We all are witnessing the amazing growth in today's computing industry. Servers are many times faster and smarter than those of just a few years ago. The need to ensure the applications run well with a large number of users on the Internet has continued and is getting more attention as the move to cloud computing is gaining momentum. To address the question whether the software system can perform under load, we look to performance and load testing. Performance testing is executed to determine how fast a system performs. It is typically done using a particular workload. It can also serve to verify other quality attributes, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage. Load testing is primarily concerned with the ability to operate under a high load such as large quantities of data or a large number of users. We use performance and load testing to evaluate the scalability of a software system. In this paper, we characterize the challenges in conducting the application performance tests and describe a systematic approach to overcome them. We present a step-by-step data driven and systematic approach to identify performance scalability issues in testing and ensuring software quality through software performance and scalability testing. The approach includes how to analyze multiple pieces of data from multiple sources, and how to determine the configuration changes that are needed to successfully complete the stress tests for scalability. The reader will find it easy to apply our approach for immediate improvement in performance and scalability testing.


The modem world is awash in technology, little of which amazes like artificial intelligence. Siri speaks to us out of our iPhones. Google answers our every question. Watson, IBM's Jeopardy!-playing supercomputer, is popularly perceived as a hair's breadth from Arthur C. Clarke's HAL 9000. But the truth of the matter is that all these technologies are far more artificial than they are intelligent. They are designed to give an impression of intelligence, a ruse at which many of them succeed. But none of them begins to approach the all-purpose intelligence of even a human child. Siri and Watson and Google and all other existing AI is what researchers refer to as "narrow" -adept at one task only. But there is a small community of scientists who are working toward "strong" AI: a synthetic intelligence as flexible, as adaptable, and as genuinely intelligent as any human being. Strong AI is an innately interdisciplinary effort at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and computer science, among others. Each of these fields is coming to understand the challenge in its own way, and each has its champions. Little is clear. Few agree on how best to build strong AL, and none can foresee its consequences. But one thing is certain: in constructing this new intelligence we will take our cues from an understanding of the human mind. And so the quest for strong AI ultimately becomes the quest to understand ourselves. Thesis Supervisor: Marcia Bartusiak Title: Executive Director, Graduate Program in Science Writing


High workplace accident and fatality rates have made the measurement of safety behaviours in job applicants a primary concern for organisations. Employee safety behaviours have been defined by a number of actions, including: safety compliance, participation, voicing, and consciousness. The significant role that these safety behaviours play in maintaining workplace safety argues strongly for the need of tools which can be used to measure these behavioural tendencies in job applicants. With this information, job applicants with these safe behaviours can be selected for high-risk positions over those without. To address this problem the Safety Behaviour Test (SBT) was developed as a gamified assessment tool, designed to objectively measure safety behaviour within an animated work environment simulation. The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether the SBT has criterion-related validity. To conduct the validation 200 participants were recruited. 100 of which completed the SBT (SBT participants), while the other 100 participated as independent criterion data sources (acquaintances) and reported on the SBT participants' safety behaviours. The SBT participants' scores were correlated with the data on the individual's actual safety behaviour provided by the acquaintance. Results indicated that the SBT captures authentic safety behaviour and has criterion-related validity. The practical and theoretical value of the SBT's criterion-related validity in the reduction of workplace accidents is discussed.


The objects that people interact with on a daily basis speak to and of these people who acquire, display, and handle them—the relationship is one of exchange. People living among household objects come to care for their things, identify with them, and think of them as a constituent part of themselves. A meaningful problem arises, however, when people who have deep connections to the objects that populate their lived spaces are not those who possess the legal rights of ownership. These individuals and groups—usually excluded from the realm of property ownership along lines of gender, race, and ethnicity—live on an axis of property precarity, persistently subject to the anxieties as well as the realities of dispossession. This Article's launching point to explore these dispossessions is Henry James' novel, The Spoils of Poynton, which involves a dispute about the settlement of a father's estate and describes the battle between mother and son over the furnishings of the family home, Poynton. On a descriptive level, The Spoils of Poynton is a novel about a wife's dispossession and the gendered nature of inheritance. The novel is also, however, about the exclusions built into property theories of labor and personhood. Accordingly, this Article explicates tactics of dispossession inherent in traditional theories of property ownership, explores the legal claims made to property ownership by those who have been dispossessed, and analyzes the ways in which the meaning of property for these individuals and communities is reconstituted within the political imaginary. The novel therefore tells the story not only of a property conflict between mother and son but also of how individuals who straddle the fragile boundary between personhood and objecthood both experience property as liminal fragments of the rightsholder they could have been and perform their property ownership as a political declaration. In this way, the novel tells the story of what it is like to live in the home of the dispossessed.


Studies were conducted to: (i) Investigate the effect of the modification of the
existing N, P, and K programme and residue management practice on pineapple
fruit yield, (ii) Compare the economic viability of in situ decomposition of
pineapple residues untouched (lDPR), i.e. stacking of pineapple residue (leaves,
crowns, and peduncles) slashed and raked from 0.60 m x 10 m rows into 0.90 m x
10 m rows (ZBT-zero burn technique), and in situ burning pineapple residues
(IBPR) (iii) Quantify the amount of humic acid (HA) that could be extracted from
composted pineapple leaves using 0.10M potassium hydroxide (KOH) produced
from pineapple leaves and that of analytical grade (0. 10M KOH), (iv) Compare the
elemental composition (C, H, N, 0, and S), functional groups (carboxylic,
phenolic OH, and total acidity), and spectral characteristics of HA extracted from
composted pineapple leaves using KOH from pineapple leaves and that of
analytical grade, and (v) Investigate the potential value added agricultural products
that could be produced from pineapple leaves.


The continental margin of westeni Norway, in the Lofoten area between 67°N and 69°30'N, is geologically complex. The continental shelf is narrow and dominated by rotated extensional fault blocks. The inner shelf has a series of deep half grabens infilled by thick sedimentary sequences, primarily of Cretaceous age. The outer shelf is dominated by a complex structural high, the Utrost Ridge, where crystalline basement rocks are at the seabed or covered by a thin veneer of sediments. Seaward of the Utrost Ridge, beneath the continental slope and extending out to water depths of approximately 3000 m, a possible Mesozoic rift basin is buried by Paleogene tlow basalts and Cenozoic sediments several kilometers thick. The Lofoten Escarpment marks the approximate edge of the Tertiary oceanic crust. West of the Lofoten Escarpment a zone of seaward dipping retlectors is observed within the oceanic basalts, interpreted to be controlled by a series of landward dipping listric faults. The oceanic basalts are overlain by a sequence of Eocene and younger Cenozoic sediments. This paper discusses the observed geological structure and presents a general model for this part of the Norwegian margin.


The aim of this article is to discuss the potential of an educative research intervention to influence the quality of the learning outcome in the workplace as interpreted from the perspectives of adult learning theory. The research project was designed as a quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study. In this article, quantitative survey data were taken as the point of departure, and qualitative data were used for the purpose of analyzing aspects of learning. An educative research intervention may support a transformative learning quality when the manager and employees have to deal with severe difficulties, and they succeed in doing so by sharing responsibilities and having the strength to engage in the development process in the workplace. It is possible to support transformative learning in the workplace through an educative research intervention that encourages managers to educate themselves and their employees to think and act in new ways, aiming at integrated autonomy, increased interaction, and learning.


The London Stock Exchange is a vibrant capital market which attracts issuers from all over the world, bringing companies with diverse corporate governance practices and norms into the UK listed landscape. The dominant mode of corporate governance in UK public companies has historically been dispersed ownership. However, during the last decade or so, the UK Listing regime has found itself addressing unfamiliar governance issues arising at companies with a concentrated ownership structure. Such companies have typically originated from the natural resources/mining sectors of various developing economies, and initially appealed to investors due to their strong growth prospects. Unfortunately, a series of high profile scandals at Bumi (now renamed Asia Mineral Resources), Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (now de-listed) and Essar Energy, have tarnished the reputation of such foreign listings and led the UK Listing Authority (the Financial Conduct Authority) to introduce new corporate governance standards as part of its Listing Regime for companies with controlling shareholders (thereafter 'The Enhanced Listing Regime'). The new rules came into force in May 2014. The Enhanced Listing Regime is essentially a measure of minority shareholder protection. It introduces several prescriptive corporate governance standards to protect minority shareholders in blockholder-controlled companies. These standards are novel in nature compared to the corporate governance standards that have been developed thus far in the UK and in other key listing regimes. Minority shareholder protections are important to listing regimes due the importance of legal and regulatory frameworks to economic and financial development. Although the original La Porta et al thesis connecting law and finance has since been criticised for its broad brush approach, various methodological inadequacies and incongruence with empirical data, most commentators acknowledge that 'law matters' to certain extents in different contexts. We analyse how the Enhanced Listing Regime works as a minority protection mechanism in blockholder-controlled companies. In the context of the UK equity market, developing standards for the governance of such companies is relatively unchartered territory. We therefore place the FCA's pioneering efforts in the wider context of minority protection frameworks in global capital markets and engage in a comparative analysis to see if lessons can be learnt from elsewhere.


In this work, we consider one-shot imitation learning for object rearrangement tasks, where an AI agent needs to watch a single expert demonstration and learn to perform the same task in different environments. To achieve a strong generalization, the AI agent must infer the spatial goal specification for the task. However, there can be multiple goal specifications that fit the given demonstration. To address this, we propose a reward learning approach, Graph-based Equivalence Mappings (GEM), that can discover spatial goal representations that are aligned with the intended goal specification, enabling successful generalization in unseen environments. Specifically, GEM represents a spatial goal specification by a reward function conditioned on i) a graph indicating important spatial relationships between objects and ii) state equivalence mappings for each edge in the graph indicating invariant properties of the corresponding relationship. GEM combines inverse reinforcement learning and active reward learning to efficiently improve the reward function by utilizing the graph structure and domain randomization enabled by the equivalence mappings. We conducted experiments with simulated oracles and with human subjects. The results show that GEM can drastically improve the generalizability of the learned goal representations over strong baselines.


Small drinking water treatment systems (serving <10,000 population) in rural communities frequently encounter multiple challenges in water quality and federal regulatory compliance, especially the disinfection byproduct (DBP) regulations, due to source water variations, limited resources, and aging infrastructures. Unlike most studies on the DBP control using synthetic water in laboratory settings, this research aimed to identify the major water quality issues confronting small systems in the state of Missouri (MO), the United States of America (USA). Three small systems were selected based on source water and geographic locations. Water samples were collected quarterly from each major treatment process during the period of May 2012 to March 2013 and analyzed to identify the treatment effectiveness and potential water quality issues in each small system. Results of water quality characterization showed that the major water quality issue in the selected small systems was the low efficiency of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) removal, especially the DOC species that are considered as the DBP precursors. Most collected water samples had a higher trihalomethane formation potential (THMFP) than the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) maximum contaminant limit (MCL) (80 μg/L). Based on the analysis of the treatment efficiency in each system, several strategies for water quality improvement were recommended, and a few of which have been implemented in the small systems, leading to improved drinking water quality and compliance with the USEPA DBP regulations. This study would provide a valuable aid to small system operators and local water authority in context of water quality improvement and the regulatory compliance.


Humans can categorize objects in complex natural scenes within 100–150 ms. This amazing ability of rapid categorization has motivated many computational models. Most of these models require extensive training to obtain a decision boundary in a very high dimensional (e.g., ∼6,000 in a leading model) feature space and often categorize objects in natural scenes by categorizing the context that co-occurs with objects when objects do not occupy large portions of the scenes. It is thus unclear how humans achieve rapid scene categorization. To address this issue, we developed a hierarchical probabilistic model for rapid object categorization in natural scenes. In this model, a natural object category is represented by a coarse hierarchical probability distribution (PD), which includes PDs of object geometry and spatial configuration of object parts. Object parts are encoded by PDs of a set of natural object structures, each of which is a concatenation of local object features. Rapid categorization is performed as statistical inference. Since the model uses a very small number (∼100) of structures for even complex object categories such as animals and cars, it requires little training and is robust in the presence of large variations within object categories and in their occurrences in natural scenes. Remarkably, we found that the model categorized animals in natural scenes and cars in street scenes with a near human-level performance. We also found that the model located animals and cars in natural scenes, thus overcoming a flaw in many other models which is to categorize objects in natural context by categorizing contextual features. These results suggest that coarse PDs of object categories based on natural object structures and statistical operations on these PDs may underlie the human ability to rapidly categorize scenes.


The aim of this research project was to obtain a deep and quantified understanding of the effects of chemical composition and heat treatment on the microstructures of Grade 92 parent metals, and in turn, their corresponding creep behaviour. Comprehensive microstructural characterisation on the virgin and creep-tested samples was carried out in this study to give valid and reliable data in order to correlate the microstructural changes with creep behaviour, which can provide steel manufacturers with useful information to optimise the manufacturing route for fabrication.Predicted long term creep behaviour based on the numerical extrapolations of short term data has been shown to be overestimated due to series of microstructural degradations. In particular, creep cavitation, which is equally important compared to other microstructural degradation mechanisms during creep exposure, was investigated by using a wide range of complementary microscopy techniques including field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) on focused ion beam (FIB) prepared thin foil lift-out samples with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), dual beam serial sectioning with post image 3D reconstruction on the cavities and particles, and combined in-lens SEM examination and EDS analysis. BN, MnS and Al2O3 inclusion particles were observed to be the preferential cavity nucleation sites. Within these three types of inclusion particles, BN was the most frequent particle observed to be associated with cavities. [Continues.]


Blattella germanica is commonly found in homes, restaurants, hospitals, other large buildings, and public health implications. It has become resistant to many insecticides. Latex effect of Euphorbia bupleuroides on B. germanica mortality was tested in order to obtain a new bioinsecticides. Five concentrations (0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%) were evaluated against males, females and larvae of German cockroach under laboratory conditions. High levels of mortality of B. germanica adults and larvae were associated with the increase in the concentration and time of exposure as well.


In 2011, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) convened conservation partners to develop a conservation action plan for great apes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with financial support from the Arcus Foundation. The main goal of this initiative was to identify critical threats to gorillas, chimpanzees and their habitats in the landscape, and to develop conservation strategies to address these threats. Emphasis was placed on activities at a systemic and strategic level that could add value to the large-scale planning effort vis-a-vis site-level efforts.


Foucault devotes seven out of the twelve lectures he delivered at the Collège de France in 1979 to German and American neo-liberalism. Contrary to the widespread view that the purpose of these lectures was to 'critique' neoliberalism, I sketch another reading of those lectures that connects them with a different kind of critique of liberal political reason that we find in the work of John Rawls. I begin by showing that Foucault is more normative than is often realised: at one point he raises the question 'what form of governmentality would be appropriate to socialism?' I then show that Rawls is not simply normative but also descriptive of the institutions and policies of liberal government: his argument for property owning democracy as an alternative to welfare state capitalism is one element of a conception of governmentality associated with his conception of justice as fairness. Finally, I point to some of the ways in which Rawls's conception of the kind of government and economy compatible with his principles of justice was influenced by elements of postwar neoliberalism. I conclude by suggesting that Foucault's sketch of a genealogy of neoliberal economic and political thought points to a historical conception of Rawls's idea of public reason, and that the egalitarian tradition of neoliberal thought on which Rawls draws points toward possible answers to Foucault's question about a governmentality appropriate to socialism.


Transfer learning problems are typically framed as leveraging knowledge learned on a source task to improve learning on a related, but different, target task. Current transfer lear ning methods are able to successfully transfer knowledge from a source reinforcement learning task into a target task, redu cing learning time. However, the complimentary task of transferring knowledge between agents with different internal representations has not been well explored The goal in both types of transfer problems is the same: reduce the time needed to learn the target with transfer, relative to learning the tar get without transfer. This work defines representation transfer, contrasts it with task transfer, and introduces two novel al gorithms. Additionally, we show representation transfer algorithms can also be successfully used for task transfer, pr oviding an empirical connection between the two problems. These algorithms are fully implemented in a complex multiagent domain and experiments demonstrate that transferring the learned knowledge between different representations is both possible and beneficial.


Route changes and delays owing to such factors as adverse weather make it difficult to predict the exact arrival of ships or barges in a port. In choosing the capacity of loading facilities in a port, one must consider that there will be many times when the facilities will be unused and many times when cargo vessels must wait a substantial time before they are serviced. The choice of capacity of port facilities when arrival and service times are random is considered here. Queuing theory can be applied to determine the average waiting time for an individual cargo vessel as a function of the arrival and service distributions, the capacity of the terminal facility, and the arrival rate. To save waiting time for a vessel, the terminal capacity must be expanded. The optimal capacity of a loading facility is determined by trading off the additional capital cost of a dock against the value of the vessel time saved. Estimates are made of costs and savings incurred by investing in new facilities. The effects of seasonality in traffic and speeding the service rate are also considered.


Many academic libraries are looking at new ways to add value when they deliver services to faculty, and one potential area where the library can provide new services is in partnering with academic staff to support the dissemination of faculty research. Librarians have traditionally helped faculty researchers at the beginning of the research cycle, with the discovery and delivery of information sources. However, they are now playing a role at the end of the research cycle, providing services that support scholarly publishing. This paper examines library participation in faculty-led publishing ventures. In particular, it explores the value that smaller research libraries can provide to faculty editors through journal hosting, which will be analysed through an examination of the successful migration of the Australian Journal of Teacher Education , a faculty-administered journal at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia, to the University's institutional repository. This transition provided library staff members at Edith Cowan University opportunities to develop new knowledge and skills in journal publishing, while meeting the journal's need for a better way to manage a growing influx of article submissions. The resultant faculty-library partnership enabled more effective management of the journal and has contributed to its growing success. The evaluative framework developed to enable assessment of the success of this journal's transition can help other libraries demonstrate the success of their own journal hosting ventures.


We use rich data on a cohort of English adolescents to analyse the long-term effects of experiencing bullying victimisation in junior high school. The data contain self-reports of five types of bullying and their frequency, for three waves of the data, when the pupils were aged 13 to 16 years. Using a variety of estimation strategies - least squares, matching, inverse probability weighting, and instrumental variables - we assess the effects of bullying victimisation on short- and long-term outcomes, including educational achievements, earnings, and mental ill-health at age 25 years. We handle potential measurement error in the child self-reports of bullying type and frequency by instrumenting with corresponding parental cross-reports. Using a detailed longitudinal survey linked to administrative data, we control for many of the determinants of bullying victimisation and child outcomes identified in previous literature, paired with comprehensive sensitivity analyses to assess the potential role of unobserved variables. The pattern of results strongly suggests that there are important long run effects on victims - stronger than correlation analysis would otherwise suggest. In particular, we find that both type of bullying and its intensity matters for long run outcomes.


Gundersen Lutheran Health System is a physician-led, not-for-profit inte- grated delivery system serving more than 550,000 people in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Gundersen Lutheran has increased efficiency, improved patient care, and achieved the high performance associated with large urban institutions by: 1) using clini- cal and financial outcomes to set benchmarks and targets for improvement, to increase transparency, and to drive improvement among physicians; 2) investing in primary care and disease management programs; and 3) hiring engineers to improve operations. It offers leadership training programs that encourage cross-training and partnership within the institution and uses external collaborations to improve community health and extend its models of care and service to outlying communities. Gundersen Lutheran's physician compact outlines the organization's expectations of physicians and ensures that its medical staff remains committed to the organization's mission: to distinguish itself in patient care, education, research, and community health.


Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a finite alphabet and $\mathcal{D}$ be a finite set of distributions over $\mathcal{F}$. A Generalized Santha-Vazirani (GSV) source of type $(\mathcal{F}, \mathcal{D})$, introduced by Beigi, Etesami and Gohari (ICALP 2015, SICOMP 2017), is a random sequence $(F_1, \dots, F_n)$ in $\mathcal{F}^n$, where $F_i$ is a sample from some distribution $d \in \mathcal{D}$ whose choice may depend on $F_1, \dots, F_{i-1}$.
We show that all GSV source types $(\mathcal{F}, \mathcal{D})$ fall into one of three categories: (1) non-extractable; (2) extractable with error $n^{-\Theta(1)}$; (3) extractable with error $2^{-\Omega(n)}$. This rules out other error rates like $1/\log n$ or $2^{-\sqrt{n}}$.
We provide essentially randomness-optimal extraction algorithms for extractable sources. Our algorithm for category (2) sources extracts with error $\varepsilon$ from $n = \mathrm{poly}(1/\varepsilon)$ samples in time linear in $n$. Our algorithm for category (3) sources extracts $m$ bits with error $\varepsilon$ from $n = O(m + \log 1/\varepsilon)$ samples in time $\min\{O(nm2^m),n^{O(\lvert\mathcal{F}\rvert)}\}$.
We also give algorithms for classifying a GSV source type $(\mathcal{F}, \mathcal{D})$: Membership in category (1) can be decided in $\mathrm{NP}$, while membership in category (3) is polynomial-time decidable.


Background
Medication Therapy Management (MTM) is a vital resource in reducing medication nonadherence, yet many individuals who are eligible for MTM services are unaware of what MTM is and how to enroll. Little is known about how to best educate patients on MTM services and its benefits.

Objective
To determine the difference between in-person education community education versus brochure community education on MTM services on perceptions of and enrollment in MTM services.

Methods
A pre-post quasi experimental study, where patients were allocated to receive information about MTM through an educational brochure or an in-person education session and completed survey assessments pre- and post-intervention, was conducted at a federally-qualified health center. Patients who were ages 18 years or older, MTM-eligible, and had received no prior MTM service were eligible to participate. Changes in patient perceptions of and enrollment in MTM from pre- to post-intervention were assessed by survey instruments developed for this study.

Results
A total of 35 patients (brochure=25, in-person=10) were recruited for this study. Most participants (94.2%) either reported having never heard of MTM or not being sure if they had heard of MTM. There were no significant between-group differences on pre-survey questions or pre-post within-group changes (p>0.05). There were significant between-group differences on 11 post-assessment questions and MTM enrollment (p<0.05), with the in-person education group showing improved perceptions and greater enrollment.

Conclusion
Patients remain largely unaware of MTM services; there is a need for education to increase awareness. Even though educating patients in a face-to-face context had a more positive impact on perceptions of MTM and enrollment in MTM, more research is needed regarding the best educational methods as it was difficult for patients to find time to attend an educational session.


Pollution‐induced community tolerance (PICT) was used to study effects of phenol on soil bacteria. Phenol was added to an agricultural soil in a microcosm experiment. The effects were studied for up to four months. Bacterial growth rates were estimated with the leucine incorporation technique. This technique was also used as detection method for PICT. Changes in community structure were studied using the phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) pattern. Increased phenol PICT of the bacterial community was found at phenol concentrations above 1 μmol/g wet weight soil. Direct inhibiting effect on bacterial growth rates 1 d after adding phenol was correlated to PICT. Phenol toxicity was reflected by changes in the structure of the bacterial community, although PICT appeared more sensitive than the PLFA method. In soil amended with 1 to 10 μmol phenol/g soil, bacterial growth recovered within one week. In the soil amended with the highest phenol concentration (30 μmol/g soil), bacterial growth rate recovered from total inhibition after 27 d, eventually reaching values six times higher than in the control. However, PICT did not change during the four months the experiment was performed. The specificity of PICT was also studied by examining cotolerance to 2‐chlorophenol, 2,4‐dichlorophenol, 2,3,6‐trichlorophenol, Cu, and Zn. Adding phenol induced cotolerance of the bacterial community to the other phenols, although always at a lover level than to phenol. No cotolerance was found to metals in phenol‐polluted soil. We conclude that the PICT concept is a valuable tool in determining phenol toxicity to bacterial communities, especially in situations where bacterial growth has recovered. Cotolerance between different phenols can, however, make interpretations of PICT more complicated.


The discovery of disease suppression in certain bark composts increased the interest in using compost as growing substrate to control root rot diseases caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi. Disease suppression mechanisms include antibiosis, competition, hyperparasitism, and induced systemic resistance. Although abiotic factors may infl uence disease suppression, the latter is often based on microbial interactions—the two common mechanisms being general for pythium (Pythium spp.) and phytophthora root rot (Phytophthora spp.) and specifi c for rhizoctonia (Rhizoctonia solani). The discovery of disease suppression agents in compost led to the development of biocontrol agent-fortifi ed compost during the last decade of the 20th century. The suggested recommendations for future research and extension outreach may include 1) development of methods to manage bacterial and viral diseases through the use of compost; 2) exploration of the potential effects of fortifi ed compost on insect pests suppression; 3) improvement of inoculation methods of composts with biocontrol agents to produce consistent levels of disease suppression at the commercial scale; 4) development of effective fortifi ed compost teas for suppressing foliar diseases; 5) education of compost producers on methods of production of fortifi ed compost that suppress specifi c diseases; and 6) education of end-users on uses of fortifi ed compost and its by-products. Historical review


Background: Early and appropriate empiric antibiotic treatment of patients suspected of having sepsis is associated with reduced mortality. The increasing prevalence of antimicrobial resistance reduces the efficacy of empiric therapy guidelines derived from population data. This problem is particularly severe for children in developing country settings. We hypothesized that by applying machine learning approaches to readily collect patient data, it would be possible to obtain individualized predictions for targeted empiric antibiotic choices. Methods and Findings: We analysed blood culture data collected from a 100-bed children's hospital in North-West Cambodia between February 2013 and January 2016. Clinical, demographic and living condition information was captured with 35 independent variables. Using these variables, we used a suite of machine learning algorithms to predict Gram stains and whether bacterial pathogens could be treated with common empiric antibiotic regimens: i) ampicillin and gentamicin; ii) ceftriaxone; iii) none of the above. 243 patients with bloodstream infections were available for analysis. We found that the random forest method had the best predictive performance overall as assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The random forest method gave an AUC of 0.80 (95%CI 0.660.94) for predicting susceptibility to ceftriaxone, 0.74 (0.59-0.89) for susceptibility to ampicillin and gentamicin, 0.85 (0.70-1.00) for susceptibility to neither, and 0.71 (0.57-0.86) for Gram stain result. Most important variables for predicting susceptibility were time from admission to blood culture, patient age, hospital versus communityOpen Peer Review


Corms with different initial corm weight (>15g,10-15g,8-10g) were planted at different planting geometries (20x10cm, 25x15cm, 30x20 cm, 35x25cm) based on number of corms/hill (1,2,3,4) Initial corm weight is of paramount importance in saffron. Studies related to saffron and corm yield indicated importance of initial corm weight for saffron production and corm yield under annual planting cycle. 2 corms/hill weighing >15g, with an application of recommended dose of FYM with inorganic fertilizers and vermicompost recorded the highest saffron yield (3.160 kg/ha) with a yield gain of 46.97% over the bench value of 2.15 kg/ha. Impact of initial corm weight was also revealed in terms of more number of daughter corms/mother corm and corm yield during 2010. Heavier Corms (>15g) exhibited superiority over standard corm size (8-10g) by about 57% for corm yield. Maximum corm yield (1800g/m2) associated with highest number of daughter corms/mother corm (5.32) and 24% flowering corms (weighing more than 8 g) was exhibited by heavier corms planted at a geometry of 25x 15 cm with 2 corms/hill.


I. INTRODUCTION One of the powers of Florida's governor is to make appointments to the state's Supreme Court.(1) As governor, Lawton Chiles made five appointments to the Supreme Court and made a sixth appointment in conjunction with then-incoming Governor Jeb Bush; all of these appointments are considered to be moderate to liberal justices.(2) Generally, appointments reflect the political philosophies of the appointing governor.(3) As such, many agree that former Governor Chiles has constructed the Supreme Court of Florida to be a moderate court, reflecting his moderate political philosophy.(4) The final appointments made by Chiles have been viewed as perpetuating the court's moderate philosophies.(5) The changing composition of the Supreme Court of Florida makes it an opportune time to conduct a high court study of Florida's high court. The court is going to experience three new faces and viewpoints,(6) and it is going to experience the departure of three veteran members, and their attendant judicial philosophies.(7) In addition, the court has recently changed chief justices, as Gerald Kogan, who was widely touted as the most liberal on the bench,(8) was replaced by Justice Major Harding, who is recognized as a moderate to conservative.(9) The result of the recent changes to the court's composition make it difficult to predict how the court's judicial philosophies will change.(10) In short, the current judicial philosophies of the Supreme Court of Florida are uncertain, thus making a high court study proper at this time. An examination of the individual members' judicial philosophies and their respective approaches to state constitutional issues will help identify which philosophies and approaches the court is losing and which are the unknown variables of the new court.(11) Although the justices are usually labeled either liberal, conservative, or moderate by commentators and practitioners, those labels do not always reflect the way the justices vote.(12) A high court study, such as this one, is a way to determine the individual philosophies by examining the individual votes and opinions.(13) This High Court Study will examine each individual justice's voting patterns, judicial philosophies, and approaches to state constitutional issues.(14) In addition, this Study will compare the judicial philosophies of the departing justices to the expected judicial philosophies of the incoming justices in the hope of ascertaining the future direction of the court related to state constitutional adjudication.(15) Part II of this Study will identify the methods used to conduct this Study and will outline the nature and process of state constitutional adjudication.(16) Part II will also discuss the benefits of understanding how a court approaches constitutional issues and the individual judicial philosophies of the justices.(17) Part III will discuss briefly the structure of the Florida Constitution and the significant differences between this state constitution and the Federal Constitution that affect state constitutional adjudication.(18) In addition, Part III will delineate the organization of the Supreme Court of Florida and discuss how the current court evolved into the court that exists today.(19) Part IV will identify the individual justices and examine the results of this Study.(20) Part V will look at the court as a whole, and assess its independence and judicial philosophies.(21) Part VI concludes that former Governor Chiles' efforts to insure a moderate court before the end of his term has paid dividends, as the court has seen a moderate shift in the court according to this Study.(22) II. THE STUDY The fundamental principles of federalism can be evidenced by the way some state courts address constitutional issues.(23) The more independent the state, the more federalist principles are demonstrated by the court's adjudication of constitutional issues.(24) In turn, a state high court's independence can be determined by how the court analyzes constitutional issues. …


INTRODUCTION
Family prion diseases are caused by mutations in the gene coding the prion protein (PrP), originating an altered isoform called prion. One of the most uncommon is the fatal familial insomnia (FFI), an entity characterized by sleep disorders and that is associated to a mutation in codon 178.

METHODS
We have studied two male patients, aged 43 and 49 years respectively, from the same family.

RESULTS
The most significant symptoms were sleep disorders with agitation, fractionated sleep, snoring and daytime sleepiness. The evolution was brief, the patient dying at a few months of the clinical debut. Sleep registries showed destructuration with total loss of the normal cycle of the phases and great decrease of the sleep spindles and K complexes in both cases. The polygraphy showed tachycardia and apnea pauses. In the molecular study, a mutation in the codon 178 was detected, both being methionine/methionine homozygotes at position 129. The most outstanding neuropathological abnormalities were located in the thalamus with gliosis and neuronal loss of anterior and dorsomedial ventral nuclei and also intense neuronal loss in olive of the first case.

CONCLUSIONS
This study describes two new cases of FFI with genotype D178N-129M and short course classical phenotype. The polysomnography is essential in the diagnostic strategy of this disease whose neuropathological substrate is the thalamic alterations and of the inferior olive. Molecular biology permits an exact diagnosis of FFI although there is still controversy on the phenotypal variability and physiopathogenic mechanisms.


Lipoprotein lipase (LPL)-deficient mice have been created by gene targeting in embryonic stem cells. At birth, homozygous knockout pups have threefold higher triglycerides and sevenfold higher VLDL cholesterol levels than controls. When permitted to suckle, LPL-deficient mice become pale, then cyanotic, and finally die at approximately 18 h of age. Before death, triglyceride levels are severely elevated (15,087 +/- 3,805 vs 188 +/- 71 mg/dl in controls). Capillaries in tissues of homozygous knockout mice are engorged with chylomicrons. This is especially significant in the lung where marginated chylomicrons prevent red cell contact with the endothelium, a phenomenon which is presumably the cause of cyanosis and death in these mice. Homozygous knockout mice also have diminished adipose tissue stores as well as decreased intracellular fat droplets. By crossbreeding with transgenic mice expressing human LPL driven by a muscle-specific promoter, mouse lines were generated that express LPL exclusively in muscle but not in any other tissue. This tissue-specific LPL expression rescued the LPL knockout mice and normalized their lipoprotein pattern. This supports the contention that hypertriglyceridemia caused the death of these mice and that LPL expression in a single tissue was sufficient for rescue. Heterozygous LPL knockout mice survive to adulthood and have mild hypertriglyceridemia, with 1.5-2-fold elevated triglyceride levels compared with controls in both the fed and fasted states on chow, Western-type, or 10% sucrose diets. In vivo turnover studies revealed that heterozygous knockout mice had impaired VLDL clearance (fractional catabolic rate) but no increase in transport rate. In summary, total LPL deficiency in the mouse prevents triglyceride removal from plasma, causing death in the neonatal period, and expression of LPL in a single tissue alleviates this problem. Furthermore, half-normal levels of LPL cause a decrease in VLDL fractional catabolic rate and mild hypertriglyceridemia, implying that partial LPL deficiency has physiological consequences.


Unsupervised image representations have significantly reduced the gap with supervised pretraining, notably with the recent achievements of contrastive learning methods. These contrastive methods typically work online and rely on a large number of explicit pairwise feature comparisons, which is computationally challenging. In this paper, we propose an online algorithm, SwAV, that takes advantage of contrastive methods without requiring to compute pairwise comparisons. Specifically, our method simultaneously clusters the data while enforcing consistency between cluster assignments produced for different augmentations (or views) of the same image, instead of comparing features directly as in contrastive learning. Simply put, we use a swapped prediction mechanism where we predict the cluster assignment of a view from the representation of another view. Our method can be trained with large and small batches and can scale to unlimited amounts of data. Compared to previous contrastive methods, our method is more memory efficient since it does not require a large memory bank or a special momentum network. In addition, we also propose a new data augmentation strategy, multi-crop, that uses a mix of views with different resolutions in place of two full-resolution views, without increasing the memory or compute requirements much. We validate our findings by achieving 75.3% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet with ResNet-50, as well as surpassing supervised pretraining on all the considered transfer tasks.


Research in the area of educational technology has often been critiqued for a lack of theoretical grounding. In this article we propose a conceptual framework for educational technology by building on Shulrnan's formulation of "pedagogical content knowledge" and extend it to the phenomenon of teachers integrating technology into their pedagogy. This framework is the result of 5 years of work on a program of research focused on teacher professional development and faculty development in higher education. It attempts to capture some of the essential qualities of teacher knowledge required for technology integration in teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted, and situated nature of this knowledge. We argue, briefly, that thoughtful pedagogical uses of technology require the development of a complex, situated form of knowledge that we call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). In doing so, we posit the complex roles of, and interplay among, three main components of learning environments: content, pedagogy, and technology. We argue that this model has much to offer to discussions of technology integration at multiple levels: theoretical, pedagogical, and methodological. In this article, we describe the theory behind our framework, provide examples of our teaching approach based upon the framework, and illustrate the methodological contributions that have resulted from this work.


For several decades, numerous legal, regulatory and social mechanisms have been adopted to accelerate the progression of women in higher managerial levels of organisations worldwide. In South African, there is a plethora of policies and practices related to gender equity. However, the equality of men and women in the workplace and shattering the glass ceiling is still a myth worldwide including in South Africa. The article will investigate the barriers that hinder women from qualifying and attaining senior management positions and underlying factors and variables that relate to promotion of women into managerial positions in the National Department of Human Settlements in South Africa. The article used both interviews and questionnaires to collect empirical data. The results of the study also show that there are significant inroads that have been made in the upward mobility of women but not significant enough to match their male counterparts in all levels of management. The article will also make recommendations to the department as to how they can improve the existing situation.


Ambient lighting in soft-copy reading rooms is currently kept at low values to preserve contrast rendition in the dark regions of a medical image. Low illuminance levels, however, create inadequate viewing conditions and may also cause eye strain. This eye strain may be potentially attributed to notable variations in the luminance adaptation state of the reader's eyes when moving the gaze intermittently between the brighter display and darker surrounding surfaces. This paper presents a methodology to minimize this variation and optimize the lighting conditions of reading rooms by exploiting the properties of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) with low diffuse reflection coefficients and high luminance ratio. First, a computational model was developed to determine a global luminance adaptation value, Ladp, when viewing a medical image on display. The model is based on the diameter of the pupil size, which depends on the luminance of the observed object. Second, this value was compared with the luminance reflected off surrounding surfaces, Ls, under various conditions of room illuminance, E, different values of diffuse reflection coefficients of surrounding surfaces, Rs, and calibration settings of a typical LCD. The results suggest that for typical luminance settings of current LCDs, it is possible to raise ambient illumination to minimize differences in eye adaptation, potentially reducing visual fatigue while also complying with the TG18 specifications for controlled contrast rendition. Specifically, room illumination in the 75-150 lux range and surface diffuse reflection coefficients in the practical range of 0.13-0.22 sr(-1) provide an ideal setup for typical LCDs. Future LCDs with lower diffuse reflectivity and with higher inherent luminance ratios can provide further improvement of ergonomic viewing conditions in reading rooms.


Throughout both urban and rural areas across the United States, rivers and streams periodically suffer from low dissolved oxygen concentrations. Current aeration technologies are often expensive or ineffective. Aeration with hollow-fiber membranes has been shown to have the potential to aerate these water courses more cost-effectively than current methods and may be able to provide aeration to locations where traditional technologies are not effective. To optimize mass transfer rates, hollow-fiber membranes in a fiber flag configuration were used. The fiber modules were tested in two different orientations to determine the fiber performance as a function of flow field conditions. The results are compared to more typical fiber configurations. In a second experiment the fiber modules were run continuously in diverted river water for over 1,700 h to determine the long-term performance of the membrane modules in a practical application. The extent of fouling was monitored over the course of the experiment and the fibers were examined to determine if the fouling was biological or chemical in nature. Finally, the previous results were incorporated into a cost comparison between the hollow-fiber membranes and a conventional in-stream aeration technology currently in use.


The pathogenesis of hypertension--a risk factor for heart disease, kidney disease, and stroke--is complex and poorly understood (see Raman and Cobb). Zacchigna et al. found that mice lacking elastin microfibril interface-located protein 1 (Emilin1), a secreted extracellular matrix protein expressed in the cardiovascular system, had high blood pressure in conjunction with decreased blood vessel diameter and increased peripheral resistance. Emilin1 contains a cysteine-rich domain, as do some proteins involved in regulation of growth factor signaling, leading the authors to investigate the relation between Emilin1 and transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), which plays a critical role in vascular development and pathophysiology. Experiments in Xenopus embryos and mammalian cell culture systems indicated that Emilin1 acts through the cysteine-rich EMI domain to block TGF-β signaling. Emilin1 acted upstream of receptor activation and failed to block ligand-receptor binding or signaling in response to mature TGF-β1. Rather, Emilin1 bound to proTGF-β1, preventing its proteolytic processing and the production of biologically active TGF-β1. Emilin1 gain- and loss-of-function experiments in which "stimulator" cells (which produced TGF-β) were mixed with "responder" cells (which expressed TGF-β reporters), and experiments involving nonsecretable Emilin1, indicated that Emilin1 acted extracellularly. TGF-β signaling (nuclear staining for phosphorylated Smad2 and expression of a TGF-β reporter) was enhanced in the aortic wall of the mice lacking Emilin1, and inactivation of one TGF-β1 allele in Emilin1 knockout mice restored normal blood vessel diameter and blood pressure. Thus, the authors conclude that Emilin1 acts to regulate blood pressure by modulating TGF-β processing and thus the availability of the biologically active form. L. Zacchigna, C. Vecchione, A. Notte, M. Cordenonsi, S. Dupont, S. Maretto, G. Cifelli, A. Ferrari, A. Maffei, C. Fabbro, P. Braghetta, G. Marino, G. Selvetella, A. Aretini, C. Colonnese, U. Bettarini, G. Russo, S. Soligo, M. Adorno, P. Bonaldo, D. Volpin, S. Piccolo, G. Lembo, G. M. Bressan, Emilin1 links TGF-β maturation to blood pressure homeostasis. Cell 124, 929-942 (2006). [Online Journal] M. Raman, M. H. Cobb, TGF-β regulation by Emilin1: New links in the etiology of hypertension. Cell 124, 893-895 (2006). [Online Journal]


This study deals with the attitude of Acehnese youth towards Acehnese language .It employs qualitative research design with a case study. This study aims to describe: (1) How the Acehnese youth attitude toward Acehnese language (2) What The factors that motivated the the Acehnese youth to have the positive attitude toward Acehnese language. The subjects were 20 Teenagers from Acehnese family, which the age of subjects ranges between 13-19 years old. The instrument used in this study was interview. The interview was used to obtain the teenagers attitude and the factors that influence them. The data were analyzed by interactive models of Miles and Huberman's technique. Based on data analysis, It was found that the teenagers have positive and negative attitude , there are ten children ( 50 %) have positive attitude and there are  ten children (50 %) who have negative attitude. There are three factors that motivated the teenagers positive attitude in Acehnese language, namely; ethnic identity, prestige and communication success.


Ongoing collaboration with improvising musicians. Foxes Fox (69.28) and 'Freedom of the City' (A 79.44, B 78.39) comprise two selected recordings with improvising musicians.

These recordings are part of Beresford's regular collaboration with the London Improvisers Orchestra (especially in the annual

Freedom of the City series), and Evan Parker, Louis Moholo and John Edwards (especially on the Foxes Fox CD).

The two recordings highlight the ongoing processes of collaboration with improvising musicians which has been at the forefront

of Beresford's work. In these recordings, and in the regular live performances in a wide variety of venues, Beresford explores

the paradoxical principles of improvisation. Every performance is highly differentiated from every other, and yet all have the

potential to sound the same. Every collaboration involves listening intently to his collaborators playing and responding to their

music with his own, but where this listening may result in strategies of non-listening. The unpredictability of free improvisation

rests on the structuring process of this unpredictability in order to create rich, satisfying music.

This work is one in a constant state of refinement: each recorded artefact moves the research forward. Through the

improvisatory process Beresford is trying to establish a flexible model for musical communication and meaning, whereby the

artefact at the end of the process, while rewarding in its own right, is only an instantaneous window onto the process itself.

Beresford's work as improviser, composer and performer was profiled in The Wire (April 2002, May 2005).

Publication dates include October 27, 2004 (Foxes Fox: Naan Tso) and May 1, 2005 (London Improvisers' Orchestra: Freedom

of the City 2005).


Imitation is a fundamental mechanism by which humans learn and understand the actions of others. This thesis addresses the low-level neural mechanisms underlying the imitation of meaningless gestures, using tools from computational neuroscience. We investigate how the human brain perceives these gestures and translates them into appropriate motor commands. In addition, we take a relatively unexplored neuropsychological perspective, which looks at imitation following a brain lesion. The analysis of how imitation breaks down in apraxia, a complex disorder of voluntary movement, enables us to reverse engineer brain function through the identification of those building blocks that are preserved. To better understand the phenomenon of apraxia, we develop a neurocomputational model of imitation that proposes potential neuroanatomical correlates, such as the flow of information across the two brain hemispheres. The model accounts for the pattern of errors observed in apraxic patients with disconnected brain hemispheres. To validate the predictions of our model, we further analyze the experimental errors and uncover a goal-dissociation, where a goal is defined as the spatial relation between two body parts. The experimental observations suggest that the imitation deficit in apraxia arises from an incorrect coordination between the reproductions of multiple goals. A prediction of this hypothesis was validated on three apraxic patients. The collected body of kinematic and neuropsychological data allowed us to refine our neurocomputational model of imitation, and to propose a biologically plausible mathematical model for the execution stage of the imitation. The model controls movement by following nonlinear dynamics, and precisely reproduces both the spatial and temporal aspects of unconstrained and natural three-dimensional reaching movements. Importantly, the model is stable and robust against external perturbations. Overall, our computational models and neuropsychological experiments contribute to a better understanding of how the brain performs the imitation of meaningless gestures; that is, by first decomposing the gesture into imitation goals, and then reproducing these goals through the association of different sensory modalities.


We present an example‐based approach to rendering hand‐colored animations which delivers visual richness comparable to real artwork while enabling control over the amount of perceived temporal noise. This is important both for artistic purposes and viewing comfort, but is tedious or even intractable to achieve manually. We analyse typical features of real hand‐colored animations and propose an algorithm that tries to mimic them using only static examples of drawing media. We apply the algorithm to various animations using different drawing media and compare the quality of synthetic results with real artwork. To verify our method perceptually, we conducted experiments confirming that our method delivers distinguishable noise levels and reduces eye strain. Finally, we demonstrate the capabilities of our method to mask imperfections such as shower‐door artifacts.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore non-technical skills from the perspective of Australian business graduates who had recently made the transition from higher education into full-time employment.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed-methods approach was applied through the use of an online survey containing closed and open-ended questions pertaining to graduates' perceptions of the relative importance of non-technical skills, as well as graduates' overall confidence levels in displaying these skills within the workplace. Data were analysed and further explored through 12 follow-up qualitative semi-structured interviews by using a constant comparative approach to identify common themes and factors.

Findings

The study revealed that the non-technical skill of self-management was reported as the most important skill for graduates who were managing the transition from higher education into the workforce. The non-technical skills which were classified to be associated with workplace socialisation and familiarisation were rated higher than those which were classified as being related to task completion.

Practical implications

Graduates commencing employment within a new workplace environment can benefit from the strategies reported, which assisted with the processes of workplace socialisation and familiarisation.

Originality/value

Perceptions of non-technical skills, from the perspective of graduates who are managing the transition process from higher education into full-time employment remains a relatively unexplored area within existing literature. This study reveals new insights into the experiences of graduates who are likely to be engaged with the issues surrounding the disparity between the expectations of higher education, industry, and the graduates themselves.


Photorhabdus is the genus of Gram-negative bioluminescent bacteria living in the mutualistic relationship with Heterorhabditis nematodes. Photorhabdus and Heterorhabditis form a complex that is highly pathogenic for insects. Focus of research was characterization of recombinant form of lectin PLL3 from P. laumondii subsp. laumondii. PLL3 was discovered to be a novel member of the structural PLL lectin family with seven-bladed beta-propeller fold. Its binding properties were investigated using hemagglutination assay and biophysical methods such as isothermal titration calorimetry and surface plasmon resonance. The structure of PLL3 was solved by X-ray crystallography. Obtained data showed that PLL3 exhibits similar binding properties as the other members of its structural family. PLL3 interacted with L-fucose and its derivatives but was also able to recognize other carbohydrates including O-methylated glycans. O-methylation is unusual glycan modification present in some species of bacteria, fungi, plants and nematodes, but not in insects or mammals. In contrast to previously described PLL family lectins, PLL3 exists as monomer in the solution as well as in the crystal structure. The monomeric state of PLL3 might be responsible for the presence of a weaker avidity effect compared to related lectins. Based on the similarity to the other lectins from PLL family and the fact that these lectins interfere with the host innate immune system, we can assume PLL3 might play a role in the interaction of P. laumondii with both nematodes and insects.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) and parental involvement beliefs of preschool teachers and the parents of preschool children. Data were collected from 279 teachers and 589 parents via a demographic information questionnaire, Teachers' Beliefs Scale [Jones, L. D., Burts, D. C., Buchanan, T. K., & Jambunathan, S. (2000). Beginning prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers' beliefs and practices: Supports and barriers to developmentally appropriate practices. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 21, 397–410]; Parents' Beliefs Scale [Yen, Y. (2008). Parents' beliefs about developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs in Taiwan (PhD thesis). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database (UMI No.3352157)] and the School and Family Partnerships Questionnaire [Epstein, J. L., & Salinas, K. C. (1993). School and family partnerships: Surveys and summaries. Baltimore, MD: Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships, John Hopkins University]. The results underline the relationship of parental involvement beliefs of teachers and parents with their DAP and Developmentally Inappropriate Practice (DIP) beliefs, as well as providing that DAP or DIP beliefs are not independent in their nature; they are influenced by parental involvement beliefs.


Abstract Childhood obesity is a highly complex issue with serious health and environmental implications. It has been postulated that young children (preschool-aged in particular) are able to internalise positive environmental beliefs. Applying a socioecological theoretical perspective, in this discussion paper we argue that although children may internalise such beliefs, they commonly behave in ways that contradict these beliefs as demonstrated by their consumer choices. The media directly influences these consumer choices and growing evidence suggests that media exposure (particularly commercial television viewing) may be a significant "player" in the prediction of childhood obesity. However, there is still debate as to whether childhood obesity is caused by digital media use per se or whether other factors mediate this relationship. Growing evidence suggests that researchers should examine whether different types of content have conflicting influences on a child's consumer choices and, by extension, obesity. The extent to which young children connect their consumer choices and the sustainability of the produces they consume with their overall health and wellbeing has not previously been researched. To these ends, we call for further research on this socioecological phenomenon among young children, particularly with respect to the influence of digital media use on a child's consumer behaviours.


During infancy, humans have a limited attention span, a limited working memory and an initial lack of social experience. Given these constraints, why are infants so socially competent and how are they capable of processing such complex social information? Here we present an information-processing hypothesis that may account for these early social capacities. We outline those aspects of the social situation that must be processed for the infant to respond in a socially appropriate manner. We also outline potential cognitive sequences through which this information is processed. We conclude that the infant uses social information to determine what is relevant in the environment and in doing so, the infant uses each successive aspect of the social world to filter the overall amount of available information to a manageable size.


This article provides an evaluation of the effect of the macroeconomic factors on credit risk in Tunisian banks. These factors are mainly the financial liberalization and the monetary policy. The first is manifested through the liberalization of interest rates, competition and the entry of foreign banks. The second, on the other hand, is exerted by the supervising authorities and includes the interest rate, the injection of money and the regulatory ratio. In order to empirically validate this work, we tested the impact of liberalization (concentration index) measured by the degree of penetration of foreign banks in Tunisia, the prudential regulation and the monetary policy on the credit risk in Tunisian banks. A negative relationship between liberalization and credit risk was found. Accordingly, the entry of foreign banks in Tunisia reduces the risk by strengthening the adequacy of the borrowers selection and improving the regulations imposed by the Central Bank of Tunisia (CBT).


In this paper, an aerosol-based process is shown for imparting antibacterial property to textiles. Metal nanoparticles (copper and silver) are produced by means of DC electrical discharges (glow and arc) between two electrodes in nitrogen at ambient pressure and passed through textile fabrics (cotton, polyester and lyocell) which act as filter media. The particle retention efficiency of the fabrics is measured in dependence of particle size and face velocity. The antibacterial performance of the fabrics treated with metal nanoparticles and its durability to wash is assessed according to industry standards. Loads of about 200 ppm (2x10-2 %wt.) of nanoparticles of copper or silver give strong antibacterial property but the colour and hand feeling of the fabrics are significantly affected. Nanosilver loads in the order of 50 ppm (5x10-3 %wt.) impart comparably high antibacterial property to the fabrics with no visible impact on colour and hand touching, and wash fastness is proven for 10 washes. Small silver nanoparticles (<5 nm) result in much less release of silver to wash water, with respect to larger nanoparticles (>20 nm).


For linear time-varying systems with bounded system matrices we discuss the problem of stabilizability by linear state feedback. It is shown that an optimal control approach yields a criterion in terms of the cost for stabilizability. The constants appearing in the criterion of optimality allow for the distinction of exponential and uniform exponential stabilizability. We show that the system is completely controllable if, and only if, the Lyapunov exponent is arbitrarily assignable by a suitable feedback. For uniform exponential stabilizability and the assignability of the Bohl exponent this property is known. Also, dynamic feedback does not provide more freedom to address the stabilization problem.


Abstract This article looks at the promise of technology to revolutionise humanitarian action, especially in terms of the gathering and use of data. With many heralding a 'data revolution', the opportunities and enthusiasm for using social media and SMS data in crisis response are on the rise. The article constructs an analytical framework in order to scrutinise the three main claims made on behalf of technologically advanced humanitarian information systems: that they can access data more accurately, more quickly, and alter power relations in emancipatory ways. It does so in relation to two aspects of digital humanitarianism: visual technology and crisis mapping, and big data. The article is partly informed by a historical perspective, but also by interview and other material that suggests some of the claims made on behalf of technology are exaggerated. In particular, we argue that the enthusiasm for the data is vastly outstripped by the capacity to meaningfully analyse it. We conclude by scoping the implications of the future technological evolution of humanitarianism, in particular by examining how technology contributes to what Duffield terms 'post-modern humanitarianism'.


This book investigates how citizens in the United States and Russia have used the democratic process to force their governments to address the horrendous environmental damage caused by the nuclear arms race. It is the first in-depth comparative study of environmental activism and democracy in the two countries. Critical Masses focuses on two crucial areas--the Hanford Reservation in Washington State and the Mayak Complex in Russia--that were at the heart of their nations' nuclear weapons programs, examining how the surrounding communities were affected. It explores nuclear weapons production, how both governments concealed environmental and health dangers from people living nearby, and how Russian and American citizens think about environmental issues. And it provides insights into the process of democratization in Russia and the limits of democracy in the United States, as well as the development of nuclear policy in the post-Cold War era.


The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of alternative advertising presentation formats, and the quantity of information presented in advertisements in overcoming possible information-processing deficits in senior adults that could affect their recall of ad attributes and brand name, the cognitive responses generated, and attitude toward the ad. In addition, the study examined the effectiveness of retirement status as a classification or segmentation variable in comparison with the use of the more traditional classification variable, chronological age. A convenience sample of senior adult volunteers from church groups, social clubs, and civic organizations from the local area were randomly assigned to one of nine experimental conditions. The experiment utilized a simulated magazine to test the effects of presentation formats (3 levels), and quantity of information (3 levels) on senior adult's recall, cognitive responses and attitude toward the test ads. Covariates (gender, wealth, education, activity level, health, and income) were used to reduce variance. The findings clearly indicate that the presentation format of the can ad adversely affected the memory of some senior adults. In addition, the results were significantly different across the different age levels. Retirement status was less beneficial than chronological age in the current study, but did reveal a marginally significant difference between seniors due to the number of attributes contained in the test ads. The implication of findings for advertisers and those who design marketing communications for seniors are numerous, and relate to the marketer's communication goals. Senior adults may prefer print media, but the inappropriate use of presentation format and the number of product attributes in the ads could have an adverse and significant impact when communicating with senior adults. Recognition of the information-processing differences of senior adults would result in more effective marketing communications for this rapidly growing and important segment of our society.


International dispute settlement is an area of ongoing evaluation and tension within the international political economy. As states continue their negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the efficacy of international arbitration as a method of dispute settlement remains controversial. Whereas some sing its praises as a method of protecting private property interests against improper government interference, others decry investment treaty arbitration (ITA) as biased against states. The literature has thus far not disentangled how politics and development contribute to investment dispute outcomes. In an effort to control for the effect of internal state politics, this Article offers the first analysis of ITA outcomes, focusing on respondent states' development status while simultaneously controlling for states' democracy levels. Using a dataset of 159 final ITA awards from prior to January 2012, the Article conducts quantitative analyses of outcomes as a function of raw wins and losses, amounts awarded, and relative investor success. Initially, when evaluating outcomes based on a respondent state's membership in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or a state's score on the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index, it was not possible to identify a reliable link to outcomes. Only defining a respondent's development status using a World Bank classification generated reliable differences for Upper-Middle income states, and only for two measures of outcome — namely raw wins and amounts awarded. Using the World Bank measure, there was no statistically significant relationship with relative investor success. None of these analyses, however, controlled for the level of internal state democracy to identify how democracy levels, which can reflect good governance infrastructure, might contribute to outcomes. After controlling for the effect of a state's internal democracy levels, twelve analyses were unable to identify a reliable link with ITA outcomes and development status irrespective of how development status was defined. While the Article cannot conclusively exclude the possibility of systemic bias in ITA against the developing world, it provides additional evidence suggesting the potential absence of such bias or the importance of alternative explanatory variables. The results also suggest that focusing on development status alone may be unwarranted, and future research should explore internal levels of democracy or other indicators of good governance, which could be associated with the decreased risk of a state loss. The Article concludes that normative choices focused solely on respondent state development status miss an opportunity to craft normative solutions tailored to redress tangible problems. By focusing on variables that demonstrably contribute to variance in ITA outcomes, stakeholders could construct more appropriate international dispute settlement processes in a time of international economic transition.


Geologic sequestration of CO2 into unmineable coal seams is proposed as a way to mitigate the greenhouse gas effect and potentially contribute to economic prosperity through enhanced methane recovery. In 2009, the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research (VCCER) injected 907 tonnes of CO2 into one vertical coalbed methane well for one month in Russell County, Virginia (VA). The main objective of the test was to assess storage potential of coal seams and to investigate the potential of enhanced gas recovery. In 2014, a larger scale test is planned where 20,000 tonnes of CO2 will be injected into three vertical coalbed methane wells over a period of a year in Buchanan County, VA. During primary coalbed methane production and enhanced production through CO2 injection, a series of complex physical and mechanical phenomena occur. The ability to represent the behavior of a coalbed reservoir as accurately as possible via computer simulations yields insight into the processes taking place and is an indispensable tool for the decision process of future operations. More specifically, the economic viability of projects can be assessed by predicting production: well performance can be maximized, drilling patterns can be optimized and, most importantly, associated risks with operations can be accounted for and possibly avoided. However, developing representative computer models and successfully simulating reservoir production and injection regimes is challenging. A large number of input parameters are required, many of which are uncertain even if they are determined experimentally or via in-situ measurements. Such parameters include, but are not limited to, seam geometry, formation properties, production constraints, etc. Modeling of production and injection in multi-seam formations for hydraulically fractured wells is a recent development in coalbed methane/enhanced coalbed methane (CBM/ECBM) reservoir modeling, where models become even more complex and demanding. In such cases model simulation times become important. iii The development of accurate simulation models that correctly account for the behavior of coalbeds in primary and enhanced production is a process that requires attention to detail, data validation, and model verification. A number of simplifying assumptions are necessary to run these models, where the user should be able to balance accuracy with computational time. In this thesis, preand post-injection simulations for the site in Russell County, VA, and preliminary reservoir simulations for the Buchanan County, VA, site are performed. The concepts of multi-well, multi-seam, explicitly modeled hydraulic fractures and skin factors are incorporated with field results to provide accurate modeling predictions.


My research explores the language and education situation in the Kumaun region of North India from the perspectives of rural Kumauni young women and in light of their views on empowerment and their aims for the future. My questions address language and education issues in the Kumaun 1) in relation to national policies and local ideologies, 2) as experienced and negotiated by young women, and 3) as applied in a unique Gandhian educational context. Based at Lakshmi Ashram, a Gandhian boarding school serving disadvantaged girls, I used ethnographic methods, focusing on a group of Kumauni young women. National-level language planning through the Indian Census, Constitution, and educational policies minimize some diversity. Locally, discourses about language and dialect, or bhasha and boli, and mother tongue allow for flexible categories and identities. Medium of instruction also takes new meaning through informal multilingual classroom practices. Each language – English, Hindi, Kumauni, and Sanskrit – is valued in its place or environment and in relationship with the other languages. Meanwhile educational opportunities vary in quality and reputation, including a push for English education. While constrained by social and economic realities, Kumauni young women look for ways to improve their lives. Alternative values advocated at the Ashram, and negotiated by the young women, point to empowerment as involving high thinking, self-confidence, and progress within community. I conclude using the ecology of language and continua of biliteracy to highlight significant themes and exploring the issues of collaboration, community, and ecology in relation to language and education. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Education First Advisor Nancy H. Hornberger Second Advisor Kathryn Howard Third Advisor Daniel Wagner


The Semantic Web aims to create a web of data where contents can be easily discovered and integrated using metadata. Many ontologies have been proposed over the years in different domains, thus producing a semantic heterogeneity that is difficult to manage. Various automated ontology mapping techniques and tools have been developed to facilitate the bridging and integration of distributed data repositories. Nevertheless, such tools are still in need of human supervision to ensure accuracy. The spread of Web 2.0 approaches demonstrate the possibility and the added value of using collaborative techniques for improving data sharing and consensus reaching. In this paper, we describe our prototype for collaborative ontology mapping and data sharing. The possibility to exploit ontology alignments for querying data is a key capability for data sharing in a networked ontology environment.


We describe a novel approach to statistical machine translation that combines syntactic information in the source language with recent advances in phrasal translation. This method requires a source-language dependency parser, target language word segmentation and an unsupervised word alignment component. We align a parallel corpus, project the source dependency parse onto the target sentence, extract dependency treelet translation pairs, and train a tree-based ordering model. We describe an efficient decoder and show that using these tree-based models in combination with conventional SMT models provides a promising approach that incorporates the power of phrasal SMT with the linguistic generality available in a parser.


Discharge and N content of surface water flowing from four Karst watersheds on Konza Prairie Research Natural Area, Kansas, managed with different burn frequencies, were monitored from 1986 to 1992. The goal was to establish the influence of natural processes (climate, fire, and bison grazing) on N transport and concentration in streams. Streams were characterized by variable flow, under conditions that included an extreme flood and a drought during which all channels were dry for over a year. The estimated groundwater/stream water discharge ratio varied between 0.15 to 6.41. Annual N transport by streams, averaged across all watersheds and years, was 0.16 kg N ha -1 yr -1 . Annual N transport per unit area also increased as the watershed area increased and as precipitation increased. Total annual transport of N from the prairie via streams ranged from 0.01 to 6.0% of the N input from precipitation. Nitrate and total N concentrations in surface water decreased (P < 0.001, r values ranged from 0.14-0.26) as length of time since last fire increased. Increased watershed area was correlated negatively (P < 0.0001) to stream water concentrations of NO 3 - -N and total N (r values = -0.43 and -0.20, respectively). Low N concentration is typical of these streams, with NH 4 + -N concentrations below 1.0 μg L -1 , NO 3 - -N ranging from below 1.4 to 392 μg L -1 , and total N from 3.0 to 714 μg L -1 . These data provide an important baseline for evaluating N transport and stream water quality from unfertilized grasslands.


We work in the UK service based at the Tavistock Centre in London, offering assessment and intervention for children and adolescents experiencing difficulties with their gender identity development. In addition, we work with children with a transgendered parent. The multidisciplinary team includes clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and child psychotherapists, working in association with two consultant paediatric and adolescent endocrinologists at UCLH who provide regular adolescent liaison clinics.

Our assessments consider the holistic context of such a presentation, including the history of the gender dysphoria, the family history and young person's developmental and medical history, the attitudes
of the family and school, and sources of stress and supports. We particularly focus on areas of gender identity such as the young person's identity statements, cross-dressing, toy and role-play, peer relations, mannerisms and voice, anatomic dysphoria, and rough-and-tumble play (Zucker &?Bradley, 1995). We also include risk assessments around any self-harm and possible suicidal ideation and, with the family's permission, liaise with any local services and the school.

The service operates a network model of care, and team members regularly convene and attend local meetings to discuss the needs of the young person in relation to their gender identity development, and agree roles with all involved professionals.

Following our assessment, we might recommend family and/or individual work to monitor the gender dysphoria and address associated difficulties, such as low mood and distress and problems with bullying and stigma in the family, local community or school. We also work closely with schools and local services in order to reduce shame and secrecy, consider the boundaries between what is public and private with regard to information sharing and to manage risk and promote support and coping. Our interventions involve a staged model of care, which include:

Stage 1: Following assessment, further therapeutic exploration of the nature of gender identity. In adolescents, reversible physical interventions are considered if their gender identity disorder (GID) persists and shows a high level of consistency.

Stage 2: Includes wholly reversible intervention to produce a state of biological neutrality – known as hormone-blocking treatment. This occurs alongside continued psychological exploration, support and physical monitoring by a consultant paediatric endocrinologist.I Stage 3: Is considered if the GID persists during Stage 2. Includes partially reversible interventions, e.g. the administration of cross-sex hormone that masculinises or feminises the body.

Stage 4: Includes irreversible interventions, such as surgical procedures. This is not considered before the age of 18, and so the Gender Identity Development Service would facilitate a smooth transition to the adult Gender Identity Service who are able to provide these interventions. Transfer to adult services would usually happen prior to the introduction of cross-sex hormones.

The figures usually quoted suggest that for individuals presenting with GID prior to adolescence about 80 per cent do not persist and find a solution other than gender transition. The most common outcome in this group is homosexuality and bisexuality. Conversely for those who present to the service in adolescence the figures are reversed and about 80 per cent pursue physical sex re-assignment. The recent newspaper articles assume that allowing the young person to live in a role of their perceived identity necessarily leads to gender reassignment. Our experience shows that some young people who lived in role from the age of nine or ten changed during their pubertal development.
There is currently much debate around the timing of physical interventions. In a number of countries in Europe and America the hormone blocker is being offered in earlier stages of puberty. If the young person decides not to pursue physical gender reassignment the blocker is stopped, and their own sex hormones resume. But the debate revolves around the reversibility of this intervention – physical and also psychological, in terms of the possible influence of sex hormones on brain and identity development.

Zucker, K.J. & Bradley, S.J. (1995). Gender identity disorder and psychosexual problems in children and adolescents. New York: Plenum Press.


As part of LOOK 17 Photography Festival, the Institute of Urban Dreaming (IUD) organised an interactive installation and a number of public talks exploring the current gentrification of domestic landscapes in China at the Tate Liverpool's Exchange Space http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/project/look17. The installation drew on our extensive fieldwork of domestic sites undergoing change in Guangzhou; presenting a range of videos, research materials and photographs for the public to engage with. The work is part of IUD's ongoing witnessing of the dispossession and displacement produced by contemporary strategies of capital accumulation used by corporations / governments centred on domestic housing.

The interactive installation was also accompanied by two free public events that hosted a range of talks by academics, practitioners and activists. The events aimed at interrogating the processes behind the current phase of Chinese 'hyper-urbanization'. These speakers included: Dr Paul Waley, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Dr Paul Watt, Department of Geography, Birkbeck, University of London, Marianna Tsionkis, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Dr Eugenie Shinkle, University of Westminster, Professor Loretta Lees, University of Leicester and ourselves, amongst others.

The range of speakers for both events examined the socio-political consequences of this urbanization and its representation in visual media. Part of our research is to bring different knowledge disciplines and creative practices into dialogue and foster such interdisciplinary discussions. The second event linked to the host city by bringing in activists from the North Docks Community Group to discuss these issues in relation to Liverpool's current stage of proposed urban changes. The event and recordings of the talks are publicly available on: https://iudblog.org/2017/06/08/architectures-of-displacement-guangzhou-china-tate-liverpool/


Automatic image registration is a basic step in multi-sensor data integration in remote sensing and photogrammetric applications such as data fusion. The effectiveness of Mutual Information (MI) as a technique for automated multi-sensor image registration has previously been demonstrated for medical and remote sensing applications. In this paper, a new General Weighted MI (GWMI) approach that improves the robustness of MI to local maxima, particularly in the case of registering optical imagery and 3D point clouds, is presented. Two different methods including a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and Kernel Density Estimation have been used to define the weight function of joint probability, regardless of the modality of the data being registered. The Expectation Maximizing method is then used to estimate parameters of GMM, and in order to reduce the cost of computation, a multi-resolution strategy has been used. The performance of the proposed GWMI method for the registration of aerial orthotoimagery and LiDAR range and intensity information has been experimentally evaluated and the results obtained are presented.


Economic inequality is soaring and the consensus in some circles is that corporations' myopic focus on profits is largely to blame. At first glance a stakeholder approach would seem an appealing solution: surely if the purpose of corporations were not wealth maximization for shareholders but rather to create value for all constituents — thus including employees, customers, suppliers, and communities — we would make strides towards combating inequality, the theory goes. Corporations themselves, through their powerful lobbying group, the Business Roundtable, recently disclaimed shareholder primacy and embraced stakeholder theory. However, far from successfully redressing inequality, a stakeholder approach is unlikely to achieve meaningful redistribution of power and resources to weaker constituents and would likely work in the opposite direction. We suggest that a stakeholder approach gives corporate executives both a sword and a shield with which to preserve their advantageous status quo. First, executives can justify stepped up lobbying efforts as part of their mandate to consider the interests of all constituents, capturing the agenda with respect to distributing more power and resources to weaker constituents. Second, because a switch to a stakeholder approach would appear as a significant change — despite not actually accomplishing meaningful redistribution — it would require significant political capital to be adopted, and once adopted would occupy an out-sized portion of legislative and regulatory space, depleting energy and resources necessary to pass reform that is more likely to actually impact inequality. In fact, in reviewing the likely drivers of inequality, we find that key factors include higher concentration leading to the shrinking of the labor share and increased monopsony in labor markets, the gradual weakening of worker protections from labor market institutions, and giving up on progressive taxation as a re-distributive mechanism. Broadening corporate purpose alone would do next to nothing to impact these fields, so to address rampant economic inequality corporate scholars will need to eschew the academic silo and reach across disciplines to identify more effective policies.


This study identifies the cause of unstable vibrations that sporadically occur in decanting centrifuges as being caused by a combination of internal bearing clearance, conveyor unbalance and low bearing loads. These centrifuges are different from other rotating equipment common in industry (pumps, fans, compressors, electric motors) in that they are dual rotor systems – one rotor inside the other. Unbalance in either rotor can produce severe vibration of the whole machine when the running speed is close to a mode of vibration – that is, running at or near a critical speed. The external rotor, called the bowl, is subjected to an internal pressure generated by the centrifugal force of the product being separated. The internal rotor is supported from the bowl and is in the form of an auger screw. The main supporting bearings are subjected to forces from both the bowl and the auger the liquid end bearing also supports the gearbox. Being able to predict critical speeds through numerical or computational analysis is a necessary step in the design process or for troubleshooting vibration problems. As part of the study, the main rolling element bearings were replaced by oil-film journal bearings to assess the viability of their use. Journal bearings are simpler, of lower cost and generate less noise than their rolling element counterparts. However, instability in running above the first critical speed can result due to oil film forces and internal hysteresis of the rotor assembly. The auger is asymmetric so instability in running is possible at around half the first critical speed. This study was undertaken to understand the dynamics of decanting type centrifuges and develop a methodology for identifying their critical speeds and cause of unstable vibration. In the longer term this will assist in the generation of new designs that are quieter, use less energy and have better separation efficiencies.


The work presented in this thesis is concerned with modelling the growth of tissue constructs, with particular focus on the effects the local micro environment has on the cell cycle and metabolism. We consider two cases; multicellular tumour spheroids and orthopaedic tissue constructs. This thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part we will present a multispecies model of an avascular tumour that studies how a cell's metabolism affects the cell cycle, spheroid growth and the mechanical forces that arise during growth. The second part consists of a study of the growth of an engineered cartilaginous tissue layer. Experimental observations will be compared to a model of the distribution of cells and extracellular matrix. The efficiency of cancer treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy are sensitive to the local environment of a cell. Therefore an essential task in tumour biology is to understand the microenvironment within a tumour. Many mathematical models study the effects of nutrients and waste products, usually assuming growth is limited by the diffusion of a single nutrient. We will look in detail at the metabolic pathways from which cells obtain energy (ATP). A multispecies model is presented that considers the transition from aerobic to anaerobic respi- ration and includes relevant chemical and ionic buffering reactions and transport mechanisms. Results show that potential ATP production affects the cell cycle and consequently the rate of growth. This model is simplified using mathematical analysis and is integrated with a morphoelastic model to study the development of mechanical forces. The model shows that mechanical effects are particularly important during necrosis, where large tensile forces are shown to develop. A review of the equations governing nutrient conservation is given, by developing alternative macroscopic equations based on the microscopic features of a tumour using homogenization techniques. The second part of this thesis studies the growth of cartilaginous tissue. Bio-materials are being engineered in an attempt to replace dysfunctional tissue in the human body using cells extracted from living organisms. We model the growth of a cartilaginous tissue construct that has been grown from expanded chondrocytes seeded onto collagen coated filters. A model is developed to explain the distribution of cells and the concentration and distribution of collagen and GAGs. This is achieved by studying the local environment of the cells. Model predictions are compared to a range of experimental data and show most of the growth takes place in the upper region of the construct.