With an increasing number of naturally ventilated dairy barns (NVDBs), the emission of ammonia and greenhouse gases into the surrounding environment is expected to increase as well. It is very challenging to accurately determine the amount of gases released from a NVDB on-farm. Moreover, control options for the micro-climate to increase animal welfare are limited in an NVDB at present. Both issues are due to the complexity of the NVDB micro-environment, which is subject to temporal (such as wind direction and temperature) and spatial (such as openings and animals acting as airflow obstacles) fluctuations. The air exchange rate (AER) is one of the most valuable evaluation entities, since it is directly related to the gas emission rate and animal welfare. In this context, our study determined the general and local AERs of NVDBs of different shapes under diverse airflow conditions. Previous works identified main influencing parameters for the general AER and mathematically linked them together to predict the AER of the barn as a whole. The present research study is a continuation and extension of previous studies about the determination of AER. It provides new insights into the influence of convection flow regimes. In addition, it goes further in precision by determining the local AERs, depending on the position of the considered volume inside the barn. After running several computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, we used the statistical tool of general linear modeling in order to identify quantitative relationships between the AER and the following five influencing parameters, the length/width ratio of the barn, the side opening configuration, the airflow temperature, magnitude and incoming direction. The work succeeded in taking the temperature into account as a further influencing parameter in the model and, thus, for the first time, in analysing the effect of the different types of flow convection in this context. The resulting equations predict the barn AER with an R2 equals 0.98 and the local AER with a mean R2 equals around 0.87. The results go a step further in the precise determination of the AER of NVDB and, therefore, are of fundamental importance for a better and deeper understanding of the interaction between the driving forces of AER in NVDB.


This dissertation consists of three journal articles that explored the effectiveness of a digital game, called EnerCities, in producing pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors by using a mixed-methods study approach. The first study was conducted as a quasi-experimental study among undergraduate students in the United States. Based on the Attitudinal Learning Instrument (ALI), this study found that the attitudinal learning gained from EnerCities influenced participants' pro-environmental behavioral intentions significantly. This learning was retained until five weeks after game play according to the qualitative results of the study. The second study, conducted in India, used EnerCities to study the differences in attitudinal learning among high school students who played the game collaboratively or individually, using the ALI and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Results showed that the attitudinal learning and its effect on pro-environmental behavioral intentions between collaborative and individual players was similar. This study also showed that EnerCities had significantly impacted the environmental attitudes and behaviors of the game players when compared to students who did not play any game, although all students had studied environmental studies through traditional instructional methods since elementary school. The third study, conducted among high school students in India, compared the environmental attitudes between game players and students who did not play any game based on the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale. Both the unidimensional and multi-dimensional properties of the NEP were considered. It was found that EnerCities had impacted game players' environmental attitudes significantly. All the three studies showed that digital games are more effective in promoting attitudinal (cognitive, affective, behavioral and social) learning compared to traditional instructional methods. This supports the implementation of digital games as a pedagogical tool in influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors.


In this paper the characteristic fringe function of hologram interferometry has been evaluated for the case of periodic, nonsinusoidal vibrations represented by a Jacobian elliptic function. To consider the reconstructed holographic image of an object, use has been made of an equation derived from considerations of the effect of motion on coherence. Graphical representation of the fringe irradiance distribution in the reconstructed image is given. It is shown that, as the motion departs from pure sinusoidal form, the intensity of the fringes increases considerably as compared with that for a pure sinusoidal case.


SAD phasing has been revisited recently, with experiments being carried out using previously unconventional sources of anomalous signal, particularly lighter atoms and softer X-rays. A case study is reported using the 75 kDa RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of the bacteriophase phi6, which binds a Mn atom and crystallizes with three molecules in the asymmetric unit. X-ray diffraction data were collected at a wavelength of 1.89 A and although the calculated anomalous signal from the three Mn atoms was only 1.2%, SHELXD and SOLVE were able to locate these atoms. SOLVE/RESOLVE used this information to obtain SAD phases and automatically build a model for the core region of the protein, which possessed the characteristic features of the right-hand polymerase motif. These results demonstrate that with modern synchrotron beamlines and software, manganese phasing is a practical tool for solving the structure of large proteins.


Proper orientation is one of the most important skills in the repertoire of an organism. Many different strategies are used in the animal kingdom to find resources like food, nesting sites, a comfortable environment, or mating partners. Optimizing the ability of finding places of interest surely has a great impact on the fitness of the organism. A way to optimize orientation is analyzed here, shown representatively in visual object approach and in temperature gradient orientation of fruit flies. This orientation strategy is called "memotaxis". It benefits from the integration of past events, leading to a robust path towards the desired goal. Although memotaxis is perfectly suited for noisy environments, its existence is conveniently proven in situations with low noise. In landmark approach experiments, fruit flies show that the longer they approach a particular target, the longer it takes for them to abandon it after its disappearance. This holds true even in the presence of a distracting landmark that comes on only after disappearance of the first-visited target. The strategy was found again in temperature orientation, in which flies are over-running a temperature optimum: distances travelled after crossing the optimum scale with the distances walked towards the optimum. Memotaxis is assumed to exist in many animals, but the genetic tools available in Drosophila melanogaster allow localizing the relevant brain centers and pathways. Memotaxis as an orientation strategy proves useful also for autonomously roving robots.


The aim of this paper is to identify the profile of existing female entrepreneurs in Greece, highlight their main characteristics, and interpret their beliefs in relation to their entrepreneurial and personal life. To this end we conducted an on-line national questionnaire survey from November 2012 to January 2013, using a sample of 300 women entrepreneurs. The main findings indicate that the majority of the participants feel strong, successful, proud and well respected due to practicing entrepreneurship. However, despite their great potential in becoming successful entrepreneurs, they also reported fears related to the entrepreneurial reality. Further, most of them expressed guilty feelings for the limited time they devote to their families. Also, almost half of them stated that entrepreneurship has no gender thus implying that the debate on women's entrepreneurship is outdated. 70% of the sample stated that economic crisis will bring out more women entrepreneurs despite the realized risks associated with new business ventures. Finally, the limitations of this work and policy implications are discussed.


Nanostencil lithography is a flexible, rapid and resistless patterning method based on a high-resolution shadow mask. It allows for a wide choice of materials and surfaces to be structured and on the contrary to deep-ultraviolet (DUV), x-ray, electron beam, or ion beam exposure, mechanically fragile and chemically functionalized surfaces can be structured by this technique. One of the major limitations in nanostencil lithography is gap-induced pattern blurring. With the aim of integrating nanomechanical structures with CMOS circuits, we use nanostencil lithography as a clean, CMOS-compatible method to define the nanodevices using the stencil-deposited metal pattern as a mask for silicon reactive ion etching (RIE). Nanomechanical resonators are fabricated in a post-processing module after CMOS circuit fabrication. When the nanostencil membrane and the wafer are put in contact, a gap of more than 1 um exists between the layer to be structured and the stencil membrane. This gap genders a blurring of the resulting pattern by a dispersive effect. Correction of this loss of resolution with the goal of recovering nominal dimensions is the objective of the present study. We have focused on aluminium (Al) as deposition material because its RIE selectivity with respect to silicon is very high even for very thin Al layers. Experiments performed with a pre-defined gap between the stencil and the surface show a blurring effect due to the non-desired deposition of a thin metal layer extending from the abrupt flanks of the desired pattern. This thin layer is strong enough to resist a posterior RIE. We can avoid this effect by a controlled etching of a few nanometres of the deposited layer to uniformly decrease the layer thickness, thus eliminating the thin layer due to the blurring effect. We have been able to correct the blurring effect by developing a controlled dry Al etch process, using Quad Drytek equipment. Some initial unsuccessful tests of wet etching lead us to choose a dry etching process for reasons of uniformity, repeatability and controllability. Experiments have been performed on samples in which 70-nm-thick Al was deposited on a silicon wafer by nanostencil lithography. The technological process that has been developed consists on two main steps. First, specific conditions are determined to remove the thin native Al oxide layer, which is resistant to many chemical components: BCl3 50 sccm, 325 mT, 125 W, T=55 oC. Then, chlorine chemistry is used to etch the pre-cleaned thin Al layer. Assuming a 25 nm Al etching as a minimal target, we use a mixture of Cl2 (as Al etchant): BCl3 (to reduce the etch rate by neutralizing H2O): N2 (for better uniformity and low etch rate) with a flow of 3/12/80 sccm respectively (rest of conditions: 325mT, 125W, average T=55oC). The resulting etch rate is approximately 100 nm/min. Using this process, the pattern widening is corrected. The results obtained provide a clear remedy to overcome one of the major challenges in nanostencil-based surface patterning.


The zero-dispersion wavelength map of an optical fiber can be obtained from measurement of end-to-end four-wave mixing efficiency at various wavelengths. A fast and unambiguous algorithm for reconstruction of the zero-dispersion wavelength map of an optical fiber by measurement of four-wave mixing efficiency is proposed. This method can produce high-resolution results in a few seconds. We also study the limitations of this technique that are due to polarization-mode dispersion (PMD). Simple practical rules to avoid the effects of PMD in such measurements are established.


Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a set of standards enabling high performance deterministic communication using different scheduling mechanisms. Due to the size of industrial networks, configuring TSN networks is challenging to be done manually. We present TSNsched, a tool for automatic generation of schedules for TSN. TSNsched takes as input the logical topology of a network, expressed as flows, and outputs schedules for TSN switches using an SMT-solver. The generated schedule guarantees the desired network performance (specified in terms of latency and jitter), if such schedules exist. TSNsched can synthesize IEEE 802.1Qbv schedules and supports unicast and multicast flows, such as, in Publish/Subscribe networks. TSNsched can be run as a standalone tool and also allows rapid prototyping with the available JAVA API. We evaluate TSNsched on a number of realistic-size network topologies. TSNsched can generate high performance schedules, with average latency less than $1000\mu \text{s}$, and average jitter less than $20\mu \text{s}$, for TSN networks, with up to 73 subscribers and up to 10 multicast flows.


Using 1.7 trillion dollars of live trade execution data from a large institutional money manager across 21 developed equity markets over a 19-year period, we measure the real-world trading costs and price impact function of a large trader. We provide a novel description of how costs vary across trade type, stock characteristics, trade size, time, and exchanges globally to test various theories of price impact. We find actual trading costs to be an order of magnitude smaller than previous studies suggest, and describe the trading process leading to these costs. A model calibrated to match the distribution of actual costs across trade size, stocks, and time outperforms other models from the literature in out of sample tests that attempt to describe independent costs from brokers and realized costs of traded index funds. Our model based on realized costs from live trades portrays very different implementation costs than previous studies suggest.


IMPORTANCE
Occupational therapy in the neurological critical care unit (NCCU) may enable safe community discharge by restoring functional ability. However, the influence of patient characteristics and NCCU occupational therapy on discharge disposition is largely unknown.

OBJECTIVE
To examine how patient factors and receipt of occupational therapy predict discharge disposition for NCCU patients.

DESIGN
Retrospective cross-sectional cohort study of electronic health records data from adults admitted to the NCCU between May 2013 and September 30, 2015.

SETTING
NCCU in a large urban academic hospital.

PARTICIPANTS
Adults age 18 yr or older (N = 1,134) admitted to the NCCU. Outcomes and Measures: Using logistic regression with discharge disposition as the dependent variable, we entered sex, age, length of stay (LOS), baseline Glasgow Coma Scale score, Elixhauser Comorbidity Index, and receipt of occupational therapy services as predictor variables.

RESULTS
Of NCCU patients, 39% received occupational therapy. Younger age, shorter LOS, lower comorbidity burden, and not receiving occupational therapy services increased the likelihood of discharge to the community. Men who received occupational therapy were less likely to be discharged to the community than men who did not receive occupational therapy. As age increased, differences in the probability of community discharge decreased between recipients and nonrecipients of occupational therapy services.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Our results suggest that patients receiving occupational therapy services in the NCCU may have a lower likelihood of community discharge. However, these findings may result from therapist's consideration of the safest discharge location to ensure the greatest balance between independence and support. What This Article Adds: This study's findings suggest that receipt of occupational therapy in the NCCU is associated with higher likelihood for noncommunity discharge (i.e., to inpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing, or long-term care). However, activity limitations and comorbidity burden may be greater for recipients of occupational therapy, and these NCCU patients are presumably less prepared for community discharge.


The paper presents a critical discussion of motivation, concept, and especially methods of implementation in Polish universities, the National Qualifications Framework for the whole Higher Education domain. It presents the genesis of the Polish National Qualifications Framework against EU documents and assesses how their implementation in Polish universities was performed. The main problem is due to the fact that the National Qualifications Framework rely on the learning outcomes that are difficult to measure and objective evaluation. Critics is focused on the manner of implementation of the National Qualifications Framework in Polish higher education, and pointing to the lack of proper preparation methodology throughout the operation, as well as a huge and very costly (in terms of the enormous contribution of human labor). The paper indicates that the actions of national scale and high importance had to be preceded by an experiment on a small scale for collection of empirical evidence for of the whole reform. It was also stressed that the way to enforce the National Qualifications Framework over the entire academic community violated one of the fundamental values which is the autonomy of the universities.


Abstract Big sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata Nuttall (Asteraceae), is the dominant plant species of large portions of semiarid western North America. However, much of historical big sagebrush vegetation has been removed or modified. Thus, regeneration is recognized as an important component for land management. Limited knowledge about key regeneration processes, however, represents an obstacle to identifying successful management practices and to gaining greater insight into the consequences of increasing disturbance frequency and global change. Therefore, our objective is to synthesize knowledge about natural big sagebrush regeneration. We identified and characterized the controls of big sagebrush seed production, germination, and establishment. The largest knowledge gaps and associated research needs include quiescence and dormancy of embryos and seedlings; variation in seed production and germination percentages; wet-thermal time model of germination; responses to frost events (including freezing/thawing of soils), CO2 concentration, and nutrients in combination with water availability; suitability of microsite vs. site conditions; competitive ability as well as seedling growth responses; and differences among subspecies and ecoregions. Potential impacts of climate change on big sagebrush regeneration could include that temperature increases may not have a large direct influence on regeneration due to the broad temperature optimum for regeneration, whereas indirect effects could include selection for populations with less stringent seed dormancy. Drier conditions will have direct negative effects on germination and seedling survival and could also lead to lighter seeds, which lowers germination success further. The short seed dispersal distance of big sagebrush may limit its tracking of suitable climate; whereas, the low competitive ability of big sagebrush seedlings may limit successful competition with species that track climate. An improved understanding of the ecology of big sagebrush regeneration should benefit resource management activities and increase the ability of land managers to anticipate global change impacts.


The contemporary United States fitness industry, in conjunction with the medical endorsement of exercise and the marketing of lifestyle consumption, has made possible the emergence and rapid growth of health and fitness services. This paper brings together the sociological fields of work, consumption, and physical culture, suggesting how the structure and organization of personal training impacts upon how fitness is sold. Drawing from interviews with personal trainers, the occupation is discussed as a combination of frontline service work, emotional labor, and flexible work strategies, resulting in a variety of job roles: the representation of the fitness club, the brokering of clients' consumer relationships with the fitness industry, the motivation of clients through service relationships, and the entrepreneurial cultivation of a client base and semi-professional authority.


Childhood aggression is one of the most significant mental health problems that children and their families suffer. Simultaneously, disorders that include maladaptive aggression within their criteria, most notably oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), remain among the most poorly neurobiologically characterized disorders of psychiatry.


The main purpose of this paper is to explicitly derive the possible bias in the Solow residual when there is imperfect competition and non-constant returns to scale. As is known very well, the standard Solow residual assumes perfect competition and constant returns to scale. As is also known, Solow residual is one of the measures of total factor productivity. Therefore, if there is imperfect competition and non-constant returns to scale, then standard Solow measure of productivity will be biased and all the comparisons based on this residual will be unreliable. In this study, we shed some light on these issues.


This dissertation reinterprets the German Romantics' project of writing a new mythology by arguing that the project's theoretical and poetic contours, as they emerge around 1800, owe to the Romantic engagement with Dante and his Commedia. Positioning the neue Mythologie vis-A -vis mythographical discourses of the Enlightenment, I begin by showing how A.W. Schlegel's scholarship on Dante in the early to mid 1790s endorses the Commedia as the preeminent symbolic work of Romantic poetry, which in turn grounds Friedrich Schlegel's theorization of the Commedia as a work of universal symbolic value in the mid to late 1790s. Friedrich Schlegel's activity culminates in the Rede A1⁄4ber die Mythologie, in which he, having defined the new mythology as a symbolic instantiation of absolute idealism, asserts that any new mythology would necessarily assume the form of the Commedia. In subsequent chapters on Novalis, Schelling, and Goethe, I show how these figures take up the challenges of the Schlegel brothers' literary historiography by adopting both poetic strategies as well as specific scenes from the Commedia in order to render the tenets of absolute idealism in a system of Dantean myth. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Germanic Languages and Literature First Advisor Catriona MacLeod


In this Note, Daniel J. Schwartz explores the connections between voter turnout, interest group mobilization, and the standards by which courts assess the constitutional validity of legislative enactments. As traditionally conceived, democracies only function properly when citizen participation in government is widespread and knowledgeable. Since the 1960s, however, few citizens have voted in American congressional elections and fewer still have been aware of the issues at stake. While political scientists attribute this situation to various causes, they agree that an important factor is a lack of electoral mobilization-that is, the process by which interest groups and others stimulate citizens to go to the polls. Drawing from public choice theory, which posits that interest groups use political contributions and electoral support to buy rent-seeking laws from legislatures, Schwartz suggests that groups engage in little electoral mobilization because they successfully obtain the rents they seek through other means, such as lobbying and litigation. He argues that courts reinforce this state of affairs by reviewing the constitutionality of most legislation with a very deferential standard, thereby protecting the value of lobbying and litigation as means of cementing legislative bargains. Schwartz thus proposes that the deferential review of a statute should be contingent on a showing of fifypercent turnout in the two elections prior to its enactment. He argues that such a condition would decrease the value of lobbying and litigation relative to that of mobilization, which, in turn, would furnish interest groups with the right incentives to turn out voters at election time.


Background: The limited diagnostic accuracy of biomarkers in children at risk of a serious bacterial infection (SBI) might be due to the imperfect reference standard of SBI. We aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of a new classification algorithm for biomarker discovery in children at risk of SBI. Methods: We used data from five previously published, prospective observational biomarker discovery studies, which included patients aged 0– <16 years: the Alder Hey emergency department (n = 1,120), Alder Hey pediatric intensive care unit (n = 355), Erasmus emergency department (n = 1,993), Maasstad emergency department (n = 714) and St. Mary's hospital (n = 200) cohorts. Biomarkers including procalcitonin (PCT) (4 cohorts), neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin-2 (NGAL) (3 cohorts) and resistin (2 cohorts) were compared for their ability to classify patients according to current standards (dichotomous classification of SBI vs. non-SBI), vs. a proposed PERFORM classification algorithm that assign patients to one of eleven categories. These categories were based on clinical phenotype, test outcomes and C-reactive protein level and accounted for the uncertainty of final diagnosis in many febrile children. The success of the biomarkers was measured by the Area under the receiver operating Curves (AUCs) when they were used individually or in combination. Results: Using the new PERFORM classification system, patients with clinically confident bacterial diagnosis ("definite bacterial" category) had significantly higher levels of PCT, NGAL and resistin compared with those with a clinically confident viral diagnosis ("definite viral" category). Patients with diagnostic uncertainty had biomarker concentrations that varied across the spectrum. AUCs were higher for classification of "definite bacterial" vs. "definite viral" following the PERFORM algorithm than using the "SBI" vs. "non-SBI" classification; summary AUC for PCT was 0.77 (95% CI 0.72–0.82) vs. 0.70 (95% CI 0.65–0.75); for NGAL this was 0.80 (95% CI 0.69–0.91) vs. 0.70 (95% CI 0.58–0.81); for resistin this was 0.68 (95% CI 0.61–0.75) vs. 0.64 (0.58–0.69) The three biomarkers combined had summary AUC of 0.83 (0.77–0.89) for "definite bacterial" vs. "definite viral" infections and 0.71 (0.67–0.74) for "SBI" vs. "non-SBI." Conclusion: Biomarkers of bacterial infection were strongly associated with the diagnostic categories using the PERFORM classification system in five independent cohorts. Our proposed algorithm provides a novel framework for phenotyping children with suspected or confirmed infection for future biomarker studies.


In the post-acquisition integration process, organizations need to transfer different types of knowledge from one organization to another in order to align their operational routines, practices and culture. Our aim is to identify the critical factors that relate to knowledge transfer in terms of the different knowledge types. We conducted a qualitative case study from an exploratory perspective. We first selected a case firm operating in the knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) field and then incorporated four different acquisition cases into the study. The results focus attention on the need to understand the "soft types" of critical factors in knowledge transfer, such as valuing employees, easing interpretation, identifying employee competences, building trust, creating a safe atmosphere, and diagnosing knowledge cultures in order to avoid information-management bias. It is necessary to identify the nature of the knowledge to be transferred to the acquired companies, and to align the communication patterns accordingly.


Water is the most limited factor for crop production in dryland farming. In the work underlying this thesis soil hydraulic properties and water balance under various soil management regimes in the Chinese Loess Plateau were evaluated in laboratory studies, field experiments and simulations. Several methods for measuring soil hydraulic properties were also tested. The study was carried out at three sites on the Loess Plateau: Mizhi in the northern part, Heyang in the southeast and Yangling at the southern edge of the plateau. The saturated hydraulic conductivity of the loess soil at these sites was similar. However, the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity, K(), of the soil was higher at the northern site (Mizhi) than at the southern sites (Heyang and Yangling), and soil water retention showed the opposite pattern. Laboratory studies demonstrated that soil compaction significantly influenced soil hydraulic properties, reducing the saturated hydraulic conductivity and altering the shape of the soil water retention curves at two of the sites (Mizhi and Heyang). At the Yangling site long-term application of organic manure increased water retention in the low tension range and decreased the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity, K(), at relatively high water contents in the surface layer (0-5 cm). However, it did not affect the saturated hydraulic conductivity. These, and other, effects of soil management practices on the soils' hydraulic properties alter the partitioning of the water balance. To assess these effects in a winter wheat system, an integrated ecosystem model was calibrated using the results of a three-year field experiment, and a long-term (45-year) simulation was run to evaluate the sustainability of wheat production under various soil management regimes. The simulations showed that mulching optimized the partitioning of the water balance components, decreasing soil evaporation and increasing both transpiration and deep percolation, leading to increased wheat yields and WUE. Furthermore, mulching significantly improved the quantity and frequency of deep percolation, which should enhance the groundwater recharge potential. Incorporating mulching into the winter wheat-summer fallow system could be a sustainable management strategy for the Loess Plateau. Increasing the organic matter content of the soil could be another beneficial approach, if sufficient resources were available. Soil compaction caused the most unfavourable partitioning of water balance, leading to the lowest yield and WUE of all the treatments. Considering all of the factors involved, the duration of bare fallow should not be less than 30 days to maximise the benefits of producing green manure or fodder without significantly reducing the wheat yield and WUE.


Bathymetric sonar systems (whether multibeam or phase-differencing sidescan) contain an inherent trade-off between resolution and uncertainty. Systems are traditionally designed with a fixed spatial resolution, and the parameter settings are optimized to minimize the uncertainty in the soundings within that constraint. By fixing the spatial resolution of the system, current generation sonars operate sub-optimally when the SNR is high, producing soundings with lower resolution than is supportable by the data, and inefficiently when the SNR is low, producing high-uncertainty soundings of little value. Here we propose fixing the sounding measurement uncertainty instead, and optimizing the resolution of the system within that uncertainty constraint. Fixing the sounding measurement uncertainty produces a swath with a variable number of bathymetric estimates per ping, in which each estimate's spatial resolution is optimized by combining measurements only until the desired depth uncertainty is achieved. When the signal to noise ratio is sufficiently high such that the desired depth uncertainty is achieved with individual measurements, bathymetric estimates are produced at the sonar's full resolution capability. Correspondingly, a sonar's resolution is no-longer only considered as a property of the sonar (based on, for example, beamwidth and bandwidth,) but now incorporates geometrical aspects of the measurements and environmental factors (e.g., seafloor scattering strength). Examples are shown from both multibeam and phasedifferencing sonar systems.


Objectives: To identify the degree of risk and the practice of prophylaxis to venous thromboembolism (VTE) in an intensive care unit (ICU). Methods: The subjects were patients admitted to the ICU between December 1997 and February 1998. Patients were excluded if they were in anticoagulant therapy or presented contra-indication to heparin. Determination of risk factors and classification of the degree of risk for VTE were done according to international consensus. The ICU medical staff did not know about the study. Results: The authors evaluated one hundred and eighty patients with a mean age of 58 years (±16.5). Risk factors more frequently found were: age ³ 40 years (85.0%), surgery (47.8%), thoracic or abdominal infection (22.8%). Two or more risk factors were present in 146 (81%) cases. In the evaluation of VTE risk, 142 (79%) patients were classified as moderate/high risk. Prophylactic measures were prescribed to 102 patients (57%), and heparin was used in 60% of moderate/high risk cases. There was a significant association between risk level and the number of risk factors with the use of prophylaxis (p < 0.05). Conclusion: VTE risk factors were frequent in the sample analyzed. However, 40% of patients considered moderate/high risk did not receive pharmacological prophylaxis for VTE.


Our knowledge of the spatial distribution of the physical properties of geologic
formations is often uncertain because of ubiquitous heterogeneity and the sparsity
of data. While many studies consider the effects of incorporating various types of
data (including transmissivity, electrical resistivity, hydraulic heads and/or
travel times) on predicting flow and transport processes in heterogeneous systems,
the uncertainty associated with the delineation of lithofacies and associated
hydraulic conductivity and porosity from limited geological and geophysical data are
only marginally analyzed. Such data, which include grain size distribution curves,
are typically derived from core samples and are often poorly differentiated thus
further compounding predictive uncertainty.
Within statistical and stochastic frameworks, this uncertainty is quantified by
treating a formation's properties (e.g., hydraulic conductivity) as random fields
that are characterized by multivariate probability density functions or,
equivalently, by their joint ensemble moments. Since in reality only a single
realization of a geologic site exists, it is necessary to invoke the ergodicity
assumption in order to substitute the sample spatial statistics, which can be
calculated, for the ensemble statistics, which are actually required. This and
other related assumptions are often impossible to validate.
Recently we (Wohlberg et al., 2006) demonstrated that Support Vector Machine (SVM)
techniques provide a viable alternative to geostatistical frameworks by allowing one
to delineate lithofacies in the absence of sufficient data parameterization, without
treating geologic parameters as random and, hence, without the need for the
ergodicity assumptions. This has been done by using well differentiated data.
Here, we extend our approach to account for poorly differentiated grain size
distribution data. The procedure starts with the inference of hydraulic
conductivity from the grain size distribution curves, which relies upon empirical
relationships of, e.g., Beyer, 1964. The heterogeneous aquifer structure can then
be assessed by analyzing the whole ensemble of grain size distribution curves with
the aim of identifying distinct clusters. These are then taken as representative of
different types of materials and identify different sedimentological data. The data
can then be analyzed by means of geostatistical or machine learning-based methods in
order to provide an estimate of the spatial arrangement of the identified
lithofacies. The step involving the classification of geologic information is based
on the possibility of differentiating the available data in order to clearly
identify distinct geologic facies. This is a crucial point, since very often grain
size distribution curves (and geologic data in general) are poorly differentiated,
forcing the introduction of modeling approximations.

References
Beyer, W., Zur Bestimmung der Wasserdurchlassigkeit von Kiesen und Sanden aus der
Kornverteilung. Wasserwirtschaft-Wassertechnik (WWT) 14, 165-168, Berlin (Verlag fur
Bauwesen), 1964.
Wohlberg, B., D. M. Tartakovsky, and A. Guadagnini, Subsurface Characterization with
Support Vector Machines, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, in
press, 2006.


currently are a hot topic in the areas of Semantic Web. The current clustering research emphasizes the development of a more efficient clustering method and mainly focuses on term weight calculation without considering the domain knowledge. This paper investigates how ontologies can also be applied to the clustering process. To complement the traditional clustering method, more informative features including concept weight are important based on recent developments in the area of the Semantic technologies. The proposed system presents the concept weight for text clustering system developed based on a k-means algorithm in accordance with the principles of ontology so that the important of words of a cluster can be identified by the weighted values. To a certain extent, it has resolved the semantic progeny in specific areas. The experimental results performed using dissertations papers from Google Search Engine and the proposed method demonstrated its effectiveness and practical value.


This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post proceedings of two international workshops, the 6th International Workshop on Data Privacy Management, DPM 2011, and the 4th International Workshop on Autonomous and Spontaneous Security, SETOP 2011, held in Leuven, Belgium, in September 2011. The volume contains 9 full papers and 1 short paper from the DPM workshop and 9 full papers and 2 short papers from the SETOP workshop, as well as the keynote paper. The contributions from DPM cover topics from location privacy, privacy-based metering and billing, record linkage, policy-based privacy, application of data privacy in recommendation systems, privacy considerations in user profiles, in RFID, in network monitoring, in transactions protocols, in usage control, and in customer data. The topics of the SETOP contributions are access control, policy derivation, requirements engineering, verification of service-oriented-architectures, query and data privacy, policy delegation and service orchestration.


Across industrial settings and environmental conditions, innovation is viewed as a source of advancing firms' competitive position. Recently, a shift has been witnessed from the traditional innovation model, which mainly focused on internal research and development (R&D) towards open innovation. In this study,wehave attempted to study if this approach is suitable for the regular, more mature industry by focusing the context of aerospace industry. The study involves a single case company that is a developer and manufacturer of components for both civil and military aero engines as well as for rocket engines. In addition to previous findings we would like to propose three key areas, which need special attention by any company aiming to successfully realize open innovation. These areas are people, process and technology, put into a framework. The PPT framework was found to be particularly helpful regarding the organizational changes needed for open innovation.


The human endometrium undergoes a unique process of benign angiogenesis under the control of ovarian steroids during reproductive life. Aberrant angiogenesis has been implicated in idiopathic menorrhagia, a common gynaecological complaint. One of the key factors involved in endometrial angiogenesis is adrenomedullin (AM), a multifunctional 52-amino acid peptide. AM mediates the activities of endometrial angiogenesis via calcitonin receptor-like receptor (CLR). The objective of the present study was to compare the endometrial expression of AM and CRL in women with and without idiopathic menorrhagia. Endometrial biopsies were obtained from 9 women with menorrhagia (≥80 ml per menstruation) and 12 women with normal blood loss (<80 ml per menstruation). Protein and mRNA expression levels of AM and CLR were determined using immunohistochemistry and real-time PCR. Compared to the controls, patients with menorrhagia exhibited low immunostaining intensity of AM, while high CLR staining was observed in the epithelium (p<0.05). No difference in mRNA expression was observed between the groups. These data suggest that an imbalance in the AM/CLR system might alter endometrial angiogenesis in menorrhagia.


. The meteorological observational period in Turkey, which starts ca. 1930 CE, is too short for understanding long-term climatic variability. Tree rings have been used intensively as proxy records to understand summer precipitation history of the region, primarily because they have a dominant precipitation signal. Yet, the historical context of temperature variability is unclear. Here, we used higher-order principle components of a network of 23 tree-ring chronologies to provide a high-resolution spring (March–April) temperature reconstruction over Turkey during the period 1800– 2002. The reconstruction model accounted for 67 % (Adj. R 2 = 0.64, p < 0.0001) of the instrumental temperature variance over the full calibration period (1930–2002). The reconstruction is punctuated by a temperature increase during the 20th century; yet extreme cold and warm events during the 19th century seem to eclipse conditions during the 20th century. We found significant correlations between our March–April spring temperature reconstruction and existing gridded spring temperature reconstructions for Europe over Turkey and southeastern Europe. Moreover, the precipitation signal obtained from the tree-ring network (first principle component) showed highly significant correlations with gridded summer drought index reconstruction over Turkey and Mediterranean countries. Our results showed that, beside the dominant precipitation signal, a temperature signal can be extracted from tree-ring series and they can be useful proxies in reconstructing past temperature variability.


The direct torque control approach called model predictive direct torque control (MP-DTC) is extended to field-weakening operation in this research. The controller is of the finite control set (FCS) type, which takes the discrete states of the voltage source inverter (VSI) into account. Each sampling period, the future behavior of the plant is predicted and inputs (voltage vectors) are selected using an optimization criterion, i.e., a cost function. Optimization, however, depend on the operation region. Maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) tracking for high electrical efficiency is aimed below rated speed, operation off the MTPA trajectory is necessary for obtaining field-weakening. In this work, a cost function is designed, which is suitable for operation at high speeds without penalizing operation below rated speed. MP-DTC is applied to permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) drive systems. High control performances, i.e., dynamics, is obtained without increasing the switching frequency nor reducing significantly the torque quality. This feature is interesting above all for high power applications. The proposed control strategy has been evaluated on a small-scale (PMSM) drive system with two-level VSI for demonstration showing promising results.


Since it is not known for certain which alpha-adrenergic receptors mediate renal vasoconstriction in human essential hypertension, we infused either doxazosin (n = 7) or yohimbine (n = 7) into the renal arteries of hypertensive subjects immediately prior to diagnostic angiography. Both agents caused an increment in renal blood flow as assessed with the xenon-washout technique. Doxazosin increased renal flow from 342 +/- 36 to 360 +/- 55 ml/min per 100 g (0.05 less than p less than 0.10). Yohimbine enhanced flow from 380 +/- 41 to 485 +/- 63 ml/min per 100 g (p less than 0.01). The effect of yohimbine was significantly greater than that of doxazosin. In a control group (n = 7) receiving only saline, no changes in renal blood flow occurred. Doxazosin enhanced renin secretion in the kidney by 10 +/- 4% over levels in controls (0.05 less than p less than 0.10), whereas yohimbine increased renin release by 80 +/- 23% (p less than 0.01). The latter increase was apparently not due to alterations in flow alone, since the arteriovenous gradient for renin also widened. We conclude that in resting conditions, neurogenic vascular tone in the kidney depends mainly upon activation of alpha 2-adrenergic receptors. Moreover, these receptors exert a tonic inhibitory influence on renin release.


This article examines the comparability of nursing homes and home health care with respect to the quality-control effects of private litigation and state licensure. It explains that the false assumption of broad comparability between nursing homes and home health care could hamper effective regulation of quality in the delivery of home health care.This article has two main sections, the first of which compares nursing homes and home health care in the context of private litigation. Points of comparison in the litigation context include the barriers to private litigation in long-term care, issues in institutional liability, applicable standards of care, and the availability of statutory private rights of action for violations of state licensure standards. Limitations and obstacles in private litigation, particularly potent for elderly individuals, reveal that although private litigation exerts influence on quality control, it cannot replace government regulation. The second main section makes the nursing home and home health care comparison with respect to state licensure and enforcement mechanisms. It begins by identifying a regulatory model focused on the individual caregiver as best-suited for home health care, using governmental regulation of hospitals and nursing homes as alternative models. Next, it provides an overview of the status of licensures for home health care providers, coverage of state statutes, intermediate sanctions currently available, and the experience of several states in the licensure of home health agencies. Finally, it analyzes the rationale for supporting intermediate sanctions for nursing homes and considers the applicability of such sanctions to home health care. Recognizing that regulatory programs alone do not guarantee quality of care, the article concludes with recommendations for how to best utilize private litigation and state licensure mechanisms to achieve effective quality-control regulation.


Human gene and cell technology is a diverse and rapidly evolving field of research. As genes represent the 'blueprint' of an organism, their analysis and manipulation is a challenge to our understanding of human nature. Stem cell research, genetic testing, gene therapy, therapeutic and reproductive cloning – all these fields of application have been raising fundamental ethical and religious-theological questions: When does human life begin? Should human beings be allowed to interfere with natural procreation or to manipulate the genome of their own species? Is genetic engineering tantamount to 'playing God'?

Based on the symposium 'GenEthics and Religion' held in Basel, Switzerland in May 2008, this volume examines the role religion can play in establishing ethical guidelines to protect human life in the face of rapid advances in biology and especially gene technology. It does so in a multidisciplinary way with contributions by philosophers, theologians, human geneticists, and several bioethicists representing the Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist perspectives. The essays illustrating a diversity of views and expressing the problems and self-critical reflectiveness of religious ethicists have been brought up to date and discuss the importance of religious ethics in society's discourse on gene technology.


Taking the intraparty politics perspective, Lehrer and Lin recently revisit Somer-Topcu's work that demonstrates how being ambiguous can help parties expand support in elections. Using survey data from the German Internet Panel, Lehrer and Lin find that intraparty cohesion is a critical moderator of Somer-Topcu's argument. While Lehrer and Lin's results are of relevance to a wide literature on party competition, intraparty politics, and political representation, their empirical strategy of relying on only one country prohibits other researchers from drawing meaningful and generalizable conclusions. In this note, we join this literature and reevaluate Lehrer and Lin's conjecture by using an innovative cross-national survey data that covers 12 European countries. With this comparative data set, we almost perfectly replicate what Somer-Topcu and Lehrer and Lin reveal in their works. Our empirical endeavor not only provides a solid empirical ground to Lehrer and Lin in a cross-national context but also has important implications for future research, particularly on electoral politics, party competition, and democratic representation.


Kaptai Lake is the largest artificial reservoir in South-East Asia and very rich in inland open water capture fisheries of Bangladesh. A study was conducted in three different communities viz. Natun Jele Para (mostly Hindus and entirely depends on fishing at lake), Adar Pahar (mostly Muslim and involved in various occupation) and Mitingachori (mostly ethnic group called Chakma, not entirely dependent on the lake fishery) to understand the historic changes of lake fish biodiversity. PRA tools, well-being ranking of the community people, were used to collect data. It was obtained mixed livelihood profiles in three communities but almost similar views on about the biodiversity changes of fishes in lake. About 44 fish species were recorded and ranked in terms of their availability within the last few decades. Indigenous and coastal fish species were available before the embankment (1960). Then some exotic carp species like Chinese carp, Big Head Carp etc. were dominated in the catch composition but gradually some Small Indigenous Species (SIS) was remaining in the top of the fish catch chart. Now, both Ganges River Sprat (Corica soborna) and Indian River Shad (Gudusia chapra) comprises about 60% of the total catch with an equal share of each. In 2013-14, total fish production was 8,813 MT (metric ton) where the overall productions of Indian Major Carps (IMC's) fish like Labeo rohita, Gibelion catla, Cirrhinus cirrhosus were only 38.44 MT. On the other hand C. soborna and G. chapra production were 2,581.53 MT and 2,640.45 MT respectively. Recent landing data of Bangladesh Fisheries Development Corporation (BFDC) were reviewed and it also supports the dramatic increase trend of SIS. The indiscriminate fishing, sedimentation in the lake, water pollution, changing the rainfall hinder the breeding performances of IMC's, and use of Keski Net damage other ichthyoplankton especially IMC's fries.


In the wake of the brutal deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a slew of reforms from Wall Street to the West Coast have been introduced, all aimed at increasing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ("DEI") in corporations. Yet the reforms face difficulties ranging from possible constitutional challenges to critical limitations in their scale, scope and degree of legal obligation and practical effects.

In this Article, we provide an old answer to the new questions facing DEI policy, and offer the first close examination of how corporate law duties impel and facilitate corporate attention to diversity. Specifically, we show that corporate fiduciaries are bound by their duties of loyalty to take affirmative steps to make sure that corporations comply with important civil rights and anti-discrimination laws and norms designed to ensure fair access to economic opportunity. We also show how corporate law principles like the business judgment rule do not just authorize, but indeed encourage American corporations to take effective action to help reduce racial and gender inequality, and increase inclusion, tolerance and diversity given the rational basis that exists connecting good DEI practices corporate reputation and sustainable firm value. By both incorporating requirements to comply with key anti-discrimination laws mandatorily, and enabling corporate DEI policies that go well beyond the legal minimum, corporate law offers critical tools with which corporations may address DEI goals that other reforms do not—and that can embed a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all aspects of corporate interactions with employees, customers, communities, and society generally. The question therefore is not whether corporate leaders can take effective action to help reduce racial and gender inequality—but will they?


Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is one of the mycotoxins with the most dangerous poisons and poses a threat to living things. Several detection methods for Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) with high sensitivity (LC-MS technique, HPLC, ELISA, etc.) still require lengthy preparation time and are not real-time and portable. Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) detection is one of the major challenges in the field of food safety because Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) attacks the food and agricultural products sector. One of the potential sensors that can be used as a base for Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) detection is the Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) sensor. This study examines the performance of the Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) sensor as one of the Aflatoxin B1 detection techniques through the physical deposition method. The Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) sensor modified uses polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) material as a container to embed a molecular model that will be detected through a molecular imprinting polymer (MIP) process coated on QCM using the electrospinning method. The response results show that the value of the sensor response using the MIP process is more significant than without the MIP process. The sensor characteristics demonstrated by the PVAc/AFB 50 sample have a limit of detection (LOD) value is 0.63 ppb, and a limit of quantitation (LOQ) is 1.91 ppb with a coefficient correlation is 0.97 for testing with a concentration range of 5.0 – 40.0 ppb. Therefore, the MIP process in QCM provides a favorable response for the detection of AFB1 in the future.


Nonsense‐mediated decay (NMD) is an RNA surveillance mechanism that degrades mRNAs containing premature termination (nonsense) codons. The second signal for this pathway in mammalian cells is an intron that must be at least ∼55 nucleotides downstream of the nonsense codon. Although the functional significance of this '−55 boundary rule' is not known, it is widely thought to reflect the important role of an exon junction protein complex deposited just upstream of exon–exon junctions after RNA splicing. Here we report that a T‐cell receptor (TCR)‐β gene did not conform to this rule. Rather than a definitive boundary position, nonsense codons had a polar effect, such that nonsense codons distant from the terminal downstream intron triggered robust NMD and proximal nonsense codons caused modest NMD. We identified a region of the TCR‐β gene that conferred this boundary‐independent polar expression pattern on a heterologous gene. Collectively, our results suggest that TCR‐β transcripts contain one or more sequence elements that elicit an unusual NMD response triggered by a novel second signal that ultimately causes boundary‐independent polar regulation. TCR genes may have evolved this unique NMD response because they frequently acquire nonsense codons during normal development.


Package Templates (PT) is a mechanism designed for writing reusable modules, called templates, each consisting of a set of classes that can be adapted to their use in a program through compile-time specialization. A template must be instantiated in a program before its classes can be used. The mechanism supports type-safe renaming, merging, type parameterization and refinement in the form of static additions and overrides that are orthogonal to the corresponding concepts of ordinary inheritance.
 In this paper, we consider PT as an extension to Java, and a PT program will then consist of a number of Java packages and templates, where templates are instantiated in packages or other templates. Our aim and main contribution is to define the meaning of such a program, and to show that this definition is consistent. We first show this for a core subset of PT, C-PT, and define a set of source-to-source transformations for converting C-PT programs to plain Java programs using semantics we have described informally in previous papers. We can then define the meaning of a C-PT program in terms of the resulting Java program. Thus, we have to verify that the transformations will always convert a legal C-PT program to a legal Java program. Finally, we briefly discuss how this approach can be extended to full PT.
 A main challenge is to preserve externally visible names (for classes, methods and fields), and at the same time prevent unwanted subsequent rebindings caused e.g. by over-load resolution in the Java compiler. Names that are bound to declarations in a template should not be rebound to different declarations by subsequent compositions or adaptions.
 In addition to defining the runtime semantics of PT constructs in terms of their translation to Java, the transformation rules can also be seen as a high-level approach to how a compiler for this language might be implemented.


Introduction It is salient to begin this article with some examples of fertile and groundbreaking study emanating from the history of the book, reading, and publishing: * Robert Darnton brilliantly re-constructed the world-view of 18th century French society from the ground up in his book The Great Cat Massacre. He did so by reinterpreting odd and rare documents such as a printing society's wage book, a semi-fictional autobiography of a printshop worker, and an odd, obsessively complete "inventory" of the city of Montpellier. [1] * Justin Kaplan's notes in his Library of America edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass list eight different editions Whitman produced and edited, the first consisting of twelve poems and a preface, others expanding to four times the length, and then contracting again. Like all of Whitman's later compilers and editors, Kaplan faced the author's injunctions declared at various times on the variety of editions, in order to come up with a complete or definitive edition. [2] * Wayne Wiegand has studied odd documents of library history like Library Bureau accession/de-accessioning books used in most small American public libraries to record the acquisition of books. Wiegand productively studied the censorship of controversial materials in some of those libraries over a 66-year period using these records. [3] * Jonathan Katz [4] and Martin Duberman [5] are scholars who have researched and documented the history of the gay experience in America. Over the course of 25 years, they have examined previously unpublished and overlooked documents discovered through various means: by communication with gay people; by following up on rumor and vaguely remembered diaries and papers; by following obscure trails left in footnotes, much of which was located in privately-owned and only-recently gathered library archival collections. What do these examples have in common? They represent important and interesting work that could be accomplished because the documents and the publications exist, and they exist primarily because they were printed and reprinted, simply kept somewhere, preserved and archived. The study of reading, books, book production, editing, and the research process posits a very simple assumption: that which has been read, edited, absorbed, used and studied will still exist as an artifact. As Ronald Schuchard wrote, "what interests the scholar ... in the archive [is] the preservation and accessibility of the materials of the creative imagination, the physical materials, including all the detritus, debris, and ephemera of art, biography, history. And the archival preservation of these materials is crucial for the minor as for the major figures of a literary generation" [6]--the very authors, as Michael Winship [7] points out, that most people read the most, after all. However, the trend toward digitization, promoted by those who want information available instantly and in a "more accessible" format, poses a very fundamental challenge to the essential assumption that those items will exist in future. The dramatic move to exclusive web-distribution of federal and state government information and data in the United States is a good case study of this problem. Essentially, this project has been undertaken without planning or budgeting for archived, permanent and secure (hat is, unaltered) access. A front page story in the New York Times detailed the digitization project in the US Patent Office of 18th and 19th century patents--and the discarding of the original documents. One person did some dumpster diving outside the Office and came up with four original application copies of some of Thomas Edison's patents. [8] Much of the newly-digitized data is the raw material for scholars in such far-flung subjects as law, the environment, education, demography, and of course economics and business. Data and documents are not in danger only from governmental sources, but in private databases as well. …


There is concern that many young adults (ages 19--29) will remain without health insurance in 2014 despite the Affordable Care Act's reforms, including subsidized private coverage offered in new state marketplaces and expanded Medicaid eligibility. How things turn out will likely depend on outreach efforts and states' decisions on expanding Medicaid. Commonwealth Fund Health Insurance Tracking Survey data from 2011 and 2013 show increasing awareness among young adults of the 2010 requirement that health plans cover children under age 26. Of the estimated 15 million young adults enrolled in a parent's plan in the prior 12 months, 7.8 million would not likely have been eligible to enroll prior to the law. Still, only 27 percent of 19-to-29-year-olds are aware of the marketplaces. Meanwhile, most uninsured young adults living below poverty will not have access to subsidized public or private insurance in states opting out of the Medicaid expansion.


Numerous frameworks and protocols are being developed to facilitate BIM understanding and implementation. A BIM framework is a structured theoretical construct that can assist in organizing BIM domains of knowledge and facilitate the creation of new knowledge. BIM Protocols explain or simplify aspects of the BIM implementation by providing detailed steps or conditions (e.g. workflows, plans, manuals, etc.) to reach a measurable outcome. Currently available BIM protocols lack the level of details and the inclusion of implementation variables and complexities present at project levels. This research aims to propose protocols for BIM collaborative design that can be utilized at project level by an entire supply chain to increase the efficiency and consistency of information flow and BIM deliverables. A grounded theory approach was adopted due to its particular emphasis on providing explicit strategies for defining and studying processes. The proposed protocols consist of flowcharts, diagrams and matrices that guide the processes of BIM implementation for collaborative design among lead architects, engineering consultants, clients and contractors. A top-level model of the protocols, representing the main elements of the protocols, the relations between elements, the underpinning methodology and a gate decision for technology, process and policy approval, is presented as an abstraction of the content of the protocols. The testing of the protocols in two international design competitions, using a mixed quantitative-qualitative, demonstrated their potential in improving the quality and quantity of information delivered to stakeholders involved in the design process. There are primary and secondary contributions that stemmed from this research. The primary contribution is represented by both the methodology for development and testing and the proposed protocols for BIM collaborative design. The secondary contribution derives from the classification and review of BIM frameworks and the demonstration of the influence of the BIM project physical environment on the performance of teams.


Verification plays an indispensable role in designing reliable computer hardware and software systems. With the fast growth in design complexity and the quick turnaround in design time, formal verification has become an increasingly important technology for establishing correctness as well as for finding difficult bugs. Since there is no "silver-bullet" to solve all verification problems, a spectrum of powerful techniques in formal verification have been developed to tackle different verification problems and complexity issues. Depending on the nature of the problem whose most salient components are the system implementation and the property specification, a proper methodology or a combination of different techniques is applied to solve the problem.
In this thesis, we focus on the research and development of formal methods to uniformly verify parameterized systems. A parameterized system is a class of systems obtained by instantiating the system parameters. Parameterized verification seeks a single correctness proof of a property for the entire class. Although the general parameterized verification problem is undecidable [AK86], it is possible to solve special classes by applying a repertoire of techniques and heuristics. Many methods in parameterized verification require a great deal of human interaction. This makes the application of these methods to real world problems infeasible. Thus, the main focus of this research is to develop techniques that can be automated to deliver proofs of safety and liveness properties.
Our research combines various formal techniques such as deductive methods, abstraction and model checking. One main result in this thesis is an automatic deductive method for parameterized verification. We apply small model properties of Bounded Data Systems (a special type of parameterized system) to help prove deductive inference rules for the safety properties of BDS systems. Another methodology we developed enables us to prove liveness properties of parameterized systems via an automatic abstraction method called counter abstraction . There are several useful by-products from our research: A set of heuristics is established for the automatic generation of program invariants which can benefit deductive verification in general; also we proposed methodologies for the automatic abstraction of fairness conditions that are crucial for proving liveness properties.


Despite its prominence in the discourse of international politics, the concept of 'great power responsibility' remains largely unmapped in International Relations. Existing accounts tend to focus their analysis at a structural level and do not pay adequate attention to agency and processes of deliberation, negotiation and contestation. Drawing on constructivist insights to extend existing English School scholarship, this article unpacks great power responsibility as a socially constructed and negotiated concept. It develops a typology to further investigate the politics of great power responsibility and focuses specifically on four categories: the location, object, nature and rationale of responsibility (respectively, responsibility by whom, to whom, for what and why). This conceptual framework is applied to China at two important international order-building junctures: institutional construction during World War II and institutional accommodation in the Cold War. In doing so, the article illuminates China's historical agency and uncovers the processes of both conflict and concordance that have shaped Chinese engagements with the question of great power responsibility.


The discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in Canada and the United States in 2003 prompted an immediate and decisive reaction from importers, with the closure of most markets to beef and cattle exports from Canada and the United States. Two years later, many of these bans have not been lifted or have been only partially lifted. These bans were put in place by national authorities attempting to protect the health of their citizens and may have been justified in the immediate period following the discoveries, but their long-term continuance is not supported by science. Trade regulations can be a powerful weapon in the fight against the spread of diseases and to protect health, but they can also unnecessarily restrict trade. Internationally agreed standards have been created in order to protect public health in the least trade restrictive manner. When dealing with BSE, however, the norm has been for countries' regulations to be far more restrictive than those they have previously agreed upon internationally.


Part adventure story, part leadership guide, this intriguing book examines Shackleton's legendary Antarctic expedition through the lens of business--to reveal a set of powerful strategies for corporate leaders. In the chronicles of extraordinary adventures and against-the-odds survival, nothing compares to the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his team of South Pole explorers. Stranded in the frozen sea for nearly two years, they endured extreme temperatures, hazardous ice, dwindling food, complete isolation, and perpetual blackness. Yet, despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the group remained cohesive, congenial, and mercifully alive--a fact that speaks not just to luck but to an unparalleled feat in leadership. Now, for the first time ever, Leading at the Edge draws on this amazing story to reveal the power of effective organizational leadership under conditions of uncertainty, ambiguity, and rapid change. The book uncovers 10 lessons--complete with stirring examples from the Shackleton expedition, as well as contemporary business case studies of the strategies in action--on what it takes to be a great leader. Readers learn how to: Set a personal example with vivid symbols and behaviors Instill optimism while staying grounded in reality Reinforce the team message constantly Find something to celebrate and something to laugh about Have the courage to take big risks, and more. For managers and executives who feel stressed out or stretched thin, these memorable strategies will help bring order to chaos--and success in the face of the most daunting adversity.


Transparent ceramics have unique properties enabling applications no other materials can and magnesium aluminate spinel has been at the forefront of their development. However, the processing-property relationships of transparent spinel fabrication, in particular interfaces, which often govern densification and influence final properties, remain poorly understood. In this light, the interfaces of transparent spinel were studied in detail; grain boundaries and surfaces of transparent spinel compacts made using powders with different stoichiometries and impurity and LiF additive contents, and using a variety of densification methods, were examined using optical microscopy, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, various chemical spectroscopy methods, atomic-force microscopy, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. In turn, interface properties were related to starting powders, processing, and mechanical and opto-electronic properties.

Differences in stoichiometry and impurity and LiF content altered the free energy, diffusion characteristics, lattice parameter, and mechanical, optical, and electronic properties of surfaces and grain boundaries. The interface energies of astoichiometric compositions were more conducive to densification, but enhanced interface transport in Al2O3-rich compositions caused coarsening that precluded densification by pressureless sintering while assisting it with added pressure. Impurities and carbon contamination from thermal treatment were the main sources of optical scatter and absorption and they also affected conductivity. Dielectric properties were found to be a complex function of microstructure, stoichiometry, impurities, and additives, and higher conductivity compared to single crystals was attributed to conductance along impurity-rich magnesium-depleted boundaries. Lastly, compact-scale stoichiometry, impurity, and additive content gradients resulted in associated microstructure and property gradients.

The LiF sintering additive had a profound, complex, and multi-faceted effect. Fluorine reacted with impurities to form volatile species, which were removed by careful processing to render transparency, and it reacted with spinel to form magnesium fluoride and oxide, altering stoichiometry. Whereas, lithium incorporated into the lattice and altered interface properties, resulting in; (i) a shift towards Al2O3-rich composition, (ii) the removal of impurities, (iii) accentuation of grain-boundary and compact-scale stoichiometry and microstructure gradients, (iv) enhanced interface transport and grain growth, (v) reduced densification temperature and enhanced densification with pressure, (vi) coarsening and inhibited densification without pressure, (vii) grain-boundary embrittlement, (viii) grain-boundary optical scatter, (ix) opacity when processing trapped LiF and its by-products, and (x) lower conductivity due to conductance-inhibiting point defects and decreased grain-boundary area and impurities.
The work demonstrated how interfaces were affected by starting powders and processing parameters and in turn how this affected microstructure, fracture behavior, and opto-electronic properties. The findings shed light on many intricacies of transparent spinel fabrication, thus giving guidance on how to tailor processing and microstructure to yield improved bulk properties.


Naming is a curious practice. It entails rudiments, now mostly taken for granted, that serve to categorize everyday literacy practices across fields as diverse as cultural anthropology and the management of multiple Git profiles. As a term unto itself, adolescent literacies is not immune to the vagaries of naming. In fact, it serves as an excellent example of how commonly named concepts in education embed the field's histories, debates, pedagogies, and policies writ large. Conceptualizing literacy in its plural form raised eyebrows among academics, researchers, practitioners, publishers, and indexers concerned with the noun–verb agreement in phrases such as "adolescent literacies is a subfield" of adolescence. For some, the very notion of literacy extending beyond reading and writing is still debatable. With each passing day, however, it becomes noticeably more evident that multimodal forms of communication—images, sounds, bodily performances, to name but a few ways of expressing oneself—are competing quite well in the marketplace of ideas that flow globally with or without a linguistic component attached to them. Aside from the naming process and its attendant political overtones, the practice of treating youth between roughly the ages of 12 and 17 as a monolithic group has been common in the United States. Largely traceable to a time in which developmental psychology dominated the field of literacy instruction (in the early to late 20th century), designating youth as adolescents equated to viewing them as some a normative group devoid of racial, class, gender, and any number of other identity markers. Even with the sociocultural turn in early 21st century and its abundance of studies reifying the socially constructed nature of adolescents, the term persists. Its adhesive-like attraction to literacies, however, may be weakening in light of research that points to youth who are agentic and dynamic game changers when it comes to participating in a world grown more attuned to the need for collaboration based not on hierarchical standing but instead on working through commonplace tensions too complex for any one solution.


The Critical Path Method (CPM) is a widely used tool throughout the construction industry. Since its creation, the use and application of the Critical Path Method has grown tremendously. Up to date, three studies have been performed on how Engineering News Record's (ENR) Top 400 Contractor use CPM. The first study was performed by Edward Davis in 1974 and the second was performed by Amir Tavakoli and Roger Riachi in 1990. This paper is a summary of the third survey, which took place in 2003. The results from the three studies indicate that CPM use by the Top 400 Contractors is growing and the areas of use are expanding. The number one use of CPM throughout the years is detailed planning before the start of construction. Periodic control during construction is another large area of CPM use and has been a large area of growth due to the advances in technology, which make updating a schedule during construction easier and faster than was possible with a mainframe computer in the past. Another area of CPM growth is estimating and bidding for several reasons: use in this area has jumped from 19% to 54% in the past 30 years. An area of concern lately in CPM is the use of precedence diagramming instead of arrow diagramming. Despite the debate, the responding companies found precedence diagrams easier to read, provide more flexibility, and allow for easier use of "smart" relationships (i.e. start-start).


The friendship and correspondence of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder encompassed the last 12 years of Stein's life and a period of major work by Wilder. A generation apart in age, the two writers met during Stein's American lecture tour in 1934-35, during which they shared the experience of lecturing to audiences in the wake of great success. They quickly became mentor and pupil as well as friends, and Wilder passed on what Stein taught him through his introduction to her books. While Wilder supported Stein's efforts at publication, she held him to his vocation as a writer, urging him to ignore the distractions incurred by family and fortune. The letters between Stein and Wilder contain ideas and plans about publications, attitudes towards fame and work and thoughts about artists and people near to them. They also refer to European-American cultural relations prior to and through World War II, show how Stein and Wilder responded to critical reception of their new work, and above all, examine how the two writers affected one another's progress. It is clear from the letters that without their friendship, Stein's "Narration" lectures would not have come about, "The Geographical History" and the novel "Ida" would have become different books and Wilder's "Our Town" might not have become the play we know. The edition, fully annotated by Edward M. Burns and Ulla E. Dydo, includes a detailed chronology of Stein's lecture tour prepared by William Rice, staging histories of "Our Town" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" and an account of Stein in World War II with documentation.


Abstract Background Subgroup analyses of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) using high dose chemotherapy (HD) with autologous stem cell support (autoSCT) reveal a potential benefit of HD in patients with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and in tumors harboring features of HRD (Vollebergh et al, 2011). The phase III part of the neo-TN RCT, compared neo-adjuvant HD with conventional treatment (CONV) in BRCA1-like TNBC. Methods Patients with cT2-3N0-3M0 TNBC with HRD were randomized between HD or CONV after 3 courses of 2-weekly doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (ddA60C600). CONV treatment consisted of another 3xddAC, or in case of an unfavorable response on MRI a switch to 3 cycles capecitabine800BID14-7/docetaxel75; after an amendment all patients switched to 3xcarboplatinAUC6/paclitaxel80weekly. The HD regimen consisted of a 4th course ddAC and 2 courses of cyclophosphamide3000d1/carboplatin400d1,2/ thiotepa250d2 both followed by autoSCT. Primary outcome was the Neo-adjuvant Response Index (NRI), secondary outcomes included overall (OS) and recurrence free survival (RFS). Results From 2010 to 2016, 122 patients were randomized (intention-to-treat). Median follow-up is 45 months. There was no significant difference in NRI between HD and CONV (mean NRI 0.78 versus 0.72, range 0-1, p = 0.41 Wilcoxon test). An NRI of > 0.7 was strongly associated with good prognosis (RFS of 97% [95%CI 93%-100%] versus 67% [95%CI 55%-82%] at 4 years). See Table for 4-years OS and RFS comparing HD with CONV. There were no treatment related deaths. However, 7 out of 55 patients who actually received HD did not complete HD mainly because of infections or allergic reactions. Table . 187P HD % (95%CI) CONV % (95%CI) HR (95%CI) p-value All (n = 122) 4-yrs OS 4-yrs RFS 92 (85-99) 92 (85-99) 79 (69-91) 78 (68-89) 0.43 (0.15-1.23) 0.41 (0.15-1.07) 0.12 0.07 Stage III only (n = 35) 4-yrs OS 93 (81-100) 60 (39-93) 0.14 (0.02-1.14) 0.07 Conclusions No significant efficacy differences were found between HD and CONV. The NRI is of prognostic value. Whether the HD regimen is promising, especially in very high risk BRCA1-like TNBC [HR = 0.14], requires additional data including a comparison with platinum treatment in all control arm patients. Clinical trial identification NCT01057069. Legal entity responsible for the study The authors. Funding The Dutch Cancer Foundation (KWF) and by the Schumacher Kramer Foundation. Disclosure S.C. Linn: Research grant / Funding (self), research support for patients fees in D-Care study: Amgen; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (self), Research grant / Funding (institution): AstraZeneca; Advisory / Consultancy: Cergentis; Research grant / Funding (self): Genentech; Advisory / Consultancy: IBM; Research grant / Funding (self): Novartis; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (institution), patients fees in TEAM 2b study: Pfizer; Advisory / Consultancy, Research grant / Funding (self), Research grant / Funding (institution): Roche; Research grant / Funding (institution): Tesaro; Speaker Bureau / Expert testimony, Fee for teaching, paid to institution: Bayer. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


P.J. sets off on a world tour to investigate funny economics. Having seen 'good' capitalism on Wall Street, he looks at 'bad' capitalism in Albania, views 'good' socialism in Sweden and endures 'bad' socialism in Cuba. The result is the world's only astute, comprehensive and concise presentation of the basic principles of economics that can make you laugh on purpose. 'P.J. O'Rourke is the acceptable face of US Republican arrogance. He sneers so irresistibly, you cough up your liberal guts laughing' Observer 'The first thing you learn about O'Rourke is this: he cannot turn off his mirth valve. Such is the severity of P.J.'s condition, the only person to have more entries in The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations is Oscar Wilde. This makes O'Rourke either the funniest man alive, or the wittiest heterosexual of all time ...In Eat the Rich, O'Rourke's ninth book, he squares up to the daunting topic of the world's wealth: who has it, who hasn't and why' Mail on Sunday 'P.J. at his scathing best ...This is economics for the uninitiated' Irish News


In England, fuel poverty (FP) is estimated to affect as many as 2.35 million households.
'Young adult households' – those where the oldest member is younger than twenty-five
– are disproportionately more likely to be fuel poor than any other age group. However,
research focused specifically on this demographic group, particularly among young adult,
non-student households, remains almost entirely absent from the evidence base.
Contributing to this gap, the present research adopted a qualitative methodological
approach to explore how urban young adults construct and make sense of their
relationship with domestic energy as independent household members. Using
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, six semi-structured interviews were
undertaken with young adults who were not in education and had recent or current
experience of living independently within an urban context (Salford, Greater
Manchester). Analytic focus was directed towards the subjective experiences of how
domestic energy is used and paid for, as well as energy related challenges and
vulnerabilities. Multiple experiences of and exposure to conditions typical of FP were
disclosed, including: self-disconnection of energy supply, energy debts, cold homes and
unrelenting challenges associated with damp and laundry practices. Detailed discussion
of the findings is presented under three emergent themes: 'establishing the independent
home', 'threats to home comfort' and 'energy and coping'. Limitations and suggestions for
further research are considered, including the potential to further define the
homogeneity of the sample by considering certain sub-demographic groups, such as
young adult migrants, lone-parents or those within specific household formations.

Keywords: fuel poverty, energy vulnerability, young adults, independent household
member, lived experience, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis


Many organizations consider the implementation of total quality management a requirement to maintain a competitive advantage. In addition to the existing research that addresses general principles of total quality management, an emerging body of literature has attempted to define internal service quality. However, little research to date has empirically examined internal service quality among departments. The purpose of this study was to explore internal service quality from the purchasing department's point of view. The results indicated that (1) internal service quality initiatives could be adopted to a greater extent within U.S. organizations, (2) purchasing considered communication with their internal customers to be less effective with their internal customers than with their internal suppliers, (3) while supplier management activities are viewed as necessary for the overall improvement of service and product quality, relatively few of these activities have been actively implemented, and (4) although purchasing managers viewed themselves as providing good, to very good, service quality to their internal customers, they were critical of their internal suppliers.


With the upsurge of political resistance in January 2011, politics became the focus of the majority of Egyptians. In such troubled times, political satire is often used as a form of revolt that serves to publicly express feelings and challenge the course of action. A new type of political satire emerged via Bassem Youssef's YouTube show that earned him millions of viewers in just a few months. Shortly after, Youssef was dubbed "Egypt's Jon Stewart" and started to present his popular television show Al-Bernameg . The show mocked politicians and parodied mainstream media in Egypt. This was a new phenomenon that elicited controversial feedback, with some critics stating that the show simply provided satirical social and political commentary, while others arguing that the content was inappropriate for broadcast television. This article qualitatively analyzes the program's content and format to explore instances in which the show deconstructs dominant political discourses and ideologies disseminated by Egyptian mainstream media.


To enter the Chinese Pharmaceutical market, "Big Pharma" has adopted different strategies to tackle the challenges specific to the country in terms of size, demographics, specific sales channels and logistics adjustments. While the majority of Global Pharmaceutical players have opted for an aggressive MA the Danish Novo Nordisk has instead chosen a strategy focusing on innovation and developing its R&D structure to capitalize on the local talent pool. To illustrate Novo Nordisk's growth strategy in the Mainland, we analyzed its competitiveness in the diabetes market by demonstrating the key drivers behind this success. We applied a various set of tools for this research: Novo Nordisk, Dong Bao Pharmaceutical executives' interviews and personal observations accounting for the primary data, we also reviewed secondary data to perform a PEST analysis in addition to Porter's competitive advantage model in order to extract the reasons behind Novo Nordisk's marching success in the Mainland.


: Export shipments arriving late at the freight building of KLM Cargo at Schiphol Airport is a trigger to deviations in the standard acceptance process. These Late Shows are currently handled ad-hoc making it difficult to plan and predict these events. By conducting a data analysis to quantitatively identify the characteristics of the Late Shows, and by conducting stakeholder interviews to understand the current process and discuss the future process, this research tried to design the operational process of the Late Shows to improve the operational excellence and quality of the acceptance process. The research shows that currently, late shipments are often still tried to be build up for the planned flight. It is found that 13% of these shipments do eventually not depart on the planned flight. The research concludes that the design of the Late Show process should include a check on whether the shipment was delivered on time, before acceptance of the shipment. By only accepting the shipment once it is decided that the planned flight is achievable or when it is rebooked to another flight, it is assured that the Late Show will be on time at the build-up buffer for the booked flight.


Background XmAb20717 is a humanized bispecific monoclonal antibody that simultaneously targets PD-1 and CTLA-4. We report preliminary data from an ongoing, multicenter, Phase 1 study investigating the safety/tolerability, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, and clinical activity (RECIST 1.1) of XmAb20717 in patients with selected advanced solid tumors. Methods A 3+3 dose-escalation design was used to establish a maximum tolerated (MTD)/recommended dose for evaluation in parallel expansion cohorts, including melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), prostate cancer, and a basket of tumor types without an FDA-approved checkpoint inhibitor (CI; n≤20 each). XmAb20717 was administered as an infusion on Days 1 and 15 of each 28-day cycle. Results As of 08Jul2020, 109 patients had been treated (table 1), and 30 were continuing treatment. In escalation, 6 dose levels (0.15–10.0 mg/kg) were evaluated (n=34); an MTD was not established. Expansion cohorts were initiated at 10 mg/kg (n=72), and a 15 mg/kg escalation cohort was added (n=3). T-cell proliferation was noted in peripheral blood at doses as low as 3 mg/kg and was highest at 10 mg/kg. At this dose, consistent proliferation of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells was observed, indicative of dual PD-1 and CTLA-4 checkpoint blockade (figure 1). Paired pre- and post-dosing biopsies showed increased intratumoral T-cell infiltration and IFN-response signatures following treatment. Grade 3/4 treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) reported for ≥3 patients included rash (13%), transaminase elevations (7%), lipase increased (4% [2% with amylase increased]), and acute kidney injury (3%), all considered immune-related. There were 2 Grade 5 TRAEs: immune-mediated pancreatitis (in the presence of pancreatic metastases) and immune-mediated myocarditis (Grade 4) that contributed to respiratory failure. A complete response was reported as the best overall response for 1 patient (melanoma); partial responses were reported for 5 patients (2 melanoma, 2 NSCLC, 1 ovarian). The objective response rate was 13% overall and 21% at 10 mg/kg (6/46 and 6/29 evaluable patients, respectively). All responders had prior CI exposure. Responses were observed only at 10 mg/kg and, within the 10 mg/kg group, appeared to correlate with higher peak serum concentration and area under the curve. Conclusions XmAb20717 induced T-cell proliferation in peripheral blood consistent with dual-checkpoint blockade. Preliminary data indicate XmAb20717 was generally well-tolerated and associated with evidence of antitumor activity in CI-pretreated patients with various types of advanced solid tumors. Trial Registration NCT03517488 Ethics Approval The study was approved by each institution's IRB.


Productive infection of non-proliferating cells by cytomegalovirus (CMV) requires the coordinated stimulation of host biochemical pathways that prepare cells to synthesize DNA. Here we illustrate the ability of human CMV (HCMV) to stimulate cellular thymidylate synthase (TS) gene expression in quiescent human embryonic lung fibroblasts. TS mRNA and protein levels are nearly undetectable in quiescent cells, but are greatly increased following HCMV infection. Inhibition of TS activity was shown to impair HCMV DNA synthesis, demonstrating that TS upregulation is required for efficient HCMV replication in quiescent cells. The increase in TS gene expression was due to an increase in gene transcription, since the expression of a reporter gene driven by the human TS promoter was strongly induced by HCMV infection. Deletion analysis of the human TS promoter identified two positive elements that are important for this increased transcription. We have previously shown that murine CMV (MCMV) stimulates the mouse TS promoter by a mechanism that depends on the presence of an E2F element in the promoter region. However, deletion of the two potential E2F binding sites in the human TS promoter did not prevent the virus-induced increase in TS promoter activity. Our data suggest that HCMV activates human TS gene transcription by mechanisms that are independent of E2F and different from those used by MCMV to stimulate the mouse TS promoter.


The Washington Legislature in its 1981 session enacted Senate bill 3158,1 the Tort and Product Liability Reform Act, a comprehensive change in product liability and tort law in the State of Washington. This change, perhaps the most sweeping legislative involvement in Washington tort law in this century, was accomplished after many years of extremely bitter political conflict over product liability and tort reform; Senate bill 3158, however, passed the legislature with little of the acrimony previously associated with the issue. This article explores the involvement of the legislature in product liability and tort reform historically, reviews the legislative history of Senate bill 3158, and discusses the relationship of the changes contained in the Act to the present law of the State of Washington.


In agent-oriented programming and planning, agents' actions are typically specified in terms of postconditions, and the model of execution assumes that the environment carries the actions out exactly as specified. That is, it is assumed that the state of the environment after an action has been executed will satisfy its postcondition.

In reality, however, such environments are rare: the actual execution of an action may fail, and the envisaged outcome is not met. We provide a conceptual framework for reasoning about success and failure of agents' behaviours. In particular, we propose a measure that reflects how "good" an environment is with respect to agent's capabilities and a given goal it might pursue. We also discuss which types of goals are worth pursuing, depending on the type of environment the agent is acting in.


The study explores and assesses mining and its environmental and social impacts on communities within which mining activities take place. The focus is on a mining community in Chingola, Zambia called Nchanga North Township where mining is carried out by a mining group called Vedanta Resources Plc, KCM. The study investigates the real and latent environmental and social impacts and the residents' perception of impacts of mining activities on their communities in the light of the numerous promises and prospects that mining is said to provide for communities.Nchanga North Township in Chingola was purposively selected as the study area because of its close proximity to KCM's Nchanga Mine. Several data collection methods were used, including; observations, literature review, 60 semi-structured interviews, water and soil sample analysis for pH. In assessing the perceptions of residents towards the environmental and social impacts of mining activities, systematic random sampling was used to interview a total of 60 households. This was out of a total number of 540 households in Nchanga North Township.It was found that mining operations at Nchanga mine were releasing dust to air mainly during blasting. There was also noise produced mainly by mine equipment and blasting operations. It was also discovered that suspended solids resulting from carry overs of sediments with runoff from pit slopes resulted into water contamination. There was no significant difference between the pH values measured at the eight sample points in Nchanga North Township (mean = 6.20; range= 5.07-8.14) and the expected normal soil pH (mean = 6.25; t = -0.121; p = 0.907) at probability level p = 0.05. This implies that there was no pH raising or decreasing contaminants in the soil. There was no significant difference between the water pH values obtained in the field with the normal water pH (t = 6.636; p = 0.095) at probability level p = 0.05. This implies that there was no pH raising or decreasing contaminants in the Kafue River at the point of sample collection. Nchanga North Township residents believe that mining operations at Nchanga mine are affecting their environment and social life negatively. The lack of an environmental management plan by the mine to combat the adverse effects on the residents meant the residents close to the mine, were highly affected negatively.