Human resources are important assets of every organization. Recruitment and selection play an effective role in improving the organizational performance, because recruitment directly is relating with employee engagement. Employee engagement has emerged as a popular organizational concept in recent years. Employee engagement, strangely enough, has been a crucial priority of HR since before the term was using. It has become one of the leading priorities of human resource practitioners and senior managers in the organization today, so employee engagement has generated great deal of attention among many human resource practitioners. In present day, where is large-scale competition in the market, it is necessary for the organization to have engaged workforce for the survival and smooth functioning of the organization. Every organization wants to make the best utilization of its human resources in order to achieve competitive advantage in the market. When employees are engaged in their work, they have good relationships with their co-workers and working environment becomes better, are not only happy in their job, but also translate that satisfaction into higher productivity and profitability of the organization. High levels of engagement promote retention of talent, foster customer loyalty and improve organizational performance and stakeholder value. The paper discusses theoretical approaches to the significant concept and phenomenon of today – employee engagement and the factors behind it. In addition, the paper examined the type of employee engagement, problematic of individual and organizational engagement that affects organizational decisions. The aim of article is to identify the distinctive features of two types of engagement in the scientific literature employee engagement and organizational engagement, also connections reflecting the possible role of human resource management practices in the process of management of employee engagement. The purpose implies tasks: to reveal the essence of engagement and the factors that determine it ; also is presented a theoretical model of interfaces. The research methodology is the theoretical modeling of the phenomenon employee engagement from a human resource management perspective. The article is presenting in different sections such as meaning and concept of employee engagement, importance and factors influencing employee engagement and impact of employee engagement on organizational performance. The article consists of three logically interconnected parts. The introduction justifies relevance topics. The main part provides a review of literary sources, in which the authors examine the typology of engagement, distinguish types such as job engagement and organizational engagement. This section analyzes the relationship between characteristics and the influence of their design on employee engagement. This section also analyzes the conditions of formation and the results of the manifestation of employee engagement at the individual organizational levels, describes the connection of various aspects of this state with the practice of human resources management. In the final part, is given a theoretical model developed by the author – the main result of the article. It is a hypothetical model of the structure of employee engagement and how various human resources management practices shape employee engagement and how individual engagement of an employee transforms into a competitive advantage of organization. Data sources for the theoretical study described in this article are publications on the topic of engagement of such highly rated publications like Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology and The International Journal of Human Resource Management. The value of the results. This paper may serve as the basis for further research in the field of employee engagement generally and individual additional variable components. Research conclusions may have be used to build the organizational policy of the company in relation to the system human resource management.


Introduction Iodine deficiency disorders (IDD), is one of the most important micronutrient deficiencies which has multiple adverse effects on growth and development. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of IDD among school children and to elucidate the distribution of iodized salt at household level in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted among school children aged 8 to 10 years in 2008. A multi-stage probability proportionate to population size (PPS) cluster sampling method was used to obtain a representative state sample of 1200 school children. Spot urine samples were collected for the determination of urinary iodine concentration while the iodine content in salt was determined using field rapid test kits. The thyroid status was determined by palpation. Results Response rate was 92.0% (n=1104/1200). The prevalence of goitre among school children in Sarawak was 2.9% (5.2% in urban, 0.7% in rural). The median urinary iodine concentration (UIC) among the school children was 102.1 µg/L (IQR, 62.3-146.5 µg/L). Urban children had significantly higher median UIC of 109.3 µg/L (IQR, 72.4-159.0 µg/L) than their rural counterparts [91.9 µg/L (IQR, 55.7-140.2 µg/L)]. The salt samples tested by rapid test kit (RTK) showed only 46.0% of household salt contained iodine. Conclusions The present study revealed that the population in Sarawak were of borderline iodine sufficient with mild IDD seen in rural areas. Hence, the state IDD control programmes need to encourage and advocate the consumption of iodized salt in order to eliminate IDD-related health problems in Sarawak.


The present thesis is concerned with tunable microwave components based on Liquid Crystals (LC). Here, the fact is utilised that LC feature at GHz frequencies as well as at optical frequencies a dielectric anisotropy along a preferential direction. By means of an electric or magnetic control field, which superimposes the RF field, this preferential direction can be reoriented and thus the permittivity effective for the RF field can be controlled. After in a preceding doctoral work the applicability of LC was demonstrated in principle, the motivation of the present work is to advance the usage of LC for microwave applications, particularly for tunable phase shifters for reconfigurable phased arrays, further toward commercial applicability. To this end, both material aspects as well as component and fabrication aspects are considered. In order to improve the dielectric properties, i.e. loss and anisotropy and hence the tunability, numerous nematic mixtures were investigated with respect to their microwave performance. Certain components could be identified which feature both high tunability and low loss. Particularly these compounds based on Diphenylacetylene or on Quarterphenyles. By employing high precision measurements it is shown that the dielectric loss strongly depends on molecular relaxations. If these relaxations are reduced, materials with loss tangents down to 0.006 and relative tunabilities of up to 25 % at 30 GHz can be synthesised. For passively tunable materials, these are exceptional values. Two different approaches were pursued in order to reduce the so far for LC-based microwave devices with layer thicknesses of several 100 µm usual response times of several seconds. On the one hand, this is the stabilisation of the LC by means of a PTFE matrix which reduced the response times considerably down to 90 ms. On the other hand, a method resembling LC display assembly technology has been developed which allows realising thin LC layers also for microwave devices. Using the fabricated tunable capacitors it could be demonstrated that with a LC layer thickness of approx. 5 µm response times faster than 100 ms and with a layer thickness of approx. 1 µm response times faster than 5 ms can be achieved. Based on these tunable capacitors a tunable phase shifter is developed which features a phase shifter performance of up to 60 degrees per dB insertion loss at 20 GHz and a response time of faster than 340 ms. Additionally, for these devices resistive bias electrodes made of Indium-Tin-Oxide were employed. The power handling capability of such devices was investigated by means of single and two tone measurements. With the single tone measurements it could be shown that the device characteristic is influenced at high power levels by self-actuation effects, however only above a certain threshold power. With the two tone measurements it could be shown that these self-actuation effects cause increased intermodulation at small tone distances (<1 kHz). However, for tone distances larger than 100 kHz IP3 values of about 60 dBm can be achieved.


This paper focuses on the role that business models play in cooperative standard setting. Certain business models, namely upstream specialists with no manufacturing of their own, have been vilified by some as patent trolls bent on exploiting the standard setting process. This view ignores important trends in specialization and industry structure and the social benefits that attend them. In particular, over the last few decades, disaggregation in the production process has been prevalent in a number of industries, particularly in the high technology sector. Specialization brings with it a number of benefits, but also complicates business interactions, including licensing. As business models have become more diversified in key industries, business model diversity among standard setting participants has led to inevitable tension. The analysis of business models presented here illustrates how non‐integrated production can benefit from "comparative advantage", where entities focus on what they do best, which results in higher quality products, increased competition, and increased consumer choice. It also shows, however, that different business models – like design versus manufacturing, or non‐integrated versus integrated – can mean divergent incentives among participants and therefore more disputes among them, which can slow down or even derail the standard setting process, to the detriment of consumers. The appropriate competition policy recognizes the opposing forces at work in modern cooperative standard setting, seeking balance between them to maximize consumer welfare.


In two-way immersion (TWI) programs in the United States, the development of student cross-cultural competence is one of three primary goals, along with academic achievement and bilingualism and biliteracy. However, as "the third goal," cross-cultural outcomes have received less scholarly attention. In this article, we briefly review the literature on cross-cultural outcomes for students in TWI programs, and highlight a consistent focus on the self in these studies, particularly as it relates to student identity. As cross-cultural competence begins with awareness of the self within the socially and culturally diverse classrooms that TWI provides, we assert that scholarly attention should be paid to the ways that TWI programs support identity development as an aspect of achieving the third goal of cross-cultural competence. We offer brief descriptions of three theoretical frameworks that hold promise for scholars considering student identity development within TWI, and close with suggestions for further research.


Impermanent Durations; On Painting and Time (part 1) This exhibition presented a collaboration by three artists and academics specializing in contemporary painting: Professor Beth Harland, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University; Professor David Thomas, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University; and Ian Woo, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. The exhibition venue was the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore. The project was fully funded by the Singaporean Arts Council including artists fees and production costs for the accompanying book. A public symposium was held in the exhibition, attended by 50 people. The artists formed the panel which was chaired by Singaporean artist Guo Liang Tan. A review of the exhibition appeared in the leading newspaper The Straits Times on 1 July 2016: 'Hour at the Museum' by Nur Asyiqun Mohamad Salleh. The book of the project, published by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore, included documentation of the process and exhibition, texts by the artists and an essay by Guo Liang Tan. A journal paper 'Considering Impermanent Durations', authored by David Thomas, including a transcript of the symposium discussion, was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Contemporary Painting, Issue 4.1 Painting and Time (2017). The exhibition explored how paintings reflect and embody various senses and durations of time through pictorial and spatial qualities. The project examined temporality through painting informed by the specific cultural realities of the three artists who are based in Singapore, Australia and UK. The project method and outcomes were established through an intensive dialogue between the artists by email and skype for a year before the exhibition, exploring notions of temporality and painting both practically and theoretically. The curatorial method was innovative in that rather than present a traditional group show of separate works, the artists worked together over the period of a week, collectively installing elements each had made individually and new interventions in the gallery into a single installation, responding to each other's work and the space. The installation addressed how painting might affect our interpretation of time and impermanence, asking questions such as: How can time and space be pictorialized? How do formal and material structures influence the speed of looking? And What is "slow time"?


PURPOSE
High-quality supportive care is an essential component of comprehensive cancer care. We implemented a patient-centered quality of cancer care survey to examine and identify predictors of quality of supportive care for bowel problems, pain, fatigue, depression, and other symptoms among 1,109 patients with colorectal cancer.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients with new diagnosis of colorectal cancer at any Veterans Health Administration medical center nationwide in 2008 were ascertained through the Veterans Affairs Central Cancer Registry and sent questionnaires assessing a variety of aspects of patient-centered cancer care. We received questionnaires from 63% of eligible patients (N = 1,109). Descriptive analyses characterizing patient experiences with supportive care and binary logistic regression models were used to examine predictors of receipt of help wanted for each of the five symptom categories.

RESULTS
There were significant gaps in patient-centered quality of supportive care, beginning with symptom assessment. In multivariable modeling, the impact of clinical factors and patient race on odds of receiving wanted help varied by symptom. Coordination of care quality predicted receipt of wanted help for all symptoms, independent of patient demographic or clinical characteristics.

CONCLUSION
This study revealed substantial gaps in patient-centered quality of care, difficult to characterize through quality measurement relying on medical record review alone. It established the feasibility of collecting patient-reported quality measures. Improving quality measurement of supportive care and implementing patient-reported outcomes in quality-measurement systems are high priorities for improving the processes and outcomes of care for patients with cancer.


Extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)-2 is presumed to play an important role in the development of post-traumatic joint contractures. Using a rat injury model, we investigated whether treatment with ERK2 small interfering RNA (siRNA) could reduce the extent of joint capsule fibrosis after an induced injury. Rats were separated into three groups (n = 32 each): non-operated control group, operated contracture group and contracture-treatment group. Stable post-traumatic joint contracture was created through surgical intra-articular joint injury followed by eight weeks of immobilization. In the contracture-treatment group, the rats were treated with lentivirus (LV)-mediated ERK2 siRNA at days 3 and 7 post-surgery. The posterior joint capsule was assessed by western blotting, immunohistochemistry and biochemical analysis for changes in ERK2, phosphorylated (p)-ERK2, myofibroblast, total collagen and relative collagen Type III expression level. Biomechanical testing was used to assess the development of flexion contractures. Statistical analysis was performed using an analysis of variance. In the operated contracture group, rats that developed flexion contractures also showed elevated phosphorylated p-ERK2 expression. In the contracture-treatment group, ERK2 siRNA significantly reduced p-ERK2 expression levels, as well as the severity of flexion contracture development (p < 0.01). Myofibroblast numbers and measurements of total collagen content were also significantly reduced following ERK2 siRNA (p < 0.01). Relative collagen type III expression as a proportion of total of Types I and III collagen, however, was significantly increased in response to ERK2 siRNA (p < 0.01). Our findings demonstrate a role for ERK2 in the induction of joint capsule fibrosis after injury. Furthermore, we show that development of flexion contractures and the resultant increase of joint capsule fibrosis can be reduced by LV-mediated ERK2 siRNA treatment.


ABSTRACT The Lower Sesan 2 (LS2) Hydropower Project in northeastern Cambodia is presently under construction. As the largest dam to ever be built in Cambodia, it is expected to cause serious and widespread environmental and social impacts. This article analyzes, on the one hand, the relationships between Cambodian non-government organizations (NGOs) and villagers who will be negatively impacted by LS2, and on the other, NGO relations with the Cambodian state. While development actors frequently attempt to construct particular narratives in order to control development trajectories, this research demonstrates that such attempts can meet with serious resistance from local people, even when facing powerful opponents, including in this case NGOs that prefer to advocate for better resettlement and compensation conditions rather than for the cancellation of projects. Focusing on interactions, positioning, local agency, and the particular political culture of Cambodia, this article highlights the importance of particular types of patronage relations in Cambodia between NGOs and villagers, NGOs and the state, and associated territorialization.


Richard Rorty wrote on many occasions that called the linguistic turn was an attempt to keep philosophy an armchair discipline. "The idea - he said - was to mark off a space for a priori knowledge into which neither sociology nor history nor art nor natural science could intrude". Linguistic analysis, in short, has become with the passing of time a sort of first philosophy, aimed at replacing metaphysics (which the founding fathers of logical positivism gave up for dead). Two opposite conceptions of language are at stake here. The first says that language is something self-explanatory which, in turn, explains everything else. This means postulating type A objects, i.e. unexplained explainers in terms of which type B objects - the explananda - can be accounted. The second conception claims, instead, that there is no actual distinction between type A and type B objects. All objects are on a par, but in a particular sense. Rorty resorts in fact to the Quinean-flavored simile of the net and its nodes. Rorty's is an intelligent move. Since there is no longer ineffability and unavailability, all problems seem to be solved. Is this true? We have good motives to be suspicious because, after all, Immanuel Kant must have adopted that kind of model for some reason, and Ludwig Wittgenstein himself struggled with the old problem of the gap between reality itself and our representations of it. Rorty proclaims his faith in holism. In contrast to the assumption that there can be entities which are what they are totally independent of all relations between them, a Davidsonian (and also Quinean) holism claims that "all entities are merely nodes in a net of relations", which gives us a picture of the following kind: "No intrinsically simple objects, no pictures, and no language. For if analysis could not end with such objects, then whether a sentence has sense would depend upon whether another sentence were true - the sentence which specifies that two simpler objects making up a composite stand in the relevant compositional relationship". The great issue at stake here is the relation between ontology and epistemology. Most interpreters would answer that such a distinction is untenable in Wittgenstein's thought, and in particular if we take into account the second phase of his philosophical parabola. But, notwithstanding this common opinion, we are confronted with a great problem, namely, that of determining what really is the reference framework about which Wittgenstein so often talks, and which is supposed to be shared by all human beings as such. He frequently says in his works that skepticism raises doubts when no questions can be asked, while Monk correctly describes his endeavor in On Certainty as one aimed at showing "The point at which doubt becomes senseless". The question to be asked is, obviously, the following: What does this mean? Wittgenstein is right when he says that some questions cannot be asked because they do not even make sense, but in my view we may interpret him in a way different from the traditional ones that have been thus far put forward. We may accept Wittgenstein's statement that the existence of the world, for instance, cannot meaningfully be questioned. But this means, in turn, that the linguistic games cannot go on forever. Sooner or later we run into a "hard rock" which is ultimately non-linguistic and whose existence is the original fact from which everything else stems, including language, linguistic games, conceptual schemes, social practices, etc. Everything, in sum, can be questioned, but nature. And when someone does question it, like the pupil mentioned in On Certainty, who will not let anything be explained to him by his teacher, for he continuously interrupts him with doubts concerning the existence of things, we are somehow forced to answer his questions as Wittgenstein's teacher does: "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all".


Rare, fault‐bounded escarpments expose natural cross sections of ocean crust in several areas and provide an unparalleled opportunity to study the end products of tectonic and magmatic processes that operated at depth beneath oceanic spreading centers. We mapped the geologic structure of ocean crust produced at the East Pacific Rise (EPR) and now exposed along steep cliffs of the Pito Deep Rift near the northern edge of the Easter microplate. The upper oceanic crust in this area is typified by basaltic lavas underlain by a sheeted dike complex comprising northeast striking, moderately to steeply southeast dipping dikes. Paleomagnetic remanence of oriented blocks of dikes collected with both Alvin and Jason II indicate clockwise rotation of ∼61° related to rotation of the microplate indicating structural coupling between the microplate and crust of the Nazca Plate to the north. The consistent southeast dip of dikes formed as the result of tilting at the EPR shortly after their injection. Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility of dikes provides well‐defined magmatic flow directions that are dominantly dike‐parallel and shallowly plunging. Corrected to their original EPR orientation, magma flow is interpreted as near‐horizontal and parallel to the ridge axis. These data provide the first direct evidence from sheeted dikes in ocean crust for along‐axis magma transport. These results also suggest that lateral transport in dikes is important even at fast spreading ridges where a laterally continuous subaxial magma chamber is present.


Biomarkers are distinctive biological indicators used to identify, often through indirect means, when an event or physiologic process of interest has occurred in an animal. Historically, a variety of biomarkers, as well as bait-markers, have been used in wildlife management including radioactive isotopes, stable isotopes, fatty acids, systemic and physical biomarkers. The ability to successfully track, monitor, and identify animals using minimally invasive techniques is becoming increasingly important as wildlife-human interactions increase. This paper is an overview of the benefits and limitations of previously and presently used biomarkers in wildlife damage and disease management with emphasis on the use of rhodamine B as a physical biomarker as part of the USDA, Wildlife Services, Oral Rabies Vaccination Program.


This thesis seeks to understand multinational activity in Indian industry after the reforms of 1991. Chapter 2 models two effects of inward FDI on local industry - linkage and competition effects. We develop a two-sector model with vertical product differentiation in the downstream sector and a monopolistically competitive upstream sector. We show that a domestic content requirement increases both linkage and competition effects, and can raise domestic welfare through growth of upstream industry, and increased consumer welfare. The stronger are linkage effects, and lower the income level, the greater are benefits from a DCR. Chapter 3 presents descriptive statistics and stylized facts about multinationals in India. We consider sectoral destination, characteristics, and performance of MNCs. We find MNC investment is horizontal and that they are more profitable than domestic firms. A model of distribution dynamics is used to investigate persistence in profitability. Differences in performance are driven by persistence of profits of highly profitable MNCs. In Chapter 4 we test for the effects of FDI reforms on firm performance. By constructing treatment and control groups and using pre and post reform data, we isolate the impact of reforms. We find that local firms' profitability has been reduced by the entry of new MNCs. However, pre-existing MNC profits have not been significantly affected by reforms. We find some evidence that MNCs are more efficient than local firms. In Chapter 5, we analyze export behaviour of Indian firms. Decomposing exports shows that post-reform export growth has been driven by surviving firms. We model the decision of the firm to export, and find that there are substantial sunk costs to exporting. Firm characteristics - size, profitability and multinationality - are important determinants of exporting. We find evidence for spillovers from general exporting activity but not from MNC presence in the industry on exporting.


We present Bema, a multimodal user interface that enables scholars of Greek rhetoric and oratory to perform virtual reality studies of ancient political assemblies at the hill of the Pnyx. Named after the flat stone speakers' platform utilized at the Pnyx, the Bema interface supports the high-level task of gaining a nuanced understanding of what it would feel like to give or receive a speech together with as many as 14,000 Athenian citizens and, further, how this experience must have changed as a result of at least two massive renovations captured in the archaeological record. Bema integrates solutions for several low-level interaction tasks, including navigating in virtual space and time, adjusting data visualization parameters, interacting with virtual characters, and analyzing spatial audio and architecture. Navigation is accomplished through a World-in-Miniature technique, re-conceived to support multi-touch input within a 4-wall Cave environment. Six degree-of-freedom head tracking and a sound level meter are used to analyze speeches delivered by users. Comparative analysis of different historical phases and assembly sizes is facilitated by the use of crowd simulation to generate realistic spatial arrangements for the assemblymen and staged animated transitions that preserve context while comparing two or more scenarios. An evaluation with our team's scholar of ancient Greek rhetoric and oratory provides support for the most important design decisions and affirms the value of this user interface for experiential analysis.


Poor people living in slums are at particularly high risk from the impacts of climate change and natural hazards. They live on the most vulnerable land within cities, typically areas deemed undesirable by others and thus affordable. This study analyzes the key challenges facing the urban poor, given the risks associated with climate change and disasters, particularly with regard to the delivery of basic services, and identifies strategies and financing opportunities for addressing these risks. The main audience for this study includes mayors and other city managers, national governments, donors, and practitioners in the fields of climate change, disaster-risk management, and urban development. The work is part of a broader program under the Mayor's task force on climate change, disaster risk and the urban poor. The study is organized in four chapters covering: 1) a broad look at climate change and disaster risk in cities of the developing world, with particular implications for the urban poor; 2) analysis of the vulnerability of the urban poor; 3) discussion of recommended approaches for building resilience for the urban poor; and 4) review of the financing opportunities for covering investments in basic services and other needs associated with climate and disaster risk.


Abstract. Atmospheric volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have key environmental and biological roles, but little is known about the daily VOC mixing ratios in Mediterranean urban and natural environments. We measured VOC mixing ratios concurrently at an urban and a rural site during the winter DAURE campaign in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula, by means of PTR-MS at both locations: a PTR-Quad-MS at the urban site and a PTR-ToF-MS at the rural site. All VOC mixing ratios measured were higher at the urban site (e.g. acetaldehyde, isoprene, benzene, and toluene with averages up to 1.68, 0.31, 0.58 and 2.71 ppbv, respectively), with the exception of some short-chain oxygenated VOCs such as acetone (with similar averages of 0.7–1.6 ppbv at both sites). The average diurnal pattern also differed between the sites. Most of the VOCs at the urban location showed their highest mixing ratios in the morning and evening. These peaks coincided with traffic during rush hour, the main origin of most of the VOCs analyzed. Between these two peaks, the sea breeze transported the urban air inland, thus helping to lower the VOC loading at the urban site. At the rural site, most of the measured VOCs were advected by the midday sea breeze, yielding the highest daily VOC mixing ratios (e.g. acetaldehyde, isoprene, benzene, and toluene with averages up to 0.65, 0.07, 0.19, and 0.41 ppbv, respectively). Only biogenic monoterpenes showed a clear local origin at this site. In addition, the concentrations of fine particulate matter observed at both sites, together with the synoptic meteorological conditions and radio-sounding data, allowed the identification of different atmospheric scenarios that had a clear influence on the measured VOC mixing ratios. These results highlight the differences and relationships in VOC mixing ratios between nearby urban and rural areas in Mediterranean regions. Further research in other urban-rural areas is warranted to better understand the urban-rural influence on atmospheric VOC mixing ratios under different atmospheric conditions.


This paper addresses the problem of variable-voltage scheduling of multirate periodic task graphs (i.e., tasks with precedence relationships) in heterogeneous distributed real-time embedded systems. Such an embedded system may contain general-purpose processors, field-programmable gate arrays, and application-specific integrated circuits. First, we discuss the implications of the distribution of power consumption, i.e., power profile, of tasks and characteristics of voltage-scalable processing elements (PEs) on variable-voltage scaling. Then, we present a power-efficient variable-voltage scheduling algorithm to address these implications. The scheduling algorithm performs execution order optimization of scheduled events to increase the chances of scaling down voltages and frequencies of these voltage-scalable PEs in the distributed embedded system. It also performs power-profile and timing-constraint driven slack allocation to maximize power reduction via voltage scaling, based on the observation that the energy consumption of a task on a voltage-scalable PE is normally a convex function of the clock speed. The scheduling algorithm is also effective in the case where the variations in power consumption of different tasks can be ignored. It can be included in the inner loop of a system-level synthesis tool for design space exploration of real-time heterogeneous embedded systems, since it is very fast. We show its efficacy by comparing it to other approaches from the literature


There has been a noticeable rise in the use of, and research into, educational videos in tertiary education in the past decade. This is due in no small part to the reduction of expensive barriers to their production and storage, and an increase in access to streaming services that make videos playable anywhere, anytime. Research into educational videos broadly falls into three categories: improving video design, investigating platforms and technologies that increase student engagement, and developing pedagogical approaches that take full advantage of the affordances of videos. A review of key findings in this journal – considered in light of the broader literature – reveals productive lines of inquiry for future research. Notably, experimental research using the lens of Cognitive Load Theory has established that videos should be short, uncluttered, and restricted to one clearly identified learning goal. There is also robust evidence to suggest videos should be accompanied by learning activities, rather than watched passively. In addition to the experimental research findings there is a wealth of research through case studies, such as exploring video based pedagogies liked flipped and blended learning. However, there are key opportunities for further research, such as the need for replications of experimental design principles in real learning contexts, and the development of pedagogical approaches that utilise the particular affordances of educational videos.


Wagon wheel ruts are still visible along pioneer trails in the USA, which suggests that vehicular traffic can modify soil properties for a century. We compared physical properties of a Barnes loam (fineloamy, mixed Udic Haploboroll) across three transects of the 1864 to 1871 Wadsworth Trail. Compaction was evident within wheel ruts of the trail, as penetration resistance and bulk density were 10% greater and water infiltration and air permeability were 50% lower within the wheel ruts than outside the trail. Erosion was also apparent within the wheel ruts, as the greater density could not fully account for the thinner A horizon (60 mm). Our investigation suggests that degradation of soil properties caused by compaction or erosion from wagon wheel or animal traffic may persist for >100 yr. This information underscores the importance that agricultural practices must minimize soil loss or compaction.


ADP-ribosylation is a post-translational modification that occurs on chemically diverse amino acids, including aspartate, glutamate, lysine, arginine, serine and cysteine on proteins and is mediated by ADP-ribosyltransferases, including a subset commonly known as poly(ADP-ribose) polymerases. ADP-ribose can be conjugated to proteins singly as a monomer or in polymeric chains as poly(ADP-ribose). While ADP-ribosylation can be reversed by ADP-ribosylhydrolases, this protein modification can also be processed to phosphoribosylation by enzymes possessing phosphodiesterase activity, such as snake venom phosphodiesterase, mammalian ectonucleotide pyrophosphatase/phosphodiesterase 1, Escherichia coli RppH, Legionella pneumophila Sde and Homo sapiens NudT16 (HsNudT16). Our studies here sought to utilize X-ray crystallographic structures of HsNudT16 in complex with monomeric and dimeric ADP-ribose in identifying the active site for binding and processing free and protein-conjugated ADP-ribose into phosphoribose forms. These structural data guide rational design of mutants that widen the active site to better accommodate protein-conjugated ADP-ribose. We identified that several HsNudT16 mutants (Δ17, F36A, and F61S) have reduced activity for free ADP-ribose, similar processing ability against protein-conjugated mono(ADP-ribose), but improved catalytic efficiency for protein-conjugated poly(ADP-ribose). These HsNudT16 variants may, therefore, provide a novel tool to investigate different forms of ADP-ribose.


Gorny, Yosef. The Jewish Press and the Holocaust, 1939-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 294 pp. $90.Translated from Hebrew by Naftali Greenwood, Yosef Gorny's book examines the role of the Jewish Press during World War II. Gorny conducts a comparative analysis of the content and editorial positions of the major Jewish newspapers in Palestine, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1945. He finds commonality across all of the newspapers, regardless of language (Hebrew, Yiddish or English), political orientation (Zionist, trade unionist, socialist, communist or revisionist), or national location. He argues that the Jewish newspapers in these countries acted as part of a transnational community as they argued for civil and political rights for Jews, contributed to the development of Jewish national culture, and aggressively reported the details of the Holocaust.Gorny divides his analysis into two subperiods: 1) the period from 1939 to 1942, which he describes as a time of uncertainty during which the Jewish press was unaware of the magnitude of the Nazis' extermination efforts, and thus questioned qcasualty reports while expressing optimism about the Jews' prospects after the war; and 2) the period from 1942 to 1945, which he describes as a time of horror during which these newspapers grasped the extent of the Holocaust and castigated the western powers for both their inadequate efforts to rescue Jews and their failure to acknowledge that the Jewish situation was uniquely tragic and perilous.In each of the four countries studied, Gorny focuses on the Jewish newspaper with the largest circulation and most influence, closely examining the content and editorial stances of these newspapers in their war coverage, and using them as a point of reference for his analysis of the other Jewish papers in those countries. The Hebrew-language Davar, which was affiliated with the Mapai labor party in Palestine; the Yiddish-language and socialist-leaning Forverts in the United States; and The Jewish Chronicle, an English-language, Zionist newspaper in Britain, serve as these focal newspapers. Gorny also analyzes the shortlived Yiddish-language Aynikayt, created in 1942 in the Soviet Union as a vehicle to militate for the creation of a second front. Gorny finds a great deal of commonality in the way in which all these Jewish newspapers presented the reality of the war to their readers. All of these newspapers acknowledged that the best hope for European Jews was the defeat of fascism, and thus provided more coverage of war-front news than did the mainstream newspapers. These newspapers also devoted more column inches to the experiences of European Jews than did the mainstream press, arguing that their plight was more dire than that of other ethnic groups who faced a loss of freedom rather than a campaign of extermination. These newspapers criticized the Allies for their unwillingness to recognize the unique situation of European Jewry and for their failure to undertake efforts to rescue them, and criticized Jews in Palestine, the United States, and Britain for not doing more to assist their European brethren. Perhaps even more significant from Gorny's perspective, all of these newspapers contributed to the concept of a Jewish identity. …


Insufficient spatial or temporal resolution is a common source of errors in numerical solutions for both water flow and solute transport in the variably unsaturated vadose zone. Evaporation near the surface, as well as infiltration into initially dry soil profiles, typically create mobile local regions with large gradients of the pressure head. Convection‐dominant transport of solutes during water flow in soil also tends to create steep moving fronts of concentration with large localized concentration gradients. Groundwater flow and solute transport in highly heterogeneous aquifers similarly tend to be preferentially channeled through regions of high flow rates. Without due consideration of special resolution requirements for such critical cases of flow and transport, simulations using traditional finite difference (FDM) and finite element (FEM) numerical methods typically provide inaccurate solutions characterized by undesirable features such as oscillation and numerical dispersion. Incorporation of local adaptive grid refinement (LAGR) algorithms in numerical models for solving such cases is an effective approach that has been used to provide accurate numerical approximations by automated adjustment of local spatial resolution. Local error estimates are typically utilized to optimize spatial resolution. Definite advantages, as well as some limitations, exist for using LAGR algorithms in FDM and FEM numerical models for flow and transport in soils.


Media has the potential to legitimize or spread a belief system to the general public. The 2014 movie Left Behind is an example of a deliberate attempt at promoting the belief system referred to as dispensational premillennialism (DPM), or belief in the imminent rapture of Christians. Producers of Left Behind (2014) sought to promote DPM to the general public, hoping for a mass conversion. Online discussion and interviews were gathered and interpreted qualitatively. Content analysis of audience anticipation and reception show believers were as concerned with the conversion of the general public via this movie than the movie itself. Differences between the text of the movie and discussion surrounding the film provide insights into the DPM worldview. Dispensational premillennialists are observed; rejecting earthly existence as counterfeit, asserting the general inerrancy of prophecy while rejecting "date setting" practices and using the effigy of the Antichrist to criticize perceived socio-political enemies.


Cities are hybrid entities based on multilayered and sometimes contradictory organizing principles. As complex networks of geographic, economic, political and cultural segments, they are caught up in a constant process of differentiation. How are we to understand such dynamic processes, especially the complex connections between individuals, whose movements and interactions leave traces in the urban landscape? This publication offers architects, urban planners and general readers interested in city design and growth a novel approach, a mapping tool that creates a framework for understanding the continually changing configuration of the city. With transparent slides, the tool allows one to superimpose various realities like layers and build new urban connections. It invites readers in short to immerse themselves in the complexity of our cities.


In a previous publication, it was shown that pressure ripple levels in a hydraulic system depend on the flow ripple generated by the pump and the impedance characteristics of both the pump and the system. These pressure fluctuations can create structural vibration and hence lead to air-borne noise. In this paper it is shown that similar effects can occur in the suction line of a pump. The pressure ripple levels may be as high as those measured in some delivery lines. Tests have been performed on an axial piston pump boost system in order to examine the effects of mean pressure and system configuration on pressure ripple levels. Wave propagation theory has been employed to examine the behavior of pressure ripple generation in boost systems, and close agreement between experimental results and theory has been obtained. It has been possible to quantify the flow ripple and impedance spectra of a piston pump at its inlet port. Preliminary tests on unboosted systems have shown that pressure ripple effects can induce either air release or cavitation and some typical results are presented


One of the major developments in machine learning in the past decade is the ensemble method, which finds highly accurate classifier by combining many moderately accurate component classifiers. In this research work, new ensemble classification methods are proposed for homogeneous ensemble classifiers using bagging and heterogeneous ensemble classifiers using arcing classifier and their performances are analyzed in terms of accuracy. A Classifier ensemble is designed using Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) as base classifiers. The feasibility and the benefits of the proposed approaches are demonstrated by the means of real and benchmark data sets of intrusion detection. The main originality of the proposed approach is based on three main parts: preprocessing phase, classification phase and combining phase. A wide range of comparative experiments are conducted for real and benchmark data sets of intrusion detection. The accuracy of base classifiers is compared with homogeneous and heterogeneous models for data mining problem. The proposed ensemble methods provide significant improvement of accuracy compared to individual classifiers and also heterogeneous models exhibit better results than homogeneous models for real and benchmark data sets of intrusion detection. Index Terms — Data Mining, Ensemble, Radial Basis Function, Support Vector Machine, Accuracy.


A simple, selective, linear, precise and accurate UV Assay method was developed and validated for rapid assay of Doxycycline hyclate in bulk and pharmaceutical formulation. For this development paddle apparatus were used. The purified water was used as dissolution medium and solvent. Stirring rate was employed at 75 rpm and the withdrawal time was identified as 30 minutes and the filter size was found to be 0.45 µm at ambient temperature. The method was validated as per the ICH guidelines. The method was successfully applied for routine analysis of Doxycycline hyclate in the rapid and reliable determination in pharmaceutical formulation.


Parental depression can interfere with numerous aspects of parents' lives, including parenting behaviors. Previous research has explored the relationship between past parental depression or current depressive symptoms and negative parenting behaviors. The current study investigates two models of mediation to explain the relationship between parental depression and parenting. In the first, it explores whether mindfulness mediates the relationship between past depression severity and three parenting behaviors: withdrawn/disengaged parenting, low levels of positive parenting and poor monitoring/supervision. In the second, it explores whether mindfulness mediates the relationship between current depressive symptoms and four parenting behaviors: withdrawn/disengaged parenting, low levels of positive parenting, poor monitoring/supervision and inconsistent discipline. The sample draws from two research sites, one in Burlington, Vermont and the other in Nashville, Tennessee and included previously or currently depressed parents (n=121; mean age = 42.5 years, SD = 7.40 years, range = 24-69), and their 9-15 year old children (n=167; mean age = 11.40 years, SD = 2.30 years, range = 9-15). All participating parents and children completed written measures at the time of their initial assessment. The overall findings of this study indicate that parents' current depressive symptoms, but not past depression severity, increase the risk of low levels of positive parenting and parenting with greater inconsistent discipline, and that these associations are mediated by a parent's level of mindfulness.


A simple method to achieve a large and tunable time delay of an optical signal by using a linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating (LCFBG) written in an erbium-ytterbium (Er/Yb) codoped fiber is proposed and demonstrated. The group delay response of the LCFBG can be tuned by optically pumping the LCFBG with different pumping powers, which leads to the tuning of the time delay. An LCFBG written in an Er/Yb codoped fiber is fabricated. A continuously tunable time delay up to 200 ps for a Gaussian pulse with a full-width at half-maximum of 7.6 GHz is experimentally demonstrated. The influence of the dispersion, the magnitude and group delay ripples of the LCFBG on the time delay performance, and also the stability of operation are investigated.


Internationally the need for the development of clinical academic careers for nurses, midwives and
allied health professionals is becoming ever more apparent. Clinical academics maintain their clinical
practice whilst also carrying out research, placing them in a unique position to make connections
between the two fields.
Integrated academic training pathways have been introduced across the UK since 2006 to combine
clinical training with research experience; however, aspiring clinical academics still face a range of
challenges in balancing the clinical and research aspects of their careers and there is a lack of
evidence to demonstrate impact of clinical academic career pathways, post initial training.
AIMS
This research aimed to follow up scholars from a Pre-Masters and Pre-PhD Clinical Academic Training
Programme delivered since 2013, to investigate the extent to which their training has been
implemented in clinical practice and to explore the extent to which the training enabled them to
move on to develop and support subsequent research activity in the clinical setting.
METHODS
This qualitative study followed up participants (including those who did not successfully complete)
from the Health Education England: East Midlands funded Clinical Academic Careers training
programme, delivered at Lincoln from 2013-2017. All previous scholars were contacted and invited
to take part in an individual interview. Data were collected from May to July 2017. Ethical approval
was granted by the host Higher Education Institution. 18 in-depth interviews were conducted,
transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.
RESULTS
The results of the study will be presented at the conference. Key barriers and facilitators to accessing
and sustaining, both initial research training and on-going implementation have been identified.
DISCUSSION
This research highlights the importance of clinical academic training programmes in developing and
supporting an environment conducing to research in the clinical healthcare setting.
CONCLUSION
There is a need for on-going work to support both clinical academic scholars and also manages
working in the healthcare setting, to overcome some of the practical and financial barriers to the
development of clinical academics.


Service providers that provide Internet access to their customers need to maintain the stability of their own network and also to reply appropriately to inquiries from customers concerning the causes of current or past connectivity problems. However, it is a hard task for network operators to prepare reports on network status in response to enormous number of inquiries. This paper proposes a database system for managing BGP data archives called BGPfind. This system helps network operators to obtain the status of external networks quickly. The paper also describes the design and implementation and of the system and provides an evaluation of its performance.


Utilizing a price transmission approach, we focus on price relationships between the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and how price changes on the world agricultural market are transmitted to the domestic CIS markets. In this study, we establish a unique price data set on five different agricultural products (i.e. wheat, pork, beef, poultry and whole milk powder) observed in eight different CIS countries. The results of the price transmission analysis indicate that regional integration within the CIS is strongest for pork and beef, followed by poultry and whole milk powder. The integration of CIS markets in world agricultural markets is strongest for wheat and beef, whereas it is relatively low for pork and poultry. Furthermore, beef markets in the CIS countries are the strongest integrated within the region, with the EU and the world market. Overall, our results indicate that domestic market support and trade policies, physical trade flows between countries, infrastructure, and bilateral or multilateral trade agreements play a key role in market integration of the CIS countries. These determinants should be particularly considered when designing recommendations for improving agri-food supply chain competitiveness in the CIS countries.


Increasingly, producers and customers establish relationships to mutually undertake the development of an innovative product. Consequently, it will be always of interest for an innovative company to know the degree to which different related suppliers are willing to form partnerships by participating in its new product development process. Several managerial implications flow from the link between relationship marketing and innovation processes, ranging from tactical product-related decisions to strategic competitor-related decisions, usually made in a relatively short period of time. Dedicated customer relationship systems track the interactions with customers and improve the flow of ideas for new products. When trying to develop long-term customer relationships, the ability to provide superior value to stakeholders is a must. Through carefully conducted relationships, customers are linked with the innovation company during the entire innovation process, and create a space for mutual understanding, learning and value co-creation. In order to co-create business value through online, also combined with offline innovation-related activities, customer orientation should be implemented throughout the organization – its culture, their systems, including the whole range of interactions.


The main objective of imaging patients with symptoms suggestive of ovarian lesions is to distinguish benign findings from malignant disease. Masses can be characterized with a variety of noninvasive imaging techniques, including transabdominal and transvaginal ultrasound, CT, and MRI. Each of these modalities has its advantages and limitations.


Trust is considered essential for effective relationships both in the context of new venture creation and outside the entrepreneur's workshop. With interpersonal trust, dyadic relationships prosper even amidst contextual pressures of uncertainty and risk. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of empirical support for how interpersonal trust is developed between an entrepreneur and the various stakeholders and resource providers in the creation of a new venture. This research examines this development by proposing the impact of time as a moderator on the antecedents of trust, as perceived by key stakeholders (i.e., customers, suppliers, investors, cofounders, employees) in the early history of a new venture. Specifically, this research includes frequency of interaction and relationship duration as two variables of time. In earlier proposed models of interpersonal trust development, time has either been left out entirely or innocently subsumed in other factors. The propositions and research implications from this conceptual study offer a new lens to investigate the process by which trust is developed in and by an entrepreneur.


Expert public speakers may not be able to tell a person why they succeed, and eager advisers may not know what they're talking about (a caveat to the readers of this essay). What follows is one person's opinion, not the final answer. It's a collection of ideas to consider while developing a style of one's own. The opinions presented are strongly held but change regularly. This is intended for graduate students, but all are welcome. Giving a seminar (like writing and teaching) is a peripheral area of the scientific endeavor that requires work and dedication. People tend to remember the main impact of whatever happens at a seminar. This makes public speaking a potentially dangerous way to communicate. The suggestions for seminar presentation are based on some philosophical considerations. These principles may be helpful even if one disregard the rest of the advice (to follow) and implement them in the own way. The magnitude of the pain inflicted by an incompetent seminar-giver can be estimated by considering the product of the time spent (usually an hour) times the size of the audience. The most entertaining part of attending a seminar is having a chance to think about something new—to try out the own brain on an unfamiliar puzzle or set of questions. The philosophy section of the chapter describes the audience as a bunch of apprehensive travelers who took on the risk of a journey.


This paper proposes a deep-learning based native-language identification (NLI) using a latent semantic analysis (LSA) as a participant (ETRI-SLP) of the NLI Shared Task 2017 where the NLI Shared Task 2017 aims to detect the native language of an essay or speech response of a standardized assessment of English proficiency for academic purposes. To this end, we use the six unit forms of a text data such as character 4/5/6-grams and word 1/2/3-grams. For each unit form of text data, we convert it into a count-based vector, extract a 2000-rank LSA feature, and perform a linear discriminant analysis (LDA) based dimension reduction. From the count-based vector or the LSA-LDA feature, we also obtain the output prediction values of a support vector machine (SVM) based classifier, the output prediction values of a deep neural network (DNN) based classifier, and the bottleneck values of a DNN based classifier. In order to incorporate the various kinds of text-based features and a speech-based i-vector feature, we design two DNN based ensemble classifiers for late fusion and early fusion, respectively. From the NLI experiments, the F1 (macro) scores are obtained as 0.8601, 0.8664, and 0.9220 for the essay track, the speech track, and the fusion track, respectively. The proposed method has comparable performance to the top-ranked teams for the speech and fusion tracks, although it has slightly lower performance for the essay track.


The major environmental impact of discharge of excessive quantities of sulfate is the pollution of the surface and ground water supplies which can be harmful to life forms and therefore the need for an efficient treatment system arises. Biological sulfate reduction offers the advantage of less sludge production, less operational cost and efficiency in comparison to the physicochemical processes. Depending upon the feeding and operating conditions as well as microbes used, a number of intermediates are formed that may greatly affect the overall performance of bioreactor. This article extensively explores the bacterial community, formation of intermediates and desirable end products, theoretical and practical aspects of various environmental and operating conditions, and performance of bioreactors used for treating sulfate rich wastewater along with process biokinetics involved in biological sulfate reduction.


Administrative law is critical to the modern practice of governance. Administrative rules fill the gaps in statutes left open by lawmakers, allow agencies to exercise legislative grants of authority and discretion, and give agencies with subject-matter expertise and frontline experience the opportunity to promulgate detailed standards and requirements in their designated issue areas. Adjudication allows an agency to dispose of matters and disputes formally before it, whether under its rules or another source of law. While agencies at every level of government—federal, state, and local— engage in administrative action, legal scholarship on administrative law is almost exclusively focused on the federal realm, which is shaped by the Administrative Procedure Act. States can look to a Model State Administrative Procedure Act drafted by experts at the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, a document that was originally promulgated around the same time as the federal Administrative Procedure Act, for guidance on ordering the activities of their agencies. Local governments, however, have far fewer resources to draw upon. This Note argues that the time has come for localities to embrace the codification of administrative procedures. The governments and agencies of localities have always played a prominent role in the everyday lives of residents, as well as regional and national economic structures, and their work will benefit from procedural statutes. Cities, in particular, have taken on an increasingly central role as political agents and policy entrepreneurs and this shift underscores the need for greater procedural guidance. To make the case, this Note briefly examines the purposes and history of modern administrative law, analyzes approaches taken by exemplar cities, lays out and probes some of arguments for and against more rigorous procedures at the local level, and proposes three methods to help localities and states undertake this project.


Most tropical bird species have narrow elevational ranges, likely reflecting climatic specialization. This is consistent with Janzen's Rule, the tendency for mountain passes to be effectively 'higher' in the tropics. Hence, those few tropical species that occur across broad elevational gradients raise questions. Are they being sundered by diversifying selection along the gradient? Does elevational movement cause them to resist diversification or specialization? Have they recently expanded, suggesting that elevational generalism is short-lived in geological time? Here we tested for differentiation, movement, and expansion in four elevational generalist songbird species on the Andean west slope. We used morphology and mtDNA to test for genetic differentiation between high- and low-elevation populations. Morphology differed for House Wren (Troglodytes aedon) and Hooded Siskin (Spinus magellanicus), but not for Cinereous Conebill (Conirostrum cinereum) and Rufous-collared Sparrow (Zonotrichia capensis), respectively. mtDNA was structured by elevation only in Z. capensis. To test for elevational movements, we measured hydrogen isotope (δ2H) values of metabolically inert feathers and metabolically active liver. δ2H data indicated elevational movements by two tree- and shrub-foraging species with moderate-to-high vagility (C. cinereum and S. magellanicus), and sedentary behavior by two terrestrial-foraging species with low-to-moderate vagility (T. aedon and Z. capensis). In S. magellanicus, elevational movements and lack of mtDNA structure contrast with striking morphological divergence, suggesting strong diversifying selection on body proportions across the ∼50 km gradient. All species except C. cinereum exhibited mtDNA-haplotype variation consistent with recent population expansion across the elevational gradient.In sum,three out of four elevational generalist species underwent genetic divergence despite gene flow, two of four make seasonal elevational movements, and three of four have recently expanded. In different ways, each species defies the tendency for tropical birds to have long-term stable distributions and sedentary habits. We conclude that tropical elevational generalism is rare due to evolutionary instability.


In the Achmea case (judgment of 6 March 2018, case C-284/16), the Court of Justice applied its standing case law on the autonomy of the EU legal order to Investor-state Dispute Resolution (ISDS) and concluded that the ISDS mechanism at hand was contrary to EU law. Irrespective of whether the Court's construction of autonomy is conceptually convincing, the principled elaborations on autonomy in Achmea, emphasized the relevance of the preliminary ruling procedure as the institutional backbone of the effectiveness of EU law. This institutional backbone, which allows for a constant dialogue between the Court of Justice and the national judiciary, played an important role in the Courts finding that EU law enjoys direct effect and primacy in van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL (respectively, judgment of 5 February 1963, case 26/62 and judgment of 15 July 1964, case 6/64). In the eyes of the Court, it cannot be compromised by offering investors an alternative route of dispute settlement from which no possibility exists to ask preliminary questions. While other aspects of the ruling, that is the Court's considerations on mutual trust, may apply specifically to the type of Intra-EU ISDS mechanisms in Achmea, the autonomy reasoning logically also applies to other forms of investment arbitration, such as the Investment Court System (ICS) in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA) and the envisaged Multilateral Investment Court (MIC). The principled stand on autonomy, as the Court has presented it in a long list of cases, including in Achmea, amounts to a considerable, albeit not necessarily insurmountable obstacle to both Member States and the Union submitting to the jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals.


First generation college students face some unique challenges in the pursuit of higher education. Aside from academic stressors, there are stressors related to social and cultural transitions which may exacerbate pre-existing emotional or psychological distress. Research suggests that acculturation influences psychological well-being and development. The current study examined the relationships between acculturation, acculturative stress, socio-economic status, and symptoms of anxiety among first-generation college students of Hispanic origin. Participants (N = 125) included those who were first in their family to attend college and were primarily female, of traditional college age, and of Mexican heritage. All measures were self-report and were completed online. Overall, this study was inconclusive as most analyses were underpowered. The present study failed to support a relationship between style of acculturation and symptoms of anxiety, although, experiencing Anglo marginality was related to high levels of acculturative stress and anxiety. Finally, regression analysis revealed that acculturative stress, age, and Anglo marginalization were significant predictors of anxiety and accounted for 31% of variance in anxiety. Implications of the present study were discussed. Further study with adequate power is highly recommended.


One of the main challenges facing power generation by fuel cells involves the difficulties related to hydrogen storage. Several methods have been suggested and studied by researchers to overcome this problem. Among these methods, using fuel reformers as a component of the fuel cell system is a practical and promising alternative to hydrogen storage. Among many hydrogen carrier fuels used in reformers, methanol is one of the most attractive ones because of its distinctive properties. To design and improve of the methanol reformate gas fuel cell systems, different aspects such as promising market applications for reformate gas–fueled fuel cell systems, and catalysts for methanol reforming should be considered. Therefore, our goal in this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview on the past and recent studies regarding methanol reforming technologies, while considering different aspects of this topic. Firstly, different fuel reforming processes are briefly explained in the first section of the paper. Then properties of various fuels and reforming of these fuels are compared, and the characteristics of commercial reformate gas–fueled systems are presented. The main objective of the first section of the paper is to give information about studies and market applications related to reformation of various fuels to understand advantages and disadvantages of using various fuels for different practical applications. In the next sections of the paper, advancements in the methanol reforming technology are explained. The methanol reforming catalysts and reaction kinetics studies by various researchers are reviewed, and the advantages and disadvantages of each catalyst are discussed, followed by presenting the studies accomplished on different types of reformers. The effects of operating parameters on methanol reforming are also discussed. In the last section of this paper, methanol reformate gas–fueled fuel cell systems are reviewed. Overall, this review paper provides insight to researchers on what has been accomplished so far in the field of methanol reforming for fuel cell power generation applications to better plan the next stage of studies in this field.


BodySpace brings together some of the best known geographers writing on gender and sexuality today. Together they explore the role of space and place in the performance of gender and sexuality. The book takes a broad perspective on feminism as a theoretical critique, and aims to ground - and destabilize - notions of citizenship, work, violence, "race" and disability in their geographical contexts. The book explores the idea of knowledge as embodied, engendered and embedded in place and space. Gender and sexuality are explored - and destabilized - through the methodological and conceptual lenses of cartography, fieldwork, resistance, transgression and the divisions between local/global and public/private space. Contributors: Linda Martin Alcoff, Kay Anderson, Vera Chouinard, Nancy Duncan, J.K. Gibson-Graham, Ali Grant, Kathleen Kirby, Audrey Kobayashi, Doreen Massey, Linda McDowell, Wayne Myslik, Heidi Nast, Gillian Rose, Joanne Sharp, Matthew Sparke, Gill Valentine


A major reason for failure to attend outpatient appointments is the inappropriateness of this offer. The appointment often involves a two-week delay and no offer to see the same interviewer, or the opportunity to contact him in the intervening time if necessary (the time of highest risk for repetition). I systematically visited overdose patients one week after the act and so often the story was that they had desperately needed to talk since discharge. They could not really see the point of going back to the clinic a week or more hence. Many still had a high level of neurotic symptoms. There is no doubt that present psychiatric management of overdose patients is poor and ineffective and the need for change is urgent.


The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of exchange current density, as dependent on operating parameters, on the activation polarization in an HTPEM fuel cell. In line with this purpose, cell performance tests were performed for different relative humidity levels (from 0 to 20% in steps of 5%) and six different acid doping levels (4.26, 4.53, 4.95, 5.51, 7.24, 7.51 H3PO4/RPU PBI) at constant cell temperature (120 °C). The exchange current densities, as dependent on acid doping level and relative humidity, were determined by fitting a zero‐dimensional steady‐state mathematical model to the cell performance test results. Finally, to investigate the activation polarization in the cell, the exchange current densities obtained were incorporated within a numerical model. The results show that the effects of relative humidity on the exchange current density are relatively limited at all acid doping levels when the relative humidity is greater than 5%. The exchange current densities exhibit a decreasing trend with increasing acid doping level. Furthermore, it was found that the acid doping level and relative humidity have a strong influence on the anode overpotential, whereas no significant effect on the cathode overpotential was observed.


Abstract The study reviews the development of the aerospace industry in three regions over a 60 year period by analysing the extent to which regional development has been dependent upon knowledge related factors. The aerospace industry is of particular interest (a) as an assembly and high-technology industry that inevitably involves a high level of inter-company collaboration, (b) due to its dependence on government support, (c) given the internationalized character of aerospace industry, and (d) for its development in various regions. The examples of Toulouse, Seattle and the north-west of England present interesting contrasts in their roles in knowledge generation and dissemination.


Three composite andesitic lava flows, within the Ordovician Borrowdale Volcanic Group, are described. They are 35-250 m thick and in their simplest form consist of a massive, flow-jointed andesite lower part and a flow-laminated to blocky basaltic andesite upper part with a zone of interlayering between them. One flow has a very thin, discontinuous, basal unit of xenolithic, flow-laminated basaltic andesite. The interlayered zone comprises layers and lenses of andesite, basaltic andesite and mixed rocks consisting of closely packed inclusions of pale coloured andesite in a chlorite-rich matrix. The rocks have undergone several stages of alteration: (a) deuteric alteration, including silicification associated with autobrecciation of the upper component and inter-magma reactions in the interlayered zone; (b) soda-metasomatism, preferentially of basaltic andesite; (c) metamorphism, attributed to the Lake District granite batholith, giving an actinolite-sericite assemblage; (d) regional metamorphism to give a chlorite-epidote-actinolite-sphene assemblage with rare prehnite and pumpellyite; (e) calcite veining. These alterations have modified the bulk chemistry of the rocks, but the concentrations of Al, P, Ti, V, Cr, Co, Ni, Ga, Y, Zr, Nb, La, Ce and Th are largely unaffected on the scale of a 2 kg sample. Using these elements the composition of the lavas compares with high-K orogenic andesites emplaced through continental crust. Each of the flows shows distinct chemical characteristics which may be explained by variations of phenocryst content or the assimilation of cognate xenoliths. Variations within flows can be explained by magma mixing and fractional crystallization of plagioclase, minor pyroxene, ilmenite and zircon. A mechanism for eruption is proposed in which a volatile-rich basic magma intruded de-gassed cooler, less dense andesite magma in a high level sub-volcanic chamber. The basic magma formed the lower layer in the chamber. On cooling and crystallization of plagioclase near the interface the volatile content of the residual basic liquid rose and the density decreased allowing the liquids to form an emulsion-like layer at the interface. This separated and rose into the andesite magma and the process was repeated to form an interlayered zone at the junction. Before mixing was complete the magma was erupted as a series of composite flows.


Hysteresis hinders the effectiveness of smart materials in sensors and actuators. It is a challenging task to control the systems with hysteresis. This note discusses the adaptive control for discrete time linear dynamical systems preceded with hysteresis described by the Prandtl-Ishlinskii model. The time delay and the order of the linear dynamical system are assumed to be known. The contribution of the note is the fusion of the hysteresis model with adaptive control techniques without constructing the inverse hysteresis nonlinearity. Only the parameters (which are generated from the parameters of the linear system and the density function of the hysteresis) directly needed in the formulation of the controller are adaptively estimated online. The proposed control law ensures the global stability of the closed-loop system, and the output tracking error can be controlled to be as small as required by choosing the design parameters. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.


Mutants remain a powerful means for dissecting gene function in model organisms such as Caenorhabditis elegans. Massively parallel sequencing has simplified the detection of variants after mutagenesis but determining precisely which change is responsible for phenotypic perturbation remains a key step. Genetic mapping paradigms in C. elegans rely on bulk segregant populations produced by crosses with the problematic Hawaiian wild isolate and an excess of redundant information from whole-genome sequencing (WGS). To increase the repertoire of available mutants and to simplify identification of the causal change, we performed WGS on 173 temperature-sensitive (TS) lethal mutants and devised a novel mapping method. The mapping method uses molecular inversion probes (MIP-MAP) in a targeted sequencing approach to genetic mapping, and replaces the Hawaiian strain with a Million Mutation Project strain with high genomic and phenotypic similarity to the laboratory wild-type strain N2. We validated MIP-MAP on a subset of the TS mutants using a competitive selection approach to produce TS candidate mapping intervals with a mean size < 3 Mb. MIP-MAP successfully uses a non-Hawaiian mapping strain and multiplexed libraries are sequenced at a fraction of the cost of WGS mapping approaches. Our mapping results suggest that the collection of TS mutants contains a diverse library of TS alleles for genes essential to development and reproduction. MIP-MAP is a robust method to genetically map mutations in both viable and essential genes and should be adaptable to other organisms. It may also simplify tracking of individual genotypes within population mixtures.


Sometimes when Anthony Ong, a new faculty member in the Department of Human Development, is traveling, strangers will ask what he does for a living. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "I'm a psychologist," he replies. "So maybe you can tell what's wrong with me?" strangers typically ask. Even if the assistant professor of human development (and a faculty affiliate in the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center and the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging) were a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist (which he is not), he wouldn't even venture a guess. Ong, who is embarking on a new set of experiments--to learn how emotional states of mind influence physical and mental well-being--is more interested in what's right with people. Adapting to Stress Why, Ong wonders, do some people facing terrible stresses--excruciating-pain from cancer, for instance--keep looking to the sunny side of life? And why do others flinch at the approach of yet another unbearable stressor, wallow in self-pity, and accept a dreadful fate? It may have something to do with the complex interplay between our positive and negative emotions. "Our ability to feel contradictory emotions such as happiness and grief, as well as anger and gratitude may reveal a deeper truth about ourselves--our human capacity for resilience in the face of life's adversities," Ong suggests. Ong offers new insights into how positive and negative emotions can influence health and illness and demonstrates the wide applicability of this perspective in various domains across the lifespan. His research has appeared in journals such as Child Development, Journal of Adolescence, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, and Psychology and Aging. Cheerful and in his 30s, Ong says he got into this line of work "to learn how to age gracefully." He asks his experimental participants to keep diaries: some diarists in his studies at the University of Notre Dame have been chronicling their emotional states for 10 years and are now 55 years old. Entries in their diaries are not random musings; rather, participants are asked to respond to standard questions at the same time each day. One self-assessment to gauge social connectedness asks diarists about the accuracy of a statement like: "I know that I can trust my friends, and they know they can trust me." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Healthy Side of Normal Diarists experiencing negative emotions might report their feelings with words such as afraid, ashamed, distressed, guilty, hostile, irritable, jittery, nervous, scared, or upset. In contrast, daily positive emotions are characterized by adjectives such as active, alert, attentive, determined, enthusiastic, excited, inspired, interested, proud, or strong. People who report feeling distressed and determined in the same day--or guilty and proud--aren't nuts, Ong emphasizes. They're probably on the healthy side of normal because they have achieved what some psychologists call a state of mindfulness. They have the ability to be aware of their present surroundings and emotions in a nonjudgmental fashion, Ong explains. "Mindful individuals can reconcile and even embrace contradictory emotions in all of their complexity." Ong believes that people in a healthy state of mindfulness--recognizing that life is a bowl of cherries but that pits can break your teeth--can willfully choose to focus on their positive emotions. And maybe even expedite their healing. Or at least ease their pain. "It's not an easy thing to do," Ong admits. "People living with chronic stressors, such as pain, never know when it will hit. It's one of the toughest kind of stresses around and one of life's great challenges, which is why we're interested in people's emotional states at times like that. …


Modeling the temporal dependency in user historical behavior is crucial to improve the conversion prediction in mobile game advertising. One common approach is to encode the time-dependent behavior sequence into meaningful representations which can enhance expressiveness of the conversion prediction model. In this work, we propose a self-supervised learning (SSL) scheme for pretraining such representations with a sequential network. An SSL pretext task is introduced to model the correlation between past and future events without labels. The pre-trained sequential network can then be transferred to perform the downstream task, i.e. conversion prediction, along with a dense network that models the feature interaction between the target ads and their context. We assess the proposed models on a real-world dataset collected from our online advertising system. From the experiments, we observe that the models with the proposed pre-training scheme (1) achieve lower test log-losses and higher AUC values, and (2) require fewer labels to achieve the similar prediction accuracy than those without in the various scenarios where the models have access to the limited or full labels. Accordingly, the proposed pre-training scheme enhances the downstream models in terms of generalization ability and label efficiency, facilitating the deployment of the sequential model at scale in the online advertising system.


Improving tax compliance is a common goal of governments worldwide. The United States is no exception. The size of the nation's "tax gap" — or the difference between what taxpayers pay in taxes in a timely manner and what they should pay if they fully complied with the tax laws — is hundreds of billions of dollars annually, significantly depriving the nation of much-needed revenue. This paper explores the mixed effects of technological advancements on tax compliance — and, thus, its counterpart, tax noncompliance. On the one hand, technological advances have largely eradicated many of the commonplace tax-noncompliance techniques that once reigned during the twentieth century. On the other hand, many of these very same technological advances threaten to usher in new modes of tax evasion. Which of these emergent trends will dominate is unclear. The outcome will largely depend upon whether Congress updates the tax laws to address technological advances and grants sufficient funding to the Internal Revenue Service to maintain robust enforcement efforts in an ever-changing technological landscape. Failure to take these steps will destine the size of the tax gap to expand. Many prior studies have addressed discreet effects of specific technologies on tax compliance. This paper contributes to this developing literature by offering a cohesive framework to address technological advancement and tax compliance.


Fast social change effected to life-value followed by society, but not all able to fit with the change, especially adolescent who was in transition era, where adolescent feel identity shook and fuzziness. Fast social change caused insecurity in society, especially adolescent. Secure feeling is individual needs since with secure feeling, individual could grow and develop and actualizing potential in optimum point. Insecurity could cause by lack of religious feeling or the low religious feeling. Religiousness is the basic needs of human, by high value religiousness, people could face the life pressure in wisdom. In rational way, religiousness could grow secure feeling so that adolescent could pass a transition era in better way. The research aimed to find out relation between religiousness with secure feeling in adolescent, with hypothesis there was positive correlation between religiousness and secure feeling in adolescent. Higher the religiousness, so that the secure feeling would be higher. Lower the religiousness, lower the secure feeling. The subjects were students of SMUN 1 Jognalan Klaten (High School). Sampling was done by purposive non-random sampling. The samples were students of grade two, male and female students, ages 16-18 years, Islam religion. Tool used in this research were religiousness scale and secure feeling. Data analysis in this research used computer program, that was SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solution) for Windows version 12.0. The data analysis result used product moment technique was rxy 0.331 with p< 0,01 which means there was significant relation between religiousness with secure feeling in students of SMUN (High School) 1 Jogonalan Klaten. In this research there could be found empirical mean 153,03 with hypothetic mean 120,00 for religiousness, while secure feeling found empirical mean 164,97 and hypothetic mean 135,00 from both variables there found that empirical mean larger than hypothetic mean which means that religiousness level and secure feeling at students of SMUN 1 Jogonalan Klaten was high. Calculation of data analysis showed that effective contribution of religiousness variable to the secure feeling variable was 11%. So that 89% of the other factors influenced secure feeling variable, like acceptance, love and certainty to live in one place.


The use of foamed-bitumen stabilization technique is growing steadfastly and it is gaining wide spread acceptance in many different countries. This technique is new to New Zealand and it just has started to achieve some acceptance within the highway construction industry. In the first part of this work, bitumens from seven different bitumen sources were collected and examined. Three sources that are currently used in New Zealand, three bitumens are from three sources in California in the US, and one source is imported from Australia. The physical properties of bitumens such as penetration, viscosity and softening point, in addition to foamability tests were carried out on these bitumens samples in order to examine the effect of bitumen source, grade and bitumen rheology on the characteristics of the resulting foam. Mixes with similar gradation were prepared with the foam bitumen resulting from the different grades and sources were subjected to resilient modulus tests to examine the mechanical properties, temperature and moisture susceptibility. It was proved that the use of temperature susceptible binders does not have a direct effect on the foaming properties. However, the resulting mixtures are likely to be sensitive to temperature change. Temperature susceptibility of foamed stabilised mixes is lower than that of the HMA. Foamed stabilised mixes exhibited a significantly improved moisture resistance as the mixes kept their integrity and strength and they did not deteriorate significantly, even after 5 days of continuous soaking in water. The average index of retained stiffness (IRS) value of 86% was observed which is reasonably high and comparable with that recommended for the HMA mixes. Indirect tensile strength (ITS), fracture energy and fatigue life were examined and compared with HMA.


Non-linear dynamic analysis techniques are rapidly being developed and have been recognized as indispensable tools. However, their use in the design office requires special experience. Consequently they are not generally accepted as analysis/design tools. Additionally, uncertainties are associated with the determination of the earthquake forces, the stiffness and strength of the structure; the selection of the mathematical models; and the form of the earthquake. In this paper a hybrid system for the non-linear dynamic analysis/design of coupled shear walls is briefly described. The system combines expert system technology with finite element method to carry out the dynamic analysis of coupled walls under earthquake forces. The system has been implemented using Quintec-Prolog, Quintec-Flex and FORTRAN 77, and runs on a SUN SPARC station under Unix system.


The Endangered Species Deskbook is a comprehensive reference to one of the most complex and heavily litigated environmental statutes ever enacted by the US Congress. The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, requires all federal departments and agencies to conserve endangered and threatened species by utilizing their authorities in furtherance of the act's purposes. Because the ESA takes a broad approach to species protection, it has had major impacts, especially on private property rights and economic development. It has also been a lightning rod for debate over human impacts on the biodiversity of the US ecosystem. More recently, the effects of climate change on imperiled species have become hotly contested as Congress considers legislation intended to combat global warming. This new edition of the Deskbook updates the previous edition's comprehensive discussion of the law by adding a new chapter on climate change and addressing the latest ESA-related developments, such as the proposed listing of the polar bear as an endangered species. This second edition also includes appendixes that detail key laws, policies, regulations, and contact information for easy reference. By explaining the ESA's complicated history and implementation--along with ensuing agency regulations and court decisions--the Deskbook provides a practical guide for interpreting the Act. It is particularly valuable in outlining the steps that are needed for compliance with ESA and agency regulations. Like its predecessor, this new edition offers a wealth of information for practitioners, policy makers, and all citizens interested in the issues surrounding species conservation.


Summary:Summary: Hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp is the gold-standard method to assess insulin sensitivity. The hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp is widely used in clinics and laboratories to measure insulin action on glucose utilization in humans and animals for clinical and basic science research. Incorporation of radioactive-labeled glucose during hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamps makes it possible to measure glucose metabolism in individual organs in awake mice. Impaired insulin sensitivity (insulin resistance) is a major characteristic of obesity and an early requisite event in the development of type 2 diabetes.


Abstract The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Library was first created at the initiative of the ICRC's co-founder and president, Gustave Moynier. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had become a specialized documentation centre with comprehensive collections on the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, international humanitarian law (IHL) and relief to war victims, keeping track of the latest legal debates and technological innovations in the fields related to the ICRC's activities. The publications collected by the Library until the end of the First World War form a rich collection of almost 4,000 documents now known as the ancien fonds, the Library's Heritage Collection. Direct witness to the birth of an international humanitarian movement and of IHL, the Heritage Collection contains the era's most important publications related to the development of humanitarian action for war victims, from the first edition of Henry Dunant's groundbreaking Un souvenir de Solférino to the first mission reports of ICRC delegates and the handwritten minutes of the Diplomatic Conference that led to the adoption of the 1864 Geneva Convention. This article looks at the way this unique collection of documents retraces the history of the ICRC during its first decades of existence and documents its original preoccupations and operations, highlighting the most noteworthy items of the Collection along the way.


This title is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students interested in ordinary differential equations and numerical methods. This book provides a conceptual introduction to the theory of ordinary differential equations, concentrating on the initial value problem for equations of evolution and with applications to the calculus of variations and classical mechanics, along with a discussion of chaos theory and ecological models. It has a careful introduction to the theory of numerical methods with an unusual treatment of the analysis of errors and stability of various numerical solution algorithms. While the book would be suitable as a textbook for an undergraduate or elementary graduate course in ordinary differential equations, the authors have designed the text also to be useful for motivated students wishing to learn the material on their own or desiring to supplement an ODE textbook being used in a course they are taking with a text offering a more conceptual approach to the subject.


Notable alumni of the Crimean University, an obstetrician-gynecologist, urologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Alexander Mazhbits made a great contribution to the history of medicine of the USSR, being the author of over 120 scientific works and 7 books, many scientific inventions and publications on obstetric and gynecological urology and its history, he was a creator of the textbook "Operative urogynecology", inventor and prominent scientist.Scientific activity Mazhbits began in 1925 in the Leningrad Research Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology, where he worked almost all his life. During summers A.M. Mazhbits was a gynecologist at the resorts of Crimea, consultant gynecologist of the resort of Sochi-Matsesta and consisted in commissions for the selection of gynecological patients. During the Great Patriotic War Lieutenant-Colonel of the Medical Service of the USSR A.Mazhbits made an important contribution to the health of the wounded and sick women, was the main army gynecologist of the air defense forces of the Leningrad Military District. Professor A.Mazhbitswithin 1953-1959 worked in the Arkhangelsk State Medical Institute (now the North-State Medical University), where he retained his personal business, thanks to which it was possible to establish little-known facts of his biography.


Tungsten carbide (WC) dominates wear protection and machining since more than 90 years due to its hardness with an associated good toughness and high melting point.
It was recently demonstrated that Niobium Carbides are wear resistant and show a better performing under cutting than WC grades. In order to profit of the good properties of Niobium Carbide, specific processing techniques need to be developed. The density of NbC is half of WC and offers colloidal processing for perfectly mixing NbC with metallic binder (up to 15 vol.-% Ni) and secondary carbide-particles. The used NbC-powder has an average particle size d50 of 3 micron measured by laser granulometry analysis. The true density was 7.68 g/cm3. An Oxygen content of the used NbC of 0.4 % is caused by residual slag content.
It is possible to increase the stability of the NbC-suspensions and to reduce their viscosity by adding a specific dispersing agent.
This surface-modified NbC powders (containing Ni)were uniaxially pressed and then gas pressure sintered in vacuum or Argon atmosphere. All samples reached more then 98 % of there theoretical density. The micrographs showed a homogenius distribution of the Ni-binder in the product. The tribological behaviour under dry sliding and oscillating up to 600 °C and the mechanical properties were studied.