The Leading Integrated Chemical Process Design Guide: Now with New Problems, New Projects, and More More than ever, effective design is the focal point of sound chemical engineering. Analysis, Synthesis, and Design of Chemical Processes, Third Edition, presents design as a creative process that integrates both the big picture and the small details–and knows which to stress when, and why. Realistic from start to finish, this book moves readers beyond classroom exercises into open-ended, real-world process problem solving. The authors introduce integrated techniques for every facet of the discipline, from finance to operations, new plant design to existing process optimization. This fully updated Third Edition presents entirely new problems at the end of every chapter. It also adds extensive coverage of batch process design, including realistic examples of equipment sizing for batch sequencing; batch scheduling for multi-product plants; improving production via intermediate storage and parallel equipment; and new optimization techniques specifically for batch processes. Coverage includes Conceptualizing and analyzing chemical processes: flow diagrams, tracing, process conditions, and more Chemical process economics: analyzing capital and manufacturing costs, and predicting or assessing profitability Synthesizing and optimizing chemical processing: experience-based principles, BFD/PFD, simulations, and more Analyzing process performance via I/O models, performance curves, and other tools Process troubleshooting and "debottlenecking" Chemical engineering design and society: ethics, professionalism, health, safety, and new "green engineering" techniques Participating successfully in chemical engineering design teams Analysis, Synthesis, and Design of Chemical Processes, Third Edition, draws on nearly 35 years of innovative chemical engineering instruction at West Virginia University. It includes suggested curricula for both single-semester and year-long design courses; case studies and design projects with practical applications; and appendixes with current equipment cost data and preliminary design information for eleven chemical processes–including seven brand new to this edition.


As cities seek to foster more livable and active communities, much attention is being placed on promoting physical activity through active transport and wellness activities. As such, it is important that city planners and engineers be able to tailor these livable improvements to the interests and needs of their specific residents. More importantly, it is important to understand where individuals are most likely to participate in physical activities as well as their level of interest in pursuing these activities. This thesis develops a unique GPS and accelerometer-based methodology for collecting and analyzing (through a series of regression models) university students' levels of interest in physical activities that take place at/near home, at a destination or during transportation. It also utilizes a discrete choice model to determine the factors influencing students' commute mode choices. As a result, it was possible to determine where students were most physically active through observed activity data. Both built environment and health/lifestyle variables significantly influenced physical activity as well as mode choice. These methods and the models estimated in this paper can be applied on a larger scale to communities to forecast locations of physical activity participation for use in guiding the development of livable communities.


Different medically based constructions of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been around since 'mental restlessness' in 1798, evolved through the 20th century with 'minimal brain dysfunction' and distinctions between Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and ADHD (DSM-III), to current presentations of ADHD (DSM5). As new insights and knowledge have become available, the meaning and labels attached to ADHD have changed, and so they are malleable. This piece will explore two different labels (or frameworks for meaning) for the cluster of behaviours and difficulties associated with the phenomenon known as ADHD; that is, the disorder label and the diversity label. These labels will be explored in terms of accuracy and consequences, particularly their impact on human dignity. Problems inherent in the disorder label will be critically considered, particularly how accurate it is given that psychobiological differences should not be viewed as disorder, may not 'cause' functional deficits, and may be understood as strengths. These problems call the disorder label into question, and suggest that ADHD-type behaviours could be understood as traits. This piece will also call into question taken-for-granted social structures that could contribute to or be responsible for the difficulties associated with ADHD, in particular, the stigmatisation of the ADHD label and socio-cultural norms and expectations around ADHD-type behaviours. An alternative diversity label, the neurodiversity framework (or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Diversity) will be explored, in terms of whether it applies to ADHD and the opportunities it offers for empowerment of people and the protection of their fundamental human dignity. In essence, this piece is a socio-political debate about identity; about the labels that can inadvertently harm human dignity and prevent other human rights. It is also about people's right to choice and autonomy in their identity and ways of being in this world. These are human rights issues, because identity is about one's inherent worth and dignity, and human dignity is the basis


Cold-water stony corals create habitat for a diverse range of deep-water species but are thought to be threatened by ocean acidification due to oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2. Knowledge of the severity of this threat is hampered by our limited understanding of the distribution and habitat requirements of these corals. Here we estimate the global acidification threat to these organisms using a global database of cold-water stony coral records and a species distribution modelling approach. We parameterised the models using present-day environmental data, and then replaced these data with future projections of ocean chemistry from the year 2099. We found suitable coral habitat to be very heterogeneously distributed, being concentrated in the northern North Atlantic and around New Zealand. Projected changes in ocean chemistry induced a pronounced reduction in habitat suitability in the North Atlantic, and a low-tomoderate impact elsewhere under both the IPCC IS92a and S650 scenarios. Seamount summits are impacted by these changes, but consistently provide more suitable habitat than the surrounding seafloor, with around 98% of seamount summits having higher suitability in both future scenarios; this is because they lie in shallower waters with a higher aragonite saturation state. These results suggest that anthropogenic-induced changes in ocean chemistry are likely to severely impact cold-water stony coral habitat in the deep-sea of the North Atlantic, and that impacts will be less severe elsewhere. We predict that coral communities on the summits and upper slopes of seamounts will be less susceptible to ocean acidification during this century than those on the surrounding seafloor, and thus that seamounts may serve as temporary refugia. Marine Ecology. ISSN 0173-9565


Epistemic justications for democracy have been offered in terms of two different forms of information aggregation and decision-making. The Condorcet Jury Theorem is appealed to as a justication in terms of votes, and the Hong–Page 'diversity trumps ability' result is appealed to as a justication in terms of deliberation in the form of collaborative search. Both results, however, are models of full and direct participation across a population. In this paper, we contrast how these results hold up within the familiar structure of a representative hierarchy. We rst consider extant analytic work that shows that representation inevitably weakens the voting results of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. We then go on to show that collaborative search, as modeled by Hong and Page, holds its own within hierarchical representation. In a variation on the dynamics of group search, representation even shows a slight edge over direct participation. This contrast illustrates how models of information aggregation vary when put into a representative structure. While some of the epistemic merits of democracy are lost when voting is done hierarchically, modeling results show that representation can preserve and even slightly amplify the epistemic virtues of collaborative search.


The limits of selective surface performance are evaluated using net power gain as a comparison variable. It is found that a model selective surface based on the optical constants of c-Ge will approach the power gain of an ideal thermally broadened selective surface within 10% for fixed collectors at 300°C, seasonally adjusted collectors at 500°C, and conventional linear tracking parabolic collectors at 700°C. Previous loss limits of performance in the literature were pessimistic primarily due to incorrect absorption edge placement in the energy spectrum and insufficiently effective methods of emittance reduction. Novel emittance reduction methods are suggested.


AI Planning has been shown to be a useful approach for the generation of narrative in interactive entertainment systems and games. However, the creation of the underlying narrative domain models is challenging: the well documented AI planning modelling bottleneck is further compounded by the need for authors, who tend to be non-technical, to create content. We seek to support authors in this task by allowing natural language (NL) plot synopses to be used as a starting point from which planning domain models can be automatically acquired. We present a solution which analyses input NL text summaries, and builds structured representations from which a pddl model is output (fully automated or author in-the-loop). We introduce a novel sieve-based approach to pronoun resolution that demonstrates consistently high performance across domains. In the paper we focus on authoring of narrative planning models for use in interactive entertainment systems and games. We show that our approach exhibits comprehensive detection of both actions and objects in the system-extracted domain models, in combination with significant improvement in the accuracy of pronoun resolution due to the use of contextual object information. Our results and an expert user assessment show that our approach enables a reduction in authoring effort required to generate baseline narrative domain models from which variants can be built.


In this paper, the effects of periodic partial harvesting of a continuously grown crop on augmentative biological control are analyzed. Partial harvesting can remove a proportion of both pests and biological control agents, so its influence on the control efficiency cannot be a priori neglected. An impulsive model consisting of a general predator-prey model in ODE, augmented by a discrete component to depict releases of biological control agents and the periodic partial harvesting is used. The periods are taken as integer multiples of each other. A stability condition for pest eradication is expressed as the minimal value of the budget per unit time to spend on predators. We consider the partial harvesting period to be fixed by both the plant's physiology and market forces so that the only manipulated variable is the release period. It is shown that varying the release period with respect to the harvest period influences the minimal budget value when the former is carried out more often than the latter and has no effect when releases take place as often as or less frequently than the partial harvests.


Despite the growing international literature in the field of efficiency and productivity measurement there are very limited Greek applications partly due to inadequate and incomplete datasets. The aim of this article is to illustrate the main methodologies for health care services efficiency and productivity measurement, to present their strengths and weaknesses and to discuss the existing evidence from applications in other countries. Notwithstanding the fact that the related methodologies have been recently developed these methods may help practitioners and health care decisions makers in improving health care management in Greece.


On Christian Belief offers a defence of realism in the philosophy of religion. It argues that religious belief - with particular reference to Christian belief - unlike any other kind of belief, is cognitive; making claims about what is real, and open to rational discussion between believers and non-believers. The author begins by providing a critique of several views which either try to describe a faith without cognitive context, or to justify believing on non-cognitive grounds. He then discusses what sense can be made of the phenomenon of religious conversion by realists and non-realists. After a chapter on knowledge in general, he defends the idea that religious knowledge is very like other knowledge, in being based on reliable testimony, sifted by reason and tested by experience. The logical status of the content of religious belief is then discussed, with reference to Christianity.


We formalize notions of robustness for composite estimators via the notion of a breakdown point. A composite estimator successively applies two (or more) estimators: on data decomposed into disjoint parts, it applies the first estimator on each part, then the second estimator on the outputs of the first estimator. And so on, if the composition is of more than two estimators. Informally, the breakdown point is the minimum fraction of data points which if significantly modified will also significantly modify the output of the estimator, so it is typically desirable to have a large breakdown point. Our main result shows that, under mild conditions on the individual estimators, the breakdown point of the composite estimator is the product of the breakdown points of the individual estimators. We also demonstrate several scenarios, ranging from regression to statistical testing, where this analysis is easy to apply, useful in understanding worst case robustness, and sheds powerful insights onto the associated data analysis.


Gameplay in real-time strategy games seems somehow to be confined to a de facto standard where economical micro-management is equally important as combat strategy, if not more important. To enable stronger combat-oriented gameplay without sacrificing other key aspects of the genre, we propose an automated system for scheduling unit training, which we believe may allow the exploration of new paradigms of play. To be accepted by the player, such a system must, among other things, be efficient and reliable, which is a non-trivial task considering the highly dynamic nature of the environment in this genre of games. To overcome such a challenge, we propose a system inspired in the swarm intelligence demonstrated by social insects, namely wasps, and describe its limitations and benefits, based on the evaluation of an implementation of the approach as a modification of the game Warcraft III The Frozen Throne (Blizzard Entertainment, 2003).


This paper presents the design and learning architecture for an omnidirectional walk used by a humanoid robot soccer agent acting in the RoboCup 3D simulation environment. The walk, which was originally designed for and tested on an actual Nao robot before being employed in the 2011 RoboCup 3D simulation competition, was the crucial component in the UT Austin Villa team winning the competition in 2011. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that robot behavior has been conceived and constructed on a real robot for the end purpose of being used in simulation.  The walk is based on a double linear inverted pendulum model, and multiple sets of its parameters are optimized via a novel framework. The framework optimizes parameters for different tasks in conjunction with one another, a little-understood problem with substantial practical significance.  Detailed experiments show that the UT Austin Villa agent significantly outperforms all the other agents in the competition with the optimized walk being the key to its success.


With the increased complexity of Very Large Scaled Integrated (VLSI) circuits, multilevel
logic synthesis plays an even more important role due to its flexibility and compactness.
The history of symbolic logic and some typical techniques for multilevel logic synthesis
are reviewed. These methods include algorithmic approach; Rule-Based approach; Binary
Decision Diagram (BDD) approach; Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA) approach
and several perturbation applications.
One new kind of don't cares (DCs), called functional DCs has been proposed for multilevel
logic synthesis. The conventional two-level cubes are generalized to multilevel cubes.
Then functional DCs are generated based on the properties of containment. The concept
of containment is more general than unateness which leads to the generation of new
DCs. A separate C program has been developed to utilize the functional DCs generated
as a Boolean function is decomposed for both single output and multiple output functions.
The program can produce better results than script.rugged of SIS, developed by UC Berkeley,
both in area and speed in less CPU time for a number of testcases from MCNC and
IWLS'93 benchmarks.
In certain applications ANDjXOR (Reed-Muller) logic has shown some attractive advantages
over the standard Boolean logic based on AND JOR operations. A bidirectional
conversion algorithm between these two paradigms is presented based on the concept of polarity
for sum-of-products (SOP) Boolean functions, multiple segment and multiple pointer
facilities. Experimental results show that the algorithm is much faster than the previously
published programs for any fixed polarity. Based on this algorithm, a new technique called
redundancy-removal is applied to generalize the idea to very large multiple output Boolean
functions. Results for benchmarks with up to 199 inputs and 99 outputs are presented.
Applying the preceding conversion program, any Boolean functions can be expressed
by fixed polarity Reed-Muller forms. There are 2n polarities for an n-variable function and
the number of product terms depends on these polarities. The problem of exact polarity
minimization is computationally extensive and current programs are only suitable when
n :::; 15. Based on the comparison of the concepts of polarity in the standard Boolean logic
and Reed-Muller logic, a fast algorithm is developed and implemented in C language which
can find the best polarity for multiple output functions. Benchmark examples of up to 25
inputs and 29 outputs run on a personal computer are given.
After the best polarity for a Boolean function is calculated, this function can be further
simplified using mixed polarity methods by combining the adjacent product terms. Hence,
an efficient program is developed based on decomposition strategy to implement mixed
polarity minimization for both single output and very large multiple output Boolean functions.
Experimental results show that the numbers of product terms are much less than
the results produced by ESPRESSO for some categories of functions.


[1] This paper presents a Bayesian method of probability forecasting for a renewal of earthquakes. When only limited records of characteristic earthquakes on a fault are available, relevant prior distributions for renewal model parameters are essential to computing unbiased, stable time-dependent earthquake probabilities. We also use event slip and geological slip rate data combined with historical earthquake records to improve our forecast model. We apply the Brownian Passage Time (BPT) model and make use of the best fit prior distribution for its coefficient of variation (the shape parameter, alpha) relative to the mean recurrence time because the Earthquake Research Committee (ERC) of Japan uses the BPT model for long-term forecasting. Currently, more than 110 active faults have been evaluated by the ERC, but most include very few paleoseismic events. We objectively select the prior distribution with the Akaike Bayesian Information Criterion using all available recurrence data including the ERC datasets. These data also include mean recurrence times estimated from slip per event divided by long-term slip rate. By comparing the goodness of fit to the historical record and simulated data, we show that the proposed predictor provides more stable performance than plug-in predictors, such as maximum likelihood estimates and the predictor currently adopted by the ERC.


We investigated scent marking behaviour in the yellow mongoose Cynictis penicillata, focusing on a low-density population where all offspring dispersed upon reaching sexual maturity. Dominant males appeared to be the main territory defenders and demarcators, with offspring foraging and marking only near the territory cores. The cheek-marking rates of dominant males increased during the breeding season and may have been involved in olfactory mate guarding. We compared our low-density population with a high-density population displaying natal philopatry. The two populations differed markedly in terms of individual contributions to territorial marking, as subordinate group members in the low-density population performed almost no territorial marking or defence, but were the primary scent-markers and territory defenders in the high-density population. We discuss scent-marking distinctions between populations in the context of ecological and social differences.


Music therapy is a significant modality in the treatment of patients with cancer, who suffer emotional and spiritual distress as well as chemotherapy side effects that impair their quality of life. In this article, we present a case study of a patient challenged with recurrent ovarian cancer who received, concomitant with chemotherapy, a special form of music therapy based on anthroposophic medicine (AM) aimed at alleviating anxiety and improving her general well-being. AM-centered music therapy goals are discussed in regard to two modes of treatment: receptive listening and clinical composition. Next, these two treatment modes are discussed in a broader context by reviewing conventional music therapy interventions during chemotherapy on two axes: a. standardized vs. individualized treatment; b. patient's involvement on a passive to active continuum. In conclusion, psycho-oncology care can be enriched by adding anthroposophic medicine-oriented music therapy integrated within patients' supportive care.


Solute transport takes place in heterogeneous porous formations, with the log conductivity, Y = ln K, modeled as a stationary random space function of given univariate normal probability density function (pdf) with mean 〈Y〉, variance σY2, and integral scale IY. For weak heterogeneity, the above mentioned quantities completely define the first‐order approximation of the longitudinal macrodispersivity αL = σY2IY. However, in highly heterogeneous formations, nonlinear effects which depend on the multipoint joint pdf of Y, impact αL. Most of the past numerical simulations assumed a multivariate normal distribution (MVN) of Y values. The main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of deviations from the MVN structure upon αL. This is achieved by using the concept of spatial correlations of different Y classes, the latter being defined as the space domain where Y falls in the generic interval [Y,Y + ΔY]. The latter is characterized by a length scale λ(Y), reflecting the degree of connectivity of the domain (the concept is similar to the indicator variograms). We consider both "symmetrical" and "non‐symmetrical" structures, for which λ(Y′) = λ(−Y′) (similar to the MVN), and λ(Y′) ≠ λ(−Y′), respectively, where Y′ = Y − 〈Y〉. For example, large Y zones may have high spatial correlation, while low Y zones are poorly correlated, or vice versa. The impact of λ(Y) on αL is investigated by adopting a structure model which has been used in the past in order to investigate flow and transport in highly heterogeneous media. It is found that the increased correlation in the low conductive zones with respect to the high ones generally leads to a significant increase in αL, for the same global IY. The finding is explained by the solute retention occurring in low Y zones, which has a larger effect on solute spreading than high Y zones. Conversely, αL decreases when the high conductivity zones are more correlated than the low Y ones. Dispersivity is less affected by the shape of λ(Y) for symmetrical distributions. It is found that the range of validity of the first‐order dispersivity, i.e., αL = IYσY2, narrows down for non‐symmetrical structures.


This paper presents an assessment of the impacts of introducing the greening scenario of the CAP, proposed by the European Commission as an alternative for the reformed CAP after 2013. In the past, the CAP has undergone numerous transformations in response to the changing macroeconomic environment and in reaction to developments in the farming sectors in EU countries. On the 12th of October 2011, the Commission presented a set of legal proposals designed to make the CAP a more effective policy to encourage more competitive and sustainable agriculture and vibrant rural areas. The proposal brings various new elements under consideration, some of them raising strong controversies such as introducing "greening" as a component of direct payments. Changes in the direct payments scheme in line with the EC proposition include forcing adjustments in the cropping pattern and creating ecological focus areas (EFA) on 7% of the farm land ; the consequences of such a proposal on the size and structure of agricultural production, and thus on the economic performance of farms and the whole agricultural sector are uncertain. The authors analyse historical changes to the CAP with a focus on a growing importance of the environmental component of the CAP, discuss different scenarios of shaping the direct payments system and present the results of modelling the impacts of greening the CAP on the Polish farming sector with the use of the LP optimisation model. The study was based on Polish FADN data. Results show that the majority of farmers in Poland comply with the crop diversification constraint of greening. However, establishing the required EFAs and necessary diversification on farms with simplified cropping structures will have a negative impact on the volume of agricultural production as well as on farm incomes.


Algorithms of inference in a computer system oriented to input and semantic processing of text information are presented. Such inference is necessary for logical questions when the direct comparison of objects from a question and database can not give a result. The following classes of problems are considered: a check of hypotheses for persons and non-typical actions, the determination of persons and circumstances for non-typical actions, planning actions, the determination of event cause and state of persons. To form an answer both deduction and plausible reasoning are used. As a knowledge domain under consideration is social behavior of persons, plausible reasoning is based on laws of social psychology. Proposed algorithms of inference and plausible reasoning can be realized in computer systems closely connected with text processing (criminology, operation of business, medicine, document systems).


Unlike other handbooks, such as the Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy (Guilford, 2002) and the Handbook of Couples Therapy (Wiley, 2005), which give considerable attention to specific theoretical approaches for treating couples, this handbook addresses clinical issues only. There are no chapters on cognitive-behavioral couple therapy, emotion-focused couple therapy, or the like. Instead, this handbook's 18 chapters cover biological and physiological issues, traumatic issues, divorce and remarital issues, sociological issues, primary prevention issues, and training issues.


BACKGROUND
Successful ablation of ectopic beats originating from the pulmonary veins (PV) could eliminate paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF). However, information about the structure of the PV in patients with PAF that is initiated by PV ectopic beats has not been reported.

METHODS AND RESULTS
We studied the morphology of the PVs and measured their diameters in 3 groups of patients. Group I included 52 patients (aged 66+/-14 years; 44 men) with focal atrial fibrillation (AF) from the PVs. Group II included 8 patients (aged 50+/-10 years; 3 men) with focal AF from the superior vena cava or cristal terminalis. Group III included 23 control patients (aged 55+/-16 years; 17 men). Of the control patients, 11 had AV node and 12 had AV reentrant tachycardia. After an atrial transseptal procedure, selective PV angiography using a biplane system with a right anterior oblique view of 30 degrees, a left anterior oblique view of 60 degrees, and a cranial angle of 20 degrees was performed. The ostial and proximal portions of the right and left superior PVs (RSPV and LSPV) were significantly dilated in group I patients compared with those in groups II and III. Furthermore, the ostia of the RSPV and LSPV were significantly dilated in group II compared with group III patients. However, the mean diameters of the inferior PVs were similar between the 3 groups. Comparisons of the individual PV diameters among the 3 subgroups of group I (which was divided according to where the ectopic focus was located) showed nonselective dilatation of the PV.

CONCLUSIONS
Nonspecific dilatation of the ostia and proximal portion of superior PVs were found in patients with PAF initiated by ectopic beats from the superior PVs.


Some of the routing protocols used in telecommunication networks route traffic on a shortest path tree according to configurable integral link weights. One crucial issue for network operators is finding a weight function that ensures a stable routing: when some link fails, traffic whose path does not use that link should not be rerouted. In this paper we improve on several previously best results for finding small stable weights. As a conceptual contribution, we draw a connection between the stable weights problem and the seemingly unrelated unique-max coloring problem. In unique-max coloring, one is given a set of points and a family of subsets of those points called regions. The task is to assign to each region a color represented as an integer such that, for every point, one region containing it has a color strictly larger than the color of any other region containing this point. In our setting, points and regions become edges and paths of the shortest path tree, respectively, and based on this connection, we provide stable weight functions with a maximum weight of O(n log n) in the case of single link failure, where n is the number of vertices in the network. Furthermore, if the root of the shortest path tree is known, we present an algorithm for determining stable weights bounded by 4n, which is optimal up to constant factors. For the case of an arbitrary number of failures, we show how stable weights bounded by 3(n)n can be obtained. All the results improve on the previously best known bounds.


The thesis establishes a sovereign artist figure, which operates through fictionalisation. It is suggested that the figure of the artist is free to be anything in tenor with the movement of emancipation in modern art. This sovereignty is mapped on to the concept of sovereignty – particularly Bataille's concept of sovereign subjectivity – and read against his notion of a restricted economy of purpose and a general economy of excess. The double movement is explored via Derrida to suggest a self-ruinous, sovereign subjectivity. This subject is then relocated in terms of political sovereignty to suggest a privileged artistic subject of decision, whose transgression is similar in structure to that of the political sovereign.

The sovereignty of the artist is thought of in terms of Bataillean 'useless self-expenditure' as a 'counter-sovereign sovereignty'. Laughter is seen as a key attribute. The self-ruin, implied in Derrida's concept of 'autoimmunity', is conceived as a falling sovereignty, which implicates the world in a contagious comedy.

This comedy unfolds in a materialism of literature as a Bataillean 'sovereign operation'. From Derrida's understanding of the sovereign phantasm as a speech-act, it is suggested that the political sovereignty of power operates within the same materialism. Power is understood to unfold as spectacle on the same order as the shenanigans of the artist comedian. Ultimately, the contagion of laughter is seen as the true counter-sovereign operation.

This comedy of falling is borne out in the supplement. The papers document how the researcher lost consecutive court cases while writing. In the first, against an author and his publishing house, he lost ownership of his identity. In the second he was taken to court as he refused to be held accountable for actions attributed to that identity. The posturing in the court cases is revealed as a comedy, but with real consequences.


Currently a myriad of devices are available for immobilization of the injured or postsurgical upper extremity. Some of these devices are straightforward and easily used, but some are more complicated and require more familiarity for their successful application. However, even simple devices have the potential for misapplication and thus prevent their benefit to the patient. This article is the first in a 3-part series. The goals of the series are (1) to present and review several devices on the market used by shoulder surgeons to immobilize the upper extremity, and (2) to discuss proper application and precautions of their use. It is intended that this series will benefit nurses, therapists, and trainers involved in the use of these devices.


For compression of digital holographic data, choosing an appropriate representation of the holographic information is always a main target. The effectiveness of the representation needs to be studied before applying further compression method for reducing storage and transmission burden. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of using amplitude-phase information of the complex object wave and the difference information between different phase-shifted holograms by scalar and vector quantization. The experiments show that the amplitude-phase representation is more suited when applying intra compression, whereas holograms are more suited for inter compression.


To understand the current revolutionary situation in the Arab Middle East, the conditions of existence of state power have to be taken into account, i.e., neoliberal restructuring, restructuring of classes, transformations in the ruling parties, the imperialist embedding of the state, the brutal disorganization of the subordinate classes, and the shifts of weight among the state apparatuses. These developments have created new contradictions and conflicts of interest which erupted due to the accumulation of resistance on the one hand, and on the other, due to international and regional shifts (the geostrategic weakness of the U.S. and its allies in the region, economic crisis), and due to political mistakes of state parties, alienation of parts of the ruling classes and state actors. In times of global and national crises, and in the absence of a democratic socialist organization of the popular classes in the Arab region, fractions of the ruling classes and certain forces of the state apparatus with the assistance of international forces help promote the initiative for change. They appeal to the popular classes, who long engaged in multiple forms of resistance, in the struggle of these fractions against other dominant fractions in the power bloc.


Abstract This article explores the ability of the training and work experience offered under public works programmes to promote employment in South Africa. Public works are a key component of South African labour market policy and are ascribed considerable potential in terms of addressing the core challenge of unemployment. However, despite this policy prominence, the labour market impact of the training component of such programmes has not been studied systematically in South Africa, from either a theoretical or empirical basis, and this article attempts to provide an initial critique of the programme from both perspectives. This article outlines the unemployment situation in South Africa and the training component of the government's national public works programme, the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), which was developed to enhance workers' skills and labour market exposure, and thereby improve their subsequent employment performance. Theoretical and empirical arguments are used to develop a critique of the training component of the programme, and the article concludes by arguing that, as currently conceptualised, the national public works programme is unlikely to have a significant impact on skills development or unemployment, due the structural nature of unemployment, excess supply of low and unskilled labour, and the high skills growth strategy adopted by government.


The transport of charged particles in turbulent magnetic fields is a topic of great interest in astrophysics, since our ability to successfully use cosmic rays as astronomic messengers depends on our understanding of the transport processes. One of the primary effects is the scattering of particles on magnetic irregularities leading in the first instance to a change in the pitch angle μ of the particle. Further transport parameters e.g. diffusion coefficients or the mean free path can then be inferred from ∆μ . We introduce new numerical methods to evaluate the pitch angle diffusion coefficient Dμμ and the perpendicular diffusion coefficient D⊥ that work well in both weak and strong turbulence scenarios and compare with analytic results from Quasi Linear Theory. We present results obtained by applying these methods to test-particle data from simulation of heliospheric conditions with our spectral MHD code Gismo. The results are then compared to test-particle simulations of the novel Perlin-noise-type pseudo-turbulence to show its viability for large-scale particle transport simulations.


We demonstrate a lower bound technique for linear decision lists, which are decision lists where the queries are arbitrary linear threshold functions. We use this technique to prove an explicit lower bound by showing that any linear decision list computing the function $MAJ \circ XOR$ requires size $2^{0.18 n}$. This completely answers an open question of Tur{a}n and Vatan [FoCM'97]. We also show that the spectral classes $PL_1, PL_\infty$, and the polynomial threshold function classes $\widehat{PT}_1, PT_1$, are incomparable to linear decision lists.


Electric vehicles (EVs) need highly optimized thermal management systems to improve range. Climate control can reduce vehicle efficiency and range by more than 50%. Due to the relative shortage of waste heat, heating the passenger cabin in EVs is difficult. Cabin cooling can take a high portion of the energy available in the battery. Compared to internal combustion engine-driven vehicles, different heating methods and more efficient cooling methods are needed, which can make EV thermal management systems more complex. More complex systems typically allow various alternative modes of operation that can be selected based on driving and ambient conditions. A good system simulation tool can greatly reduce the time and expense for developing these complex systems. A simulation model should also be able to efficiently co-simulate with vehicle simulation programs, and should be applicable for evaluating various control algorithms. The MATLAB/Simulink dynamic system simulation environment, widely used in the automotive industry, effectively meets these criteria. To model the full EV thermal management system, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's air-conditioning model now incorporates liquid-coolant system components. In the full system model, lookup tables were used to characterize the components' performance. Predicted data obtained with the system simulation model were compared against experimental data. An agreement within 5% for most of the system parameters was achieved. The validated system model was then used to determine which of two possible locations for the power electronics and electric motor in the system is better for quick cabin heating starting from cold soak.


In the early nineteenth century, Vuk Karadzic, a Serb scholar and linguist, collected and eventually published transcriptions of the traditional oral poetry of the South Slavs. It was a monumental and unprecedented undertaking. Karadzic gathered and heard performances of the rich songs of Balkan peasants, outlaws, and professional singers and their rebel heroes. His four volumes constitute the classic anthology of Balkan oral poetry, treasured for nearly two centuries by readers of all literatures, and influential to such literary giants as Goethe, Merimee, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Sir Walter Scott.This edition of the songs offers the most complete and authoritative translations ever assembled in English. Holton and Mihailovich, leading scholars of Slavic literature, have preserved here the unique meter and rhythm at the heart of Serbian oral poetry, as well as the idiom of the original singers. Extensive notes and comments aid the reader in understanding the poems, the history they record and the oral tradition that lies beneath them, the singers and their audience.The songs contain seven cycles, identified here in sections titled: Songs Before History, Before Kosovo, the Battle of Kosovo, Marko Karadzic, Under the Turks, Songs of the Outlaws, and Songs of the Serbian Insurrection. The editors have selected the best known and most representative songs from each of the cycles. A complete biography is also provided."


Ten years of administrative data from a diverse, private, top-100 law school are used to examine the ways in which female and nonwhite students benefit from exposure to demographically similar faculty in first-year required law courses. Arguably causal impacts of exposure to same-sex and same-race instructors on course-specific outcomes such as course grades are identified using a two-way (student and classroom) fixed effects strategy. Impacts of faculty representation on long-run, student-specific outcomes such as graduation are identified using an instrumental variables (IV) strategy that exploits transitory variation in the demographic makeup of the faculty. Having an other-sex instructor reduces the likelihood of receiving a good grade (A or A-) by one percentage point (3%) and having an other-race instructor reduces the likelihood of receiving a good grade by three percentage points (10%). The effects of student-instructor demographic mismatch are particularly salient for nonwhite female students. The IV estimates suggest that the share of first-year courses taught by nonwhite instructors increases the probabilities that nonwhite students persist into the second year and graduate on time. These results provide novel evidence of the pervasiveness of role-model effects in elite settings and of the graduate-school education production function.


Throughout human history, slow-renewal biological resource populations have been predictably overexploited, often to the point of economic extinction. We assess whether and how this has occurred with timber resources in the Brazilian Amazon. The asynchronous advance of industrial-scale logging frontiers has left regional-scale forest landscapes with varying histories of logging. Initial harvests in unlogged forests can be highly selective, targeting slow-growing, high-grade, shade-tolerant hardwood species, while later harvests tend to focus on fast-growing, light-wooded, long-lived pioneer trees. Brazil accounts for 85% of all native neotropical forest roundlog production, and the State of Pará for almost half of all timber production in Brazilian Amazonia, the largest old-growth tropical timber reserve controlled by any country. Yet the degree to which timber harvests beyond the first-cut can be financially profitable or demographically sustainable remains poorly understood. Here, we use data on legally planned logging of ~17.3 million cubic meters of timber across 314 species extracted from 824 authorized harvest areas in private and community-owned forests, 446 of which reported volumetric composition data by timber species. We document patterns of timber extraction by volume, species composition, and monetary value along aging eastern Amazonian logging frontiers, which are then explained on the basis of historical and environmental variables. Generalized linear models indicate that relatively recent logging operations farthest from heavy-traffic roads are the most selective, concentrating gross revenues on few high-value species. We find no evidence that the post-logging timber species composition and total value of forest stands recovers beyond the first-cut, suggesting that the commercially most valuable timber species become predictably rare or economically extinct in old logging frontiers. In avoiding even more destructive land-use patterns, managing yields of selectively-logged forests is crucial for the long-term integrity of forest biodiversity and financial viability of local industries. The logging history of eastern Amazonian old-growth forests likely mirrors unsustainable patterns of timber depletion over time in Brazil and other tropical countries.


Does natural resource abundance decrease Latin American Foreign Direct Investment? This paper studies the effects of natural resource abundance on foreign direct investment (FDI), by focusing on inequality as the channel that links these two variables. Two arguments in the literature inspire this paper: 1) scholars attribute Latin America's high income inequality to its abundance of natural resources; and 2) some scholars argue that income inequality leads to lower investment. I argue that large shares of capital-intensive endowments (export measured as percentage share of GDP) are associated with low levels of secondary and tertiary FDI. The theory is based on the Stopel-Samuelson model, which claims that rises in the price of a capital-intensive commodity leads to an increase in the return to capital, and conversely, to a fall in the return to labor and wages. I analyze this logic through a two-stage least square model examining 15 Latin American countries from 1984-2007. I conclude, among several conflicting results that the inequality levels generated by exports can explain 40 percent of the variance of secondary and tertiary FDI.


This article describes a court-connected alternative dispute resolution program, the Interdisciplinary Settlement Conference. The key feature of this program is the participation of two volunteer panelists, one a family law attorney and the other a mental health professional experienced in parenting disputes, who assist the judicial officer in working with the parties and their attorneys (if any) to reach a resolution of their parenting dispute. Significantly, in addition to addressing the parties' legal issues, the panelists also address the parties' psychological and emotional issues relevant to the dispute on an as-needed basis. Findings from six years of experience with the program are discussed, including evidence of high satisfaction with the program, a high rate of settlement, a decrease in relitigation, and a concomitant savings of scarce judicial resources.


Is there a continuous sweep in direction of Alpine orogenic displacements around the Alpine arc, or does the overlap of a few distinct directions give this impression? The thrust evolution of the SW Alps, which supports the latter view, does not accord with the hypothesis of indenter-induced body forces. Two displacement realms, one with directions determined by intraplate configuration and another with directions related simply to the body forces, maycoexist within the orogen, but this is not yet established. One of the longest-standing disagreements in Alpine geology concerns the nature of the radial pattern of orogenic displacements outwards from the Alpine arc. In one view, there is a continuum of displacement directions sweeping from approximately southward in the Maritime Alps, through west and northwest to approximately northward in Austria. In the other view, there is no continuum, but a small number of distinct directions of orogenic displacements, each dominating a particular sector, which relay one to another around the Alpine arc. Recent papers mark a significant development in both sides of this argument, which is given additional importance by the attempt of Platt et al. (1989a) to use displacement data to constrain plate motions. This paper is intended as a contribution to the discussion and suggests one possible resolution of the argument. Sophisticated syntheses of Alpine structure have for a long time accepted the possibility that both of the above views have some validity, and Goguel (1963) is a good starting point for discussion. His displacements of crystalline basement of


Stella the Star Fairy is all in a flutter, trying to put the sparkle into Christmas. Stella looks after all the special Christmas lights - from the overhead illuminations,to the Christmas tree fairy lights, right through to the twinkling stars. Three magic Christmas baubles control all of these elements but now Jack Frost's goblins have stolen them. There's not going to be any Christmas atmosphere and Santa won't even be able to guide his sleigh through the night sky. Stella the Star Fairy needs Rachel and Kirsty's help to get the baubles back.


Relaxed acquisition conditions in iris recognition systems have significant effects on the quality and resolution of acquired images, which can severely affect performance if not addressed properly. Here, we evaluate two trained super- resolution algorithms in the context of iris identification. They are based on reconstruction of local image patches, where each patch is reconstructed separately using its own optimal reconstruction function. We employ a database of 1,872 near-infrared iris images (with 163 different identities for identification experiments) and three iris comparators. The trained approaches are substantially superior to bilinear or bicubic interpolations, with one of the comparators providing a Rank-1 performance of 88% with images of only 15x15 pixels, and an identification rate of 95% with a hit list size of only 8 identities.


Distortion-induced fatigue damage is a common problem in steel girder bridges built prior to the mid-1980s.The University of Kansas has studied and developed several retrofit techniques with an aim to determine the efficacy of different retrofit measures to mitigate the effects of distortion-induced fatigue and stop fatigue crack growth or slow the rate of crack propagation. One simple and commonly-used retrofit technique is the practice of drilling crack-arrest holes at the tips of cracks to smooth out the sharp crack tip, reducing the stress concentration and halting fatigue crack propagation. The practice of hole-drilling has existed for decades, but its application to distortion-induced fatigue cracking has not been adequately studied. Another technique discussed in this thesis, called the angles-with-plate retrofit, requires two angles providing attachment between the connection plate and girder web with a plate placed on the other side of the web to distribute out-of-plane forces. An appealing aspect of the angles-with-plate retrofit is the minimal traffic disruption required during retrofit application. Girder subassemblies were chosen for study to evaluate for the effectiveness of various retrofits using both analytical approach and experimental testing. This dissertation is divided into five parts and appendices. The first part is the introduction for the dissertation. The second part is analytical and experimental investigations of repairing fatigue damage in steel plate with adhesively bonded carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) overlays under tension loading. Parts 3 and 4 are analytical and experimental investigations of evaluating the uses of crack-arrest holes and angles-with-plate retrofit to effectively repair distortion-induced fatigue cracking on 3-m (9-ft) steel girder specimens under fatigue loading. Part 5 is the recommendations and synthesis. Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 within the document contain particular formatting associated with published or expected publishing requirements. Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Use of CFRP Overlays to Repair Fatigue Damage in Steel Plates under Tension Loading Part 3: Effectiveness of Crack-Arrest Holes under Distortion-Induced Fatigue Loading Part 4: Evaluation of Three Computational Techniques for Quantifying Distortion-Induced Fatigue Crack Propensity Using Finite Element Analysis Part 5: Recommendations and Synthesis Part 2 was published in the Journal of Composites for Construction, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2014.18. Part 3 was presented at the ASCE 2014 Structures Congress in April 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts. This research has been accepted for presentation and potential proceedings publication for the 16th European Bridge Conference in June 2015 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Part4is intended for future publication.


Do parents alter their investment in their child's human capital in response to changes in school inputs? If they do, then ignoring this effect will bias the estimates of school and parental inputs in educational production functions. This paper tries to answer this question by studying out-of-school suspensions and their effect on parental involvement in children's education. The use of out-of- school suspensions is the novelty of this paper. Out-of-school suspensions are chosen by the teacher or the principal of the school and not by parents, but they are a consequence of student misbehavior. To account for the nature of these out-of-school suspensions, they are instrumented with measures of "principal's preference toward discipline." The estimates show that, without controlling for selection, the level of parental involvement is negatively correlated with the number of out-of-school suspensions. Once selection is accounted for, the effect disappears—that is, out-of-school suspensions do not affect parental involvement in children's education.


In Swedish educational context the term "education for all" has a relatively long tradition but the interpretation and implementation of these educational policies has varied during the past six decades. The issues of class, gender, ethnicity and disability as well as discourses of inclusion, integration and exclusion have permeated the debates about and the implementation of "education for all". Today the number of students attending schools for students in the need of special educational support, due to their difficulties to reach intended learning outcomes, has increased. In this paper, I examine the specific didactic challenges teachers working with children with autism face. Additionally, the teachers' preunderstanding of students' identities and problems are being analysed. The study is based on interviews with upper secondary school teachers working in a school for students with high functioning autism in general and Asperger syndrome in particular. The interviews with teachers and school counsellors were conducted in a Swedish city and the questions discussed in the paper are:Which didactic challenges face educators in their everyday work? What is characteristic for the pedagogic work at the analysed school and in which ways educators prepare students for their future life? In which ways the analysed educational institution contributes to inclusion/exclusion of students and implementation of "education for all" policy?The analysis shows that teachers advocate individualised didactic solutions and help, extra resources, methodological clarity and step-by-step instructions. Teachers are expected to be highly adaptable and their work often centres on students social skills, behavioural training and socialization of youth, rather than only helping students to achieve expected learning outcomes. Thus, the "hidden curriculum" is in this learning environment highly visible. The school is described as integrative because it gives students opportunity to practice their social skills but excludes them from general social contexts.


This article compares the investment spending for each of 396 corporations during the late 1980s and early 1990s to projections of their spending derived from several basic models of investment. According to these models, capital spending, on average, adheres closely to output, profits, and the cost of capital. The pattern of average forecast errors derived from the statistical models does not correspond very closely to measures of indebtedness, liquidity, size, or type of business. It is not surprising that these variables should influence capital spending so little, once the general business climate (represented by sales or cash flow) has been taken into account. ; For the making of economic policy, the evidence suggests that the familiar macroeconomic incentives for investment would be no less effective today than they have been in the past. In particular, the volume of investment spending would appear to respond to monetary and fiscal policies in the customary way. Despite their potential differences, the models agree that monetary or fiscal policy must be unusually aggressive to increase investment spending substantially when the rate of growth of GDP is unusually low.


Provision of high speed Internet access on moving trains is a challenging task, recently addressed by several research projects and also network operators, resulting in different proprietary solutions involving different telecommunication technologies. Some solutions are being tested in pilot networks while there are already some in commercial operation. The most challenging aspect is the provision of (seemingly) uninterrupted service in all different sections of the railway line, including those with particularly unfavourable radio propagation environment such as valleys, dells and tunnels. As a consequence, the sole use of the 2G/3G access technologies such as GPRS, EDGE, UMTS/WCDMA or HSPA for the access to the broadband services on trains is inadequate both economically as well as technically in most countries. Thus, some rail operators are already offering high speed internet access based on hybrid solutions which are comprised of various wireless access technologies such as unior bi-directional satellite links, 2G/3G technologies, WiMAX and WiFi. In this paper we provide a brief overview of different technical solutions for provision of broadband access on trains, along with the most important providers, trials and commercial implementations, and discuss the feasibility of implementation of broadband service delivery on trains in


It is a widely held view that analytical integration is more accurate than the numerical one. In some special cases, however, numerical integration can be more advantageous than analytical integration. In our paper we show this benefit for the case of electric potential and field computation of charged triangles and rectangles applied in the boundary element method (BEM). Analytical potential and field formulas are rather complicated (even in the simplest case of constant charge densities), they have usually large computation times, and at field points far from the elements they suffer from large rounding errors. On the other hand, Gaussian cubature, which is an efficient numerical integration method, yields simple and fast potential and field formulas that are very accurate far from the elements. The simplicity of the method is demonstrated by the physical picture: the triangles and rectangles with their continuous charge distributions are replaced by discrete point charges, whose simple potential and field formulas explain the higher accuracy and speed of this method. We implemented the Gaussian cubature method for the purpose of BEM computations both with CPU and GPU, and we compare its performance with two different analytical integration methods. The ten different Gaussian cubature formulas presented in our paper can be used for arbitrary high-precision and fast integrations over triangles and rectangles.


Abstract. We investigate whether the dipolarization process during sawtooth events is global or not through an examination of the local time distribution of the magnetic tilt angle (i.e. the angle between the B vector and the equatorial plane in dipole VDH coordinates) at geostationary orbit. From the statistical analysis of 207 individual teeth and 212 isolated substorms, we find that individual teeth follow a dipolarization pattern similar to that observed for isolated substorms. The dipolarization for individual teeth initiates in the sector between 22:00 magnetic local time (MLT) and 00:00 MLT. Then the dipolarization expands both eastward and westward. However, relative to isolated substorms, we find that the nightside magnetosphere is much more stretched prior to the onset, and the change of the tilt angle during the dipolarization process is much larger during individual teeth. The magnetic dipolarization is seen over a wider local time sector during individual teeth than during isolated substorms. However, the magnetic dipolarization is rarely observed near local noon during individual teeth. This suggests that the magnetic dipolarization process during individual teeth is still confined primarily to the nightside.


The osteoblasts were expanded in large-scale by microcarrier suspension culture in rotating wall vessel bioreactor(RWV), then the biological functions of the cells were detected by histomorphometry and the cells were seeded at 2×10 6 cells/ml and 1×10 6 cells/ml onto scaffolds respectively to culture for 2 weeks. The biological properties of the fabricated bone tissue were detected by inverted microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), von-Kossa staining on mineralized nodules and AO/EB fluorescence staining. Meanwhile the cells' metabolism of nutrients was monitored and analyzed during the whole culture process. The bone tissue fabricated in RWV with two different seeded cell densities grew well. Osteoblasts in the scaffolds secreted much collagen fibers and formed mineralized nodules and new osteoid tissue. It can be conclueled that: With the stress stimulation inside the fluid in the RWV, the active expression of ALP can be increased, the formation of mineralized nodules can be accelerated. The rapid proliferation and differentiation of osteoblasts are possible and the three-dimensional fabrication of engineered bone could be realized.


Abstract. Fracture patterns, interactions, and crosscutting relationships are tools for interpretation of fractures as paleostress indicators for past tectonic events and as past or present-day fluid-flow networks. In the Appalachian Basin in Central Pennsylvania along Mount Nittany Expressway Route 322 lies a significantly stratified fracture set hosted in Ordovician age limestone. Tectonic strain is a problematic mechanism for these fractures because they are hosted in individual beds lacking apparent mechanical significance relative to other limestone beds in the outcrop. Many of the fractures are layer-parallel, a characteristic commonly observed in shales, due to shales' mechanical anisotropy and tendency to develop fluid overpressures; however, these fracture-hosting limestones lack obvious mechanical anisotropy. Fracture orientations vary, but desiccation, bentonite swelling, and dolomitization are eliminated by an interpreted transgressional paleoenvironment and a deficiency of the hypothesized minerals. X-ray diffraction determined the composition of samples collected, point-count quantification determined fracture intensity, and optical petrography recorded scaled petrographic photographs. Comparison between fracture intensity and host-rock minerals reveal that silica content is consistently depleted in fractured layers relative to unfractured layers. The diagenetic transition of biogenic silica to quartz is suggested to be the driving mechanism based on silica being present as biogenic grains, as well as cement and detrital grains, and fractures being filled with calcite cement. Silica migration explains the volume lost from fractured layers in a proposed horizontal fracturing mechanism whereby the host rock shrinks but is excluded from vertical contraction.


The Stille-coupling polymerization of a short conjugated polymer with an aliphatic linker was used to demonstrate a prototype in a new class of polymer semiconductors wherein the conjugation segment length and the length of the entire chain can be independently controlled. Subsequent thermal, morphological, and 2D grazing-incidence crystallographic analysis revealed this prototype polymer's ability to exhibit distinct thin-film morphologies without changing the molecular weight. In field-effect transistors this unique ability gave rise to an improvement of the charge carrier mobility from fibril-type (0.01 cm2 V−1 s−1) to terrace morphologies (0.04 cm2 V−1 s−1). When compared to a fully-conjugated, high molecular weight polymer, these differences afforded insight into the roles of inter- and intra-molecular charge transport in the film, highlighting the importance of chain self-assembly on charge transport. Overall, our results indicate that employing linkers is a promising route to advance morphology control in semiconducting polymer based devices.


Against the background of a global, yet unsettled, debate about what hate speech is and whether and how to regulate it, driven predominantly by European governance actors, this article provides a closer examination of the experiences of Latin America in pursuing policy, regulatory, and legislative answers. The study focuses on gender-based hate speech because this intersects with global questions of human rights, as well as local historical and legal contexts. The article demonstrates the reluctant approach to the regulation of hate speech through the study of policy initiatives by the state and policy considerations by civil society (CS) actors in Colombia and Guatemala, through semistructured interviews with CS organizations and the analysis of 19 policy milestones. Partly in contrast to the European approach, prejudice speech is considered a term that better reflects sociocultural contexts and responsibility vis-à-vis a narrow focus on individual "bad behavior."


Abstract The wheat stem sawfly, Cephus cinctus, is a major pest of wheat and key ecological player in the grasslands of western North America. It also represents the distinctive Cephoidea superfamily of sawflies (Symphyta) that appeared early during the hymenopteran radiation, but after three early-branching eusymphytan superfamilies that form the base of the order Hymenoptera. We present a high-quality draft genome assembly of 162 Mb in 1,976 scaffolds with a scaffold N50 of 622 kb. Automated gene annotation identified 11,210 protein-coding gene models and 1,307 noncoding RNA models. Thirteen percent of the assembly consists of ∼58,000 transposable elements partitioned equally between Class-I and Class-II elements. Orthology analysis reveals that 86% of Cephus proteins have identifiable orthologs in other insects. Phylogenomic analysis of conserved subsets of these proteins supports the placement of the Cephoidea between the Eusymphyta and the parasitic woodwasp superfamily Orussoidea. Manual annotation and phylogenetic analysis of families of odorant, gustatory, and ionotropic receptors, plus odorant-binding proteins, shows that Cephus has representatives for most conserved and expanded gene lineages in the Apocrita (wasps, ants, and bees). Cephus has also maintained several insect gene lineages that have been lost from the Apocrita, most prominently the carbon dioxide receptor subfamily. Furthermore, Cephus encodes a few small lineage-specific chemoreceptor gene family expansions that might be involved in adaptations to new grasses including wheat. These comparative analyses identify gene family members likely to have been present in the hymenopteran ancestor and provide a new perspective on the evolution of the chemosensory gene repertoire.


The Dantzig selector has received popularity for many applications such as compressed sensing and sparse modeling, thanks to its computational efficiency as a linear programming problem and its nice sampling properties. Existing results show that it can recover sparse signals mimicking the accuracy of the ideal procedure, up to a logarithmic factor of the dimensionality. Such a factor has been shown to hold for many regularization methods. An important question is whether this factor can be reduced to a logarithmic factor of the sample size in ultra-high dimensions under mild regularity conditions. To provide an affirmative answer, in this paper we suggest the constrained Dantzig selector, which has more flexible constraints and parameter space. We prove that the suggested method can achieve convergence rates within a logarithmic factor of the sample size of the oracle rates and improved sparsity, under a fairly weak assumption on the signal strength. Such improvement is significant in ultra-high dimensions. This method can be implemented efficiently through sequential linear programming. Numerical studies confirm that the sample size needed for a certain level of accuracy in these problems can be much reduced.


We develop an algorithm for efficient range search when the notion of dissimilarity is given by a Bregman divergence. The range search task is to return all points in a potentially large database that are within some specified distance of a query. It arises in many learning algorithms such as locally-weighted regression, kernel density estimation, neighborhood graph-based algorithms, and in tasks like outlier detection and information retrieval. In metric spaces, efficient range search-like algorithms based on spatial data structures have been deployed on a variety of statistical tasks. Here we describe an algorithm for range search for an arbitrary Bregman divergence. This broad class of dissimilarity measures includes the relative entropy, Mahalanobis distance, Itakura-Saito divergence, and a variety of matrix divergences. Metric methods cannot be directly applied since Bregman divergences do not in general satisfy the triangle inequality. We derive geometric properties of Bregman divergences that yield an efficient algorithm for range search based on a recently proposed space decomposition for Bregman divergences.


Nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes encapsulating iron carbide (Fe3C) nanocrystals (Fe3C@NCNT) were fabricated by a simple and direct pyrolysis method using melamine and ferric chloride as the C, N and Fe precursors. The surface morphology, structure and composition of the Fe3C@NCNT materials were thoroughly investigated. The nanomaterials were employed as novel catalysts for peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation; outstanding efficiency, high stability and excellent reusability were observed in the catalytic oxidation of organics. The encapsulated Fe3C nanoparticles played a key role in the emerging synergetic effects of the carbide and the protective graphitic layers. In addition, the quaternary N and trace amounts of iron on the CNT surface acted as the active sites. Various quenching experiments were carried out to elucidate the catalytic mechanism of Fe3C@NCNT. It was found that singlet oxygen, superoxide, sulfate and hydroxyl radicals worked together to degrade phenol solutions. Due to their simple synthesis method, low-cost precursors, unique structure and excellent catalytic activity and stability, these novel iron-carbide-based composites have great potential as new strategic materials for environmental catalysis.


This thesis deals with the task of modeling a web server and designing a mechanism that can prevent the web server from being overloaded. Four papers are presented. The first paper gives an M/G/1/K processor sharing model of a single web server. The model is validated against measurements ands imulations on the commonly usedw eb server Apache. A description is given on how to calculate the necessary parameters in the model. The second paper introduces an admission control mechanism for the Apache web server basedon a combination of queuing theory andcon trol theory. The admission control mechanism is tested in the laboratory, implemented as a stand-alone application in front of the web server. The third paper continues the work from the secondp aper by discussing stability. This time, the admission control mechanism is implemented as a module within the Apache source code. Experiments show the stability and settling time of the controller. Finally, the fourth paper investigates the concept of service level agreements for a web site. The agreements allow a maximum response time anda minimal throughput to be set. The requests are sorted into classes, where each class is assigneda weight (representing the income for the web site owner). Then an optimization algorithm is appliedso that the total profit for the web site during overload is maximized. (Less)


A reference service focusing on multilateral treaties concluded by more than two parties, this calendar covers a period of almost 350 years of multilateral diplomacy, from the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 to the end of 1995. It lists chronologically all multilateral treaties concluded during that period, provides information on the location of their printed text in various collections (with parallel citations), adds data on duration, depository arrangements, and status, and provides extensive notes on their amendments, modification, extension, termination and other details.


We show that the amplitude spectrum of a texture pattern, regardless of its phase spectrum, can be used to predict whether the pattern will convey the veridical three-dimensional (3-D) shape of the surface on which it lies. Patterns from the Brodatz collection of natural textures were overlaid on a flat surface that was then corrugated in depth and projected in perspective. Perceived ordinal shapes, reconstructed from a series of local relative depth judgments, showed that only about a third of the patterns conveyed veridical shape. The phase structure of each pattern was then randomized. Simulated concavities and convexities were presented for both the Brodatz and the phase-randomized patterns in a global shape identification task. The concordance between the shapes perceived from the Brodatz patterns and their phase-randomized versions was 80-88%, showing that the capacity for a pattern to correctly convey concavities and convexities is independent of phase information and that the amplitude spectrum contains all the information required to determine whether a pattern will convey veridical 3-D shape. A measure of the discrete oriented energy centered on the axis of maximum curvature was successful in identifying textures that convey veridical shape.


We report on a multiwavelength campaign on the TeV γ-ray blazar Mrk 421 performed during 2002 December and 2003 January. These target of opportunity observations were initiated by the detection of X-ray and TeV γ-ray flares with the All Sky Monitor (ASM) on board the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and the 10 m Whipple γ-ray telescope. The campaign included observational coverage in the radio (University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory), optical (Boltwood, La Palma KVA 0.6 m; WIYN 0.9 m), X-ray (RXTE pointed telescopes), and TeV γ-ray (Whipple and HEGRA) bands. At TeV energies, the observations revealed several flares at intermediate flux levels, peaking between 1 and 1.5 times the flux from the Crab Nebula. While the time-averaged spectrum can be fitted with a single power law of photon index Γ = 2.8 from dNγ/dE ∝ E-Γ, we find some evidence for spectral variability. Confirming earlier results, the campaign reveals a rather loose correlation between the X-ray and TeV γ-ray fluxes. In one case, a very strong X-ray flare is not accompanied by a comparable TeV γ-ray flare. Although the source flux was variable in the optical and radio bands, the sparse sampling of the optical and radio light curves does not allow us to study the correlation properties in detail. We present a simple analysis of the data with a synchrotron self-Compton model, emphasizing that models with very high Doppler factors and low magnetic fields can describe the data.


One of the important problems in data mining is the evaluation of subjective interestingness of the discovered rules. Past research has found that in many real-life applications it is easy to generate a large number of rules from the database, but most of the rules are not useful or interesting to the user. Due to the large number of rules, it is difficult for the user to analyze them manually in order to identify those interesting ones. Whether a rule is of interest to a user depends on his/her existing knowledge of the domain, and his/her interests. In this paper, we propose a technique that analyzes the discovered rules against a specific type of existing knowledge, which we call general impressions, to help the user identify interesting rules. We first propose a representation language to allow general impressions to be specified. We then present some algorithms to analyze the discovered classification rules against a set of general impressions. The results of the analysis tell us which rules conform to the general impressions and which rules are unexpected. Unexpected rules are by definition interesting.


Due to the complicated nature of studying living bacterial communities, Magnetic Resonance Microscopy (MRM) is a necessary tool providing unique data that is complementary to other techniques such as confocal microscopy and microelectrodes. MRM has the ability to probe an opaque system non-invasively and collect velocity measurements, imaging data, diffusion, and relaxation values and is an asset in the quest to learn how biofilms establish, grow, and die. The goal of these studies was to extend current biofilm research using MRM to enhance our understanding of transport phenomena over a hierarchy of scales, from the microscopic diffusion level to the macroscopic bulk flow. Staphylococcus epidermidis was the bacteria chosen for the biopolymer diffusion and the secondary flow studies due to its common identification in opportunistic biofilm infections. This diffusion study was the first Pulse Gradient Spin Echo (PGSE) MRM measurements of the impact of environmental and chemical challenges on the biomacromolecular dynamics in medically relevant S. epidermidis biofilm material demonstrating the ability to characterize molecular dynamics in biofilms, providing a basis for sensors which can indicate the state of the biofilm after thermal or chemical treatment and provide information to further understand the molecular level mechanisms of such treatments. The secondary flow data clearly support the conclusion that reactor size impacts studies of spatially distributed biological activity, and the idea that, scaling of transport models in biofilm impacted devices is possible but requires more study. Additionally, due to the increasing amount of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere and the need to understand the options of sequestering this CO2 to combat the impacts of global warming, studies were conducted to understand how biofilms grow in porous media. The resilience of Bacillus mojavensis biofilms to super critical CO2 is documented, and thus, this bacteria was chosen. Results indicate that by varying exchange times, T2-T2 experiments can determine the extent of biofilm growth in an opaque porous media as demonstrated in multiple glass bead pack configurations. Using MRM as a tool to study these biofilm systems over a wide range of environmental conditions is the focus of the research presented in this dissertation.


This paper presents a parametric joint channel coding scheme that enables the delivery of channel-based immersive audio content in formats such as 7.1.4, 5.1.4, or 5.1.2 at very low bit rates. It is based on a generalized approach for parametric spatial coding of groups of two, three, or more channels using a single downmix channel together with a compact parametrization that guarantees full covariance re-instatement in the decoder. By arranging the full-band channels of the immersive content into five groups, the content can be conveyed as a 5.1 downmix together with the parameters for each group. This coding scheme is implemented in the A-JCC tool of the AC-4 system recently standardized by ETSI, and listening test results illustrate its performance.


This paper investigates the problem of cross-lingual transfer parsing, aiming at inducing dependency parsers for low-resource languages while using only training data from a resource-rich language (e.g., English). Existing model transfer approaches typically don't include lexical features, which are not transferable across languages. In this paper, we bridge the lexical feature gap by using distributed feature representations and their composition. We provide two algorithms for inducing cross-lingual distributed representations of words, which map vocabularies from two different languages into a common vector space. Consequently, both lexical features and non-lexical features can be used in our model for cross-lingual transfer. Furthermore, our framework is flexible enough to incorporate additional useful features such as cross-lingual word clusters. Our combined contributions achieve an average relative error reduction of 10.9% in labeled attachment score as compared with the delexicalized parser, trained on English universal treebank and transferred to three other languages. It also significantly outperforms state-of-the-art delexicalized models augmented with projected cluster features on identical data. Finally, we demonstrate that our models can be further boosted with minimal supervision (e.g., 100 annotated sentences) from target languages, which is of great significance for practical usage.


The paper presents a direct, capacitive shear stress sensor with performance sufficient for time-resolved turbulence measurements. The device employs a bulk-micromachined, metal-plated, differential capacitive floating-element design. A simple, two-mask fabrication process is used with DRIE on an SOI wafer to form a tethered floating element structure with comb fingers for transduction. Experimental results indicate a linear sensitivity of 7.66 mV/Pa up to the testing limit of 1.9 Pa at a bias voltage of 10V , and a bandwidth of 6.2 kHz . The sensor possesses a dynamic range ≫ 102 dB and a noise floor of 14.9 μPa/Hz at 1 kHz , outperforming previously reported sensors by nearly two orders of magnitude in MDS.


The climate pledges under the Copenhagen Accord have been evaluated by researchers in quantitative terms, but less attention has been provided on insights into what drove countries and what political barriers impeded countries to submit a pledge and the ambitiousness of the pledges. This article therefore highlights what the drivers and barriers are under the Copenhagen Accord and assesses whether the political considerations can be expected to differ from the positions under a binding climate regime under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. By means of case studies the research finds that the political origin differs and in general views that the Accord is viewed as adding to transparency and legitimacy of the negotiations. Moreover, while the pledges can be viewed as a separate regime, it should be complemented by emissions trading to spur increased ambition. The research also identifies that the pledges are commonly viewed as binding and that barriers are increasingly viewed as drivers seeing that costs of climate action is viewed as lower than inaction.


The complex and fragmented nature of the U.S. equities exchange landscape has given rise to structural inefficiencies that have created the potential for inherent conflicts of interest between market participants. The introduction of the Investors Exchange, or IEX, offers the unique opportunity to evaluate market quality across exchanges with varying design characteristics and fee structures. As execution quality on a stock exchange cannot be examined independently of equity market structure, we take a holistic approach: we study four dimensions of market quality — liquidity, execution costs, price discovery, and market stability — and within each category we examine structural mechanics responsible for observed disparities in execution quality. We observe a consistent trend in venue stratification by fee structure across a number of market quality metrics: maker-taker exchanges dominate the U.S. equities trading landscape in market share despite greater adverse selection, less stability around executions, significantly longer queues at the inside, and a lower probability of execution. This suggests that access fees and rebates perpetuate economic incentives misaligned with the tenets of best execution, and may promote activity detrimental to market quality. We employ a publicly available dataset (Daily TAQ) in an effort to facilitate replication of our metrics, via which market participants can independently evaluate venue performance.


It is increasingly recognized that India is urbanizing rapidly, that urbanization is accompanying and contributing to economic growth, but that living conditions in urban areas are often not adequate, particularly for the poor. Health, nutrition, and population conditions are an important part of the urbanization equation. This paper explores the extent to which health, nutrition, and population conditions may be contributing to the benefits of urbanization, as well as the extent to which they may reflect its costs. This is an exploratory study that reviews available information on health, nutrition, and population conditions in urban India. Recognizing that national generalizations and statistics may mask considerable diversity in how the opportunities and challenges of urbanization and health are met in different cities across the country, this paper also draws on specifics of four case studies: Chennai in Tamil Nadu, Bhubaneswar in Odisha, Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, and Shillong in Meghalaya. The summary section provides an overview of this exploratory analysis, discussing the patterns and issues that emerge, along with policy implications in section one. This introductory section two briefly discusses how urbanization and health may be conceptualized, and describes the methodology of this paper. Section three describes governance and organization of urban health systems. Sections four and five review data on the demographic and epidemiological situation in urban India, as well as service utilization. Section six analyzes disparities in health outcomes and access to services, and section seven focuses on water supply and sanitation in urban areas.


The study of the distribution of baryonic matter within dark halos enriches our understanding of galaxy formation. We show the radial dependence of stellar baryon-fraction curves derived for 21 lensing galaxies from the CfA-Arizona Space Telescope LEns Survey (CASTLES) by means of stellar population synthesis and pixel-based mass reconstruction. The sample covers a stellar mass range of Ms ≃ 2 × 109–3 × 1011 M☉ (solar masses) which corresponds to a total enclosed mass range of ML ≃ 7 × 109–3 × 1012 M☉ on radial scales from 0.25Re to 5Re (effective radii). By examining the Ms and ML dependence on radial distance to the center of each galaxy, we find that there are pairs of lenses on small to intermediate mass scales which approach at large radii the same values for their enclosed total mass but exhibit very different stellar masses and stellar baryon fractions. This peculiar behavior subsides for the most massive lensing galaxies. All the baryon-fraction profiles show that the dark matter halo overtakes the stellar content between 1.5 and 2.5Re. At 3Re most of the stellar component is enclosed. We find evidence for a stellar baryon fraction steadily declining over the full mass range. Furthermore, we shed light on the Fundamental Plane puzzle by showing that the slope of the ML(< R)-to-Ms(< R) relation approaches the mass-to-light relation of recent Fundamental Plane studies at large radii. We also introduce novel concentration indices c = R90/R50 for stellar and total mass profiles (i.e., the ratio of radii enclosing 90% and 50% of the stellar or total mass). We show that the value c = 2.6 originally determined by light profiles which separates early-type galaxies from late-type galaxies also holds for stellar mass. In particular, less massive dark matter halos turn out to be influenced by the distribution of stellar matter on resolved scales below 10 kpc. The ongoing study of resolved baryon-fraction profiles will make it possible to evaluate the validity of star formation models as well as adiabatic contraction prescriptions commonly used in simulations.


It seems to be a standard assumption that Charles Morris originated the concept of "iconicity" on the basis of Peirce's icon-index-symbol discussion. This paper locates the origin in Peirce himself, in the context of judging the merits of different mathematical and logic representations – the more iconic such representations generally being preferable to less iconic ones, for scientific purposes. In Peirce's Collected Papers, "iconicity" occurs in the discussion of different conventions in the logic representation system called "Existential Graphs". This paper provides the context of logic representations in order to show how Peirce's articulation of the concept of "iconicity" comes out of the attempt to find as iconic a way as possible to depict logical relations. Moreover, this indicates a use of "iconicity", from the very beginning, which addresses not only similarities between different visual representations – but also visual representations of abstract contents.


The success of a knowledge management system (KMS) depends on knowledge sharing. Numerous scholars and practitioners claim that motivational factors can facilitate successful knowledge sharing behavior. However, little empirical research has been conducted examining the different kinds of motivation (i.e., KMS empowerment) used to explain knowledge sharing behavior. By integrating a psychological empowerment perspective with the job characteristics theory (job significance, job autonomy, and task feedback), this study examines the role of KMS empowerment in explaining employee knowledge sharing behavior. Based on a survey of 183 employees from IT firms in Korea, this study applies the structural equation modelling approach to investigate the research model. The results show that KMS empowerment was significantly associated with knowledge sharing behavior, and work environment (job autonomy, task feedback, usefulness, and ease of use) enhanced KMS empowerment. However, job significance did not significantly influence KMS empowerment. The present findings' implications for organizations are discussed.


Global climate reconstruction across time and space using data assimilation Nathan Steiger Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Greg Hakim Department of Atmospheric Sciences Paleoclimate proxy data span seasonal to millennial time scales, and Earth's climate system has both highand low-frequency components. Yet it is currently unclear how best to incorporate multiple time scales of proxy data into a single reconstruction framework and to also capture both highand low-frequency components of reconstructed variables. In the first half of this dissertation we present a data assimilation algorithm that can explicitly incorporate proxy data at arbitrary time scales. Through a series of pseudoproxy experiments, we find that atmosphere–ocean states are most skilfully reconstructed by incorporating proxies across multiple time scales compared to using proxies at short (annual) or long (∼ decadal) time scales alone. Additionally, reconstructions that incorporate long time-scale pseudoproxies improve the low-frequency components of the reconstructions relative to using only high-resolution pseudoproxies. We argue that this is because time averaging high-resolution observations improves their covariance relationship with the slowly-varying components of the coupled-climate system, which the data assimilation algorithm can exploit. These results are insensitive to the choice of climate model, despite the model variables having very different spectral characteristics. Our results also suggest that it may be possible to reconstruct features of the oceanic meridional overturning circulation based solely on atmospheric surface temperature proxies. Water isotope data from ice cores, particularly δO, has long been used as a paleoclimate proxy. In the past decade or so isotope-enabled climate models have allowed for a more rich understanding of the climate processes that produce the isotopic signals in precipitation. Such modeling-based studies tend to complicate simple temperature-isotope interpretations by pointing to the many non-local influences on isotopic signals at coring locations. Recent observational studies have also linked ice cores to non-local patterns of climate variability, particularly to mid-latitude atmospheric circulation patterns and to variations in tropical climate. However, the full spatial and temporal extent to which ice cores can robustly inform past climate is unknown. In the second half of this dissertation we estimate a realistic upper-bound on what ice cores can tell us about climate at annual and decadal time scales in a paleoclimate reconstruction context. We employ a similar data assimilation-based reconstruction technique that optimally combines isotopic proxy information with the dynamical constraints of climate models. Through several pseudo and real proxy experiments we assess the spatial and temporal extent to which ice cores can reconstruct the key variables of surface temperature, geopotential height at 500 hPa, and precipitation. We find local reconstruction skill to be the most robust across the reconstructions, particularly for temperature and geopotential heights. Non-local skill is also found for these variables in certain locations. For precipitation we find virtually no reconstruction skill outside of coastal and West Antarctica. These results are in agreement with long-held views that isotopes in ice cores have clear value as local climate proxies, particularly for temperature and atmospheric circulation. These results also show that in principle non-local climate information may also be reliably deduced from ice cores, though the spatial range of this information depends on how proxies are modelled within the reconstruction process, is non-uniform, and may not extend into plausible nearby locations: in particular, Greenland ice cores, by their nature, appear to be relatively uninformative for Europe and the British Isles at annual and decadal time scales.


Although treatment for cholera is well-known and cheap, outbreaks in epidemic regions still exact high death tolls mostly due to the unpreparedness of health care infrastructures to face unforeseen emergencies. In this context, mathematical models for the prediction of the evolution of an ongoing outbreak are of paramount importance. Here, we test a real-time forecasting framework that readily integrates new information as soon as available and periodically issues an updated forecast. The spread of cholera is modeled by a spatially-explicit scheme that accounts for the dynamics of susceptible, infected and recovered individuals hosted in different local communities connected through hydrologic and human mobility networks. The framework presents two major innovations for cholera modeling: the use of a data assimilation technique, specifically an ensemble Kalman filter, to update both state variables and parameters based on the observations, and the use of rainfall forecasts to force the model. The exercise of simulating the state of the system and the predictive capabilities of the novel tools, set at the initial phase of the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak using only information that was available at that time, serves as a bench-mark. Our results suggest that the assimilation procedure with the sequential update of the parameters outperforms calibration schemes based on Markov chain Monte Carlo. Moreover, in a forecasting mode the model usefully predicts the spatial incidence of cholera at least one month ahead. The performance decreases for longer time horizons yet allowing sufficient time to plan for deployment of medical supplies and staff, and to evaluate alternative strategies of emergency management.