An important debate in corporate governance is whether passive funds — a term that includes ETFs and index funds — have incentives to provide adequate oversight of their portfolio companies. One set of scholars contends that agency cost problems likely thwart passive fund stewardship for several reasons. First, passive funds suffer from an acute collective action problem because any investment in improving the performance of a company will benefit all funds that track the index equally, while only the activist fund will incur the costs. Indeed, these scholars point out that investments in stewardship are particularly costly for the passive fund portfolio manager, which lacks the firm-specific information necessary to participate in governance in a beneficial way. Second, passive fund portfolio managers may have inadequate incentives to invest in beneficial stewardship because they capture only a small fraction of the gains. And third and finally, passive fund portfolio managers have ample incentive to be excessively deferential to management, who are often their clients. These scholars conclude that because of these flawed incentives, the rise of passive investing portends economic harm and justifies wide-ranging regulatory intervention — from incentivizing passive fund stewardship, to restricting passive fund voting rights. Another set of scholars contend that passive fund stewardship is likely to be as good as, if not better than, stewardship by other investors. They contend that passive funds compete for investor dollars not just against other passive funds, but also against actively managed mutual funds. This competition provides an incentive for passive funds to invest in stewardship that will attract asset inflows. In addition, the large size of the institutional investors that offer passive funds affords them economies of scale and scope in stewardship. And because these large institutional investors have massive stakes in portfolio companies, capturing even a small fraction of any gain will substantially increase their take home pay, providing an incentive to be engaged for a small number of material votes that occur each year. These scholars contend — in the words of Adam Smith, and later, Jack Bogle — that the invisible hand is all that is needed. This is a chapter from the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Law and Economics (Adam Badawi, ed., 2nd edition 2020).


In four short meditations, approaches to time and the future are explored through both a time and futures lens. A compressed poetic form of expression is used to distil the essence of the processes involved. The shapes emerge in the writing and once discernable they begin to guide the choice of words. Theory becomes a playful activity that draws on a deep and extensive pool of time theory. The first meditation expresses the difficulty for conventional social science to engage with the future. The second depicts temporal relations of modernity that encompass features shared by humanity across the ages. The third piece explores time encoded in nature, money and society. The last meditation engages with approaches to sustainability and indicates the significant differences that arise with the respective standpoints of the present future and future present. It closes the circle back to the first meditation on disciplinary challenges presented by the temporal and engagement with future presents.


Introduction: As oogenesis is a continuum of months, oocyte quality will be dictated by events that occur during both the growth and maturation stages of development. Morphological variation of the oocyte and embryo result from intrinsic factors such as age and genetic defects or extrinsic factors such as stimulation protocol, culture condition, and nutrition. Controlled ovarian stimulation (COH) interferes with the balance of forces within the ovary and overrides their endogenous pattern of control to optimize normal selection process. Aim: 1. To compare the embryogenesis and outcome of assisted reproductive technology (ART) in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and non-PCOS women. 2. To determine whether embryo quality, implantation rate (IR) and clinical pregnancy rate (CPR) are related to estradiol (E2) or progesterone (P4) levels on the day of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective case–control study of 425 women at a Tertiary Care Center from January 2017 to December 2018. Of these 183 were PCOS and 242 non-PCOS matched for body mass index and age. We compared the follicle stimulating hormone, antral follicle count (AFC), anti-Mullerian hormone, thyroid-stimulating hormone, total gonadotropin utilized, total days of stimulation, estradiol (E2), and progesterone (P4) on the day of hCG trigger between both groups. Before entering the in vitro fertilization program, patients were classified into PCOS and non-PCOS depending on the AFC at the baseline scan done on day 2/3 of the menstrual cycle. We calculated the fertilization, cleavage, blastocyst formation rate, and utilization rate of the embryos from the total oocytes retrieved and fertilized in four different groups classified according to the E2 levels on the day of the hCG (≤1000, 1001–2000, 2001–3000, >3000 pg/ml) in both PCOS and non-PCOS women. We also looked at the IR and CPR in the above four groups in fresh cycle and included the frozen embryo transfer cycles to calculate the utilization rate. Statistical comparison was done using the Mann–Whitney U test. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the fertilization rate (P = 0.803), cleavage rate was higher in PCOS group (P = 0.001) and blastocyst formation rate was higher in non-PCOS group (P < 0.001). There was no statistical difference seen in the grade of the embryos on day 3 and day 5 across the E2 groups in the PCOS women. The quality of embryos on D3 and D5 was much better in non-PCOS group with E2 levels more than 2000 pg/ml. The IR was similar in both PCOS and non-PCOS group when E2 values were <2000 pg/ml and >3000 pg/ml. The IR was higher in the PCOS group as compared to non-PCOS in women with E2 between 2000 and 3000 (P = 0.020). No difference in the CPR across the E2 groups. The utilization rate of the embryos per egg retrieved and per 2PN was statistically higher in patients with an E2 < 1000 pg/ml in PCOS women. The utilization rate of the embryos per egg retrieved and per 2PN was significantly higher in non-PCOS when E2 was more than 2000 pg/ml. Conclusion: As embryogenesis and endometrial receptivity can be affected by high E2 and P4 levels it is highly recommended to closely monitor COS cycles by measuring serum E2 and P4 levels on D2 and at the time of hCG trigger. The dose of gonadotropins dose should be chosen in such a way that the number of oocytes retrieved should not be more than 10 to 12. When E2 and P4 are elevated over a threshold value, one should cryopreserve the embryo and transfer them in the subsequent cycle to decrease the incidence of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and improve the IR.


Troubleshooting and Maintaining Cisco IP Networks (TSHOOT) Foundation Learning Guide Troubleshooting and Maintaining Cisco IP Networks (TSHOOT) Foundation Learning Guide is your Cisco authorized learning tool for CCNP TSHOOT 300-135 exam preparation. Part of the Cisco Press Foundation Learning Guide series, it teaches you how to maintain and monitor even the most complex enterprise networks. Youll compare and master todays leading approaches to troubleshooting, including an efficient structured process for maximizing network uptime in the context of your own organizations policies and procedures. Coverage includes gathering information, capturing traffic, using event notifications, working with maintenance and trouble-shooting tools, and more. Throughout, each chapter opens with a list of topics that clearly identify its focus. Each chapter ends with a summary of key concepts for quick study, as well as review questions to assess and reinforce your understanding. To deepen your hands-on expertise and strengthen your exam readiness, this guide also presents five full chapters of real-world troubleshooting case studies. This guide is ideal for all certification candidates who want to master all the topics covered on the TSHOOT 300-135 exam. --The official textbook for the Cisco Networking Academy CCNP TSHOOT 300-135 course --Thoroughly introduces proven troubleshooting principles and common troubleshooting approaches --Defines structured troubleshooting and reviews its subprocesses --Shows how to integrate troubleshooting into day-to-day network maintenance processes --Covers information gathering on Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing with IOS show and debug commands, ping, and telnet --Introduces specialized tools for capturing traffic, gathering information (SNMP and NetFlow), and receiving network event notifications (EEM) --Uses extensive troubleshooting examples and diagrams to support explanations and strengthen your understanding --Presents self-assessment review questions, chapter objectives, and summaries to facilitate effective studying


Caenorhabditis elegans uses chemosensation to determine its course of development. Young larvae can arrest as dauer larvae in response to increasing population density, which they measure by a nematodeexcreted pheromone, and decreasing food supply. Dauer larvae can resume development in response to a decrease in pheromone and increase in food concentration. We show here that two novel G protein alpha subunits (GPA-2 and GPA-3) show promoter activity in subsets of chemosensory neurons and are involved in the decision to form dauer larvae primarily through the response to dauer pheromone. Dominant activating mutations in these G proteins result in constitutive, pheromone-independent dauer formation, whereas inactivation results in reduced sensitivity to pheromone, and, under certain conditions, an alteration in the response to food. Interactions between gpa-2, gpa-3 and other genes controlling dauer formation suggest that these G proteins may act in parallel to regulate the neuronal decision making that precedes dauer formation.


This Chapter in Preventing Capture: Special Interest Influence in Regulation and How to Limit It, examines the extent to which consumer empowerment programs can counteract industry influence over insurance regulation. Consumer empowerment programs come in two basic varieties. Proxy advocacy creates independent government entities that are tasked with representing consumer interests in regulatory processes, while tripartism empowers independent public interest groups to influence regulation. Focusing on three short case studies, the Chapter offers several preliminary thoughts regarding the optimal deployment and design of these programs in insurance regulation. First, it suggests that proxy advocacy can effectively counteract industry influence where there exists a discernible consumer position, new information is likely to impact regulatory results, and the involvement of non-industry stakeholders is limited. These conditions are met in a broader set of circumstances than the current deployment of proxy advocacy might suggest. Second, it argues that tripartism may be more desirable than proxy advocacy when a clear consumer position is difficult to identify or the threat of political pressure is an important tool to influence results. However, the Chapter cautions that tripartism may be ineffective where there does not exist a sufficient network of public interest groups, which is a substantial risk in regulatory contexts that resemble insurance.


Plants are a rich source of antibiotics, but screening all the existing plant species for biological activity using current methods can be time and resource consuming. The present study is to investigate whether powdered plant materials would perform as well as plant extracts in the screening of plants with antimicrobial activity. In the new method proposed (STAMP), we compared in vitro antimicrobial activity of powdered plant materials from 12 species against bacteria and fungi. We confirmed these results with their corresponding aqueous (wet) and hydro-alcoholic extracts and one species testing the antimicrobial activity of two isolated compounds. Compared with hydro-alcoholic extracts, screening using the powdered plant materials correctly identified the majority of the species with antimicrobial activity against Candida albicans (sensitivity 91%, specificity 86%), C. parapsilosis (sensitivity 100%, specificity 67%), and Staphylococcus aureus (sensitivity 64%, specificity 86%). For bacteria, the method performed better in a pH of 9.0. The antimicrobial activity of two compounds isolated from one species (maytenin and netzahualcoyone) confirmed the results. In conclusion, the use of powdered plant materials for screening plants with antimicrobial properties is a cheap, widely available, technically easy, time sparing, reproducible, and sensitive method and can significantly shorten the time and money spent during drug development.


Many chemical and physical factors govern the mobility of metal contaminants in soils and clay systems; some of these chemical factors include mineralogical composition, cation exchange capacity, organic matter content, pH and the ionic strength of soil water. This makes understanding and therefore predicting the fate of metal contaminants in soils a complex undertaking.
There were two broad objectives in this study. The first was to investigate binary and ternary sorption systems, with the aim to understand the effects that factors such as pH, ionic strength, organic matter and metal concentrations, have on sorption of simple clay minerals (bentonite and kaolinite) with metals (cadmium, caesium, nickel and strontium). The second was to investigate the retention of heavy metals and radionuclides by well characterised organic-rich and organic-poor clay soils, breaking them down to their individual components to help understand the effects of each component separately, the study also tested to see if the additivity principle holds for these heavy metals and radionuclides, the additivity principle presumes that the overall sorption behaviour of a complex mixture is a summation of the weighted individual sorption behaviours of its constituents. The study also determined the relationship between the natural organic matter (NOM) content and cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the soils and how these affect the mobility of the metals, while also considering the relative importance of the speciation of the metals.
Two British clay soils (Mercia Mudstone and London Clay) and two Nigerian soils (an organic-rich Ikeja Loam and the other organic-poor Magodo Laterite) were characterised by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Batch techniques were employed for the sorption studies, and radiometric techniques, ICP-OES and ICP-MS were used to quantify metal distribution between phases.
The sorption of dissolved organic matter to clay minerals is very dependent on pH; this dependence is greater with increasing concentration of organic matter. The formation of metal-humate complexes is dependent on the nature of the metal and pH. Caesium exhibits no discernible sorption to humic acid, cadmium sorption is enhanced by increasing alkalinity but this enhancement is slightly reduced in higher concentrations of humic acid, nickel sorption is mostly unaffected by pH except in higher concentrations of humic acid and enhanced only under very low concentrations of humic acid, while strontium sorption to humic acid is reduced with increasing alkalinity. The nature and preference of humic acid sorption for these metals are vital to understanding the role played by humic acid in the ternary sorption studies of metals, humic acid and clay minerals.
Strongly acidic conditions dominate other factors affecting sorption such as ionic strength in sorption of metals to clay minerals. Caesium sorption to bentonite at pH 4 is poor and almost unaffected by ionic strength of the electrolyte solution; saturation of sorption sites is reached with low amounts of adsorbed caesium. Strontium also binds poorly to bentonite at pH 4, more so than caesium, but an ionic strength effect on sorption still exists and is discernible even under these conditions. Increasing alkalinity has the expected effect of increasing sorption capacity of bentonite for both metals.
Bentonite has poor sorption properties, having low affinity for caesium and strontium, but has greater affinity for caesium than strontium. The presence of humic acid can enhance or suppresses sorption, this varies from metal to metal and from solid to solid, the degree of enhancement or suppression also depends on humic acid concentration.
Kaolinite has better sorption properties than bentonie. Cadmium has greater sorption affinity for kaolinite in the absence of humic acid, but nickel sorption is more enhanced in the presence of humic acid. Although the presence of humic acid enhances cadmium and nickel sorption to kaolinite, low humic acid concentration provides the best conditions for maximum sorption of both metals. High concentrations of humic acid lead to colloid formation which block access of metals with larger hydration radii to sorption sites while also encouraging the formation of humic acid-metal complexes.
As with bentonite, caesium and strontium are both poorly sorbed by kaolinite. Unlike with cadmium and nickel however, the enhancement of strontium sorption is supported by higher concentrations of humic acid, these confirm a greater preference for the formation of S-HA-Sr ternary and lower preference for the formation HA-Sr binary complexes. The presence of humic acid inhibits caesium binding, and retention but this reduces with increasing alkalinity, while the reverse is the case with strontium whose retention is very poor and improved in the presence of humic acid and increasing alkalinity.
Both caesium and strontium are poorly sorbed and retained by kaolinite but their retention improves with increasing humic acid concentration and pH. Cadmium and nickel also exhibit poor retention to kaolinite but their retentions are more improved under alkaline conditions and higher humic acid concentrations, nickel more so than cadmium.
Similar sorption affinities were exhibited by the British (London Clay and Mercia Mudstone) and Nigerian soils (Magodo Laterite and Ikeja Loam) for the metals studied, showing the significance of soil constituent contribution to sorption behaviour. Both British clay matrices have affinity for the metals in the order Cs >> Cd ≈ Ni >> Sr, London Clay has the greater sorption capacity for all the metals, the clay mineral content of Mercia Mudstone is almost entirely made up of Illite while London Clay contains a mixture of smectite, illite and kaolinite with smectite being the most prevalent clay mineral phase. These confirm that smectite-rich clay systems will exhibit better sorption and retention capacities for metal contaminants.
Both Nigerian soils showed the same order of affinity for all the metals Cd >> Ni >> Cs >> Sr, cadmium s preferential sorption to kaolinite was observed in its greater sorption and retention by the Nigerian soils which are kaolinite-rich. This preferential sorption of cadmium by kaolinite is confirmed by the Standard Addition experiment where its contribution to cadmium sorption is clearly evident, a trend not replicated with nickel as the sorbing metal.
The presence of organic matter in soils or clay systems improves their metal sorption capacity significantly, especially true for insoluble organic matter, however its significance is reduced as pH increases. The contribution of organic matter also depends on the sorption affinity of the metal for organic matter; metals such like strontium are more affected by organic matter presence.
The overall sorption behaviour of complex systems such as soils is difficult to attribute to their individual constituents. The laterite soils can be considered a relatively simple soil system containing only four constituents in significant quantities, yet it is difficult to replicate its sorption behaviour using a replicate proportioned mixture of its constituent phases. The additively calculated sorption profiles for the synthetic laterite were different from those obtained experimentally, the reason for this is that the existence of significant particle size differences between the natural and synthetic soils give rise to differences in the availability of sorption sites which is evident from the different CEC values measured for both systems.


Unit commitment (UC) is an important problem
solved on a daily basis within a strict time limit. While hourly UC problems
are currently considered, they may not be flexible enough with the fast-changing
demand and the increased penetration of intermittent renewables. Sub-hourly UC
is therefore recommended. This, however, will significantly increase problem
complexity even under the deterministic setting, and current methods may not be
able to obtain good solutions within the time limit. In this paper, deterministic
sub-hourly UC is considered, with the innovative exploitation of soft
constraints – constraints that do not need to be strictly satisfied, but with
predetermined penalty coefficients for their violations. The key idea is the
"surrogate optimization" concept that ensures multiplier convergence within "surrogate"
Lagrangian relaxation as long as the "surrogate optimality condition" is
satisfied without the need to optimally solve the "relaxed problem." Consequently,
subproblems can still be formed and optimized when soft constraints are not
relaxed, leading to a drastically reduced number of multipliers and improved
performance. To further enhance the method, a parallel version is developed.
Testing results on the Polish system demonstrate the effectiveness and
robustness of both the sequential and parallel versions at finding high-quality
solutions within the time limit.


Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity, by Jonathan Friedman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. 408 pp. $34.50. As a klezmerologist, I was initially delighted to see a distinguished literary scholar turn to "klezmer" as the title-worthy metaphor for a wide-ranging study of Jewish-American modernity and its impact on contemporary culture. But the more I turned the pages, the slighter the payoff. Briefly put, the book is a loose-jointed collection of essays, mainly based in literary studies, that struggles to deliver on the literally jazzy title. By the eleven-page Conclusion, which uses the word "klezmer" once, despite being titled "the klezmering of America," I began to wonder whether the author thought that an umbrella term might substitute for a tight trajectory. It's hard to blame him. In my book on klezmer, I began with the figure of the expanding mushroom, taken from a children's story, which grows to accommodate all the forest animals seeking shelter. I compared the tale to the surprising way that the Yiddish word klezmer-professional instrumentalist-had spread by the 1990s to cover a wide variety of music, social, and personal pathways. So it's not surprising that the process plays on, but perhaps it also plays out. Freedman profiles scattered aspects of the musical history and current scene routinely referred to as "klezmer," but cannot reaUy foUow through when expanding to topics as diverse as Arthur Miller's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, Asian- and Latino-American novels, or the agonized fauxwhite hero of Philip Roth's The Human Stain. Freedman seems to know this, as he constantly undercuts his own narrative with qualifications, backpedaling and postponement of the punchline. To quote just a couple of examples, "to note these paraUels is not to stress the inevitability of the comparison" (p. 279), or " I should begin by saying that my real discomfort with the Jews-aswhite-folks argument lies not so much with the argument per se" (p. 29). This ambivalence runs deep in Freedman's deployment of klezmer as a metaphor. Brandishing the surprising adjective "klezmerical," the peroration for the lengthy Introduction argues on behalf of the enduring and endearing Jewish talent for engaging in "a syncretic, hybridizing engagement" with American culture (p. 38). This is meant to serve as counterweight to what he sees as an alarming trend towards essentialism. But just a few pages earlier, he touts "klezmer revivalists and post-klezmer Radical Jewish Culture makers" as the ones who have "created new configurations from categories (black/white, Jewish/gentile, Western/Eastern) that have long seemed perdurable, fixed" (p. …


Automatic landmarking has overcome a main drawback in Active Appearance Models (AAMs) computer vision technique: landmarks must be manually placed on training images to construct the shape mesh. Although AAMs are a well-known procedure for statistical matching of object shape and texture between images, hand-landmarking makes it very time consuming and not automatically applicable on new objects observed in images.
There is a vast body of work applying automatic landmarking on faces or body joints for AAM training and several other purposes. In this paper, first we explore the possibility to extend one of these methods to full body contours on still images supplied by a single camera and demonstrate it is a plausible approach in terms of accuracy and speed measures from experimentation. Then, a 3D upgrade approach is presented using a RGB-D sensor to detect and automatically landmark body shapes with high accuracy in real-time, as a comparison with the latest technology.
Our proposal represents a new research line in human body pose tracking with a single-view camera and the first steps of a novel contribution in learning body appearance. Hence, further implementation in robots would lead to people being recognized and identified by them with any vision resources, no matter how primitive or Advanced in human-robot interaction tasks.


The role of the sport psychologist is multifaceted. One element of this role is in using relating skills. This aspect has received little detailed attention in the sport psychology literature. In study I of the thesis, the roles of researcher and consultant were combined in an applied project with junior dlite archers. Findings from study I included using both task and ego-oriented (Duda, 1996) forms of elicitation in baseline assessment, adapting a performance profile (Butler, 1989) to be archery-specific and emphasising transfer of skills to help in other life domains. Reflections of the consultant's role included questioning the training involved in the relating skills of applied sport psychologists in the UK. A key consideration was dealing with 'issues not directly related to sport/performance' that were raised in consultations. The perceived prevalence and impact of these issues were examined further in study 2 by assessing the perceptions of athletes and other practitioners.
The findings confirmed that these issues are raised in consultations and have a perceived impact on athletes' training and competition performances. Various relating skills (including counselling skills) were highlighted as important to the role of the sport psychologist. The terminology used by respondents required clarification on practitioners' understanding of these terms in order to address further the role of relating skills for sport psychologists. Study 3 explored practitioners' use of relating skills, their understanding of various relating terms, perceptions of the importance of counselling skills and implications for the training of sport psychologists via focus group methodology. A definition of 'interaction' was developed to complement the unique qualitative analysis of data from the focus groups. Many themes emerged which included the importance of listening and interpersonal skills to the role of applied sport psychologists. Perceptions of different types of counselling existed and most of the practitioners possessed relating skills based on their 'craft' knowledge (McFee, 1993), this was contrasted with a notion of sport psychologists being 'formal' helpers (Egan, 1998) with 'professional' knowledge (Sch6n, 1983). There was a lack of clarity and diverging perceptions from the groups on various aspects of relating skills that sometimes caused underlying tensions to emerge. In conclusion, an integrated model of 'helping' for applied sport psychologists was presented which included the notion of adapting approaches and giving 'appropriate responses' based on a foundation of core relating skills developed from professional and craft knowledge. At the end of this thesis the researcher reflects on her conceptual and methodological journey, a route that encompassed different writing styles and legitimisation criteria. This journey includes a notion of development both as a researcher and consultant and in using different methodological and philosophical perspectives that were appropriate to the research questions.


Restoring and enhancing riparian vegetation on private and communal lands in Mexico is important for biodiversity conservation given the ecological significance of these areas and the scarcity of public protected areas. To enhance riparian vegetation and wildlife habitats and train local people in restoration techniques, we implemented restoration and outreach efforts on private and communal lands in the Sky Islands region of northwest Mexico. We fenced 475 ha of riparian zones from livestock, erected erosion-control structures, planted trees, and developed management agreements for cool-season grazing with landowners on 10 ranches across 3 sites in 2012-2013, then repaired fences and renegotiated agreements in 2017-2019. To foster evaluation, we used a before-after/control-impact design to measure attributes of vegetation structure and bird communities and compared baselines from 2012 with post-treatment estimates from 2019. As predicted, understory vegetation volume generally increased in treatments relative to controls (P = .09), especially when one treatment area with the lowest pre-treatment grazing impacts was censored (P = .01). Although canopy cover also increased, there was little differential change in treatments relative to controls (P ⩾ .23) due likely to longer time periods needed to realize responses. Densities of most focal bird populations varied across time periods in directions that typically matched observed changes in vegetation structure, but fewer species showed signs of differential positive change linked to treatments relative to controls. Densities of Yellow-breasted Chat, a key understory obligate and important focal species, increased in treatments relative to controls across sites, as did densities of Sinaloa Wren, which also use dense underbrush (P ⩽ .05). Positive changes by other understory obligates (eg, Common Yellowthroat, Song Sparrow) were more local but sometimes of high magnitude (>8-fold) also suggesting positive impacts of treatments. Despite mixed results over a limited time period, these patterns suggest restoration efforts drove localized recovery of understory vegetation and associated bird populations, but benefits varied widely with environmental and social factors linked to management. Greater ecological benefits to riparian areas on private and communal lands in this region can be fostered by further incentivizing construction, maintenance, and proper use of restoration infrastructure, through education, and by building relationships based on trust and credibility with landowners.


This project is a computerized information management for transcript management which will help to over-come the undesirable problem associated with misplacement of student records, student's grades, slow and strenuous accessibility of student report and record, inaccurate record keeping and poor information management within the schools. Here the aims and objectives of the study will be easily retrieved with increased data security, and there will be reduction in the amount of resources, which will lower the cost of processing of student transcript, since information is stored in a database with reduced data redundancy. This will also prevent over-working of personnel and reduce in the bulkiness of file and record. This program developed/designed will ensure easy flow of information in the school (Godfrey Okoye university), and accurate information management in all school.


Based on previous research conducted concerning eTandem or telecollaboration Foreign Language education, especially a detailed analysis of the "failed" experiences of related courses, an original pedagogical design of an eTandem course is proposed. This small-scale pilot design-based research project involved 6 students from two very different languages and cultures: Chinese/China and French/Switzerland. The eTandem Chinese-French writing course included theme-based oral communication and writing activities, peer-corrections by native speakers, and tutoring. Despite the cultural and language differences, most of the pedagogical purposes of the project have been achieved and it has proved that most potential "failures" in telecollaboration projects could be possibly avoided. The result of this pilot research has been taken into consideration for the design of a larger-scale eTandem project between Switzerland and China, following an iterative design methodology.


I show my Civil Procedure students a video on electronically stored information ("ESI") created by Jason Baron and Ralph Losey. The video, set to the type of pulsating electronic music normally heard prior to kickoff, sets forth a series of frightening factoids about ESI. For Baron and Losey, the "near future" is that litigants cannot "afford the whole truth" but they suggest (with, I hope and suspect, tongues in cheek) that the "far future" is discovery conducted by artificial intelligence agents. The answer to the challenges of E-discovery, in other words, is the creation of E-lawyers.Absent a disaster that sends civilization to the stone ages, the digitalization of life is here to stay. The complexity of managing ESI in litigation is almost certain to grow as what we can create and where we can send it grows increasingly robust. While some of these advances may aid in the management of e-discovery, it seems a safe bet that the location and production of ESI is going to get much harder before it gets appreciably easier. If defined as access to "all relevant documents," it may be that we cannot afford "the whole truth." But it is less obvious that, because of this, much of the "truth" is really lost. The idea, undergirding much of discovery practice, that any information anywhere that might conceivably be helpful on any issue ought to be available for perusal is a notion that only lawyers could love. While the growth of ESI is irresistible, it faces an unmovable limiting principle. However voluminous and dynamic electronic information may become, human beings remain blissfully limited in their capacity to process information. As long as litigation remains concerned with the endeavors of mortals, the percentage of nonduplicative ESI that is in fact relevant to the "whole truth" is likely to remain rather limited. The development of E-discovery principles and rules has been an effort to balance cost against the value of the information utilizing the traditional tools of judicial management of discovery, i.e., ad hoc and factually intensive balancing. This will continue to be necessary. But I want to suggest another paradigm. As ESI multiplies, organizations will have to find ways to retain and have access to that information which is necessary to conduct business, i.e., to sell and design things, to hire and fire people and to do all the other things that happen in the real world and become the subject of litigation. There ought to be, at minimum, a strong presumption that the retention and retrieval policies created to manage this information outside the litigation process are likely to catch almost all the information that is relevant within it.


In order to evaluation of the potassium, zinc and manganese effects on agronomic traits of soybean, a factorial experiment was conducted on 2008 growing season with three replications at Kohne-kan research field in Bojnourd, Iran. This experiment was done based on RCBD design. Treatments were, potassium in three level( 0, 80 and 160 kg/ha K2O in form of potassium sulphate fertilizer) and application of micronutrients including of, control, Zinc Librel, Manganese Librel, Zinc + Manganese Librel (1.5/1000 v/v) and also Solopotash, trade mark for soluble potassium sulphate, spraying (2/1000 v/v). Results showed potassium had no significant effects on yield, but Zn 2+ +Mn 2+ , and Solopotash increased yield via effect on yield components. The highest seed yield was obtained from application of Solopotash alone, about 4767 kg/ha. This is a result of increasing in seed number per pod, branch number and seed weight at that treatment. The greatest seed per pod was obtained from 160 kg/ha K2O + Solopotash. Application of only Mn 2+ , increased the harvest index.


According to Andre Nollkaemper, the problem of "system criminality" reveals a flaw in the international criminal law's focus on individual liability.Because many of the criminal acts prohibited by international criminal law are inextricably intertwined with the political and legal system from which it emerges, Nollkaemper argues, international criminal law should be reconsidered to address these systemic factors. Otherwise, it cannot achieve its second goal of deterring future criminal activity. In this comment, I suggest that pursuing system criminality would actually tend to worsen the problems Nollkaemper seeks to address. By widening the set of individuals who are likely to resist prosecution, the pursuit of system criminality is more likely to strengthen rather than weaken the regime's resisting international criminal prosecution, both in the short term and possibly in the long term as well. I use the recent ICC arrest warrants against Sudan's sitting President and Minister of the Interior as early evidence of the dangers of Nollkaemper's proposal.


Abiotic and biotic variables of coastal lagoons are highly heterogeneous in both space and time, and this heterogeneity complicates the assessment of lagoon ecological status. These variables are essential for monitoring and preserving of these fragile ecosystems and the resources and services they sustain. This study was designed to assess the effect of lagoon water quality on changes in fish abundance. In situ measurements of chemical and physical parameters of the Batticaloa lagoons were measured fortnightly by using a calibrated portable Hanna instruments over the different seasons from March 2012 to February 2013. Fish diversity indices for the main commercial species were calculated. Fish composition varied greatly according to the study site and the seasonal trends. Results reveal that the existing conditions, such as salinity dissolved oxygen, nitrate and pH had a strong effect on the fish community in the lagoon. The present study is commissioned to assess the seasonal variation and the status of the lagoon to make informed plans for the fishery of the lagoon patients to reap it successfully and sustainably.


Techniques employed in making production forecasts of fruit crops are somewhat different from those used for field crops. Many questions have arisen as to why this is so. This study shows the reliability of past forecasts, indicates the relative accuracy of the procedure now used and of alternative methods, and suggests under what conditions different techniques should improve the accuracy of forecasts.


The Intermountain Adaptation Partnership (IAP) identified climate change issues relevant to resource management on Federal lands in Nevada, Utah, southern Idaho, eastern California, and western Wyoming, and developed solutions intended to minimize negative effects of climate change and facilitate transition of diverse ecosystems to a warmer climate. U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service scientists, Federal resource managers, and stakeholders collaborated over a 2-year period to conduct a state-of-science climate change vulnerability assessment and develop adaptation options for Federal lands. The vulnerability assessment emphasized key resource areas - water, fisheries, vegetation and disturbance, wildlife, recreation, infrastructure, cultural heritage, and ecosystem services - regarded as the most important for ecosystems and human communities.The earliest and most profound effects of climate change are expected for water resources, the result of declining snowpacks causing higher peak winter streamflows, lower summer flows, and higher stream temperatures. These changes will in turn reduce fish habitat for cold-water fish species, negatively affect riparian vegetation and wildlife, damage roads and other infrastructure, and reduce reliable water supplies for communities. Increased frequency and magnitude of disturbances (drought, insect outbreaks, wildfire) will reduce the area of mature forest, affect wildlife populations (some positively, some negatively), damage infrastructure and cultural resources, degrade the quality of municipal water supplies, and reduce carbon sequestration. Climate change effects on recreation, a major economic driver in the IAP region, will be positive for warm-weather activities and negative for snow-based activities. IAP participants developed adaptation options that can be implemented in planning, project management, monitoring, and restoration as climate-smart responses to altered resource conditions.Part 1 | High-Resolution PDF (76 MB).Printed Copies Available


Molecular docking is routinely used for understanding drug–receptor interaction in modern drug design. The goal of protein docking is to obtain a model for the bound complex from the coordinates of the unbound component molecules. Current docking methods evaluate a vast number of docked conformations by simple functions that measure surface complementarily. Many proteins undergo small side chain or even backbone movements on binding of different ligands into the same protein structure. This is known as induced fit and is potentially problematic for virtual screening of databases against protein targets. In this report we investigate the limits of the flexible protein approximation used by the docking program, AutoDock, through cross-docking using protein structures of influenza hemagglutinin. Here, we describe the suitability of antiviral drugs recommended against influenza for the docking and 3D structure prediction of hemagglutinin protein of the novel influenza A virus H1N1. The 3D structure of the macromolecular complex resulting from the protein-ligand association is a very useful basis to understand its specific functions. Homology model of hemagglutinin protein was constructed using MODELLER 9v6 and the model was energy minimized and validated using Gromacs to obtain a stable structure, which was further used for 3D structure prediction and docking through molecular docking studies using Autodock. The active sites were analyzed by the program Surface Racer.


We present the first version of the Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events (ALeRCE) broker light curve classifier. ALeRCE is currently processing the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) alert stream, in preparation for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The ALeRCE light curve classifier uses variability features computed from the ZTF alert stream and colors obtained from AllWISE and ZTF photometry. We apply a balanced random forest algorithm with a two-level scheme where the top level classifies each source as periodic, stochastic, or transient, and the bottom level further resolves each of these hierarchical classes among 15 total classes. This classifier corresponds to the first attempt to classify multiple classes of stochastic variables (including core- and host-dominated active galactic nuclei, blazars, young stellar objects, and cataclysmic variables) in addition to different classes of periodic and transient sources, using real data. We created a labeled set using various public catalogs (such as the Catalina Surveys and Gaia DR2 variable stars catalogs, and the Million Quasars catalog), and we classify all objects with ≥6 g-band or ≥6 r-band detections in ZTF (868,371 sources as of 2020 June 9), providing updated classifications for sources with new alerts every day. For the top level we obtain macro-averaged precision and recall scores of 0.96 and 0.99, respectively, and for the bottom level we obtain macro-averaged precision and recall scores of 0.57 and 0.76, respectively. Updated classifications from the light curve classifier can be found at the ALeRCE Explorer website (http://alerce.online).


The culture-centered approach (CCA) foregrounds meanings from the margins as entry points for interrogating structures of health care. Through a culturally centered ethnographic examination of the ways in which family members left behind in a village in China make sense of their (in)access to health services, we seek to develop an understanding of China's new rural cooperative medical scheme (NCMS). Although structures have been theorized in earlier CCA projects, this article specifically focuses on the interpretations of health services under a newly introduced health policy framework. To our knowledge, this is the first culture-centered study of negotiations of health services in rural China amid the ongoing health reforms as China opens up to a global market economy and undergoes market reforms in the public sectors (e.g., health, education). Voices of community members point toward the inequities constituted in the structures of NCMS, corruption introduced by the transformation to a monetary economy from a cooperative-based economy of health care, and agentic expressions that imagine alternative structures of organizing health and care.


Why does the United States sign environmental treaties but not ratify them? U.S. presidents have negotiated and signed several environmental treaties that ultimately could not obtain Senate ratification. This article considers two alternative explanations. First, presidents may face divided government and upcoming elections; elections can increase uncertainty regarding ratification, because they upset majorities and change congressional preferences on issues. Such factors may have caused "involuntary" defection from international environmental cooperation. Second, compensation and compromise on enabling legislation could satisfy enough senators and their constituents to allow the legislation's passage. Failure to secure ratification may be a result of the president's overestimating the potential for negotiating a policy package capable of creating sufficient support to obtain Senate ratification. I compare domestic constraints on U.S. participation in three international environmental negotiations—climate change, biodiversity, and chemicals—to assess the alternative explanations. The cases exemplify how domestic institutions affect international environmental cooperation.


A field study was carried out in three small shallow ice-covered lakes to study heat and mass fluxes and their spatial and temporal variability. During the main part of the winter, the heat flux at the ice-water interface, being of the order 0.5-1, W m(-2), was dominated by conduction from water to ice and did not show any significant variations in time or space. The heat flux from sediments to water was the main source for the lake water heating during early and mid-winter, being depth-dependent and 1-4.5 W m(-2) in early winter, and 0.5-3 W m(-2) in late winter. A heat transport from shallow regions to deep parts was shown to occur during the winter, being of the same order as the vertical fluxes, and should thus be accounted for in any attempt to predict the temperature evolution in an ice covered lake. The salt flux from sediments was found to be of the order 1-10 x 10(-10) kg m(-2) s(-1). A comparison of this flux with salt content changes indicates that the former is of the same order as the horizontal salt flux which is directed from shallow regions to the deeper parts of a lake during winter. (Less)


Abstract The digitisation and transcription of rich archival sources and the use of statistical techniques combined with modern computing power have, over the last decade, enabled social scientists to reinterpret eighteenth-century Cape history. This review article summarises the main findings from the burgeoning literature, assesses whether these new studies refute or support earlier hypotheses, shows how new quantitative evidence can inform our understanding of the process of economic development, and appeals to historians and economists to learn each other's languages.


A thesis presented to The Department of Economics College of Humanities and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science in Economics, 2016


Purpose: To compare anterior and posterior segment parameters measured with the iVue-100 optical coherence tomography (OCT) in photopic and scotopic conditions. Methods: Central and peripheral corneal thickness, retinal nerve fiber layer and macula thickness were measured using the iVue-100 OCT in 47 healthy individuals at a higher education institution in photopic (958 lux) and scotopic (0.03 lux) conditions. Results: As the lighting conditions changed from scotopic to photopic, a significant change in pupil size was noted (P < 0.001). However, there was no significant difference in central corneal thickness measurements with this change in surrounding illumination with only the temporal peripheral corneal area showing a significant difference (3.44 μm thinner). No significant differences were found in the retinal nerve fiber layer thickness. A significant decrease in the reading was noted in only the inferior (P = 0.05) and temporal (P = 0.05) inner macula area. Conclusion: Change in the ambient lighting conditions does not result in a clinically significant difference in corneal, retinal nerve fiber layer, and macula thickness when measured with the iVue-100 OCT,


Debates about the nature of the Enlightenment date to the eighteenth century, when Immanuel Kant himself addressed the question, 'What is Enlightenment'? The contributors to this ambitious book offer a paradigm-shifting answer to that now-famous query: Enlightenment is an event in the history of mediation. Enlightenment, they argue, needs to be engaged within the newly broad sense of mediation introduced here - not only oral, visual, written, and printed media, but everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between. With essays addressing infrastructure and genres, associational practices and protocols, this volume establishes mediation as the condition of possibility for enlightenment. In so doing, it not only answers Kant's query; it also poses its own broader question: how would foregrounding mediation change the kinds and areas of inquiry in our own epoch? "This Is Enlightenment" is a landmark volume with the polemical force and archival depth to start a conversation that extends across the disciplines that the Enlightenment itself first configured.


Conventional accounts of world history tend to focus on the rise of Western civilisation and concentrate on the story of ancient Greece, the Roman empire and the expansion of Europe. The histories of the great civilisations of China, India and Japan, and therefore the experience of the majority of the world's people, have been relegated to a minor place. World History adopts a radically different approach. Starting from the assumption that the human story has to be seen in the round, it examines the evolution of humans, their lives as hunters and gatherers and their eventual adoption of agriculture, before looking at the emergence of civilisation across the globe; in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica and Peru. It goes on to tell the story of the earliest empires, emphasising not just their differences but also their similarities. It explains how contacts were established between them and how technologies, ideas and the world's great religions travelled from one to another. It describes the great empires of Islam, of China and of the Mongols. Only towards the end of the story does Europe come slowly to dominate the world, against the background of technical innovations and social and economic change.


The use of traditional medicine during pregnancy and childbirth is common among the
Black traditional cultures of Southern Africa. Any pregnancy–related problem is believed to
be somehow associated with dikgaba, a phenomenon that only indigenous healers are
capable of managing. It is therefore crucial that the midwives and other health care
professionals acknowledge the relevance of traditional medicine when dealing with clients
who belong to black traditional societies of South Africa.
The objective of the study was to explore and describe health practices related to dikgaba
in pregnancy as well as to formulate recommendations for culturally congruent and safe
midwifery care.
In–depth individual interviews were conducted to collect data from ten participants known
to be experts in kgaba remedies used during pregnancy and birth. These were traditional
healers, traditional birth attendants and those with keen interest in traditional and cultural
issues. Interviews were conducted in the participants' homes for privacy, confidentiality
and convenience.
A naturalistic and phenomenological approach using contextual exploratory and
descriptive research design was used to reach the aim of the study from the perspectives
of Batswana in the North West province.
The study revealed that an understanding of dikgaba and the related healing practices in
pregnancy and childbirth is common. This clearly motivates for better understanding of
traditional medicine by the midwives as it is relevant and justifiable.
Recommendations are made to inform the transformation of the health–care delivery
system, with specific reference to midwifery education, research and practice, in order to
make health care acceptable and accessible to all.


Heterogeneous multi-cores–platforms comprised of both general purpose and accelerator cores—are becoming increasingly common. Further, with processor designs in which there are many cores on a chip, a recent trend is to include functional and performance asymmetries to balance their power usage vs. performance requirements. Coupled with this trend in CPUs is the development of high end interconnects providing low latency and high throughput communication. Understanding the utility of such next generation platforms for future datacenter workloads requires investigations that evaluate the combined effects on workload of (1) processing units, (2) interconnect, and (3) usage models. For benchmarks, then, this requires functionality that makes it possible to easily yet separately vary different benchmark attributes that affect the performance observed for application-relevant metrics like throughput, end-toend latency, and the effects on both due to the presence of other concurrently running applications. To obtain these properties, benchmarks must be designed to test different and varying, rather than fixed, combinations of factors pertaining to their processing and communication behavior and their respective usage patterns (e.g., degree of burstiness). The 'Nectere' benchmarking framework is intended for understanding and evaluating next generation multicore platforms under varying workload conditions. This paper demonstrates two specific benchmarks constructed with Nectere: (1) a financial benchmark posing low-latency challenges, and (2) an image processing benchmark with high throughput expectations. Benchmark characteristics can be varied along dimensions that include their relative usage of heterogeneous processors, like CPUs vs. graphics processors (GPUs), and their use of the interconnect through variations in data sizes and communication rates. With Nectere, one can create a mix of workloads to study the effects of consolidation, and one can create both singleand multi-node versions of these benchmarks. Results presented in the paper evaluate workload ability or inability to share resources like GPUs or network interconnects, and the effects of such sharing on applications running in consolidated systems.


Introduction A functioning voice is essential for normal human communication. A good voice requires two moving vocal folds; if one fold is paralysed (unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP)) people suffer from a breathy, weak voice that tires easily and is unable to function normally. UVFP can also result in choking and breathlessness. Current treatment for adults with UVFP is speech therapy to stimulate recovery of vocal fold (VF) motion or function and/or injection of the paralysed VF with a material to move it into a more favourable position for the functioning VF to close against. When these therapies are unsuccessful, or only provide temporary relief, surgery is offered. Two available surgical techniques are: (1) surgical medialisation; placing an implant near the paralysed VF to move it to the middle (thyroplasty) and/or repositioning the cartilage (arytenoid adduction) or (2) restoring the nerve supply to the VF (laryngeal reinnervation). Currently there is limited evidence to determine which surgery should be offered to adults with UVFP. Methods and analysis A feasibility study to test the practicality of running a multicentre, randomised clinical trial of surgery for UVFP, including: (1) a qualitative study to understand the recruitment process and how it operates in clinical centres and (2) a small randomised trial of 30 participants recruited at 3 UK sites comparing non-selective laryngeal reinnervation to type I thyroplasty. Participants will be followed up for 12 months. The primary outcome focuses on recruitment and retention, with secondary outcomes covering voice, swallowing and quality of life. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval was received from National Research Ethics Service—Committee Bromley (reference 11/LO/0583). In addition to dissemination of results through presentation and publication of peer-reviewed articles, results will be shared with key clinician and patient groups required to develop the future large-scale randomised controlled trial. Trial registration number ISRCTN90201732; 16 December 2015.


Introduction: Sensorineural hearing loss in chronic renal failure is believed to be of mul-tifactorial etiology. Associated hypertension and diabetes mellitus, use of ototoxic drugs, hemodialysis and the changes in metabolic parameters are the various reasons quoted for the hearing loss. Objectives: Our study attempts to correlate the hearing thresholds with the multiple pa-rameters like blood levels of urea, serum cre-atinine, sodium, potassium, calcium and he-moglobin values incriminated in decreased hearing in CRF patients. Materials and methods: Prospective study of 25 patients receiving treatment for CRF. The threshold of the worsen ear was considered for statistical analysis. Results: 18% of the patients at low frequencies (250 and 500 Hz), 32% of the patients at mid-frequencies (1000 and 2000 Hz), and 72% of the patients at high frequencies (4000 and 8000 Hz) had decreased hearing for both bone and air conduction hearing. We found a positive corre-lation between hearing loss and increasing number of hemodialysis sessions, the levels of blood urea, serum creatinine, serum sodium and use of ototoxic drugs; while serum calcium, serum potassium and hemoglobin levels had a negative correlation.


Increasingly firms develop technology-based sharing approaches where users rent, lease and share products, instead of purchasing them. Particularly, the product service system (PSS) concept has recently caught attention by scholars from different disciplines, although surprisingly little from the innovation research community. The writings from our colleagues however lead us to suspect that PSS developing firms might pursue an innovation behavior that is much more in line with recent societal demands for reducing environmental externalities. Recent examples show that adopting the PSS approach could be a way even for profit-driven firms towards a more sustainable economy, actually without too much governmental intervention. However, to our knowledge this argument has yet been hardly discussed in detail. Drawing on concepts from the innovation management literature as well as from environmental management research, we contribute a model that explains why the PSS approach can shift firm innovation behavior towards generating fewer environmental externalities. This model links firm innovation behavior to three antecedents, including two product related characteristics (ownership, product purpose) and the specifics of the PSS related profit function. We argue that these antecedents differ whether firms develop products or PSSs. In the latter case the antecedent specifications impact firms' R&D objectives in a way that creates incentives to follow innovation trajectories that lead to a reduction of environmental externalities (i.e., ecoinnovation behavior).


We present an overview of the properties of nonlinear guided waves and (bright and dark) spatial optical solitons in a periodic medium created by linear and nonlinear waveguides. First we consider a single layer with a cubic nonlinear response (a nonlinear slab waveguide) embedded in a periodic layered linear medium and describe nonlinear localized modes (guided waves and Bragg-like localized gap modes) and their stability. Then we study modulational instability as well as the existence and stability of discrete spatial solitons in a periodic array of identical nonlinear layers, a one-dimensional model of nonlinear photonic crystals. We emphasize both similarities to and differences from the models described by the discrete nonlinear Schrodinger equation, which is derived in the tight-binding approximation, and the coupled-mode theory, which is valid for shallow periodic modulations.


Title of dissertation: MULTI-CRITERION DYNAMIC TRAFFIC ASSIGNMENT MODELS AND ALGORITHMS FOR ROAD PRICING APPLICATIONS WITH HETEROGENEOUS USERS Chung-Cheng Jason Lu, Ph.D., 2007 Dissertation Directed by: Professor Hani S. Mahmassani, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering This study develops a simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment, or dynamic user equilibrium (DUE), model for dynamic road pricing applications. This proposed model is considered as the bi-criterion DUE (BDUE) model, because it explicitly considers heterogeneous users with different values of time (VOT) choose paths that minimize the two path attributes: travel time and out-of-pocket cost. This study assumed trip-makers would select their respective least generalized cost paths, the generalized cost being the sum of travel cost and travel time weighted by the trip-maker's VOT. The VOT is modeled as a continuous random variable distributed across all users in a network. The BDUE problem is formulated as an infinite dimensional variational inequality (VI), and solved by a column generation-based algorithmic framework which embeds (i) a parametric analysis (PAM) to obtain the VOT breakpoints which determine multiple user classes, and find the set of extreme non-dominated paths, (ii) a simulator to determine experienced travel times, and (iii) a multi-class path flow equilibrating scheme to update path assignments. The idea of finding and assigning heterogeneous trips to the set of extreme non-dominated paths is based on the assumption that in the disutility minimization path choice model with convex utility functions, all trips would choose only among the set of extreme non-dominated paths. Moreover, to circumvent the difficulty of storing the grand path set and assignment results for large-scale network applications, a vehicle-based implementation technique is proposed. This BDUE model is generalized to the multi-criterion DUE (MDUE) model, in which heterogeneous users with different VOT and values of reliability (VOR) make path choices so as to minimize their path travel cost, travel time, and travel time variability. Another important extension of the BDUE model is the multi-criterion simultaneous route and departure time user equilibrium (MSRDUE) model, which considers heterogeneous trip-makers with different VOT and values of schedule delay (VOSD) making simultaneous route and departure time choices so as to minimize their respective trip costs, defined as the sum of travel cost, travel time weighted by VOT, and schedule delay weighted by VOSD. The MSRDUE problem is also solved by the column generation-based algorithmic framework. The Sequential Parametric Analysis Method (SPAM) is developed to find the VOT and VOSD breakpoints that define multiple user classes, and determine the least trip cost alternative (a combination of departure time and path) for each user class. MULTI-CRITERION DYNAMIC TRAFFIC ASSIGNMENT MODELS AND ALGORITHMS FOR ROAD PRICING APPLICATIONS WITH HETEROGENEOUS USERS


Balaam and Shakespeare: Two gentiles, two excellent poets, each assigned to a task, one against the biblical Israelites, one against the European Jews. Concerning Balaam, we have the text in the Torah, Numbers 22-24, testifying to visitations by God to redirect his curses to blessings upon His nation Israel. Concerning William Shakespeare (1564-1616), we have no such testimony from any source. His creation of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender of The Merchant of Venice (ca. 1596) displaying both avariciousness and tragicalness remains an unexplained phenomenon. The text of the play, I will argue, will suffice to demonstrate that indeed Divinely-driven inspiration may have again redirected a poet's intentions. The story of Balaam must have been well known to William Shakespeare. He read it in the most popular English translation of the Bible in his day, the Geneva Bible, first published by the Calvinists in Geneva in 1560, then published in England in 1575, about 20 years before he wrote The Merchant of Venice. One scholar calls it "Shakespeare's Bible." (1) Talent, intention, and perhaps embedded memory of the story may have combined to make Shakespeare ripe for such a Divine intervention. To develop my case, first permit me to briefly synopsize the Balaam confrontation in a manner appropriate to the thesis of this article. THE BALAAM SCENARIO HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The children of Israel, after the Exodus from Egypt, and after their victories over Amalek, Edom, Arad, Sihon, and Og, came unbidden to the borders of Moab. King Balak of Moab decided something has to be done about it. THE STORY There lived in the town of Pethor, near the Euphrates, a wizard named Balaam, so talented in his art that some have actually called him a prophet. (2) So King Balak hired him to curse the children of Israel. Balaam voiced no objection, but God was displeased. First he sent an angel and then Himself came to control the intended curses that Balaam was hired to heap upon His people. The Geneva Bible relates, God met Balaam ... And the Lord put an answer in Balaam's mouth and said, 'Go again to Balak, and say on this wise ...' (23:4-5). Thus, in a paroxysm of Divine inspiration, Balaam recognized Israel: 'For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations' (23:9). The Geneva Bible adds a marginal note: But shall have religion and laws apart. We shall hear oblique echoes of Balaam's apt description in Shakespeare's dialogue. Because of Balaam's persistence in attempting to fulfill Balak's commission, The Lord met Balaam [a second time], and ... said, 'Go again unto Balak and say thus ...' (23:16). And so out of the mouth of Balaam flowed remarkable passages of prophetic biblical rhetoric about the future of the Israelite nation, climaxed by: 'Behold, the people shall rise up as a lion, and lift himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down, till he eat of the prey, and till he drink the blood of the slain' (23: 24). Balak was appalled by the praises Balaam had laid, and continued to lay, upon Israel. To end the matter, Balaam rose up, and went and returned to his place, and Balak also went his way (24:25). And all this, too, in an oblique way, will be echoed in The Merchant of Venice. AFTERMATH Balaam went on to advise seducing the Israelites at Baal Peor and died an ignominous death (Josh. 13:22). In reality, nothing changed as a result of this encounter: the anti-Israelite prejudices of the ancient Near Eastern peoples were not quieted by Balaam's paeans. SHAKESPEAREAN REPRISE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Between the expulsion of Jews in 1290, because of church-fanned prejudice and a mountain of royal debts to them, and the intermittent arrival in London of Marranos--Crypto-Jews--in 1492, England was empty of Jews. …


Background: Surgical decompression of peripheral cranial and spinal nerves at several anatomically studied trigger sites has demonstrated significant efficacy in bringing permanent relief to migraine sufferers. In their experience performing frontal nerve decompression on migraine patients, the authors noticed a previously undescribed accessory nerve and vessel in the frontotemporal area, and report its implication in migraine surgery and cosmetic filler injection. Methods: A retrospective review of 113 patients who underwent frontal migraine decompression surgery with the senior author at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center from July of 2012 to May of 2016 was performed. For the included 76 patients, measurements of this nerve had been taken intraoperatively using high-definition endoscopic assistance, and topographic measurements were correlated with endoscopic location of the nerve. Results: This frontotemporal nerve (FTN) was present in 55 percent, and the bilateral incidence was 57 percent of those. An accompanying vessel was also present in 81 percent of nerve complexes. Both nerve and vessel varied in size. A large vessel was present in 8 percent of all patients, and a medium vessel was present in 20 percent. Consistently, the nerve exited a foramen in the frontal bone on average 3.4 ± 0.47 cm superior to the lateral canthus. Conclusions: The identification and proper avulsion neurectomy of this newly described sensory FTN may lead to better surgical response rate during migraine surgery. In addition, this nerve should be considered during nerve block and botulinum toxin injections in migraine treatment. The existence of the accompanying vessel could have significant implications in the safety of filler and fat injections to this area.


Through-the-Wall Imaging is an ever-expanding area in which processing time, scanning time, vertical, and horizontal resolutions have been tried to improve. In this study, several methods are investigated to obtain efficient reconstruction of through-the-wall imaging radar signals with high resolution. Microwave radar signals, which are produced in YTU Microwave Laboratory, are processed by compressive sensing (CS). B and C scanned reflection data samples collected between 1 and 7 GHz frequency band are taken randomly at 1/4, 1/2 of whole amount and reconstructed by CS method. Considering the signal structure, 10 and 20 compressible Fourier coefficients are taken through CS to analyze the difference between them. In addition, we applied synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processing, also combined with SAR-Multiple Signal Classification over raw data. Experimental performance results are given and shown in the figures with high quality.


Plant diversity is believed to govern animal community structure, yet few studies have tested this relationship. We manipulated plant species diversity and composition (2 seagrasses and 3 seaweeds) and measured the abundance, diversity, and biomass of plant-associated macroinverte- brates in a temperate, estuarine seagrass community. Animal diversity was weakly but positively related to plant diversity (Simpson's 1 - λ). Most indices of animal diversity, however, were more strongly related to total plant surface area than to plant diversity. Epifaunal abundance and biomass increased, whereas epifaunal diversity and evenness decreased with total plant surface area. Both food and habitat covary with plant surface area, providing potential mechanistic explanations for these patterns. Plant species composition had strong effects on epifaunal community structure. After statistically controlling for effects of plant surface area, epifaunal abundance and biomass remained higher, and evenness remained lower, among assemblages composed of branched (mostly seaweeds) relative to unbranched (mostly seagrasses) macrophytes. Multiple regression analyses also revealed differential use of particular plant species by epifauna. For example, amphipods responded particu- larly strongly to the coarsely branched red alga Gracilaria verrucosa. Thus, our experimental results support a strong effect of plant species composition, and little effect of plant diversity per se, on the motile macrofauna that we studied. This conclusion is consistent with results of a concurrent field sur- vey; epifaunal community structure differed among plant species and seasons, with no host-plant specialists. These results support evidence from both terrestrial and aquatic communities; ecosystem structural and functional properties are often more strongly influenced by particular attributes, rather than number of species, in a community.


We consider the estimation of a semiparametric regression model where data is independently and identically distributed. Our primary interest is on the estimation of the parameter vector, where the associated regressors are correlated with the errors and contain both continuous and discrete variables. We propose three estimators by adapting Robinson's (1988) and Li and Stengos' (1996) framework and establish their asymptotic properties. They are asymptotically normally distributed and correctly centered at the true value of the parameter vector. Among a class of semiparametric IV estimators with conditional moment restriction, the first two are efficient under conditional homoskedasticity and the last one is efficient under heteroskedasticity. They allow the reduced form to be nonparametric, are asymptotically equivalent to semiparametric IV estimators that optimally select the instrument and reach the semiparametric efficiency bounds in Chamberlain (1992). A Monte Carlo study is performed to shed light on the finite sample properties of these competing estimators. Its applicability is illustrated with an empirical data set.


In October 1998, a chemical synoptic survey was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory, in the Lower Youghiogheny River Basin in Pennsylvania to give a snap-shot of present (1998) water quality during low-flow conditions. Water samples from 38 sites--12 mainstem sites, 22 tributaries, and 4 mine discharges that discharge directly to the Youghiogheny River--were used to identify sources of contaminants from mining operations. Specific conductance, water temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen were measured in the field at each site and concentrations of major ions and trace elements were measured in the laboratory. Unaccounted for gains and losses in streamflow were measured during the study. Unaccounted for losses in streamflow might be attributed to water loss through streambed fractures. Extensive mine tunnels are present in the basin and loss of water to these tunnels seems likely. Unaccounted for gains in streamflow may be from unmeasured tributaries or surface seeps, but most of the gains are suspected to come from artesian flow through fractures in the streambed from underground mine pools. Influent flows of rust-colored water were noted in some river sections. The pH values for all the samples collected during this survey were above 5.8, and most (33 of 38 samples) were above 7.0. Samples from the four mine-discharge sites also had pH values between 6.3 and 6.7. The lowest pH (5.8) was in a tributary, Galley Run. All 38 sampling sites had net alkalinity. The alkalinity load in the Youghiogheny River increased between Connellsville and McKeesport from 35 to 79 tons per day. Above Smithton, the measured alkalinity load in the Lower Youghiogheny River agreed well with the estimated alkalinity load. Below Smithton, measured alkalinity loads in the Lower Youghiogheny River are greater than calculated loads, resulting in unaccounted for gains in alkalinity. These gains are believed to be from seeps in the streambed. Approximately one-third of the load of total alkalinity in the Youghiogheny River at McKeesport is attributed to Sewickley Creek, which contributes 14 tons per day. Sulfate concentrations in the Youghiogheny River steadily increase from 33 milligrams per liter at Connellsville to 77 milligrams per liter near McKeesport. The measured concentrations of sulfate exceeded Pennsylvania water-quality standards at four tributary sites (Galley Run, Hickman Run, Sewickley Creek, and Gillespie Run) and all four mine-discharge sites but not at any main-stem sites. A large increase in sulfate load between West Newton and Sutersville can be attributed almost entirely to the contribution from Sewickley Creek (49 tons per day). Approximately 25 percent of the load measured between Connellsville and McKeesport is unaccounted for. These gains are believed to be from seeps in the streambed from underground mine pools. Similar patterns also were observed for loads of sodium, calcium, and magnesium. Unmeasured inputs from mine rainage are believed to be the source of these loads. Elevated concentrations (above background levels) of chemicals associated with drainage from coal-mining operations were measured in samples from tributaries, especially from Galley Run, Gillespie Run, and Sewickley Creek, and from the mine-discharge sites. The synoptic survey conducted for this study was successful in identifying generalized reaches of the Youghiogheny River where unaccounted for loads of constituents associated with mining activities are entering the river. However, the survey was not able to pinpoint the location of these loads. Remote-sensing techniques, such as thermal infrared imaging by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, could be useful for determining the precise locations of these inputs.


This paper examines the effect of trade barriers on quality levels in a duopoly model for two countries where products are both vertically and horizontally differentiated. In the absence of quality regulation the producer in the large country produces a higher quality than the producer in the small country. Moreover, the quality levels between the two producers converge in case of market integration i.e. when the trade barrier is reduced. If a common minimum quality standard is introduced, which forces the low quality producer to increase the quality of his product, the high quality producer reacts strategically by lowering the quality of his product. On unregulated markets, market integration increases welfare in both countries if they are almost of similar size. However, if the countries are very asymmetrical with respect to size, market integration may harm welfare in the large country. Introducing a minimum quality standard also has ambiguous effects on welfare.


This research examines the Tree Investigators project to support science learning with mobile devices during family public programmes in an arboretum. Using a case study methodology, researchers analysed video records of 10 families (25 people) using mobile technologies with naturalists at an arboretum to understand how mobile devices supported science talk related to tree biodiversity. The conceptual framework brings together research on technological supports for science learning and research on strategies that encourage families to engage in conversations that support observation and explanation practices. Findings suggested that families engaged in high levels of perceptual talk (describing and identifying) while using mobile computers. Commonly, families articulated scientific observations when supported by prompts, visuals, and scaffolds delivered by the mobile computers. Families struggled to make explanations about the biological importance of what they saw in relation to ecological principles; however, families made connections to their everyday life within explanations they developed at the arboretum. Our research showed the importance of mobile supports that provided on-demand, localised sense-making resources for explanation building while limiting observational complexity.


An Investigation of the Effect of Segmentation on Immediate and Delayed Knowledge Transfer in a Multimedia Learning Environment Gina J. Mariano The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of segmentation on immediate and delayed recall and transfer in a multimedia learning environment. The independent variables of segmentation and non-segmentation, and immediate and delayed assessments were manipulated to assess the effects of segmentation on the participants' ability to recall and transfer information from the multimedia tutorial. Data was analyzed using a 2X2 factorial design. The results of this study found that segmentation of multimedia tutorials did not result in significant differences in recall or transfer. The results also revealed that the time period between when a tutorial was viewed and when the recall and transfer assessments were taken did significantly affect participants ability to recall and transfer information.


Many of the most virulent bacterial pathogens show low genetic diversity and sexual isolation. Accordingly, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the deadliest human pathogen, is thought to be clonal and evolve by genetic drift. Yet, its genome shows few of the concomitant signs of genome degradation. We analyzed 24 genomes and found an excess of genetic diversity in regions encoding key adaptive functions including the type VII secretion system and the ancient horizontally transferred virulence-related regions. Four different approaches showed evident signs of recombination in M. tuberculosis. Recombination tracts add a high density of polymorphisms, and many are thus predicted to arise from outside the clade. Some of these tracts match Mycobacterium canettii sequences. Recombination introduced an excess of non-synonymous diversity in general and even more in genes expected to be under positive or diversifying selection, e.g., cell wall component genes. Mutations leading to non-synonymous SNPs are effectively purged in MTBC, which shows dominance of purifying selection. MTBC mutation bias toward AT nucleotides is not compensated by biased gene conversion, suggesting the action of natural selection also on synonymous changes. Together, all of these observations point to a strong imprint of recombination and selection in the genome affecting both non-synonymous and synonymous positions. Hence, contrary to some other pathogens and previous proposals concerning M. tuberculosis, this lineage may have come out of its ancestral bottleneck as a very successful pathogen that is rapidly diversifying by the action of mutation, recombination, and natural selection.


Abstract. High biogenic silica (BSi) concentrations occur sporadically in lake sediments
throughout the world; however, the processes leading to high BSi concentrations
vary.
We explored the factors responsible for the high BSi concentration in sediments
of a small, high-latitude subarctic lake (Lake 850). The Si budget of this
lake had not been fully characterized before to establish the drivers
of BSi accumulation in this environment.
To do this, we combined
measurements of variations in stream discharge, dissolved silica (DSi) concentrations, and stable
Si isotopes in both lake and stream water with measurements of BSi content in
lake sediments. Water, radon, and Si mass balances revealed the importance
of groundwater discharge as a main source of DSi to the lake, with
groundwater-derived DSi inputs 3 times higher than those from ephemeral
stream inlets. After including all external DSi sources (i.e., inlets and groundwater
discharge) and estimating the total BSi accumulation in the sediment,
we show that diatom production consumes up to 79 % of total DSi input.
Additionally, low sediment accumulation rates were observed based on the
dated gravity core. Our findings thus demonstrate that groundwater discharge
and low mass accumulation rate can account for the high BSi accumulation
during the last 150 cal yr BP. Globally, lakes have been estimated to
retain one-fifth of the annual DSi terrestrial weathering flux that
would otherwise be delivered to the ocean. Well-constrained
lake mass balances, such as presented here, bring clarity to those estimates
of the terrestrial Si cycle sinks.


A large number of problems arising in computer vision can be reduced to the problem of minimizing the nuclear norm of a matrix, subject to additional structural and sparsity constraints on its elements. Examples of relevant applications include, among others, robust tracking in the presence of outliers, manifold embedding, event detection, in-painting and tracklet matching across occlusion. In principle, these problems can be reduced to a convex semi-definite optimization form and solved using interior point methods. However, the poor scaling properties of these methods limit the use of this approach to relatively small sized problems. The main result of this paper shows that structured nuclear norm minimization problems can be efficiently solved by using an iterative Augmented Lagrangian Type (ALM) method that only requires performing at each iteration a combination of matrix thresholding and matrix inversion steps. As we illustrate in the paper with several examples, the proposed algorithm results in a substantial reduction of computational time and memory requirements when compared against interior-point methods, opening up the possibility of solving realistic, large sized problems.


Recent monetary models with explicit microfoundations are made tractable by assuming that agents have access to centralized markets after one round of decentralized trade. Given quasi-linear preferences, this makes the distribution of money degenerate - which keeps the models simple but precludes discussion of distributional effects of monetary policy. We generalize these models by assuming two rounds of trade before agents can readjust their money holdings to study a range of new distributional effects analytically. We show that unexpected, symmetric lump-sum money injections may increase short-run output and welfare, while asymmetric injections may increase long-run output and welfare.


This footage was filmed in May 2015 in the television studio at Royal Holloway University of London in Egham, United Kingdom. A team of veteran television film cameramen, electricians, and sound engineers who worked at the BBC Television Film Studios in the 1960s and 1970s recalled various aspects of their work. Their memories were filmed using three Sony PMW-100 digital cameras and recorded using wireless microphones. The conversation was free-flowing with occasional questions and interventions from the ADAPT crew. This video is part of a series that shows how a typical television film crew went about the task of filming footage for television during the 1960s and 1970s. About the project ADAPT (2013-8) is a European Research Council project at Royal Holloway University of London. The project studies the history of technologies in television, focussing on their everyday use in production activities. ADAPT examines what technologies were adopted and why; how they worked; and how people worked with them. As well as publishing written accounts, the project carries out 'simulations' that reunite retired equipment with the people who used to use it. Participants in these simulations explain how each machine worked and how different machines worked together as an 'array'; how they adapted the machines; and how they worked together as teams within the overall production process. www.adaptTVhistory.org.ukhttps://doi.org/10.17637/rh.c.3925603.v1


Procedure Appropriateness Category Relative Radiation Level MRI head without IV contrast Usually Appropriate O US head May Be Appropriate O MRI head without and with IV contrast May Be Appropriate O CT head without IV contrast May Be Appropriate ☢☢☢ CT head with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ CT head without and with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢☢ HMPAO SPECT or SPECT/CT brain Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢☢ FDG-PET/CT brain Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢☢


In this hermeneutic analysis of seven literary texts, Stephanie Barbe Hammer studies the roles of criminal protagonists in the dramas of George Lillo "(The London Merchant) "and Friedrich Schiller "(The Robbers) "and in the narratives of Abbe de Prevost "(Manon Lescaut), "Henry Fielding "(Jonathan Wild), "Marquis de Sade "(Justine), "William Godwin "(Caleb Williams), "and Heinrich von Kleist "(Michael Kohlhaas)."Hammer reflects the current interest in cultural critique by utilizing the social theories of Michel Foucault and the feminist approaches of Helene Cixous and Eve Sedgwick to redefine the Enlightenment as a movement of thought rather than as a strictly defined period synonymous with the eighteenth century. In addition, through the examination of the works of three postWorld War II authors (Jean Genet, Anthony Burgess, and Peter Handke), Hammer suggests that the Enlightenment s artistic representations of criminality are unparalleled by subsequent modern literature.Hammer explains that the seven works she focuses on have been dismissed as failures by readers who have misunderstood the texts aesthetic elements. While claiming that the form of these works breaks down under the pressure of their criminal protagonists, she asserts that this formal failure actually contributes to the success of the works as art. The works "fail" because, like the criminal characters themselves, they break laws. The criminal protagonist effectively sabotages the official story that the text seeks to tell by deflecting the plot, style, and formal requirements in question, subverting its messagebe it moral, sentimental, or libertine through a kind of structural undermining, forcing the text beyond its own formal boundaries. For example, Hammer maintains that the presence of the criminal figure, Millwood, in Lillo s bourgeois tragedy actually makes the play covertly antibourgeois.Hammer insists that the criminal s subversive presence in these seven works inaugurates new insight, and her analysis thereby challenges late twentieth-century readers to continue the investigation that the works themselves have begun.This book will prove indispensable to scholars of comparative literature, especially eighteenth-century specialists, as well as to all individuals interested in cultural critique."


Employee noncompliance with information systems security policies is a key concern for organizations. If users do not comply with IS security policies, security solutions lose their efficacy. Of the different IS security policy compliance approaches, training is the most commonly suggested in the literature. Yet, few of the existing studies about training to promote IS policy compliance utilize theory to explain what learning principles affect user compliance with IS security policies, or offer empirical evidence of their practical effectiveness. Consequently, there is a need for IS security training approaches that are theory-based and empirically evaluated. Accordingly, we propose a training program based on two theories: the universal constructive instructional theory and the elaboration likelihood model. We then validate the training program for IS security policy compliance training through an action research project. The action research intervention suggests that the theory-based training achieved positive results and was practical to deploy. Moreover, the intervention suggests that information security training should utilize contents and methods that activate and motivate the learners to systematic cognitive processing of information they receive during the training. In addition, the action research study made clear that a continuous communication process was also required to improve user IS security policy compliance. The findings of this study offer new insights for scholars and practitioners involved in IS security policy compliance.


In this paper, preliminary results in motor function improvement for four sub-acute stroke patients that underwent a hybrid robotic and traditional rehabilitation program are presented. The therapy program was scheduled for three days a week, four hours per day (approximately 60% traditional constraint induced therapy activities and 40% robotic therapy). A haptic joystick was used to implement four different operating modes for robotic therapy: unassisted (U), constrained (C), assisted (A), and resisted (R) modes. A target hitting task involving the positioning of a pointer on twelve targets was completed by the patients. Two different robotic measures were utilized to quantify the motor function improvement through the sessions: trajectory error (TE) and smoothness of movement (SM). Fugl-Meyer (FM) and motor activity log (MAL) scales were used as clinical measures. Analysis of results showed that the group demonstrates a significant motor function improvement with respect to both clinical and robotic measures. Regression analyses were carried out on corresponding clinical and robotic measure result pairs. A significant relation between FM scale and robotic measures was found for both of the analyzed modes. Regression of robotic measures on MAL scores resulted in no significance. A regression analysis that compared the two clinical measures revealed a very low agreement. Our findings suggest that it might be possible to obtain objective robotic measures that are significantly correlated to widely-used and reliable clinical measures in considerably different operating modes and control schemes.


Yucatec Maya (YM) is an indigenous language of Mexico which displays phonemic tonal distinctions and phonemic vowel length. These features are primarily associated with the phonetic cues of pitch and duration, which are also considered the primary correlates of stress in language. Though scholars have noted the existence of stress or accent since it was first documented centuries ago, no detailed account of stress as either a separate or related entity to tone or length has been made. In this paper, I analyze the phonetic changes evident in a series of loan words into YM from Spanish, a language without tone or length distinctions, found in elicited and conversational data as an initial step in diagnosing stress patterns in YM.


In the second half of the nineteenth century, in the period after John Stuart Mill, and into and including the first third of the twentieth century, a group of philosophers, sociologists, economists and journalists, systematically adapted classical liberal arguments to make them relevant to the appalling social conditions generated by the development of capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their writings contained distinctive models of society, of human nature, and of change, that are relevant to sociologists studying education in the twenty-first century. My aim throughout this chapter will be to work through the arguments of the new liberals accepting those that meet the tests of a critical interrogation as being relevant to twenty-first century global capitalism, and adapting or rejecting them as is appropriate. Although some of their arguments will be found wanting, I will argue that their original ideas in defence of social democracy can be restated in terms of developments in science and philosophy over a century since they wrote. Developments in post-quantum complexity theory, within both the physical and social sciences, will enable us to re-ground social democratic arguments and state them in a more plausible way for the twenty-first century.


This article summarizes the evaluation of a new method for rice cultivation, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), by a group of 90 rice farmers in Benin. Between August 2009 and June 2012, a series of tests were conducted in two rice ecosystems on 32 plots. This farmer-conducted research focused on the new methodology's agronomic performance and its labor and seed requirements, also considering what would be the constraints on adoption. The trials showed that SRI methods could increase average yields under farmer conditions by 54 %, while reducing seed requirements by 87 % and shortening the growing season by 14 days. To achieve these benefits required an increase in the amount of labor, by 36 %. Producers participating in this evaluation concluded that SRI offers significant opportunities to increase their rice production, provided its methods are adapted to local conditions