimental stem cell therapeutics in the field. In this Review, we focus on the nature of the preclinical challenges and discuss potential solutions that could help overcome them. Furthermore, we discuss the use of allogeneic versus autologous stem cell products, including a review of their respective advantages and disadvantages, major clinical requirements, quality standards, time lines, and costs of clinical grade development.


A condensed-matter system is used to study superfluid dynamics. A quantum fluid passing an obstacle behaves differently from a classical one. When the flow is slow enough, the quantum gas enters a superfluid regime, and neither whirlpools nor waves form around the obstacle. For higher flow velocities, it has been predicted that the perturbation induced by the defect gives rise to the turbulent emission of quantized vortices and to the nucleation of solitons. Using an interacting Bose gas of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity, we report the transition from superfluidity to the hydrodynamic formation of oblique dark solitons and vortex streets in the wake of a potential barrier. The direct observation of these topological excitations provides key information on the mechanisms of superflow and shows the potential of polariton condensates for quantum turbulence studies.


Exposure to airborne particles is detrimental to human health and indoor exposures dominate total exposures for most people. The accidental or intentional release of aerosolized chemical and biological agents within or near a building can lead to exposures of building occupants to hazardous agents and costly building remediation. Particle deposition in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems may significantly influence exposures to particles indoors, diminish HVAC performance and lead to secondary pollutant release within buildings. This dissertation advances the understanding of particle behavior in HVAC systems and the fates of indoor particles by means of experiments and modeling. Laboratory experiments were conducted to quantify particle deposition rates in horizontal ventilation ducts using real HVAC materials. Particle deposition experiments were conducted in steel and internally insulated ducts at air speeds typically found in ventilation ducts, 2-9 m/s. Behaviors of monodisperse particles with diameters in the size range 1-16 {micro}m were investigated. Deposition rates were measured in straight ducts with a fully developed turbulent flow profile, straight ducts with a developing turbulent flow profile, in duct bends and at S-connector pieces located at duct junctions. In straight ducts with fully developed turbulence, experiments showed deposition rates to be highest at duct floors, intermediate at duct walls, and lowest at duct ceilings. Deposition rates to a given surface increased with an increase in particle size or air speed. Deposition was much higher in internally insulated ducts than in uninsulated steel ducts. In most cases, deposition in straight ducts with developing turbulence, in duct bends and at S-connectors at duct junctions was higher than in straight ducts with fully developed turbulence. Measured deposition rates were generally higher than predicted by published models. A model incorporating empirical equations based on the experimental measurements was applied to evaluate particle losses in supply and return duct runs. Model results suggest that duct losses are negligible for particle sizes less than 1 {micro}m and complete for particle sizes greater than 50 {micro}m. Deposition to insulated ducts, horizontal duct floors and bends are predicted to control losses in duct systems. When combined with models for HVAC filtration and deposition to indoor surfaces to predict the ultimate fates of particles within buildings, these results suggest that ventilation ducts play only a small role in determining indoor particle concentrations, especially when HVAC filtration is present. However, the measured and modeled particle deposition rates are expected to be important for ventilation system contamination.


Like late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century doctors such as Benjamin Rush and Amariah Brigham, Nathaniel Hawthorne recognized the pathogenic potential of excessive religious zeal. In much of his short fiction Hawthorne offers a medical perspective of characters who obsessively find sin either in themselves or others. Yet he was skeptical about a new medical perspective of the human mind that potentially obscured the moral symbolism, or what he referred to as the ""moral signification,"" of apparent mental illness. In his short fiction Hawthorne thus tries to resolve an implicit dialogue between medical and theological views of the mind by fusing the Puritan sensitivity to symbol and moral signification with a keen medical awareness of the dangers of religious enthusiasm and unhealthy obsession with discovering moral signification. His mode of narration ""saneitizes"" the insane search for moral signification exemplified by characters such as Ethan Brand, Roderick Elliston, and the Minister Hooper.


Program Overview The University of Tennessee at Martin-School of Education (UTM) and Hirosaki University-School of education in Japan (HU) was awarded a three year joint research grant in 1993 by the Ministry of Education of Japan. The Ministry of Education established as two of their educational goals (1) to improve the programs, facilities and, placement of students with disabilities (still referred to as handicapped in japan) within the schools in Japan and (2) to conduct a comparison study of special education programs and placement of students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment (commonly known as mainstreaming in both countries). Hirosaki University was selected as the host institution for the coordination of these goals. Team members include Professor Kazuko Kaku (team chairman) representing the Department of School/Health Science (HU), Professor Kiyoko Matsushita representing the Department of Health and Physical Education (HU), Professor Akihiko Toyoshima representing the Department of Psychology (HU), and Professor Fusaji Ando representing the Department of Special Education (HU). The United States of America was identified as the country to conduct the comparison study due to the exemplary federal and state special education mandates such as the Education for all handicapped Children Act, PL. 94-142 and the amendment, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), PL. 99-457 (services for infants, toddlers ad preschoolers with disabilities or determined to be "at-risk," Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504, and other numerous federal and state laws and policies. The University of Tennessee at Martin (Martin, Tennessee) was selected as the international host institution due to (1) the formal "sister universities of international exchange" relationship that exists between Hirosaki University and UTM since 1980, (2) the national (NCATE) and State approved special education teacher education program and curriculum and, (3) the recognized innovative special education programs in northwest Tennessee. Team members include Dr. Robbie Kendall (team chairman) representing the College of Education and department of Special education (UTM), Dr. Donald F. DeMoulin (research design specialist) representing the Department of Educational Administration (MU), Dr. Barbara Gregory, representing the Department of Special Education (UTM), and Dr. Sharon Wentz, representing the Department of Home Economics (UTM). Research Goals and Objectives The members of the research team expressed the needs and expectations for each country in this proposed project. From initial communications, an outline of the research project was designed establishing operating parameters, goals, and objectives. The research population for the initial comparison will consist of 90+ regular education teachers in the Hirosaki University Public System and a complimentary number of regular education teachers from northwest Tennessee. Objectives of the research are: a. to compare the education of children with disabilities in terms of mandates, programs, services, parental involvement, curriculum modifications, assistive technology, and placement in the least restrictive environment (referred to as mainstreaming in both countries); b. to compare the teacher training programs for special education teachers, supervisors, and principals; c. to compare the knowledge and training of the school of education faculty members at HU and UTM regarding the education of students with disabilities; d. to compare the preparation and training activities for regular education teachers in accommodating, modifying, and instructing students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. (Note: this study will examine those students with disabilities who are able to receive some portion of their educational program in the regular education classroom); e. to conduct an attitudinal study of Japanese and American regular education teachers regarding the integration of students with disabilities in the regular education; f. …


The contribution of ruptured tendons to the residual strength of bonded post-tensioned concrete structures is currently assessed based on pre-tensioned concrete bond models. However, this approach is inaccurate due to the inherent differences between pre-tensioned and post-tensioned concrete. In this paper, a non-linear 3D finite element model is developed for the re-anchoring of a ruptured tendon in post-tensioned concrete. The model is validated using full-field displacement measurement from 33 post-tensioned concrete prisms and previous experimental data on beams from the literature. The influence of different parameters was investigated, including tendon properties (i.e. diameter, roughness), duct properties (i.e. diameter, thickness, material), initial prestress, concrete strength, grout strength, grout voids, stirrups, and strands, on the tendon re-anchorage. The most influential parameters are found to be tendon and duct properties.


This study evaluates the employment effects of vocational labour market training in Finnish youth labour markets. We are especially interested in whether the timing of an intervention matters. We explore this issue by analyzing the monthly time paths of employment effects over an observation period of four years. The study adopts two different identifying assumptions in trying to identify the causal impact of training programmes, viz. conditional independence and the discontinuity in the probability of participation caused by the allocation of training to individuals over 20 years of age. JEL codes: C21, J13, J18


This paper focuses on embodiment as enacted and expressed on websites and blogs produced or populated by Muslim women. While there is no agreement amongst scholars and believers in different schools of Islam whether Muslim women are required to wear the headscarf, it is acknowledged that Muslim dresscode should be guided by the principle of modesty. Modest dress in Islam is understood in different ways, from all-concealing garments such as the burqa, to long-sleeved tops and long skirts or tunics obscuring body shape, all available to purchase online. This variety is reflected in material published by Muslim women on the Internet who construct their online identity by writing but also by posting their pictures on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Muslim or Islamic dating websites. According to some interpretations, depictions of human bodies should not be published and Muslim women advocating this position choose to use photos of still nature or abstract works of art as their avatars. Imagery on the websites is a useful springboard into considering the nature of online identity, therefore a range of Muslim women's profiles on social networks as well a number of websites and blogs are analysed using interdisciplinary methods (visual and discourse analysis). Muslim women's representations of themselves often contrast with their representations produced by the media; it is argued that the latter are negative and biased (Afshar, 1998, 2008), hence it is imperative to address the ways in which Muslim women speak about themselves in not only textual, but also visual modes.


Reproductive decisions, such as timing of reproduction and the number of offspring to product, affect the conditions for the offspring at the time of independence These conditions can refer to the state of an individual, such as mass, or of the environment, such as time of the season, and will affect the reproductive value of the offspring. Knowledge of these fitness consequences is important when assessing the adaptive value of reproductive decisions. However it is often unclear how long- term the effect of these conditions is on an individual's reproductive success. Previous work has shown that the probability thar great tit fledglings recruit into the breeding population is strongly affected by their fledging date and mass. Using a long-term field study of a great tit population, we studied whether fledging conditions (fledging date, fledging mass and tarsus length) also affected reproductive success after an individual had recruited into the breeding population. For female recruits. this was not the case. For males, however, there was an effect of fledging date on lifetime reproductive success (LRS), calculated for individuals that had recruited. Males that fledged late produced fer er recruiting offspring in their first year of breeding partly because they had a twice as high probability that their breeding attempt failed to produce fledglings. Due to this decrease in LRS of recruited sons with increase in their hedging date, the fitness cost of breeding late is underestimated when counting the number of recruits produced from a breeding attempt. [KEYWORDS: Parus-major; clutch size; establishment; reproduction; dispersal; dominance; palustris]


Concurrent nitrification and denitrification (CND) are natural phenomena in the soil environment that can be applied in wastewater treatment for enhanced total nitrogen removal. However, significant renovation is necessary for existing plants to equip them for nutrient removal. At a domestic wastewater treatment plant, we performed a pilot test by installing bioplates with entrapped biomass in a conventional aeration basin for CND, and investigated the effects of bioplate packing ratio (PR), hydraulic retention time (HRT), dissolved oxygen (DO) level, on/off aeration mode, and supplemental carbon and alkalinity on nitrogen removal. With the pilot aeration basin of 1.3 m3 loaded with mixed liquor suspended solids of 1,500–2,500 mg/L and bioplates at PR of 3.2% (3.2% basin volume) operated at HRT of 6 h and DO of 4–6 mg/L without supplemental carbon or alkalinity, nitrogen in the wastewater was removed to an effluent total nitrogen (TN) of 7.3 mg/L from an influent TN of 28 mg/L, achieving a specific TN removal of 25 g TN/m2/d. The bioplate, consisting of modular, robust cellulose triacetate structure carrying the biomass, shows promise in retrofitting conventional aeration basins for enhanced nutrient removal.


Recently Durnin pointed out the existence of nondiffracting beams that propagate in free space with their energy confined around their axis but that experience no spread or divergence [ J. Opt. Soc. Am. A4, 651 ( 1987)]. This Communication provides an alternative way of interpreting these results. The approach is based on the McCutchen theorem from which the necessary conditions for a nondiffracting field are derived. This description may be useful in suggesting several different means of synthesizing such fields and in providing a convenient way of estimating their practical limitations. Some examples, inspired by known techniques studied for depth of field enhancement, are briefly mentioned.


This article focuses on the importance of the community context for voluntarism within shifting discourses of localism in England and Scotland. Mobilising communities through the encouragement and support of voluntarism is an important policy and practice driver in both jurisdictions, but is non-reserved. In this context, we outline the ways localism discourses have been mobilised, drawing on case study research in deprived urban areas of Scotland and England to explore the implications of these for sustaining voluntarism. We argue it is important to recognise that the social, spatial and economic context in which voluntarism takes place is multi-layered: some acts are undertaken through an organisation, others may be part of one-to-one acts of helping, or through semi-formal or informal neighbourhood/community groups. If expectations of further voluntarism are to be realistic and sustainable, discourses of localism must support this at the local level and recognise the diverse range of both visible and less visible acts which take place over time. Otherwise unrealistic, unsustainable and ultimately unachievable models and amounts of voluntary participation may be asked of communities, posing serious challenges for 'localism' discourse.


In the 2018 Carpenter case, Chief Justice Roberts focuses on the quality of the information sought by the police as a means of deciding the case in Carpenter's favor. Less obviously, however, the majority opinion also stresses the nature of the policing involved in Carpenter's case: new technologies that do not just enhance human abilities. The majority makes no explicit clams about this focus. But the Carpenter decision reveals the Supreme Court's first set of views on how it might evaluate police use of artificial intelligence. That contention, and the questions it raises, form the subject of this essay.


Abstract The composition of the soluble organic matter of the Oxfordian–Kimmeridgian Flodigarry Shale Member (Isle of Skye, Scotland) is presented for the first time. A continuous succession of silty clays and nodular limestone beds is exposed on a rocky shore to the north of Staffin Bay. This succession is proposed as a potential stratotype of the boundary between the Oxfordian and Kimmeridgian stages. This paper points out the exceptional preservation and very low thermal degradation of the organic matter. Indeed, the molecular composition is characterized by the abundance of unsaturated biomarkers (hopenes and diasterenes) as well as undamaged bioterpenoids (ferruginol and sugiol). The abundance of long-chain n-alkanes characterized by an odd-over-even predominance reveals a dominant continental contribution. This is also attested to by the relatively high amounts of plant biomarkers (e.g. ferruginol, sugiol, cadalene and retene), which suggest a palaeovegetation largely composed of pinophytes, especially Cupressaceae, Taxodiaceae and Cheirolepidiaceae, on the nearest emerged lands. The water column of the depositional environment was oxic in its upper part and rather dysoxic in its lower part. The composition of the organic matter does not significantly change along the Flodigarry Shale Member. In other words, no evolutionary events or drastic change in palaeoenvironments can be deduced from the molecular content of these sedimentary rocks, and it does not allow us to support a precise location for the Oxfordian/Kimmeridgian boundary in the succession.


Abstract As a teacher of teachers, I must address whether or how grammar belongs in instruction. The official National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) position, against formal grammar teaching, is that most honored in U.S. practice. However, those for any grammar use voice their views in the NCTE's Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar (ATEG). Some states, like California, require grammar instruction. Divisions exist among grammar-instruction supporters. This article explores both grammar wars and issues which separate classroom-grammar supporters. A Discipline Divided Whether grammar should or should not be taught one way or another divides the profession. Representative of over forty years of grammar wars are the February, October and December 1985 issues of College English. Authors include Kolln, Williams et al, and Hartwell. Not necessarily interpretable as exclusive in theory, the National Council of the Teachers of English (NCTE) webpages reflect a division in practice: One webpage has the official, never amended, NCTE 1986 statement on grammar: Resolved, that the National Council of Teachers of English affirm the position that the use of isolated grammar and usage exercises not supported by theory and research is a deterrent to the improvement of students' speaking and writing and that, in order to improve both of these, class time at all levels must be devoted to opportunities for meaningful listening, speaking, reading, and writing; and that NCTE urge the discontinuance of testing practices that encourage the teaching of grammar rather than English language arts instruction. Another NCTE webpage has Knowing about grammar is important for numerous reasons. It's the language that lets us talk about language. It names the type of words and word groups that comprise sentences in English and other languages. It helps with understanding what makes sentences and paragraphs clear, interesting, and precise. It can be part of literature discussions as we examine the sentences in poetry and stories. It lets us understand that all languages and all dialects follow grammatical patterns. Research shows that learning grammar is best done in the context of reading, writing, and speaking. Beneath the above text are three columns which contain 1. Seven online articles on Grammar, 2. Suggested readings from three books and one journal article on grammar 3. a. Grammar Kit advertisement, b. Link to Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar, c. Link to the official anti-grammar position statement, and d. Link to what grammar teaching is supported by research. My Students Make me Do it. My grammar-dispute study does not follow from finding such research to be fun. I teach literature and writing, but my chief charge is teaching linguistic insights into language to future teachers. These include Early-Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Elementary Education with Secondary English Extension, Secondary English Education, and Special Education majors among others. Consequently, I have had to consider grammar's role both in my own and in my students' classroom use. My students reflect the same attitudes toward grammar which this article discusses. The majority rejects any classroom grammar, and a minority supports some kind of grammar instruction. The students, and the authorities which I will cite, differ however. Most student views reflect no critical thinking. Most students are unfamiliar with literature addressing either classroom practice or research findings. A common denominator among the negatively disposed are statements like "I write well, am a devoted reader, and have learned from good models without formal grammar instruction. Who needs it?" A smaller positively disposed group deems grammar instruction good for people like medicine and exercise. …


Infrared imagers are important for reorganization and monitoring. This paper discusses the design of an infrared imager. Optical design in medium wavelength infrared (MWIR) and long wavelength infrared (LWIR) bands is different and needs distinct detectors and materials. Reflective systems are not suitable due to their small field of view (FOV) and vignetting. Refractive dual band optical system has been designed with considering both regions assessment and each band detector specifications.


Purpose: The elderly are more likely to be on anticoagulant or antiplatelet medications, which increase bleeding. We aimed to determine the effect of preinjury anticoagulant or antiplatelet medications on required blood transfusions and the trauma outcomes of elderly patients.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of all elderly trauma patients admitted to Chungbuk National University Hospital from January 2016 to June 2019. We compared the required number of blood transfusion units, complications, and mortality rate between those on anticoagulant or antiplatelet medications and those that were not, using the chi-squared test, independent t-test, liner regression analysis, and logistic regression analysis.Results: Out of 466 patients, 142 were on anticoagulant or antiplatelet medications while 324 were not. There was a significant statistical difference in the unit amount of red blood cells transfused within 4 hours of arriving at the hospital between the medicated and non-medicated groups (0.89 vs 1.43 units, respectively, p = 0.02); however, multivariate analysis showed no statistical difference (p = 0.28). The medication group showed a higher rate of complications compared to the non-medicated group (47.9% vs. 29.6%, respectively, p = 0.001), bleeding (17.6% vs 2.8%, respectively, p = 0.001), and pneumonia (24.4% vs 14.2%, respectively, p =0.01). There was no statistical difference in the mortality rate (16.9% vs. 22.2%, respectively, p = 0.21). Conclusion: Preinjury anticoagulant or antiplatelet medications in elderly trauma patients increased bleeding and complications such as pneumonia but did not affect transfusion requirement, or mortality rate.


We describe a single autoregulatory cassette that allows reversible induction of transgene expression in response to tetracycline (tet). This cassette contains all of the necessary components previously described by others on two separate plasmids that are introduced sequentially over a period of months [Gossen, M. & Bujard, H. (1992) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89, 5547-5551]. The cassette is introduced using a retrovirus, allowing transfer into cell types that are difficult to transfect. Thus, populations of thousands of cells, rather than a few clones, can be isolated and characterized within weeks. To avoid potential interference of the strong retroviral long terminal repeat enhancer and promoter elements with the function of the tet-regulated cytomegalovirus minimal promoter, the vector is self-inactivating, eliminating transcription from the long terminal repeat after infection of target cells. Tandem tet operator sequences and the cytomegalovirus minimal promoter drive expression of a bicistronic mRNA, leading to transcription of the gene of interest (lacZ) and the internal ribosome entry site controlled transactivator (Tet repressor-VP16 fusion protein). In the absence of tet, there is a progressive increase in transactivator by means of an autoregulatory loop, whereas in the presence of tet, gene expression is prevented. Northern blot, biochemical, and single cell analyses have all shown that the construct yields low basal levels of gene expression and induction of one to two orders of magnitude. Thus, the current cassette of the retroviral construct (SIN-RetroTet vector) allows rapid delivery of inducible genes and should have broad applications to cultured cells, transgenic animals, and gene therapy.


Across your desk come the notes of a patient just diagnosed with multiple sclerosis under your care. Pinned to the front is a laboratory report saying her antinuclear antibody (ANA) is positive. It is not clear why the test was done or who arranged it. Does that mean your patient has lupus? Or 'lupoid sclerosis?' Does it matter anyway? What should you do? WHAT DOES A 'POSITIVE ANA' MEAN? The traditional test of an antinuclear antibody is an indirect immunofluorescence test of the binding of serum to the nuclei of Hep-2 cells. The result is read as the greatest dilution at which binding to the cells is still visible: the greater the dilution (titre) the higher the concentration and/or affinity of the antibody. Some laboratories give the titre itself; others (trying to be helpful) report 'positive', 'strongly positive' and so on. The pattern of binding ('nucleolar', 'homogeneous') is also sometimes


Novel avatar bodies are ones that are not controlled in a one-to-one relationship between the user's body and the avatar body, for example, when the avatar's arms are controlled by the user's legs, or, when the avatar has a third arm. People have been shown to complete tasks more successfully when controlling novel avatar bodies than when controlling avatars that conform to the normal human configurations, when those novel avatars are better suited to the task (Won, Bailenson, Lee, & Lanier, 2015). However, the novel avatars in such studies tend to follow two conventions. First, the novel avatars still resemble biological forms, and second, the novel extensions of the avatar are connected to the avatar body. In the following study, participants operated bodies with three arms. We examined the interaction between biological appearance of the third arm and whether it was attached to the body. There was a significant effect of biological appearance on performance, such that participants inhabiting an avatar with a biological appearance did worse overall. There was also an interaction with biological appearance and an extension that appeared detached from the participant's body such that participants in this condition performed most poorly overall. We propose a relationship between self-reported presence and task success, and discuss the implications of these findings for the design, implementation, and use of novel avatars.


Powerful radio galaxies are often associated with gas-rich galaxy mergers. These mergers may provide the fuel to trigger starburst and active galactic nuclear (AGN) activity. In this Research Note, we study the host galaxies of three seemingly young or re-started radio sources that drive fast outflows of cool neutral hydrogen (HI) gas, namely 3C 293, 3C 305 and 4C 12.50 (PKS 1345+12). Our aim is to link the feedback processes in the central kpc-scale region with new information on the distribution of stars and gas at scales of the galaxy. For this, we use deep optical V-band imaging of the host galaxies, complemented with HI emission-line observations to study their gaseous environments. We find prominent optical tidal features in all three radio galaxies, which confirm previous claims that 3C 293, 3C 305 and 4C 12.50 have been involved in a recent galaxy merger or interaction. Our data show the complex morphology of the host galaxies, and identify the companion galaxies that are likely involved in the merger or interaction. The radio sources appear to be (re-)triggered at a different stage of the merger; 4C 12.50 is a pre-coalescent and possibly multiple merger, 3C 293 is a post-coalescent merger that is undergoing a minor interaction with a close satellite galaxy, while 3C 305 appears to be shaped by an interaction with a gas-rich companion. For 3C 293 and 3C 305, we do not detect HI beyond the inner ~30-45 kpc region, which shows that the bulk of the cold gas is concentrated within the host-galaxy, rather than along the widespread tidal features.


Microeconomic efficiency and market transparency argue in favour of UK membership in EMU and for Scotland's membership in the UK monetary union and also in EMU. UK seigniorage (government revenues from money issuance) would be boosted by EMU membership. Lender of last resort arrangements would not be substantially affected by UK membership in EMU. The UK is too small and too open to be an optimal currency area. The same point applies even more emphatically to Scotland. The 'one-size-fits-all', 'asymmetric shocks' and 'cyclical divergence' objections to UK membership are based on the misapprehension that independent national monetary policy, and the associated nominal exchange rate flexibility, can be used effectively to offset or even neutralise asymmetric shocks. This 'fine tuning delusion' is compounded by a failure to understand that, under a high degree of international financial integration, market-determined exchange rates are primarily a source of shocks and instability. Instead, opponents of UK membership in EMU view exchange rate flexibility as an effective buffer for adjusting to asymmetric shocks originating elsewhere. I know of no evidence that supports such an optimistic reading of what exchange rate flexibility can deliver under conditions of very high international financial capital mobility. The economic arguments for immediate UK membership in EMU, at an appropriate entry rate, are overwhelming. Monetary union raises important constitutional and political issues. It involves a further surrender of national sovereignty to a supranational institution, the ECB/ESCB. It is essential that this transfer of national sovereignty be perceived as legitimate by those affected by it. In addition, the citizens of the UK have become accustomed to a high standard of openness and accountability of their central bank since it gained operational independence in 1997. The ECB/ESCB must be held to the same high standard, and, while there are grounds for optimism, there still is some way to go there.


In this Letter, telecom-band degenerate-frequency photon pairs are generated in a specific mode of a silicon microring cavity by the nondegenerate spontaneous four-wave mixing (SFWM) process, under two continuous-wave pumps at resonance wavelength of two different cavity modes. The ratio of coincidence to accidental coincidence is up to 100 under a time bin width of 5 ns, showing their characteristics of quantum correlation. Their quantum interference in balanced and unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers is investigated theoretically and experimentally, and the results show potential in quantum metrology and quantum information.


Optical wireless communication network is gaining acceptance in an increasing number of sectors of science and industry, owing to its unique combination of features: Extremely high bandwidth, rapid deployment time, license and tariff-free bandwidth allocation, and low power consumption, weight, and size. The demand of high signal bandwidth in optical wireless communication networks is growing exponentially day by day, as the numbers of users have been increased drastically over the span of last five years. The next generation wireless communication systems therefore need to be of higher standards, so as to support various broadband wireless services such as, video conferencing, videophones, high-speed internet access, etc. The existing wireless systems can hardly provide transmission capacity of the order of few Mbps. However, wireless optical fiber technology has the potential of providing data capacity of the order of Mbit/sec and Tbit/sec, respectively. Therefore the requirements of optical broadband wireless system can be met through the integration of optical communication fiber and millimeter wave optical wireless systems.  Terrestrial optical wireless communication network is emerging as a promising technology, which makes connectivity possible between high rise buildings and metropolitan and intercity communication infrastructures. We have developed a light beam carrying the audio and video information, which facilitates extremely ultra high transmission data rates for ultra long transmission distances within Shannon propagation technique.

 Key words: Wireless communication networks, transmission technique, point to point link, indoor and outdoor broadband wireless networks, audio signal, video signal


This essay examines some of the institutional costs of achieving a more diverse law student body. In recent decades, there has been growing support for diversity initiatives in education, and the legal academy is no exception. Yet for most law schools, diversity remains an elusive goal, some of which is the result of problems with anticipating the needs of diverse students and being able to deliver. These are some of the unseen or hidden costs associated with achieving greater diversity. Both law schools and the legal profession remain relatively stratified by race, which is an ongoing legacy of legal education's origins as a project dominated by white male elites predominantly serving white male clients. Today's law schools still lack in diversity, but major developments are increasingly changing student demographics. Perhaps the first push toward diversification of law schools came after the 1920s, when women won suffrage and began to enroll in law school in increasing numbers. Advocacy efforts over the next century would produce many breakthroughs, including in the present,where an unprecedented three women sit on the Supreme Court. With the creation of The Historically Black College/University ("HBCU") law schools, which enrolled significant numbers of African American students, Civil Rights legislation and court cases in the 1950s and 1960s paved the way for a growing number of ethnic minorities to apply to law school and for a female explosion of matriculants. Today's diversity initiatives seek to create classrooms with profiles based on a range of intellect and experience as a means to enhance learning for all students. As such, diversity may be understood as supporting the marketplace of ideas concept by seeking to create an environment where study and problem solving draw from a broad range of knowledge and experience. Law schools are also enrolling individuals with lower credentials to assuage the sting of lower enrollment. Maintaining and servicing diverse student bodies inevitably incurs downstream costs. This essay attempts to offer a snapshot of some the administrative, pedagogical, and regulative costs involved, and provide commentary on how law schools might meet these challenges.


The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) contemplates the interpretation of treaties topic in its articles 31, 32 and 33, portraying the frame to be followed by one who is engaged in this difficult endeavor. Tax treaties are, fore and foremost, treaties. Therefore, the VCLT is the leading guideline for their interpretation. The United States has sixty-eight income tax treaties in force. If one logs on any website provider of case-law services and types "tax treaty," more than six hundred cases will pop up. This paper focuses both on what courts have been doing and on what they could have been doing, according to the VCLT, when ruling about tax treaties, but theorizing an approach to the interpretation of tax treaties is not its intent. Regardless of the inference of Savigny and other jurists that "interpretation is an art" and "cannot be learned and governed by any specific rules," in accordance with the preponderant point of view, customary international law has developed rules on interpretation of treaties, which are accurately contemplated in the VCLT. Still, the American judiciary does not exactly follow its rules. Nonetheless, the U.S. court decisions that have already applied the interpretation rules of the VCLT are "especially valuable" as substantiation of international law since they are rendered by courts of a nation not a party to the Convention, and their importance is further reinforced because the United States, as the most active treaty-maker in the world, decidedly influences the law applicable to treaties.


Dental erosion has become a major problem that affects the long-term health of the dentition. Among the various potential causes for erosive tooth wear, the different drugs prescribed for patients may be overlooked. Several therapeutic medications can directly or indirectly be associated with dental erosion. It is the responsibility of oral health providers to make both patients and colleagues aware of drugs that may contribute to this condition. Therefore, the purpose of this discussion is to provide an overview of the various therapeutic medications that can be related to tooth erosion. The authors also include precautionary measures-summarized as The 9 Rs-to avoid or at least reduce medication-induced erosion.


The light scattered by a sphere behind a plane surface is solved with an extension of Mie theory. I solve the boundary conditions at the sphere and at the surface simultaneously and develop the scattering amplitude and Mueller scattering matrices. This approach involves the multiplication of the fields in the half-space region not including the sphere by an appropriate Fresnel reflection coefficient and the projection of these fields onto the half-space region including the sphere. The scattered fields from the sphere, reflecting off the surface and interacting with the sphere, are assumed to be incident upon the surface at near-normal incidence. The exact scatter approaches this limit when (1) the sphere is at a large distance from the surface, (2) the sphere radius is small compared with the incident wavelength, or (3) the difference between the refractive indices of the two half-space regions is either small or great.


Abstract Data on the financial performance of a diverse set of 249 farm businesses in south-western Australia over the period 2002 to 2011 was collated and analysed. These 10 years were a period of challenging weather years, underpinned by a warming and drying trend in the region's climate, frost events and marked price volatility. Based on a range of metrics, almost two-thirds (64%) of the farms in the sample were classed as growing or strong. A less secure group of farms that are at some potential financial risk formed 15% of the farm sample. Over the study period farm profitability, on average, improved, supported by productivity growth, in spite of no underlying improvement in the farmers' terms of trade. Productivity improvement allowed most farm businesses, especially crop and mixed enterprise farm businesses, to prosper. The pathway to their profitability was not so much by investing in new technologies that may have shifted outwards farms' production possibilities, but rather through better use of existing technologies, including technologies that offered scale economies. Also farmers' shift into greater dependence on cropping, especially wheat production, was shown to be a sensible and successful adaptation strategy in many regions of south-western Australia, particularly the northern grainbelt. The unique and particular characteristics of each farm business were the main determinant of their business success. However, a few generalisations apply. Due to seasonal and market conditions during the study period more farms in the northern parts of the grainbelt in south-western Australia fared better. Also farmers whose businesses grew strongly over the study period on average displayed superior management capabilities and choices in many areas of farm management. In addition, these farmers were often more connected to their local community and achieved greater work-life balance. We conclude that as long as broadacre farmers in south-western Australia have on-going access to improved crop varieties and technologies that support the profitable growing of crops, especially wheat; and that they have access to farm management and business education then farmers are likely to be able to adapt to projected climate change. Provided that a farmer's terms of trade does not become unduly adverse, and that farmers sensibly manage farm debt, then it seems highly likely that farmers who continue to rely on crop production, mostly wheat-growing, will persist as financially sound businesses in most parts of the study region, even in the face of projected climate change. Please cite this report as: Kingwell, R, Anderton, L, Islam, N, Xayavong, V, Wardell-Johnson, A, Feldman, D, Speijers, J 2013 Broadacre farmers adapting to a changing climate, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Gold Coast. pp.171. Data on the financial performance of a diverse set of 249 farm businesses in south-western Australia over the period 2002 to 2011 was collated and analysed. These 10 years were a period of challenging weather years, underpinned by a warming and drying trend in the region's climate, frost events and marked price volatility. Based on a range of metrics, almost two-thirds (64%) of the farms in the sample were classed as growing or strong. A less secure group of farms that are at some potential financial risk formed 15% of the farm sample. Over the study period farm profitability, on average, improved, supported by productivity growth, in spite of no underlying improvement in the farmers' terms of trade. Productivity improvement allowed most farm businesses, especially crop and mixed enterprise farm businesses, to prosper. The pathway to their profitability was not so much by investing in new technologies that may have shifted outwards farms' production possibilities, but rather through better use of existing technologies, including technologies that offered scale economies. Also farmers' shift into greater dependence on cropping, especially wheat production, was shown to be a sensible and successful adaptation strategy in many regions of south-western Australia, particularly the northern grainbelt. The unique and particular characteristics of each farm business were the main determinant of their business success. However, a few generalisations apply. Due to seasonal and market conditions during the study period more farms in the northern parts of the grainbelt in south-western Australia fared better. Also farmers whose businesses grew strongly over the study period on average displayed superior management capabilities and choices in many areas of farm management. In addition, these farmers were often more connected to their local community and achieved greater work-life balance. We conclude that as long as broadacre farmers in south-western Australia have on-going access to improved crop varieties and technologies that support the profitable growing of crops, especially wheat; and that they have access to farm management and business education then farmers are likely to be able to adapt to projected climate change. Provided that a farmer's terms of trade does not become unduly adverse, and that farmers sensibly manage farm debt, then it seems highly likely that farmers who continue to rely on crop production, mostly wheat-growing, will persist as financially sound businesses in most parts of the study region, even in the face of projected climate change.


The continued scaling of CMOS technologies and consideration of post-CMOS technologies has elevated hardware reliability to a first-class challenge, particularly in energy- and resource-constrained embedded sensor applications. In such applications, there is an increasing emphasis on inference functions. Machine-learning algorithms play an important role by enabling the construction of data-driven models for inference over data that is too complex to model analytically. This paper explores how data-driven training can be exploited to also overcome computational errors due to hardware faults within an inference stage. FPGA emulation with randomized fault injections shows that the proposed architecture restores system performance to the level of a fault free system, with 1% of the hardware requiring explicit fault protection, and with digital faults affecting >2% of the circuit nodes in the rest of the hardware. To train an error-aware inference model, a training algorithm is presented whose hardware (memory) and energy requirements are reduced by 65 × and 10 × compared to previously reported algorithms (AdaBoost and FilterBoost respectively), thereby enabling model construction entirely on the device.


Influenza is a contagious airborne viral illness characterized by abrupt onset of symptoms. Fever, myalgia, headache, rhinitis, sore throat, and cough are commonly reported symptoms. The diagnosis should be made clinically, and the decision to begin antiviral therapy should not be delayed for laboratory confirmation of influenza. The 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus is expected to continue to circulate during the 2010-2011 season, but it is not certain whether it will replace or cocirculate with seasonal influenza A subtypes that have been circulating since 1977. The 2009 H1N1 virus is largely resistant to adamantanes, but it is sensitive to neuraminidase inhibitors such as oseltamivir. Neuraminidase inhibitors have modest effectiveness in reducing influenza-related symptoms in patients at low risk of complications. Patients at high risk of complications, including pregnant women, should be treated with antiviral agents, preferably within 48 hours of symptom onset. Family physicians should follow guidelines from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when treating patients with influenza or influenza-like symptoms.


Online behavioral advertisers track users across websites, often without users' knowledge. Over the last twelve years, the online behavioral advertising industry has responded to the resulting privacy concerns and pressure from the FTC by creating private selfregulatory bodies. These include the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and an umbrella organization known as the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). In this paper, we enumerate the DAA and NAI notice and choice requirements and check for compliance with those requirements by examining NAI members' privacy policies and reviewing ads on the top 100 websites. We also test DAA and NAI opt-out mechanisms and categorize how their members define opting out. Our results show that most members are in compliance with some of the notice and choice requirements, but two years after the DAA published its Self-Regulatory Principles, there are still numerous instances of non-compliance. Most examples of noncompliance are related to the ``enhanced notice" requirement, which requires advertisers to mark behavioral ads with a link to further information and a means of opting out. Revised October 7, 2011.


Women with singleton pregnancy 34 weeks to 36+5 weeks with high probability of late preterm delivery. Women who had previously had glucocorticoid steroids, or whose delivery was expected within 24 hours, or patients with known fetal anomaly or non-reassuring fetal status, were excluded.

1429 women randomised to betamethasone and 1402 to placebo. Subsequent management was dictated by clinical condition. The groups were balanced for major factors except age (28.6 years in the betamethasone group vs 27.6 years in the placebo group) and Hispanic ethnic group (28.3% in the betamethasone group vs 32% in the placebo group).

Primary outcome: need for respiratory support, stillbirth and neonatal death within the first 72 hours. Secondary outcomes: severe respiratory complications, transient tachypnoea of …


In early modernity, church historians initially showed little interest in Berthold of Moosburg. They knew him as a commentator of Proclus, but they did not recognise his importance for the history of Neoplatonism. The librarians and bibliographers who came across Berthold's commentary on Proclus in the Balliol College Library at Oxford showed no interest in the philosophical content of this work. An article on Berthold in the monumental work Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum (1719) summarised the available information. It was Johann Albert Fabricius (1668–1736) who took notice of it. Fabricius was very interested in Proclus as well as in Neoplatonic theology and its narration in the Elements of Theology; he had started to collect all available information regarding this issue and had also come across Berthold's commentary. However, he did not ignore him, as many had done before, but properly recognised the importance of Berthold for the history of the reception of Proclus's philosophy. Fabricius always referred to the Dominican thinker when dealing with Proclus's Elements of Theology, in particular in his own Bibliotheca graeca. One of the attentive readers of this work was the German philologist Friedrich Creuzer. In 1822, within the framework of publishing Neoplatonic writings, Creuzer reedited Proclus's Elements of Theology. As a consequence of this new edition, Proclus together with his medieval commentator came into the focus of leading representatives of classical German philosophy.


How, and how effectively, different electric vehicle (EV) related policies will work is an immediate and important question for California as the state updates its EV policies. Adding urgency, Assembly Bill (AB) 615, which was signed by the Governor, requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to produce a report by December 2018 on related topics, in consultation with the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies (UC ITS). Senate Bill (SB) 498, also signed, also requires CARB reporting with somewhat different but overlapping topics. The need is to define the state of the research on policies to support EV deployment in a manner that is directly usable by California in updating policies. The specific need for CARB is material estimates of these factors (called out in AB 615): "impact of income caps, increased rebates for low-income consumers, and increased outreach on the electric vehicle market, as well as a quantification of emissions reductions attributable to the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project." This white paper is one in a series summarizing recent research findings for the state of California. The topic of the series is evaluating the important components of electric vehicle adoption and its effects. The goals of these white papers are to: 1. Synthesize the best published and on-going research available on each topic; 2. Highlight important research gaps and propose areas for future research; 3. Provide the reader with a framework for understanding the various dimensions of each topic; 4. Make a clear link between research findings and policy implications, if possible; and 5. Be accessible to an informed and interested, but non-technical audience.


Pediatric Nurse Practitioner Certification Review Guide: Primary Care has been developed especially for Pediatric Nurse Practitioners and Family Nurse Practitioners preparing to take certification examinations and as a reference in the practice setting. The text is divided into systems with an in-depth coverage of growth and development and health promotion and maintenance. The common disorders of the various body systems provide succinct summaries of definitions, etiology, signs and symptoms, clinical findings, differential diagnoses, diagnostic tests\findings, and management\treatment. The final chapter addresses PNP role development, current trends and health policy issues including topics such as credentialing, legal issues, legislation, reimbursement and delivery systems. Following each chapter are test questions, which are intended to serve as an introduction to the testing arena. In addition a bibliography is included for those who need a more in-depth discussion of the subject matter in each chapter.


This thesis investigates a method for using contextual information in text recognition. This is based on the premise that, while reading, humans recognize words with missing or garbled characters by examining the surrounding characters and then selecting the appropriate character. The correct character is chosen based on an inherent knowledge of the language and spelling techniques. We can then model this statistically. The approach taken by this Thesis is to combine feature extraction techniques, Neural Networks and Hidden Markov Modeling. This method of character recognition involves a three step process: pixel image preprocessing, neural network classification and context interpretation. Pixel image preprocessing applies a feature extraction algorithm to original bit mapped images, which produces a feature vector for the original images which are input into a neural network. The neural network performs the initial classification of the characters by producing ten weights, one for each character. The magnitude of the weight is translated into the confidence the network has in each of the choices. The greater the magnitude and separation, the more confident the neural network is of a given choice. The output of the neural network is the input for a context interpreter. The context interpreter uses Hidden Markov Modeling (HMM) techniques to determine the most probable classification for all characters based on the characters that precede that character and character pair statistics. The HMMs are built using an a priori knowledge of the language: a statistical description of the probabilities of digrams. Experimentation and verification of this method combines the development and use of a preprocessor program, a Cascade Correlation Neural Network and a HMM context interpreter program. Results from these experiments show the neural network successfully classified 88.2 percent of the characters. Expanding this to the word level, 63 percent of the words were correctly identified. Adding the Hidden Markov Modeling improved the word recognition to 82.9 percent.


Phenomena and Plan of Discussion. Evidences of Movement :—All observers are aware that few rock masses are continuous for any considerable distance. It is seldom that more than a few yards of a rock exposure can be examined without revealing joints, fissures or slickensides. Still more frequently rock masses show slaty or schistose cleavage,* impressed upon them by dynamical causes. In a very great proportion of such cases a little attention also discloses the fact that the partings are locally arranged on a definite system. In slaty cleavage the cleavage planes are substantially parallel and very close together; in flags of the slaty class the intervals between cleavage planes are greater; in schists the partings range through small angles, and in these last rocks there are frequently two sets of partings, each cleavage making a small angle with others of the same set, but a large angle with those of . . .


Title of Dissertation: THE CRITICAL CULTURAL CYPHER: HIP HOP'S ROLE IN ENGAGING STUDENTS IN A DISCOURSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT A.Dee Williams, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation Directed By: Associate Professor Marvin Lynn Department of Education Hip Hop culture has been much maligned in the field of education for its disruptive role in the lives of youth. As such, education has ignored a cultural force that has had a major role in the development of youth identity. This study seeks to capitalize on the relationship between youth and Hip Hop culture through the engagement of high school students in a series of liberating intergroup dialogues with Hip Hop at their center. Based on the Cultural Circles of Paulo Freire and the theoretical frameworks of Critical Social Theory and Critical Race Theory, the Critical Cultural Cyphers – a Cypher is a Hip Hop term that describes a site where valued knowledge is constructed – were designed to cultivate the participants' development of three areas: 1) the development of counter-narratives 2) the use of a language of critique and transcendence, and 3) the development of consientização or critical consciousness. Employing the methodology of critical ethnography, this study engaged eight high school seniors through a series of formal and informal interviews, mainstream academic classroom observations, and their participation in the inter-group dialogues. Within the dialogue, the participants attempted to 1) negotiate and integrate their constructions of definitions of Hip Hop culture, 2) identify problems within Hip Hop culture, and 3) develop individual and collective actions the group could take towards the resolution of the identified problems. As the profiles of the participants are shared, the findings suggest that as the participants engaged themselves and the others in an interrogation of Hip Hop culture, the participants went through a transformation that changed the ways in which they interacted with their lived environment. The Critical Cultural Cypher is shown to have implications for educational research, teacher education, school administration, and classroom teachers. THE CRITICAL CULTURAL CYPHER: HIP HOP'S ROLE IN ENGAGING STUDENTS IN A DISCOURSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT


This paper presents a new methodology to simulate soft object deformation by drawing an analogy between a cellular neural network (CNN) and elastic deformation. The potential energy stored in an elastic body as a result of a deformation caused by an external force is propagated among mass points by a nonlinear CNN. The novelty of the methodology is that: 1) CNN techniques are established to describe the potential energy distribution of the deformation for extrapolating internal forces and 2) nonlinear materials are modeled with nonlinear CNNs rather than geometric nonlinearity. Integration with a haptic device has been achieved for deformable object simulation with force feedback. The proposed methodology not only predicts the typical behaviors of living tissues, but it also accommodates isotropic, anisotropic, and inhomogeneous materials, as well as local and large-range deformation


Inspired by a critical reading of James Scott's The Art of Not Being Governed (2009) which argued that Highlanders in Southeast Asia have intentionally evaded 'state capture and state formations', I offer a contrasting vision of Highlander motivations and desires from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I argue that, in pre-colonial times, lowland states and Highland regions have been mutually constitutive through trade, tribute and feasts. Economic, political and ritual exchanges and connections were far more important for both uplands and lowlands than is usually acknowledged, not only in scholarship but in such phrases as 'remote and backward areas'. For postcolonial Vietnam, I show that Highlanders were often motivated by the desire to become modern, and enacted such desires by joining ecumenes that embody modern universals, in particular revolutionary and Christian ecumenes, exemplifying oppositional pathways to modernity that contrast with those offered by authors Tania Li and Holly High.


The field of linguistic anthropology looks at human uniqueness and diversity through the lens of language, our species' special combination of art and instinct. Human language both shapes, and is shaped by, our minds, societies, and cultural worlds. This state-of-the-field survey covers a wide range of topics, approaches, and theories, such as the nature and function of language systems, the relationship between language and social interaction, and the place of language in the social life of communities. Promoting a broad vision of the subject, spanning a range of disciplines from linguistics to biology, from psychology to sociology and philosophy, this authoritative handbook is an essential reference guide for students and researchers working on language and culture across the social sciences.


ABSTRACT Puzzled by how geographical changes in the Arctic might cause changes in state behavior the authors of this article have been inspired to return to the roots of geopolitical reasoning. By combining insights from the intellectual roots of the geopolitical tradition with empirical data on geographical changes as well as policy changes in the Arctic today, we investigate the degree to which geopolitics, in the sense of geography influencing politics, is still a useful approach in the discipline of International Relations (IR). In limiting our primary focus to the state level, and investigating the period since the turn of the millennium, this article seeks to develop new knowledge concerning if, how, and to what extent geography matters in international politics. Our empirical investigation indicates that geographical changes in the Arctic have indeed had an effect on power relations among several states. Overall, this article shows that geography is an important factor in IR in the sense of enabling or empowering state actors. However, while it appears that physical geography is a possible factor in the cases analyzed to explain changes in identified power potentials, it does not always account for these changes on its own. Economic, political, legal, and historical factors also play a role in the observed power shifts.


Weighing lysimeters are the standard method for directly measuring evapotranspiration (ET). This paper discusses the construction, installation, and performance of two (1.52 m × 1.52 m × 2.13-m deep) repacked weighing lysimeters for measuring ET of corn and soybean in West Central Nebraska. The cost of constructing and installing each lysimeter was approximately US $12,500, which could vary depending on the availability and cost of equipment and labor. The resolution of the lysimeters was 0.0001 mV V −1 , which was limited by the data processing and storage resolution of the datalogger. This resolution was equivalent to 0.064 and 0.078 mm of ET for the north and south lysimeters, respectively. Since the percent measurement error decreases with the magnitude of the ET measured, this resolution is adequate for measuring ET for daily and longer periods, but not for shorter time steps. This resolution would result in measurement errors of less than 5% for measuring ET values of ≥3 mm, but the percent error rapidly increases for lower ET values. The resolution of the lysimeters could potentially be improved by choosing a datalogger that could process and store data with a higher resolution than the one used in this study.


This paper introduces the architecture of a robust communication framework, which allows high quality data exchange for a distributed neutron detection system that works in a radiating environment. This distributed system needs a reliable data transfer infrastructure, since the latter is exposed to radiation as well as the sensing electronics but must keep error resilient. For this purpose, we introduced some redundancy in data transfer and provided diagnostic protocols to identify the faulty elements of the system and, when required, to isolate them.


Emotional intelligence (EI) is itself an important factor in predicting individual performance and has been introduced as the strongest force for leadership and success. The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlation between EI and self-regulation (SR) in elite male swimmers of East Azerbaijan Province, Iran. The subjects included 100 male athletes participating in East Azerbaijan Province swimming championships held in Tabriz from 18-21 March, 2014. Mean age and mean years of training records in swimming subjects were equal to 22.86±6.86 and 11±6.51, respectively. To collect the required data, Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire of Bradberry and Greaves and Self-regulation Questionnaire of Brown, Miller and Lawendowski were used. The results showed that there is a significant positive correlation between total scores of EI and SR. Also, all components of EI (except social awareness) had a positive significant correlation with the total SR score. Among the components of EI, social awareness had a negative significant relationship with SR. The findings suggest that EI and SR consist of the same infrastructure and this fact can justify the high correlation between them.


This review discusses how the main parameters of the deposition regimes of the oxides of semiconductors and metals affect the structure and relief of a precipitated film and analyzes the orientation mechanisms of liquid crystals (LCs) by means of such films. The dependence between the deposition angles, the tilt of the crystallites, and the tilt of the LC director is reported. It is shown that, when the deposition angle of the orienting film is increased relative to the substrate plane, it can be energetically favorable to make a transition either to the planar or the homeotropic orientation of the LC, depending on the film-deposition rate.


Nestled at the base of the Illawarra Escarpment, in the shadow of Mount Keira and Bert Flugelman's winged monument to flight, the University of Wollongong central campus is constantly reminded of the power of nature and the unique sense of place which exists in this most picturesque part of Australia. Located at a geographical point of convergence between the mountains and the sea, nature is everywhere and obvious, despite the ever encroaching evidence of man and machine. As a seat of learning and focus for research and the implementation of new technologies in the 21st century, the University of Wollongong is ever mindful of the history and heritage of the region in which it operates and continues to flourish. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details This book chapter was originally published as Organ, MK, History and heritage: change and adaptation, in Barkley, GP (ed), Illawarra Visions Collections of the University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong and Wollongong City Gallery, Wollongong, 2000, 38p. This book chapter is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/93


''The strong recommendation made by the authors is that the press release should be proactively discussed with all patients with definite or probable IPF, currently receiving immunosuppressive therapy, in order to make a shared decision on subsequent management. Over and above a review of the press release itself, informed discussion should include a summary of the aforementioned uncertainties and detailed consideration of the specific clinical scenario of the individual patient. We recommend strongly that the patient should be offered the opportunity to take a view on management changes and, in clinical scenarios in which management decisions are otherwise a close call, strongly held views of the patient should determine the final management decision.''


Previous studies have shown that in contraceptive counselling the provider sets the agenda. The aim of this study was to describe how a group of Swedish nurse-midwives think and act in their role as contraceptive counsellors. Semi-structured questions were put to a convenience sample of 16 nurse-midwives. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Five categories were identified: exploring the woman's situation; providing information about contraceptive methods; performing medical evaluation; guiding the decision-making process; and following up on the counselling. Results showed that the providers had developed their own strategies and suggest the use of interventions which combine counselling methods to provide information, with a theory for decision-making, to help in giving advice. This study could contribute to personal reflection on contraceptive counselling in practice, both for experienced counsellors and those new to the task.


Introduction. This paper examines and synthesizes previous research in scientific collaboration, scholarly communication, scientific collaboratories, scientific disciplines, invisible colleges and virtual communities to identify factors that may impact the design, adoption and use of a collaboratory within librarianship and information science. Results. A taxonomy of factors that appear to impact the design, adoption and use of a collaboratory emerged from the synthesis. Six types of factors were identified: factors that impact a researcher's career advancements; factors concerning aspects of doing science which affect researchers on a personal level, other than their career; factors focusing on whether the benefits of submitting to and using a collaboratory is worth the cost for the individual; disciplinary and factors focusing on science and disciplines in general, such as the development of new methodology within a discipline; factors that affect the community of researchers; and factors that are the costs of developing and sustaining a collaboratory for a community or discipline. Conclusions. The taxonomy provides a concise overview of explanatory factors concerning the adoption and use of collaboratories. The taxonomy provides a theoretical framework to guide future research which explores the adoption and use of a collaboratory in disciplines not yet studied, e.g., library and information science. (Less)


This study presents anti-deficit counter-narratives of higher education attainment among African American men. Grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT), this work disrupts anti-Black educational discourses and informs initiatives to improve community college degree completion for Black men. A hybrid qualitative/postqualitative research methodology was designed to examine the educational experiences of three African American men who completed a community college degree, and to inquire into how their counter-narratives both intersected with and were divergent from dominant social and educational discourses. This specialized methodology facilitated multi-faceted explorations and deconstruction of a single set of data, viewing themes and concepts, socially produced silences, marginalization, and agency and resistance through a CRT lens. It further facilitated philosophical explorations such as Angry Black Man Ideology and the role of neoliberal discourses in the community college.


Current state of Russian databases on inorganic substances properties is considered. Several modern trends in materials database development are discovered. Special attention is paid to heterogeneous materials information systems integration. Several integration approaches are discussed regarding to consolidation of materials science information. Metabase approach used to integrate heterogeneous materials information systems in Russia on base of IMET RAS is discovered and means to international material information integration are announced.