The US Supreme Court last decided a federal tax case on constitutional grounds in 1920, a century ago. The case was Eisner v. Macomber, and the issue was whether Congress had the power under the Sixteenth Amendment (authorizing an income tax, 1913) to include stock dividends in the tax base. The Court answered no because "income" in the Sixteenth Amendment meant "the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined." A stock dividend, since it did not increase the wealth of the shareholder, was not "income."

Macomber was never formally overruled, and it is sometime still cited by academics and practitioners for the proposition that the Constitution requires that income be "realized" to be subject to tax. However, in Glenshaw Glass, the Court held in the context of treble antitrust damages that the Macomber definition of income for constitutional purposes "was not meant to provide a touchstone to all future gross income questions" and that a better definition encompassed all "instances of undeniable accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion."

In the century that has passed since Macomber, the Court has never held that a federal tax statute was unconstitutional. This behavior of the Court constitutes a remarkable example of American tax exceptionalism, because in most other countries tax laws are subject to constitutional review and are frequently ruled unconstitutional.

In what follows, we will first examine three examples of how tax law is constitutionalized in other countries (part 2). We will then look at some of the larger tax expenditures in the US and ask how they would fare under constitutional scrutiny (part 3). Finally, we will attempt to answer the question whether US tax law should be constitutionalized, and answer in a reluctant negative (part 4). But we will also urge Congress, which is equally charged with upholding constitutional values, to take horizontal equity more into consideration when evaluating tax expenditures.


This study examines news articles and anti-discrimination ordinances that affect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) communities in the four most populous counties from five Southeastern states: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. The possible impact of such policies on the collection of non-fiction young adult materials in the public libraries in those counties is explored. The holdings of each county are compared to a list of 23 titles compiled from literary award winners selected from the time period 1996-2003 using the Lambda Literary Foundation Awards, the American Library Association Stonewall Awards, and an American Library Association GLBT Roundtable Bibliography. Findings suggest that there is no relationship between antidiscrimination ordinances and the level of collecting LGBTQ material. The evidence shows that the more demographically diverse counties made more LGBTQ titles available to their constituents. More studies investigating the impact of demographics on collection development would be helpful.


Salicornia is a halophytic plant that grows near salt marshes and salted wetlands, very rich in vitamins, minerals and highly unsaturated oils. Because of its biochemical composition and despite salinity, Salicornia is considered a gourmet product. Since stems present a short shelf life, the aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of controlled atmosphere on quality of Salicornia ramosissima during four weeks at 4°C. Vitamin C and chlorophyll contents were determined, and microbiological and sensory analyses were performed. Salicornia shoots preserved better the visual appearance and L-ascorbic acid for three weeks of storage under CA with 3% oxygen and 10% carbon dioxide, although chlorophyll was better preserved in air. All samples were microbiologically safe during all storage. CA storage, especially in 3% oxygen and 10% carbon dioxide seems to be a good method to preserve Salicornia ramosissima shoots.


This thesis concerns a carefully controlled set of experiments, to study in detail the characteristics of straight stable channels and the alterations occurring in these channels due to the presence of hydraulic structures e. g. bridge piers, and abutments. A unique feature of the experiments is the mobility of the entire crosssection. The experimental data from present study are used to verify the characteristics of straight stable channels and the validity of the White et al (1981) theory and other published formulae for the prediction of the characteristics of these channels. The results show that the White et al (1981) theory is a useful tool for prediction of the hydraulic and geometric dimensions of stable straight channels. However, this theory underpredicts the water surface width, cross-sectional area, and sediment concentration of the laboratory channels for the range of applied discharges. It also overpredicts mean depth and water surface slopes. A bank profile investigation of the developed channels show that, for the prediction of bank profile, the fifthdegree polynomial of Diplas and Vigilar (1992) results in a better approximation than that obtained from the normal-depth method and the cosine profile. A hyperbolic function has been fitted to the bank profile data. This function approximates the bank profile even closer than the fifth-degree polynomial of Diplas and Vigilar (1992). The effect of the introduction of hydraulic structures e. g. bridge piers or abutments into the bed of developed channels and the instabilities produced was investigated. The interaction of piers and developed channels reveals that the main abrupt change in channel bed and bank is because of scour hole formation. An increase in channel width downstream of piers is observed. The rate of this increase is high initially and reduces thereafter. A mathematical model has been proposed to predict the temporal variation of scour depth in clear water and live bed scour conditions. This model, when compared with available data, predicts satisfactory results for most conditions. Scour topography due to the interaction of abutments and developed straight channels shows that the channel bank upstream of abutments was mainly scoured because of slowly circulating water ahead of the abutment. An equation is proposed to predict this scoured area. TABLE OF CONTENTS


Neuroscientists routinely investigate such classical philosophical topics as consciousness, thought, language, meaning, aesthetics, and death. According to Henrik Walter, philosophers should in turn embrace the wealth of research findings and ideas provided by neuroscience. In this book Walter applies the methodology of neurophilosophy to one of philosophy's central challenges, the notion of free will. Neurophilosophical conclusions are based on, and consistent with, scientific knowledge about the brain and its functioning. Walter's answer to whether there is free will is, It depends. The basic questions concerning free will are (1) whether we are able to choose other than we actually do, (2) whether our choices are made intelligibly, and (3) whether we are really the originators of our choices. According to Walter, freedom of will is an illusion if we mean by it that under identical conditions we would be able to do or decide otherwise, while simultaneously acting only for reasons and being the true originators of our actions. In place of this scientifically untenable strong version of free will, Walter offers what he calls natural autonomy -- self-determination unaided by supernatural powers that could exist even in an entirely determined universe. Although natural autonomy can support neither our traditional concept of guilt nor certain cherished illusions about ourselves, it does not imply the abandonment of all concepts of responsibility. For we are not mere marionettes, with no influence over our thoughts or actions.


"If we were fired from the factory, I could go to school, but then who would feed my mother and sister?" --Shahadat, 14, Bangladeshi garment worker, 1995(2) Child labor, as pointed out above, is not as straightforward a problem as it might seem. At least 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work worldwide. That estimate is low, and the real number of working children is most likely much greater. More than 120 million of these children are employed full-time, which means that they probably do not attend school.(3) Child labor is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the informal economy While some children can be found in low-skill, low-tech and poorly regulated sectors of the formal economy, most working children work in agriculture, services, small-scale manufacturing and other sectors that are difficult to monitor.(4) In most countries, laws limit the employment of children in the formal sector, although these laws are not often vigorously enforced. Other factors minimizing the number of children working in formal workplaces include the presence of adult trade unions and the relatively high education, skill and physical strength demanded by most formal-sector employers. During the last two decades, an international movement has emerged to eliminate or at least seriously reduce child labor. The movement represents a multiplicity of forces with a variety of motives that have converged because of, among other things, the pressures of globalization.(5) In the early 1980s and 1990s, international concerns about children produced a series of international conventions and commemorative declarations on children's issues. These spurred multilateral institutions (such as the International Labor Organization and UNICEF), governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and academics to conduct new research. Meanwhile, two other forces had a major influence on the revival of child labor issues. First, NGOs mushroomed both as critics of and as partial replacements for the failure of many governments to deliver adequate health, education and other social services to children and poor families. Second, the increase in international trade, finance and investment, and the disruption that this created in some industries caused trade unions and workers to become active in the anti-child labor movement. This was largely due to a perceived threat to the jobs of adult workers and outrage about the exploitation of children. Attention generated by activists, unions, politicians, journalists and others convinced some consumers in developed nations to boycott child-made imports. The scope of such boycotts is a subject of debate, but they did pressure governments and businesses into exposing and reducing child labor. Many businesses responded with corporate codes of conduct and support for social programs for children, such as building new schools. Some businesses adopted purchase, sales and marketing strategies that promoted goods purportedly not made by children. And in some of these businesses, child labor has decreased.(6) This international movement has made substantive progress in describing the child labor problem and developing solutions. Unfortunately, public attention has been partially misdirected and public policies have occasionally brought harm to the very children they were intended to help. The reasons stem from a popular misunderstanding. Contrary to popular perceptions, most child labor occurs not in sanctioned industry, but in the informal economy. This is a rather large misunderstanding: The informal economy makes up from one-third to two-thirds of the economies of developing nations, and although it is much smaller in developed countries, it is still large enough to be a repository of child labor.(7) Reasons for this misunderstanding are not hard to spot. The US anti-child labor movement, one of the primary drivers of the debate, has focused attention on child labor in imports from industrial or semi-industrial workplaces. …


In this Essay, we examine some of the factors that make developing a "science of security" a significant research and policy challenge. We focus on how the empirical hurdles of missing data, inaccurate data, and invalid inferences can significantly impact—and sometimes impair—the security decisionmaking processes of individuals, firms, and policymakers. We offer practical examples of the sensitivity of policy modeling to those hurdles and highlight the relevance of these examples in the context of national security.


Employee-based errors result in quality defects that can often impact customer satisfaction. This study examined the effects of a process change and feedback system intervention on error rates of 3 teams of retail furniture distribution warehouse workers. Archival records of error codes were analyzed and aggregated as the measure of quality. The intervention consisted of a process change where teams of 5 employees who had previously been assigned a specific role within the process were cross-trained to know and help with other team members' functions. Additionally, these teams were given performance feedback on an immediate, daily, and weekly basis. Team A reduced mean errors from 7.47 errors per week during baseline to 3.53 errors per week during the intervention phase. Team B experienced a reduction in mean number of weekly errors from a baseline of 11.39 errors per week to 3.82 errors per week during the intervention phase. Team C did not experience significant error rate reduction.


The Philippine archipelago, which is regarded as the fifth nation with the longest coastline, is a climate "hotspot". The country's geographic bases contribute to the vulnerability of its populace's lives and livelihood to climate change's adverse manifestations. The Philippine coastal areas are likely to be desolated by the impacts of sea level rise and inauspicious phenomena brought by the exacerbated environmental condition. This study aims to review climate change impacts on the Philippine coastal communities, which can possibly and critically give rise to poverty and other socio-economic related troubles. Essential tools in determining the susceptibility of the areas surrounding the Navotas Fish port Complex, the archetypal subject of this study, and diminution of risks the community and ecosystem has to endure such as flood mapping and vulnerability and risk assessment will be used in this study. The optimal values of risk will be determined in terms of hazard (tropical cyclone), exposure (population) and vulnerability (human development index).


In a hydrocarbon exploration workflow, marine controlled-source electromagnetic (mCSEM) data are usually acquired after seismic interpretation for prospect identification and close-to-the-drilling decision making. Therefore, the mCSEM interpreter must provide quick answers to the asset teams in a way that the EM interpretation can add value to that decision. To achieve that goal, Petrobras developed a fast-track mCSEM interpretation workflow that consists in identifying anomalies in the mCSEM data set by frequency normalization, and then performing 1D CMP inversions followed by 2.5D polygonal inversions. The proposed workflow was successfully applied to several mCSEM surveys offshore Brazil. We evaluated an application in a complex geologic setting where the reservoir dips toward allochthonous salt. The reservoir appears as a flat spot in the seismic section, but with no significant amplitude variation with offset response. The mCSEM analysis confirmed the seismic anomaly and extended it northward. Two drilled wells corroborated the mCSEM interpretation.


State courts are creating conditions for moral hazard in the arbitration of employment disputes. The problem begins when employers compel individuals to arbitrate their legal claims, denying them access to juries and other benefits of a trial. This empirical study identifies a disturbing trend. State courts vacated many arbitration wins for employees, but not for employers. My database has 443 federal and state court rulings from 1975-2007. Remarkably, state appellate courts confirmed only 56.4% of employee wins in arbitration. But when the same courts ruled on employer victories, they confirmed 86.7% of awards. The difference in rates was statistically significant. Similarly, federal appeals courts upheld 85.7% of employer wins. Lower courts behaved like appellate courts. These state courts confirmed only 77.6% of employee wins, while federal district judges enforced 92.7% of these awards.The lopsided results suggest a moral hazard. When courts vacate many awards that rule for employees, the individual must either return to a lengthy and costly "do over" arbitration - or worse, be stuck with a useless award, and no other recourse because Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp. bars employees from suing. Throughout this Article, the reader will sense snowballing futility for employees. The problem is that the number of award reviewing standards is growing, due to new state laws and creeping expansion of common law standards. This causes judges to deviate from the FAA's extremely deferential principles. As a result, court review is becoming an insurance program that protects employers from costly awards. This poses a moral hazard, as judges reduce incentives for employers to be responsible for their actions. Because Gilmer permanently bars employees from suing, employers are double-insulated from being held to account for their unlawful conduct.This trend undermines the purpose of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The law meant to end court interference with awards. Gilmer reinforced this view by stating a theory of forum substitution - the idea that by "agreeing to arbitrate a statutory claim, a party . . . submits to their resolution in an arbitral, rather than a judicial, forum." After Gilmer, employers adopted mandatory arbitration to control litigation costs and liability. But the data raise new doubts about forum substitution. Courts interfere with arbitration more than the FAA or Gilmer envisioned. I propose two solutions. Judicial review of awards in all courts should be limited to the four explicit FAA standards. This would free arbitration from court interference, just as Congress intended. Indeed, the gist of my legislative proposal was supported in the current term of the Supreme Court, when Preston v. Ferrar said: "The Act (FAA), which rests on Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause, supplies not simply a procedural framework applicable in federal courts; it also calls for the application, in state as well as federal courts, of federal substantive law regarding arbitration." Second, arbitration losers who incur liability should be required to post judgment bonds if they challenge an award. This idea borrows from civil procedure codes, and is therefore consistent with the goal of forum substitution. The current practice erodes award finality by allowing employers to make cost free appeals. Arbitration offers attractive benefits: reduced cost, simplicity, and easy accessibility to disputants. But these benefits will not be achieved until the growing vacatur problem - and its attendant quality of relieving employers of liability for unlawful behavior - is addressed.


A new class of energy-efficient digital microprocessor is being developed which is susceptible to thermal noise and consequently operates in probabilistic rather than conventional deterministic mode. Hybrid computing systems which combine probabilistic and deterministic processors can provide robust and efficient tools for computational problems that hitherto would be intractable by conventional deterministic algorithm. These developments suggest a revised perspective on the consequences of ion-channel noise in slender axons, often regarded as a hindrance to neuronal computations. It is proposed that the human brain is such an energy-efficient hybrid computational system whose remarkable characteristics emerge from constructive synergies between probabilistic and deterministic modes of operation. In particular, the capacity for intuition and creative problem solving appears to arise naturally from such a hybrid system. Bearing in mind that physical thermal noise is both pure and available at no cost, our proposal has implications for attempts to emulate the energy-efficient human brain on conventional energy-intensive deterministic supercomputers.


This chapter provides a systematic overview of the Alkire-Foster multidimensional measurement methodology with an emphasis on the Adjusted Headcount Ratio. The chapter is divided into seven sections. The first shows how this measure combines the practical appeal of the counting tradition with the rigour of the axiomatic one. The second sets out the identification of who is poor using the dual-cutoff approach, and the third outlines the aggregation method used to construct the Adjusted Headcount Ratio. In the fourth, we take stock and present the main distinctive characteristics of the Adjusted Headcount Ratio, whereas the fifth section presents its useful, consistent partial indices or components. To illustrate, we present a case study using the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in the sixth section. The final section presents the members of the AF class of measures that can be constructed in less common situations where data are cardinal.


Although there is no consensus on the definition of the peri-urban interface, there is growing recognition among development professionals and institutions that rural and urban features tend increasingly to co-exist within cities and beyond their limits. There is also recognition that the urban–rural dichotomy that is deeply ingrained in planning systems is inadequate for dealing with processes of environmental and developmental change in the peri-urban context. This paper argues that environmental planning and management of the peri-urban interface cannot simply be based on the extrapolation of planning approaches and tools applied in rural and urban areas. Instead, it needs to be based on the construction of an approach that responds to the specific environment, social, economic and institutional aspects of the peri-urban interface. The paper also outlines approaches to environmental planning and management in the peri-urban interface, examining its specificity in terms of both the challenges faced and possible approaches for implementation.


This comparative study illustrates the depiction of images of women in the selected poems of Percy B. Shelley and Walt Whitman. Analysis of the poems looks into poetical matters that include the themes of the respective texts and how the images of women are presented in the framework of the selected poems. It is also another contribution to the continuing tradition and fascination with neo-platonic thought among the Romantics. It also explores the fundamental aesthetic differences between Shelley and Whitman, and shows another facet in the comparative studies of English and American Romantic poems. Analysis of the respective poets' depictions of women shows that Shelley and
Whitman can indeed be linked in relation to their roles as poets and as philosophers. Both poets highlight the significant role of women in their treatment of the images.
However, their individual approaches in presenting the circumstances in which the images are depicted are different, and the images presented are primarily connected
to the poets' respective worldviews. Shelley is individual, passionate and concrete in his presentation of women as specific female characters are the subjects in the selected poems. Whitman, however, is more abstract and universal in his presentation of women as they are presented as mother, sister or lover, and unlike Shelley's women, these characters are interspersed throughout Leaves of Grass,
amidst the crowds and the great amount of space that is characteristic of Whitman's poems. The ideas suggested by both poets in their presentation of women, although governed
by their respective philosophies, are undoubtedly revolutionary. Ultimately, this study illustrates the vast scope of image interpretation in the study of literary works
in general and encourages more studies on the images of women, particularly, in the works of other Romantic and Transcendental poets.


The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) approved the establishment of the AASHTO Accreditation Program (AAP) in February 1988 and the first laboratory was accredited in June 1988. The objective of the AAP is to provide a mechanism for formally recognizing the competency of construction materials testing laboratories to carry out specific tests on soils, asphalt cements, cutback asphalts, emulsified asphalts, bituminous concrete mixtures, concrete aggregates. AAP is structured to comply with ASTM Standards, Guide for Laboratory Accreditation Systems (E 994) and Practice for Generic Criteria for Use in the Evaluation of Testing and Inspection Agencies (E 548), and International Standards Organization (ISO) Guide 25. AASHTO has assigned responsibility for administering the program to its Highway Subcommittee on Materials. Information on the program scope, operational procedures, and current status are given.


Sponsored search aims at retrieving the advertisements that in the one hand meet users' intent reflected in their search queries, and in the other hand attract user clicks to generate revenue. Advertisements are typically ranked based on their expected revenue that is computed as the product between their predicted probability of being clicked (i.e., namely clickability) and their advertiser provided bid. The relevance of an advertisement to a user query is implicitly captured by the predicted clickability of the advertisement, assuming that relevant advertisements are more likely to attract user clicks. However, this approach easily biases the ranking toward advertisements having rich click history. This may incorrectly lead to showing irrelevant advertisements whose clickability is not accurately predicted due to lack of click history. Another side effect consists of never giving a chance to new advertisements that may be highly relevant to be printed due to their lack of click history. To address this problem, we explicitly measure the relevance between an advertisement and a query without relying on the advertisement's click history, and present different ways of leveraging this relevance to improve user search experience without reducing search engine revenue. Specifically, we propose a machine learning approach that solely relies on text-based features to measure the relevance between an advertisement and a query. We discuss how the introduced relevance can be used in four important use cases: pre-filtering of irrelevant advertisements, recovering advertisements with little history, improving clickability prediction, and re-ranking of the advertisements on the final search result page. Offine experiments using large-scale query logs and online A/B tests demonstrate the superiority of the proposed click-oblivious relevance model and the important roles that relevance plays in sponsored search.


This paper analyzes relations among MODIS surface albedos, ASTER broadband (3–14 μm) emissivities, and a soil taxonomy map over the arid areas of Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia in North Africa at 30 second (about 1 km) and 2 minute (about 4 km) spatial resolutions. The MODIS albedo data are from 7 spectral bands and 3 broadbands during dust‐free seasons and the emissivity data are derived from a linear combination of the waveband emissivities of the ASTER five thermal infrared channels. Both albedo and emissivity data in the study region show similar considerable spatial variability, larger than assumed by most climate models, and such variability is related to the surface types (sands, rock, and soil orders). Emissivity over bare soils exhibits statistically significant correlations with albedos at both broadbands and most of spectral bands and decreases linearly with albedos. Albedo and emissivity are more strongly correlated with each other than either is to the surface types, apparently because of their higher resolution either spatially or in surface mineralogy. This paper provides guidance for the possible inclusion of such correlation to specify albedo and emissivity in climate models.


In this paper, we show that the subadditive dual of a feasible conic mixed-integer program (MIP) is a strong dual whenever it is feasible. Moreover, we show that this dual feasibility condition is equivalent to feasibility of the conic dual of the continuous relaxation of the conic MIP. In addition, we prove that all known conditions and other "natural" conditions for strong duality, such as strict mixed-integer feasibility, boundedness of the feasible set, or essentially strict feasibility, imply that the subadditive dual is feasible. As an intermediate result, we extend the so-called "finiteness property" from full-dimensional convex sets to intersections of full-dimensional convex sets and Dirichlet convex sets.


Q methodology traditionally involves the sorting of stimuli such as textual
phrases or images that are then analyzed with statistical software. Coupled with these
quantitative techniques, Q methodology often involves in-depth interviews and
interpretative methods. In spite of these mixed-methods strengths, scholars are turning
to internet-based platforms for administering Q studies, allowing for a greater range of
access to a larger pool of potential participants. In this article, we examine issues related
to participant engagement and the potential impact of low-quality sorts on data
reliability. These issues are particularly germane for studies utilizing online platforms
for administering Q methodology studies, where the distance between researcher and
participants is increased. Our analysis involves the generation of random Q sorts as a
proxy for low-quality data and explores the influence of introduced low-quality data on
factor loadings and interpretation. In our exploratory study, we find that the
introduction of even a small number of low-quality sorts can seriously influence factor
loadings; in particular, these random sorts alter the composition of Q sorts that load on
less dominant "minority" factors and, ultimately, the interpretation of factors. Based on
these findings, we propose an approach that allows Q methodology researchers to
explore further the quality of their data to detect low-quality sorts and offer suggestions
for improving participant engagement in online studies.


A hybrid planning approach is presented in this paper with the focus of integrating task planning and motion planning for highly automated driving. In the context of task planning, the vehicle and environment states are transformed from the continuous configuration space to a discrete state space. A planning problem is solved by a search algorithm for an optimal task sequence to reach the goal conditions in the symbolic space, regarding constraints such as space topology, place occupation, and traffic rules. Each task can be mapped to a specific driving maneuver and solved with a dedicated motion planning method in the continuous configuration space. The task planning approach not only bridges the gap between high-level navigation and low-level motion planning, but also provides a modular domain description that can be developed and verified individually. Our task planner for automated driving is evaluated in several scenarios with prior knowledge about the road-map and sensing range of the vehicle. Behavior that is otherwise complex to achieve is planned according to traffic rules and re-planned regarding the on-line perception.


Understanding disaster risk due to hazard events, such as earthquakes, creates powerful incentives for countries to develop planning options and tools to reduce potential damages. This has been the reason why CAPRA, the risk evaluation model described in this paper, was developed with the technical and financial support of the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the International Strategy of United Nations for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). CAPRA is a techno-scientific methodology and information platform, composed of tools for the evaluation and communication of risk at various territorial levels. This model allows the evaluation of probabilistic losses on exposed elements using probabilistic metrics, such as the exceedance probability curve, expected annual
loss and probable maximum loss, useful for multi-hazard/risk analyses. The platform is conceptually oriented to facilitate decision making; using CAPRA is possible to design risk transfer instruments, the evaluation of
probabilistic cost-benefit ratio, providing an innovative tool for decision makers to analyze the net benefits of the risk
mitigation strategies, such as building retrofitting. This model is useful for land use planning, loss scenarios for emergency response, early warning, on-line loss assessment mechanisms, and for the holistic evaluation of disaster risk based on indicators that facilitates the integrated risk management by the different stakeholders involved in risk reduction decision-making. CAPRA has been used in Colombia, Mexico, Central American countries and Spain, and it is a potential contribution for the development of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM). Examples of application of the model in the different countries, descriptions of the wiki and visualization tools available are made to illustrate the capabilities of this innovative open architecture ad open source platform using as example earthquakes, nevertheless similar application can be made for hurricanes, floods, landslides and volcanoes.


Silicon Carbide with its wide bandgap, high thermal conductivity, and high breakdown electric field is an attractive material to be used for applications in high power, and high temperature semiconductor devices. For such applications, it is extremely important to be able to form stable ohmic contacts. Various metals have been attempted to form ohmic contacts on SiC such as Ni, Ti, and Al. However it has been observed that these metallization schemes have degraded performance due to carbon accumulation by forming carbides at the interface. In this study, polycide (poly Si + silicide) based metallizations have been investigated, using NiSi2 and TiSi2. Silicides of Ni and Ti have been synthesized employing a layer of heavily doped polysilicon to prevent any form of reaction between the metal and the carbon at the SiC interface. Using a 0.5cm2 n-type 6H-SiC samples with various doping concentrations (1.3 x 1018 cm~3 and 1.7 x 1018 cni3), the electrical and structural properties of NiSi2 and TiSi2 have been examined by fabricating linear transmission line model (TLM) structures. I-V characterization have been carried out to determine the specific contact resistivity, PC. Samples were processed at various annealing temperatures to determine conditions for the best ohmic contact resistivity.


Suppose that multiple experts (or learning algorithms) provide us with alternative Bayesian network (BN) structures over a domain, and that we are interested in combining them into a single consensus BN structure. Specifically, we are interested in that the consensus BN structure only represents independences all the given BN structures agree upon and that it has as few parameters associated as possible. In this paper, we prove that there may exist several non-equivalent consensus BN structures and that finding one of them is NP-hard. Thus, we decide to resort to heuristics to find an approximated consensus BN structure. In this paper, we consider the heuristic proposed by Matzkevich and Abramson, which builds upon two algorithms, called Methods A and B, for efficiently deriving the minimal directed independence map of a BN structure relative to a given node ordering. Methods A and B are claimed to be correct although no proof is provided (a proof is just sketched). In this paper, we show that Methods A and B are not correct and propose a correction of them.


We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens' and governments' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reacted strongly to the crisis: they report engaging in social distancing and hygiene behaviors, and believe that strong policy measures, such as shop closures and curfews, are necessary. They also believe that their government and their country's citizens are not doing enough and underestimate the degree to which others in their country support strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. The perception of a weak government and public response is associated with higher levels of worries and depression. Using both cross-country panel data and an event-study, we additionally show that strong government reactions correct misperceptions, and reduce worries and depression. Our findings highlight that policy-makers not only need to consider how their decisions affect the spread of COVID-19, but also how such choices influence the mental health of their population


The study was to specifically find out socio-economic factors supporting pupils with learning difficulties (Ld) in primary schools class five in Kasarani Division. The objective of this study was to establish parents' level of education and their support for children with learning difficulties, both at home and school, the learning resources they provided which are economic factors. The study involved a descriptive survey design and the target population of the study was 200 (parents, pupils and teachers) respondents from 25 primary schools in the division.
The sample of the study comprised six randomly selected schools in Kasarani Division. From the selected schools, five pupils with learning difficulties per school were purposively selected giving a total of thirty pupils. Five parents whose children had learning difficulties were also purposively selected giving a total of thirty parents, six teachers were purposively selected, one from each school. Four instruments were used to collect data: the researcher made checklist for teachers, questionnaire for teachers, an interview schedule for pupils and another interview schedule for the parents. The instruments were pre-tested at Kiboro Primary School in Starehe Division to enhance the validity and reliability of the research instruments. The split-half technique of assessing reliability of data was employed. The Spearman-Brown formula was employed to compute the reliability coefficient and 0.7934 was obtained and considered to be reliable. Objectives yielded data which were analyzed using descriptive statistics. They were then presented using percentages, graphs and charts.
The findings revealed in part that: Parental level of education did not support learning of pupils with Ld although it was minimal. There was also lack of adequate learning resources provided by parents. Even though parents provided basic necessities in the home environment, there were minimal provision learning resources at home to support learning of their children. However, teachers could identify and assist pupils with Ld in learning. The results led to the conclusion that, there are socio-economic factors like resources, home environment provided, parental level of education that do not support learning of pupils with learning difficulties in classes five in primary schools in Kasarani Division. The study therefore, recommends that parents should provide learning materials, enrich the home environment, and use the education they have acquired to boost the learning of their children both at home and in schools.


Controlled-source electromagnetics (CSEM) is a geophysical electromagnetic method used to detect hydrocarbon reservoirs in marine settings. Used mainly as a derisking tool by the industry, the applicability of CSEM is limited by the size of the target, low-spatial resolution, and depth of the reservoir. Synthetic aperture, a technique that increases the size of the source by combining multiple individual sources, has been applied to CSEM fields to increase the detectability of hydrocarbon reservoirs. We apply synthetic aperture to a 3D synthetic CSEM field with a 2D source distribution to evaluate the benefits of the technique. The 2D source allows steering in the inline and crossline directions. We present an optimized beamforming of the 2D source, which increases the detectability of the reservoir. With only a portion of three towlines spaced 2 km apart, we enhance the anomaly from the target by 80%. We also demonstrate the benefits of using the Poynting vector to view CSEM fields in 3D. Synthetic apert...


Conversational facial gestures fit Kendon's (2004) specifications of the functions of hand gestures. We illustrate how facial gestures in dialogue, like hand gestures, convey referential content as well as serving pragmatic, interpersonal and interactive functions. Hand and facial gestures often occur together, creating an integrated visual image in gesture–speech ensembles. A semantic features analysis demonstrates how speakers adjust their use of these visible versus audible expressive resources according to context. Speakers who were interacting face-to-face (compared to speakers who could not see their addressee) were significantly more likely to rely on their hand and facial gestures than on their words when describing key semantic features, and their gestures were more likely to convey information that was not in their words.


The following pages form a commentary on my own thoughts, notes, sketches and final printed texts of six pieces written between 2009 and 2013. The purpose of the text is twofold: to inform the reader of the intentions and poetic impulses of the composer and to make an accompanying statement for a researcher or musicologist who might attempt an actual analysis of the pieces. It is not, in my view, the work of a composer to self-analyze the extensively or to deconstruct the entities that are represented by finished compositions. However, the commentary itself is a reflection of the music – a personal account of what was important during the creative stages of 'inventing' a music the very essence of my thoughts during the period when I composed the music. In that it is, unquestionably, the most complete, appropriate and succinct account the composer might offer, regarding the thoughts behind the sounds.

From a technical point of view, the methods I used for the compositions in this portfolio range from using scalar formations and basic techniques such as inversions, permutations, augmentations or diminutions of materials all the way to more abstract methods of organising sound, whereby the choice of register, for example, is the outcome of a correspondence with an extra-musical narrative.

The structure of my commentary is that of a sonata, with this abstract being the motif. After an introduction (Nostalgia – 'what is silence?'), I start out with a triple exposition (Regeneration – Ordinatio – Nos dec), continue with a development (Exelixis, meaning literally 'development') and finish off with a recapitulation (Quantum, where the themes of the exposition and the recapitulation meet). The coda is a resounding 'confession' that if little has been achieved, much has been questioned in the process. Why the sonata form? A commentary on certain structures ought to be structured in an opposite way.


There is an ongoing explosion of interactive Internet applications. By nature, these applications require responsive clientserver data exchange and lossless, in-order delivery. In previous work, we have shown that a hybrid FEC-ARQ protocol which combines sending original data packets with forward error correction (FEC) packets is effective in reducing the latency caused by retransmissions of lost packets. However, the prior scheme only sends FEC packets when there are no original packets pending transmission. In this paper, we further expand the investigation of the hybrid FEC-ARQ protocol and show that sometimes, the transmission latency can be further reduced by preempting original data packets with FEC packets. We have formulated the decision of whether to send new original data packets, FEC packets, or resend original data packets as a transmission policy. An optimal transmission policy is selected to minimize the delay experienced by the application subject to a constraint on the amount of waste. By using this optimal policy, we significantly improve the delay performance over straightforward FEC schemes while controlling the amount of waste due to FEC.


The mechanisms that enable plants to perceive and respond to aphids remain poorly characterised, particularly with respect to systemic signalling pathways. The aim of the
studies reported in this thesis was to characterise the local and systemic signalling pathways induced by Myzus persicae infestation of Arabidopsis thaliana with
translational aspects to potato (Solanum tuberosum). Particular emphasis was placed on the role of redox signalling pathways, which were studied in wild type A. thaliana (Col0) and in mutants that were deficient either in the major low molecular weight antioxidant ascorbic acid vitamin C defective 2 (vtc2) or in the abscisic acid (ABA)
Insensitive-4 (ABI4) transcription factor or both components. Transcriptome analysis and metabolite profiling of leaves infested by M. persicae and on leaves from the same rosettes that were remote from the site of aphid attack revealed that the plant responses to aphids involved rapid local and systemic transcriptome re-programming in the
absence of marked changes in the metabolite profiles. Moreover, the transcriptome reprogramming observed in infested leaves was different from the systemic response. The aphid-induced transcriptome signature of the infested leaves bore strong hallmarks of redox-signalling, salicylic acid (SA) signalling and ABA signalling, while that of the
systemic leaves revealed a transcript profile where redox signalling was present but SA signalling was decreased. The vtc2 mutant showed decreased aphid fecundity, while aphid numbers were increased on the abi4 mutants. The differences in resistance to aphids between these genotypes are linked to alterations in ABA-dependent jasmonate-signalling pathways. When potato leaves were enriched in asorbate aphid fecundity was increased. These findings demonstrate the central role of redox signalling pathways in plant responses to aphids. Further characterisation of genes crucial for maintenance of redox homeostasis following aphid attack will inevitably facilitate development of
aphid-resistant crops through GM technologies and marker-assisted selection.


The generation of hydrogen (H2) induced by solar water splitting over semiconductors has been regarded as one of the most promising strategies for providing clean and renewable energy sources for future energy sustainability. The key to achieving high solar-to-chemical-energy conversion efficiency is the design of efficient structures with high charge separation and transportation; thus, the development of inexpensive and functional nanomaterials has become quite necessary. Photocatalysts based on non-noble metals have great potential as substitutes for noble metal-based catalysts for H2 generation from photocatalytic (PC) and/or photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. In this review, we present the recent progress on non-noble metal-based nanostructures using in PC and/or PEC water splitting and reveal their underlying roles in affecting the behavior of charge carriers in specific reactions. This review should bring new insight and inspire further innovative work on designing non-noble metals involved in solar water splitting.


Abstract. The recently developed Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) is employed for simulations contributing to the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5) experiments and the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-AR5). In this manuscript, we focus on evaluating the ocean and land carbon cycle components of the NorESM, based on the preindustrial control and historical simulations. Many of the observed large scale ocean biogeochemical features are reproduced satisfactorily by the NorESM. When compared to the climatological estimates from the World Ocean Atlas (WOA), the model simulated temperature, salinity, oxygen, and phosphate distributions agree reasonably well in both the surface layer and deep water structure. However, the model simulates a relatively strong overturning circulation strength that leads to noticeable model-data bias, especially within the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW). This strong overturning circulation slightly distorts the structure of the biogeochemical tracers at depth. Advancements in simulating the oceanic mixed layer depth with respect to the previous generation model particularly improve the surface tracer distribution as well as the upper ocean biogeochemical processes, particularly in the Southern Ocean. Consequently, near-surface ocean processes such as biological production and air–sea gas exchange, are in good agreement with climatological observations. The NorESM adopts the same terrestrial model as the Community Earth System Model (CESM1). It reproduces the general pattern of land-vegetation gross primary productivity (GPP) when compared to the observationally based values derived from the FLUXNET network of eddy covariance towers. While the model simulates well the vegetation carbon pool, the soil carbon pool is smaller by a factor of three relative to the observational based estimates. The simulated annual mean terrestrial GPP and total respiration are slightly larger than observed, but the difference between the global GPP and respiration is comparable. Model-data bias in GPP is mainly simulated in the tropics (overestimation) and in high latitudes (underestimation). Within the NorESM framework, both the ocean and terrestrial carbon cycle models simulate a steady increase in carbon uptake from the preindustrial period to the present-day. The land carbon uptake is noticeably smaller than the observations, which is attributed to the strong nitrogen limitation formulated by the land model.


As sessile and photoautotrophic organisms, plants require an explicit adjustment of the development processes with the prevailing environmental conditions. Light is the most important environmental factor, which acts not only as the energy source, but also as the regulation signal for numerous physiological processes in the plants. A set of photosensing molecules – photoreceptors – have been developed in plants to perceive light of different quality, intensity, direction and continuance.
Phytochromes are photoreceptors that perceive the red and far-red regions of the light spectrum (650 - 750 nm). In Arabidopsis the phytochrome gene family consists of five members (PHYA-E). Phytochromes can be divided into "light-labile" (phyA) and light-stable (phyB-E) types. Phytochromes mediate responses that can be categorized as follows: very low fluence responses (VLFR), low fluence responses (LFR) and high irradiance responses (HIR). The light-labile phyA mediates responses that are characterized by a low Pfr/Pr ratio and R/FR irreversibility, namely VLFR and FR-HIR.
This study describes the Arabidopsis thaliana mutant (psm, renamed phyA-5) showing a distinct photomorphogenic phenotype. Molecular mapping revealed a new missense mutation in the PHYA amino terminal extension (NTE) domain. The phyA-5 mutant exhibits a hyposensitive phenotype in continuous low-intensity far-red light, whereas in high-intensity conditions the mutant resembles the wild-type. Both VLFR and HIR are reduced in the mutant. The mutation does not affect the expression level of PHYA. The dark-accumulated level of the mutated phyA-5 protein and R light-induced degradation were shown to be normal, whereas higher residual amounts of phyA-5 were detected in low FR.
It has been shown that the complex mutant phenotype and the abnormal stability of the mutated protein under low intensity of FR light are caused by the impaired nuclear import of the phyA-5 under these conditions, whereas high-fluence light induces normal nuclear import, resulting in a phenotype resembling the wild-type. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the reduced nuclear import of phyA-5 is caused by the decreased binding affinity of the mutant photoreceptor to the nuclear import facilitators FHY1 and FHL.
Studies on transgenic plants expressing phyA-5-YFP-NLS protein in phyA-201 background provided evidence that phyA-5 behaves identically to wild-type phyA, i.e. it is constitutively localized in the nucleus.
To sum up, the data obtained show that the NTE domain influences the regulation of phyA nuclear import through participation in the assembling of the FHY1/FHL/PHYA Pfr complex and the resulting aberrant nucleo/cytoplasmic distribution impairs light-induced degradation of phyA. Results of this study underline the interconnection between phototransformation of phyA, its nuclear import, functioning and degradation.


Pandemic Influenza H1N1 virus affected the population of Paraguay in the first week of July 2009. It was accompanied by an unusual outbreak of community-acquired pneumonia. Objectives: To describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of an outbreak of pneumonia in the community during the pandemic of H1N1 influenza. Methods: observational, descriptive and prospective study, involving 97 adult subjects, clinical carriers of influenza-like illness accompanied by acute community-acquired pneumonia, hospitalized in the Department of Internal Medicine (National Hospital, Itauguá) during the months of July and August 2009. Results: predominance of females (66%), mean age 42±17 years. The most frequent comorbidities were: arterial hypertension (39,2%), age over 60 years (17,5%), pregnancy (14,4%). The clinical and laboratory characteristics were: bilateral pulmonary involvement (95,4%), leukopenia, hypertransaminemia (14,4%), myocarditis (22,2%). On chest radiographs predominated bilateral interstitial infiltrate (58,5%). Most of the blood cultures were negative. The mortality rate was 2,1%. Conclusions: this outbreak identified hihh morbidity but low mortality.


As the world struggles to emerge from the Global Financial Crisis the vision of a harmonious framework of global financial regulation seems as distant as ever. Important progress made by international committees such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board notwithstanding, there seem to be increasing signs of unilateral, extraterritorial action by major jurisdictions, including the United States. This paper reviews the framework created by the US financial reforms, in particular anti money laundering provisions, the Volcker Rule and the proposed OTC derivatives margin requirements, and considers some of the dilemmas presented by modern global banking and its concomitant regulation. The conclusion is that we are likely to see more regional reforms that are not necessarily uniform, and that this might not be a bad result, given the complexity of the financial markets and the need to respond flexibly to evolving circumstances.


The Holocene fire history of Central Europe has revealed that the charred organic matter found in soils today results basically from anthropogenic burning. The vegetation fires laid since the Early Holocene may well have influenced the properties of soils; the early human impact on the global climate system could also be connected to this prehistoric burning. The present thesis contributes to the investigation of potential effects of prehistoric anthropogenic burning on soils. Information about prehistorical agricultural techniques such as slash-and-burn and their impact on the environment are scarce. We do not know much about the processes that consequently lead to the change of natural environments into human-dominated, open cultural landscapes, as it is indicated by several terrestrial archives and proxy-records from the Neolithic (5500-2200 BC). Advantage was taken of an experimental burning in Forchtenberg (SW-Germany), to determine how much charcoal is produced by slash-and-burn in temperate deciduous forests and if fire affected soil carbon budgets and soil lightness. The charcoal produced by slash-and-burn was slowly incorporated into the soil profile, this was mainly done by earthworms. The aromatic compounds in charcoals are correlated to soil colour, they could be responsible for the dark colour of Chernozems and related soil types. It is not known how much charcoal has been transferred into soils since prehistoric fire-use started, and how high the charcoal loss has been, e.g. by decomposition or erosion. However, after even one fire the mass of potentially available charcoal is relatively high. A literature review was made to elucidate which are the main soil forming factors controlling the pedogenesis of Central European Chernozems. The distribution of Chernozems does not seem to be dependent on natural factors alone, not all the soils possessing Chernozem properties can be steppe soils. Biomass burning, including that for agriculture, might be an important formation factor. It is now an open question as to wether Neolithic settlers did indeed prefer to grow crops where Chernozems occurred or if Neolithic burning formed the chernozemic soils. Biogeochemical markers were used to investigate if Luvic Phaeozems in the Lower Rhine Basin are the natural successors of Early Holocene Chernozems. It was concluded that the investigated dark soils formed as a result of anthropogenic burning during several (pre)historic epochs. A general use of other soil amendments like manure could not be proven. The investigated soils should not be classified as Luvic Phaeozems, they are Luvisols containing a degraded (fossil) anthric horizon. The occurrence of these dark soil horizons documented the transition from a natural to a human-dominated landscape. Additionally, soil charcoals from Southern Switzerland were investigated to obtain further information concerning fire and vegetation history. It was found that the chestnut was present in Southern Switzerland about 1000 years earlier than predicted by the pollen based model of the introduction of the chestnut (Castanea sativa) by the Romans. The application of geochemical methods to detect human impact on soils was problematic for phosphorus and lipid analysis, mainly because not enough control samples were available. Soil charcoal analyses, including 14C dating of microcharcoal, are considered useful tools forreconstructing palaeoenvironments. A main future task would be to consolidate the existing archaeological and palaeoecological data to build an extended model of human impact on the environment in prehistoric societies.


Learning mappings between arbitrary structured input and output variables is a fundamental problem in machine learning. It covers many natural learning tasks and challenges the standard model of learning a mapping from independently drawn instances to a small set of labels. Potential applications include classification with a class taxonomy, named entity recognition, and natural language parsing. In these structured domains, labeled training instances are generally expensive to obtain while unlabeled inputs are readily available and inexpensive. This thesis deals with semi-supervised learning of discriminative models for structured output variables. The analytical techniques and algorithms of classical semi-supervised learning are lifted to the structured setting. Several approaches based on different assumptions of the data are presented. Colearning, for instance, maximizes the agreement among multiple hypotheses while transductive approaches rely on an implicit cluster assumption. Furthermore, in the framework of this dissertation, a case study on email batch detection in message streams is presented. The involved tasks exhibit an inherent cluster structure and the presented solution exploits the streaming nature of the data. The different approaches are developed into semi-supervised structured prediction models and efficient optimization strategies thereof are presented. The novel algorithms generalize state-of-the-art approaches in structural learning such as structural support vector machines. Empirical results show that the semi-supervised algorithms lead to significantly lower error rates than their fully supervised counterparts in many application areas, including multi-class classification, named entity recognition, and natural language parsing.


This paper contains an analysis of the importance of teaching and research activities at the University of Sonora (UNISON), from the academic perspective. During 2007 the survey "Reconfiguration of Academic Profession in Mexico" (RPAM) was applied on a representative sample of full-time teachers of UNISON, public higher institution which happens to be one of the most important universities of northwestern Mexico. The academic features of both teaching and research were considered separately, and then sought for some relations between these two activities, to finally make a comparative analysis with the national survey results. The UNISON faculty is mainly composed by adulthood (51.8 years average), labor experienced (23 years in working place) and a high rate in educational levels: 20.2 % bachelor degree, 53.2% master, 26.5% doctorate). The presence of academic women throws a 33% of faculty, lower than the average shown by the national survey (37%). Given the classification scheme proposed in this paper, it was possible to clearly identify four types of scholars which set a pattern that might be present in other public state institutions of the country, this according to the differential importance assigned to the various activities, roles and responsibilities that make up academic work.


Determining the marginal value of improved freight mobility along a corridor requires full information on tonnage, dollar value of freight movements and services used in moving these products and the value-added characteristics of those products. This report investigates whether a practical methodology, applicable in the real world, can estimate value-added components of freight moving on Washington's transportation system. Determining this value-added can be done with the methodology identified in this study though it was found that specific data availability varied heavily from commodity to commodity, from corridor to corridor and project to project. The general results, and restructive assumptions and data deficiencies necessary for statewide analysis, cast doubt on specific findings. Regional or highway segment analysis can be more precise, if the data are locally developed. The basic model, consisting of knowledge about traffic levels, commodity composition, commodity value and value added of the commodity can reveal the importance of a corridor or region of interest to the state's economy.


Ethnographic and archaeological research shows that hunter-gatherers have colonized and inhabited a diverse range of environmental settings. One example of this is the occupation of the unique sub-arctic, island environment of the Kuril archipelago located in Northeast Asia. This research aims to investigate the strategies used by hunter-gatherers to meet the challenges associated with colonization and habitation of this dynamic landscape. Building from a human behavioral ecology framework, this research develops a model that provides a series of predictions for the structure of social networks in response to differing levels of environmental uncertainty within the Kuril Islands. Using a novel methodological approach, models of social relationships are derived from the compositional data of pottery indicating the movement of artifacts across the landscape. Once network models from archaeological data have been constructed, social network analysis methods are utilized to visually and quantitatively assess archaeological networks in relation to model expectations. In addition to investigating social network patterns, this research also provides a thorough and systematic approach to understanding the production and use of pottery within maritime foraging societies of the Kuril Islands. This includes the development of a regional pottery typology that contributes to the growing body of knowledge concerning the occupation history of the region. The research also investigated the technological attributes of pottery remains by utilizing a range for archaeometric methods to infer the pottery production process as well as regional and cultural differences in the use of pottery technology. Results of this research suggest that the colonization and settlement of the Kuril Islands is a complex process highly influenced by a range of environmental, cultural and demographic factors. In contrast to the theoretical expectations about the influence of biogeography, results suggest that environmental and geographic variables are not the primary influence on the colonization and long-term habitation of the Kuril Islands. Changes in the production and use of pottery vessels as well as differences in social network structures suggest the major differences recognized in the archipelago are primarily due to socio-cultural influences. This research supports a growing body of knowledge that living in marginal island landscapes is not comparable to living in geographic isolation but rather populations in these regions are highly influenced by broader political and economic conditions.


This paper focuses on extensive testing of multimatcher methods for obtaining a system that is comparable with the state-of-the-art commercial matchers. Through extensive testing, we propose an ensemble method that uses minutiae, correlation-based, and hybrid methods. To further improve our system, we conduct experiments with matchers that are also based on different enhancement techniques, combining matcher scores by sum rule. Our results are validated on all four FVC2004 DBs and on the easier FVC2002 DB2. Finally, we study the fusion among the proposed methods with the competitor systems in the FVC2004 competition. We find that our method improves the performance of the winner of FVC2004 competition. The MATLAB code for our experiments is freely available for downloading at bias.csr.unibo.it/nanni/Fconf.rar.


This UKERC Working Paper seeks to understand the factors contributing to the emergence, growth and nature of community energy in the UK. It is based on a review of existing data and literature, and focuses on investigating the role of financing mechanisms and business models in the evolution of the community energy sector. It argues that, since its emergence in the UK in the late 1990s, community energy has grown through finding opportunities for smaller scale, decentralised energy activities in the UK's highly centralised energy system. The combination of development of renewable energy technologies, and the launch of the government's Feed-In Tariff Scheme (FITS) in 2010, produced a boom in the sector, especially around solar electricity generation. Recent cuts to FITS rates and other policy changes place community energy at a crossroads. Some renewables activity will continue, but groups are exploring a wide range of activities, partnerships, and business models. We are engaging with the sector around outputs from our research, which include a survey and case studies, to co-develop recommendations and pathways for the future.


Marked on-road cycle lanes are a relatively inexpensive means of providing for cycling; however, their use has been questioned in terms of both their safety and their effectiveness in attracting more people to take up cycling. While both questions have been previously researched, the findings were rather inconclusive. A recent research project in Christchurch, New Zealand investigated the relative effects on cycle count and crash numbers of installing a series of cycle lanes. Twelve routes installed in Christchurch during the mid-2000s were analyzed, together with some control routes that already had cycle lanes. Cycle count data from a series of route locations and dates were used to establish cycling trends before and after installation. These were also compared against cycle crash numbers along these routes during the same periods. The results generally show no consistent "step" increase in cycling numbers immediately following installation of cycle lanes, with some increasing and decreasing. Changes on cycling growth rates were more positive, although it is clear that other wider trends such as motor traffic growth are having an effect. Taking into account the control routes and relative changes in volumes, the study also found notable reductions in cycle crashes following installation, typically with a 23% average reduction in crash rates. However, this reduction was not statistically significant at the 95% level.


This paper examines localized activism conducted through Anglophone Kashmiri literary fiction and by South Asian feminist social justice movements such as Girls at Dhabas and Why Loiter , in order to analyze the emergence of a pleasure-centric model of human rights advocacy in the South Asian region. Life narratives and testimonies foregrounding bodily pain, torture and victimization are ubiquitous within international human rights advocacy campaigns. South Asian activist movements have, however, suggested an alternative to this suffering-centered mode of advocacy; they foreground the effectiveness and emotional resonance of narratives of pleasure instead. This paper builds on existing scholarship focusing on the way in which insights from human rights activism conducted in local cultural contexts can be translated back to the global and how they can in turn potentially transform international practices of human rights advocacy, rather than always the other way around.


We investigate and discuss stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers for the generation of millimeter waves in theory and experiment. With a derivation of the responsible differential equation system we show that the phases of two independently amplified sidebands of a frequency comb will remain the same. Neither third-order nonlinear effects like self- and cross-phase modulation nor the Brillouin amplification has an influence on the phases. We verify our theoretical predictions with phase noise measurements of the generated millimeter-wave signal. The results show that the generated phase noise is in fact very low.


This research presents the design of a board game that explores Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) of Information Technologies (IT) for the Disaster and Risk Management (DRM) domain. The game aims to support circumspect discussions of issues emerging at cross-border, cross-sector, interoperation and data management such as privacy, trust, accountability, non-discrimination, and security. IsITethical? board game is both a tool and a process of collaboratively building worlds in which ELSI guidance can be discussed, developed further and applied in preferable near futures. The original idea emerged from the research deliverables of the ELSI work package of SecInCoRe (2014--17), a large-scale EU funded research project concerned with IT for DRM Common Information Spaces (CIS). SecInCoRe's first prototype of the game was further developed and tested in the context of IsITethical?Exchange (2017--2019), a UK Research Innovation funded service co-design project, that explores the idea of ethical impact assessment as a creative collaborative process. This paper offers insights from designing and playing of IsITethical? that begun as a project to make ELSI guidance accessible, but that ultimately opened the way for a much bigger journey, including an online community of practitioners, a living knowledge base, a travelling tool kit for ethical impact assessment service, a methodology to do ethics, and the developing of Ethics through Design framework, that both reformulates ideas of Ethics and ideas of Human-Computer Interaction Design.


Plasmids enable the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in common Enterobacterales pathogens, representing a major public health challenge. However, the extent of plasmid sharing and evolution between Enterobacterales causing human infections and other niches remains unclear, including the emergence of resistance plasmids. Dense, unselected sampling is highly relevant to developing our understanding of plasmid epidemiology and designing appropriate interventions to limit the emergence and dissemination of plasmid-associated AMR. We established a geographically and temporally restricted collection of human bloodstream infection (BSI)-associated, livestock-associated (cattle, pig, poultry, and sheep faeces, farm soils) and wastewater treatment work (WwTW)-associated (influent, effluent, waterways upstream/downstream of effluent outlets) Enterobacterales. Isolates were collected between 2008-2020 from sites <60km apart in Oxfordshire, UK. Pangenome analysis of plasmid clusters revealed shared "backbones", with phylogenies suggesting an intertwined ecology where well-conserved plasmid backbones carry diverse accessory functions, including AMR genes. Many plasmid "backbones" were seen across species and niches, raising the possibility that plasmid movement between these followed by rapid accessory gene change could be relatively common. Overall, the signature of identical plasmid sharing is likely to be a highly transient one, implying that plasmid movement might be occurring at greater rates than previously estimated, raising a challenge for future genomic One Health studies. Funding This study was funded by the Antimicrobial Resistance Cross-council Initiative supported by the seven research councils and the NIHR, UK.


In cities with tall buildings, emergency responders need accurate floor-level location to find 911 callers quickly. We introduce a system to estimate a victim's floor-level via their mobile device's sensor data in a two-step process. First, we train a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) hidden units to determine when a smartphone enters or exits a building. Second, we use a barometer equipped smartphone to measure the change in barometric pressure from the entrance of the building to the victim's indoor location. Unlike impractical previous approaches, our system is the first that does not require the use of beacons, previous knowledge of the building infrastructure or knowledge of user behavior. We demonstrate real-world feasibility through 63 experiments across five different tall buildings throughout New York City. Our system predicted the correct floor-level within 2 floors with 90.5% accuracy.


The process of teaching and learning is rooted in student, teacher, and curriculum. Discussions about education are mostly focused on the level of attainment of the desired learning objectives. When student achievement is low, then some critical factors related to teaching and learning should be closely examined, such as qualities of teachers and school curricula, appropriateness of teaching strategies to students' developmental levels, and atmosphere and climate of schools related to students learning. Different views and suggestions about increasing students' academic achievement are discussed publicly. However, the perceptions of teachers as one of the main parts of the teaching and learning system have not publicized enough. The aim of this study was to examine teachers' views about the responsibilities of parents, schools, and teachers to enhance students' academic achievement. Specifically, the following three questions guided this study: 1. What do teachers think of the responsibilities of parents in enhancing students' academic achievement in schools? 2. What do teachers think of the responsibilities of schools in enhancing students' academic achievement in schools? 3. What do teachers think of the responsibilities of teachers in enhancing students' academic achievement in schools? The family characteristic that is the most powerful predictor of school performance is socioeconomic status. The correlation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement has been found 0.58 (White, 1982). Some caring parents are very good in creating a home atmosphere that fosters student learning (e.g., reading to their children, helping them with their homework, encouraging them to go to college, and taking them to the library and some cultural events) (Danielson, 2002). They also communicate their expectations to the children and show a great interest in the schoolwork of their children (Fan & Chen, 2001). There is a positive relationship between school quality and student learning. According to a current meta-analysis study, schools definitely can make a difference in student achievement. For example, the average student who attends a "good" school will have a score that is 23 percentile points higher than the average student who attends a "poor" school (Marzano, Pikering, & Pollock, 2001). The question is then "What are the characteristics of good or effective schools ? ". Marzano (2003) listed in rank order five school-level factors in terms of their impact on student achievement. They are guaranteed and viable curriculum, challenging goals and effective feedback, parental and community involvement, safe and orderly environment, and collegiality and professionalism. If a school is to be a true learning community, both teachers and students must have the opportunity to help develop the policies and practices that affect them (Danielson, 2002). Moreover, there is a negative relationship between school size and student achievement. Since, small schools report better attendance and fewer discipline problems than larger ones, small schools have been proven to be more conducive to student academic achievement (Burke, 1987). Teachers have a significant impact on student achievement. Teachers directly affect how students learn, what they learn, how much they learn, and the ways they interact with one another and the world around them. The effect the classroom teacher can have on student achievement is clear because student achievement begins and ends with the quality of the teacher, the instructional program, and his/her leadership. After conducting a meta-analysis study, Marzano (2003) concluded that the most effective teachers produced a gain of about 53 percentage points in student achievement over one year, whereas the least effective teachers produced achievement gains of about 14 percentage points over one year. Furthermore, 54-percentile point discrepancy in achievement gains between students with least effective teachers versus those with most effective teachers-29 percentage points versus 83 percentage points respectively over three years. …


This article is a response to Benjamin Cassady's recent article, "You've Got Your Crook, I've Got Mine": Why the Disqualification Clause Doesn't (Always) Disqualify. It agrees with Your Crook that disqualification does not apply to election to the House or Senate, and that voters should have as free a hand as the Constitution will allow to elect representatives and senators that others in Congress might find scurrilous. The article focuses, however, on disagreements and distinctions. Part I critiques the nature of the structural claims in Your Crook. Part II examines the importance of the legal-process question: who decides whether a particular person is disqualified from a particular post? Part III looks at other elements of the constitutional structure that Your Crook does not consider. Part IV similarly fleshes out the question of disqualification and the presidency. Finally, Part V takes issue with Mr. Cassady's application of the term "pardon" to the election of a previously disqualified or expelled person.


Command and control environments ranging from transport control rooms to disaster response have long been of interest to HCI and CSCW as rich sites of interactive technology use embedded in work practice. Drawing on our engagement with disaster response teams, including ethnography of their training work, we unpack the ways in which situational uncertainty is managed while a shared operational 'picture' is constituted through various practices around tabletop work. Our analysis reveals how this picture is collaboratively assembled as a socially shared object and displayed by drawing on digital and physical resources. Accordingly, we provide a range of principles implicated by our study that guide the design of systems augmenting and enriching disaster response work practices. In turn, we propose the Augmented Bird Table to illustrate how our principles can be implemented to support tabletop work.


Vehicle/Track Interaction (VTI) Safety Standards aim to reduce the risk of derailments and other accidents attributable to the dynamic interaction between moving vehicles and the track over which they operate. On March 13, 2013, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published a final rule titled "Vehicle/Track Interaction Safety Standards; High-Speed and High Cant Deficiency Operations" which amended the Track Safety Standards (49 CFR Part213) and the Passenger Equipment Safety Standards (49 CFR Part 238) in order to promote VTI safety under a variety of conditions at speeds up to 220 mph. Among its main accomplishments, the final rule revises standards for track geometry and enhances qualification procedures for demonstrating vehicle trackworthiness to take advantage of computer modeling.The Track Safety Standards provide safety limits for maximum allowable track geometry variations for all nine FRA Track Classes — i.e., safety "minimums." These limits serve to identify conditions that require immediate attention because they may pose or create a potential safety hazard. While these conditions are generally infrequent, they define the worst conditions that can exist before a vehicle is required to slow down. To promote the safe interaction of rail vehicles with the track over which they operate (i.e. wheels stay on track, and vehicle dynamics do not overload the track structure, vehicle itself, or cause injury to passengers), these conditions must be considered in the design of suspension systems. In particular, rail vehicle suspensions must be designed to control the dynamic response such that wheel/rail forces and vehicle accelerations remain within prescribed thresholds (VTI safety limits) when traversing these more demanding track geometry conditions at all allowable speeds associated with at particular track class.To help understand the differences in performance requirements (design constraints) being placed on the design of passenger equipment suspensions throughout the world, comparisons have been made between FRA safety standards and similar standards used internationally (Europe, Japan, and China) in terms of both allowable track geometry deviations and the criteria that define acceptable vehicle performance (VTI safety limits). While the various factors that have influenced the development of each of the standards are not readily available or fully understood at this time (e.g., economic considerations, provide safety for unique operating conditions, promote interoperability by providing a railway infrastructure that supports a wide variety of rail vehicle types, etc.), this comparative study helps to explain in part why, in certain circumstances, equipment that has been designed for operation in other parts of the world has performed poorly, and in some cases had derailment problems when imported to the U.S. Furthermore, for specific equipment that is not specifically designed for operation in the U.S., it helps to identify areas that may need to be addressed with other appropriate action(s) to mitigate potential safety concerns, such as by ensuring that the track over which the equipment is operating is maintained to standards appropriate for the specific equipment type, or by placing operational restrictions on the equipment, or both.In addition to these comparisons, an overview of the new FRA qualification procedures which are used for demonstrating vehicle trackworthiness is provided in this paper. These procedures, which include use of simulations to demonstrate dynamic performance, are intended to give guidance to vehicle designers and provide a more comprehensive tool for safety assessment and verification of the suitability of a particular equipment design for the track conditions found in the U.S.© 2014 ASME


Amidst the recent apologies for slavery from the legislatures of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, and Alabama, there is significant controversy over the wisdom of investigations of institution's connections to slavery and apologies for those connections. The divide over attitudes towards apologies falls along racial lines. This paper briefly looks to the controversy on both sides of the apology debates. Among those questions about investigations of the past, Universities occupy a special place. Efforts at recovery of their connections to slavery include a study released by graduate students at Yale in 2001, Brown University's Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, and the University of Virginia's board of visitors' spring 2007 apology for that institution's connections to slavery. That leads to a question about whether other schools ought to consider a self-investigation. William and Mary is a particularly good place to ask such questions. This paper focuses on Thomas R. Dew, first a professor, then president at William and Mary, from 1828 to his early death in 1846. Dew is the author of Review of the Debates in the Virginia Legislature, one of the most reprinted arguments on slavery in the years leading into Civil War. He is also the author of one of the most comprehensive and important histories published in the United States in the nineteenth century, A Digest of the Laws, Customs, Manners and Institutions of Ancient and Modern Nations. Dew focused on considerations of utility and history to suggest the impracticality of gradual emancipation. Through Dew we can gauge the intellectual connections to slavery, then ask the important question, what - if anything - is an appropriate institutional response today? We can use him to begin a discussion of the virtues and pitfalls of apologies and to assess the value of talk of the connections to the past.


In order to analyze the distribution and evolution of the aquatic vegetation and ecological status of the Semois-Chiers basin (Semois sub-basin and Chiers sub-basin), macrophyte surveys were conducted at 48 sites in 2007 and 2013. Environmental parameters were also measured in order to characterize the waterbodies in terms of physico-chemical properties and anthropogenic pressure. The two-way clustering and indicator value (INDVAL) methods were used to assess groups of sites according to their macrophytic composition and species communities. The results showed a clear difference between streams in the Lorraine area (calcareous watercourses) and in the Ardennes (siliceous). Within each natural region, those with natural vegetation of high ecological status were separated from those dominated by resistant species. The Macrophytical Biological Index for Rivers (IBMR) was calculated for the sites visited in 2010 and 2013 and the results show a trend towards an increase of IBMR values of polluted sites. For the latter, the Wilcoxon test was performed to assess the significance of the difference in quality between 2010 and 2013. This showed a statistically significant difference (p-value = 0.035). Our results showed similarities with previous data, as well as some differences. The differences observed might indicate a gradual change in the composition of the vegetation in the study area, which was caused by changes in environmental conditions. They could also reflect a lack of information about the ecology of certain groups of plants, mainly bryophytes and macroalgae that were not considered in previous studies. Despite the measures implemented under the EU's Water Framework Directive (WFD), the current vegetation of the Semois river differs little from that observed in 1996. The headwaters of a Semois river, described in previous studies as polytrophic and devoid of vegetation, show a slight improvement, with the appearance of macrophytic species. In some parts of the Chiers sub-basin, however, resistant species observed in 1999 persist.


The photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) was one of the most significant Italian artists of the late twentieth century. This volume – the first scholarly book-length publication on Ghirri to appear in English – introduces his photographic and critical work to a broader audience and positions Ghirri as a key voice within global artistic debates. It breaks new ground by approaching Ghirri's œuvre from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives, in order to take account of the breadth of his interests, the variety of his projects and the far-reaching impact of his work as a practitioner, writer, theorist and curator, both in the field of photography and beyond. Drawing on different approaches from disciplines including art history, theory of photography, literary and cultural studies, architecture, cartography, and place and landscape studies, the essays in the volume show how Ghirri redefined contemporary photography and helped shape the «spatial» or «landscape» turn in Italy and further afield.


This article reports on two empirical studies and an experiment that have significant policy implications for contracts and consumer protection law in the context of real estate transactions. The Condo Contract Study reflected that 79% of the form condominium purchase contracts that real estate developers used in Chicago contained a highly unfair remedies clause where in the event of the seller's default the buyer's sole remedy was return of the buyer's earnest money (hence no real negative consequence to the seller) but in the event of the buyer's default, the seller would be able to retain the buyer's earnest money (which typically was 10% of the purchase price). We argue that this lopsided remedies clause should be considered to be unconscionable and that it creates an illusory agreement. But this view has so far only prevailed in Florida. Reported case law from other jurisdictions have ruled that this type of limitation of remedy clause is enforceable as the bargained for agreement between the parties, on the assumption that buyers of homes read and understand the terms of the contracts they enter into. We therefore tested this assumption in a Consumer Remedies Experiment in which consumers are provided what courts consider to be "clearly" worded and enforceable (even though highly unfair) limitation of remedies clauses. We found that a large percentage of participants in the experiment had trouble understanding the negative ramifications of these "clearly" worded clauses, thus undercutting the premise upon which the concept of enforcing "bargained for" contract terms rests. As reflected in our experiment, participants rarely understood the rights they have upon default and therefore did not understand the rights they "bargained away" when they signed developer based form contracts. The article also considers the implication of this finding on the debate over the unauthorized practice of law, and argues that this result, and other data reported on in the article, provide important evidence of the public benefit from buyers having an attorney to consult with at the contract formation stage when purchasing a home. The article reports on other data collected and then details four areas of legal reform in light of this data to better protect home purchasers: (i) revise the unauthorized practice of law rules to mandate attorney review and approval of home purchase contracts, further requiring such attorneys to be specially trained and licensed for this type of representation, (ii) enact legislation that prohibits remedies clauses that limit buyers' remedies to return of earnest money and create safe harbor rules based on mutuality of remedy and true bargaining in the home purchase contract, (iii) replace the substantive unconscionability test with a "reasonable limitation of remedy" test in the home purchase context for limitation-of-remedies clauses, and (iv) enact legislation requiring attorneys' fees to the prevailing party in the context of enforcing rights in a home purchase agreement when the counterparty is a real estate developer.


This document describes a file format for the storage of flow data based upon the IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) protocol. It proposes a set of requirements for flat-file, binary flow data file formats, then specifies the IPFIX File format to meet these requirements based upon IPFIX Messages. This IPFIX File format is designed to facilitate interoperability and reusability among a wide variety of flow storage, processing, and analysis tools.


We use geodetic measurements from very long baseline interferometry to estimate the motion of the Sierra Nevadan microplate, which is composed of the Sierra Nevada and the Great Valley. The motion of the Sierra Nevadan microplate relative to the North American plate is described by a right-handed rotation of 0.61°/m.y. about lat 32°N, long 128°W. This Euler pole lies only 10° southwest of the Sierra Nevadan microplate and predicts a significant counterclockwise rotation about a local vertical axis. It further predicts a velocity of the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada (at 38.0°N, 119.3°W) relative to stable North America of 11 ±1 mm/yr toward N36° ±3°W (quoted uncertainties are plus or minus one standard error), which accounts for about one-fourth of the velocity between the Pacific and North American plates and is ∼25° clockwise of many prior estimates. The velocity nearly parallels the boundary between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin, which implies that current motion within the Great Basin results in a rotational, noncoaxial deformation. We use this velocity to estimate how motion is distributed across the broad deforming zone taking up Pacific-North America plate motion. We find that the vector sum of strike slip along the San Andreas fault and motion of the Sierra Nevada relative to stable North America (taken up by deformation within the Great Basin) differs little from the Pacific-North America plate velocity. The difference can be described at 36°N along the San Andreas fault by a vector of 6 mm/yr directed toward N20°W. This vector resolves into components of 5 mm/yr parallel to the fault and 2 mm/yr perpendicular to the fault with 95% confidence intervals of 0 to 10 mm/yr and -1 to +5 mm/yr, respectively. The component perpendicular to the fault is several times smaller than found in prior studies and places a small upper bound on fault-perpendicular shortening. We conclude that motion previously inferred to be taken up by deformation other than strike slip along the San Andreas fault or deformation within the Great Basin is much smaller than previously thought.


OBJECTIVE To evaluate the utility of capture-recapture methods using multiple, routinely collected, computerized data sources to estimate the numbers and prevalence of diabetes. Methods employed for regional and national monitoring of diabetes have been too inaccurate or too expensive. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A survey was undertaken that used four sources of ascertainment to identify prevalent cases of known diabetes in a community of Northern Italy: diabetic clinic and family physicians, hospital discharges, prescriptions, and reagent strips and insulin syringes. Capture-recapture methods were employed to estimate the number of missing cases and to adjust for undercount to accurately estimate the number of people who had diabetes. RESULTS We identified 2,069 unique prevalent cases of known diabetes with the intensive case-finding procedure. The diabetic clinic and family physicians data source identified the largest number of cases. The evaluation of the two sample capture-recapture estimates showed that they were all biased downward because of dependencies between sources. Log-linear modeling was employed to take into account the dependence among all data sources and the heterogeneity of diabetic patients. This method estimated that 2,586 cases existed, resulting in an ascertainment-adjusted prevalence of 2.77% (95% confidence interval, 2.44–3.10). Thus, despite the active case identification, ∼20% could not be identified. However, the number of cases and rates could easily be adjusted using capture-recapture. CONCLUSIONS The study shows that a two-sample capture-recapture estimate could be very biased if the investigator is not assured that the sources are independent. However, if at least three data sources are employed, log-linear models allow estimation of the number and prevalence rate adjusted for the degree of undercount (in spite of both the dependence of data sources and the heterogeneity of the diabetic population). The critical factor, however, is that the application of multiple sources with capture-recapture methods could be applied across broad geographical areas and across time to have cost-effective monitoring of diabetes at local and national level.


Cloud computing and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) are emerging and promising technologies, however their faster-pased adoption is hampered by data security concerns. At the same time, Trusted Computing (TC) is experiencing an increasing interest and revived interest as a security mechanism for IaaS. In this paper we present a protocol and We address the lack of an implementable mechanism to to ensure the launch of a virtual machine (VM) instance on a trusted remote compute host. Relying on Trusted Platform Module operations such as binding and sealing to provide integrity guarantees for clients that require a trusted VM launch, we have designed a trusted launch protocol for VM instances and images in public IaaS environments. We also present a proof-of-concept implementation of the protocol based on OpenStack, an open-source IaaS platform. The results provide a basis for the use of TC mechanisms within IaaS platforms and pave the way for a wider applicability of TC to IaaS security.