Under the modern business conditions, characterized by constant changes and increase of the quantity of risk factors, organizations – for the purpose of conduct of successful activities – have to pay special attention to issues of provision of economic security. The article proves importance of personnel aspect of economic security of organization is proved and deter-mines main causes of personnel risks. Classification of factors, which influence personnel security of organization, is shown. For the purpose of minimization of personnel risks and prevention of threats, the authors offer regulation of personnel labor: special attention is paid to such component of personnel security as "selection of employees†, which, in authors' opinion, is the most vulnerable aspect. As a result of thorough analysis of collected material, the authors offer a scheme of the process of management of personnel security with specific stages and sub-systems of management.


Many companies that are achieving the most significant business results today, made a shift in focus from the management of quality in the twentieth century to the quality of management in the twenty-first century. The big difference is that these companies focus on quality as a fundamental organization and market-wide strategy for their company's competitiveness.Quality into the 21st Century: Perspectives on Quality and Competitiveness for Sustained Performancefocuses on the call for a more expansive use of quality practices throughout business in the twenty-first century than in their original application in manufacturing. It also calls for a definitive emphasis on the use of quality principles throughout health care, education, technology, medicine and government. The editors complied a collection of papers that focus on the emerging themes in quality including social values, privacy, security, and software quality.


This article sketches the outlines of an object-oriented literary criticism, contrasting it with several familiar critical schools. We begin with a summary of two new philosophical trends: speculative realism and object-oriented philosophy. The latter approach offers new arguments for the autonomy of objects from their relations, and allows us to consider whether various approaches to literature do justice to this autonomy. The New Criticism insists on the independence of the text, but only at the price of destroying the independence of its internal elements, due to its excessively holistic vision of the textual interior. New Historicism famously embeds the text in its cultural and material surroundings, thereby over-relationizing it, which is found to be philosophically untenable. Deconstruction leads to similar difficulties through its misinterpretation of identity as a form of presence, thereby disallowing any independence of things. In closing, some suggestions are offered for new methods of criticism capable of living up to the unity and autonomy of both the text and its internal elements.


The author reviews the 2021 production of James Baldwin's play,
 The Amen Corner, as directed by Whitney White at
 Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. After situating the experience of
 engaging with Baldwin's art through a constructivist approach to
 art-based education and learning design, the piece turns to considering the
 impact of various interpretive materials and the director's artistic
 vision in the production. White's decision to include an epigraph in the
 production leaves a notable impact, particularly in conversation with
 Baldwin's essays, "Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare" and
 "The Artist's Struggle for Integrity."


20 Animals show behavioral traits that can collectively be called personality. We focus here on the role 21 of the Prader-Willi Syndrom gene region in regulating personality behavior. It includes two clusters of 22 tandem repeats coding for small nucleolar RNAs, SNORD115 and SNORD116. SNORD115 is 23 known to regulate splicing of the serotonin receptor Ht2cr and SNORD116 is predicted to interact 24 with the transcript of the chromatin regulator Ankrd11 . We show that both snoRNA clusters display 25 major copy number variation within and between populations, as well as in an inbred mouse strain 26 and that this affects the expression of their specific target genes. Using a set of behavioral scores 27 related to personality in populations of two species of wild mice, guinea pigs and humans, we find a 28 strong correlation between the snoRNA copy number and these scores. Our results suggest that the 29 SNORD clusters are major regulators of personality and correlated traits. 30


Changing Welfare, Changing States disentangles the various answers to these questions, inviting us to think differently about the remaking of the relationships between welfare, state and nation. Informed by the `cultural turn' in the social sciences, the book reflects a commitment to the importance of rethinking social policy at a time when social, political and intellectual certainties have been profoundly unsettled.
Key features of the book include:
} a thought-provoking approach - encourages students to 'rethink' welfare states.
} broad coverage - engages with a range of approaches to the study of welfare states, drawing on social policy, politics, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.
} contributes to key debates on: globalization, neo-liberalism, changing forms of governance and conflicts over citizenship in the contemporary remaking of welfare states.

Written by a leading academic in the field, the book has a flowing narrative and clear structure that makes it accessible to and popular with students and academics alike. It is an invaluable resource for undergraduates and postgraduates in the field of social policy and will also be of interest to students and researchers in related disciplines such as sociology, politics, anthropology and cultural studies.


This thesis explores the performance of people–place relationships on the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail, an ancestral dreaming track in north-western Australia. In 1987 Goolarabooloo Indigenous elder Paddy Roe established the cross-cultural walking of the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail with the vision of uniting Indigenous and non-Indigenous people so that ultimately, they would protect and look after the country together. The thesis uses three questions to guide the examination of people-place relationships on the Trail: 'What relationships are being performed on the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail?', 'What work are stories doing in the performance of these relationships?' and 'What do these relationships tell us about the ontologies being performed on the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail?' A methodology of 'working together' Indigenous and Western knowledge systems directs the response to the thesis questions and incorporates the approaches of storytelling and Actor-Network Theory. Stories told by Goolarabooloo people and walkers of the Trail, in addition to my own ethnographic stories, form the data upon which this thesis is based. By following the human and non-human actors on the Trail, both during the annual walking of the Trail and during a time of external threat, this thesis finds that 'country' (in the Indigenous sense) and stories are powerful actors that do important work on the Trail, especially in establishing and maintaining connections between people and place. Living country, a distinct entity that is familiar to Goolarabooloo people, is becoming visible to and experienced by walkers of the Trail. This thesis also finds that relationships performed on the Trail are enactments of a relational ontology of 'being with', whereby people and country are drawn into co productive acts, including mutual recognition, reciprocity of care and communicative engagement. Stories told by Goolarabooloo people and walkers of the Trail clearly show that 'being with' country transcends cultural boundaries. This finding is not only significant in terms of Paddy Roe's vision, but also offers a powerful insight into how non-Indigenous Australians can come to know and participate in mutually beneficial relationships with country. This broader realisation of country, by more than just Indigenous peoples, offers a pathway to reconciliation between non- Indigenous people and the land, and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, which is critical to supporting people's sacred connections with place.


Questions

(i) Which species dominate mid-successional old-fields in Hungary? How does the identity of these species relate to local (patch-scale) diversity and to the progress of succession? (ii) Which species have the strongest negative impact on diversity in spontaneous old-field succession and what generalizations are possible about traits of these species? (iii) Are these species dominant or subordinate components in mature target communities? (iv) Do native or alien species have stronger effects on the diversity and progress of succession?

Location

Abandoned agricultural fields (abandoned croplands, orchards and vineyards) at various locations throughout Hungary.

Methods

Vegetation patterns on 112 old-fields, in 25 sites varying in soil and climatic conditions, topography, landscape contexts and land-use histories were sampled. Most old-fields had appropriate seed sources in the immediate vicinity, i.e. natural or semi-natural grasslands (meadows steppes, closed and open sand steppes) as source and target habitats. Age of abandoned fields ranged from 1 to 69 yr, but most sites were between 15 and 60 yr. The cover of vascular plant species (%) was estimated in 2 × 2-m plots. Relationships between diversity, progress of succession (similarity to target communities) and identity of dominants were tested.

Results

A small portion of successional dominants (eight species) had strong negative impacts on diversity. These species belonged to Poaceae, Asteraceae and Fabaceae. Most of these species were wind-pollinated, and capable of lateral vegetative spread. Dominant species varied in size and had, on average, a low requirement for N but a high requirement for light. With one exception, Solidago gigantea, they were native to the Hungarian flora. Significant differences were found among the impact of successional dominants when dominant species were grouped according to their original role (dominants or subordinates) in natural communities. The overall effect of species identity was also significant. Bothriochloa ischaemum was identified as the species with the strongest negative effect on species diversity.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that mid-successional dominant species differ in their impact on diversity and progress of succession. Mid-successional plots dominated by alien species, or by native species that were originally subordinate in natural communities, regenerate less successfully and may temporarily arrest succession. Therefore, early colonization of native dominants should be enhanced with restoration measures.


Gary Hatfield examines theories of spatial perception from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century and provides a detailed analysis of the works of Kant and Helmholtz, who adopted opposing stances on whether central questions about spatial perception were amenable to natural-scientific treatment. At stake were the proper understanding of the relationships among sensation, perception, and experience, and the proper methodological framework for investigating the mental activities of judgment, understanding, and reason issues which remain at the core of philosophical psychology and cognitive science. Hatfield presents these important issues as living philosophies of science that shape and are shaped by actual research programs, creating a complex and fascinating picture of the entire nineteenth-century battle between nativism and empiricism. His examination of Helmholtz's work in physiological optics and epistemology is a tour de force.


The largest corporate bankruptcy filed in the U.S., that of Enron in 2001, was preceded by a string of disclosures about errors in and corrections to their financial statements. The presence of such errors creates uncertainty about the quality of the financial statements, can lead to pricing distortions, and inefficient market allocations. Several causes have been suggested for the current state of affairs. Most important, perhaps, are managers' tendency to inflate stock prices for personal gain through deceit, "cooking the Books" - misrepresentations in financial reporting - and other unethical behavioral practices, and auditors' failure to fulfill their role as independent gatekeepers. Currently, the incentives driving auditors' behavior may not elicit unbiased reports. Auditors are paid by the companies they audit which creates an inherent conflict of interest that is endemic to the relation between the firm (the principal) and the auditor (the agent). Unfortunately, remedying these problems is not simple. Prosecution and punishment may not adequately deter wrongdoing, as intentional misrepresentation is difficult to discover or prove. Overhauling the regulatory structure and adding layers of supervision and monitoring by the government would be inefficient and socially wasteful. In addition, little can be done in the short run to cultivate ethical personalities. Rather, the solution lies in market mechanisms that eliminate the perverse incentives of gatekeepers, most notably the auditors. We present a financial statement insurance institutional mechanism that eliminates the conflict of interest auditors face and properly aligns their incentives with those of shareholders. We show analytically that the introduction of financial statement insurance can significantly mitigate market inefficiencies arising from uncertainty regarding the quality of financial statements. The basic structure of Financial Statement Insurance (FSI) can be described as follows. Instead of appointing and paying auditors, companies would purchase financial statement insurance that provides coverage to investors against losses suffered as a result of misrepresentation in financial reports. The insurance coverage that the companies are able to obtain is publicized, as are the premiums paid for that coverage. The insurance carriers would then appoint and pay the auditors who attest to the accuracy of the financial statements of the prospective insurance clients. Those firms announcing higher limits of coverage and smaller premiums would distinguish themselves in the eyes of the investors as companies with higher quality financial statements. In contrast, those with smaller or no coverage or higher premiums will reveal themselves as those with lower quality financial statements. Every company will be eager to get higher coverage and pay smaller premiums lest it be identified as the latter. A sort of Gresham's law in reverse would be set in operation, resulting in a flight to quality.


BACKGROUND: Loss of the trachea and proximal airway from congenital disorders, acute injury or chronic disease is a life-threatening complication. The lack of suitable native replacements has led to attempts to bioengineer tracheas. Recent clinical cases of bioengineered tracheal transplants have been hampered by an inability to maintain growing cell populations. The majority of cases have ended in significant acute and chronic complications, morbidity and death. A growing body of literature has found that a ligand-receptor interaction between the secreted protein thrombospodin-1 (TSP1) and its high affinity receptor CD47, which is upregulated in tissue injury, constitutively restricts multiple transcription factors that modulate self-renewal and pluripotency.

HYPOTHESIS: TSP1-CD47 signaling is maladaptively induced in injured airways and bioengineered tracheas to inhibit cellular dedifferentiation, proliferation and restoration of engineered tracheal transplants.

METHODS: This dissertation first describes a murine orthotopic tracheal transplant model and second describes methods to characterize the effects of TSP1-CD47 signaling on airway epithelial cells. In vitro, airway epithelial cell wound healing and tissue angiogenic capacity was assessed using a variety of techniques. In vivo, naphthalene injury and orthotopic transplantation of decellularized tracheal grafts was performed in wild-type mice or in mice that lacked TSP1-CD47 signaling, and epithelial restoration was assessed.

RESULTS: Decellularized tracheal grafts support re-epithelization within seven days and epithelial differentiation within eight weeks after transplantation. Disruption of TSP1-CD47 signaling restores self-renewal gene expression in tracheal epithelial cells exposed to hypoxic stress and stimulates more rapid wound healing in an in vitro model of airway injury. TSP1 inhibits proliferation of airway epithelial cells while antibody blockade of CD47 restores cell proliferation. Further, TSP1 is upregulated following airway epithelial cell seeding onto decellularized tracheal scaffolds. TSP1-CD47 signaling is induced in the airways of WT mice after injury. CD47 null mice displayed enhanced tracheal healing of both chemically injured airways and following orthotopic transplantation of decellularized tracheal grafts.

CONCLUSION: TSP1-CD47 signaling is maladaptively upregulated in stressed tracheal epithelial cells, in injured airways, in cells seeded on decellularized tracheal grafts, and in engineered tracheal transplants to limit self-renewal gene expression and inhibit cell proliferation, airway healing and cellular incorporation of bioengineered tracheal transplants.


We aimed to determine the effect of acute stress on taste perception and its modulation in relation to body weight and baseline anxiety in this study. The anxiety of the participants, randomly allocated to stress (n = 35) or control (n = 16) groups, was assessed by State Trait Anxiety Inventory. Stroop color-word interference and cold pressor tests were applied as stress protocol. Glucose and salt taste detection thresholds were evaluated before and after the stress protocol in the stress group and corresponding times in the control group. Stress protocol increased heart rate and blood pressure as an indicator of stress system activation. Following stress glucose and salt thresholds decreased in the stress group, unchanged in the control group. Prestress salt thresholds were positively and decrements in salt thresholds were negatively correlated with trait anxiety scores of participants. The state anxiety levels of stress group positively correlated with the decrease in glucose thresholds. Waist-to-hip ratio was negatively correlated with prestress salt thresholds of the subjects. Our results revealed that thresholds for sweet and salty tastes are modulated during stressful conditions. Our data also demonstrated a relationship between taste perception and baseline anxiety levels of healthy individuals, which may be important to understand the appetite alterations in individuals under stressful conditions.


While deforestation is one of the greatest drivers of biodiversity loss, our understanding of the effects of habitat modification on species is limited. We investigated the diet of a forest-dwelling frog species, Morafka's frog (Odorrana morafkai), in a highland forest in Vietnam in relation to habitat disturbance, sex and season. We surveyed the species at 45 sites in forest of varying disturbance and examined its diet using stomach flushing, estimating prey availability via trapping. We detected significantly fewer O. morafkai in highly disturbed habitats compared to moderately disturbed or non-disturbed habitats. We revealed that O. morafkai is a dietary generalist, identifying 28 prey types, primarily invertebrates. Prey composition, the number of prey items per stomach and prey volume per stomach did not vary between disturbance levels. Diet did not vary significantly between sexes, except that females had a higher prey volume. Prey composition in the species varied between seasons, with Coleoptera and Orthoptera dominating the diet in the rainy season and Lepidoptera in the dry season. The number of prey items per stomach and prey volume were significantly higher in the rainy season. There was a significant correlation between prey availability and diet composition. The low number of O. morafkai detected in highly disturbed habitats suggests that this habitat may not be optimal for the species, despite having a generalist feeding strategy and presumed high mobility. This study provides a window into the impact of an increasing threat, habitat disturbance, on forest-dependent amphibian species.


Summary. Several approaches to computing body wave seismograms in 2-D and 3-D laterally inhomogeneous layered structures are suggested. They are based on the Gaussian beam method, which has been recently applied to the evaluation of time-harmonic high-frequency wavefields in inhomogeneous media. Three variants are discussed in some detail: the spectral method, the convolutory method and the wave-packet method. The most promising seems to be the wave-packet approach. In this approach, the wavefield, generated by a source, is expanded into a system of wave packets, which propagate along rays from the source in all directions. The wave packets change their properties due to diffusion, spreading, reflections/transmissions, etc. The resulting seismogram at any point of the medium is then obtained as a superposition of those packets which propagate close to the point. The final expressions in all the three methods are regular even in regions, in which the ray method fails, e.g. in the vicinity of caustics, in the critical region, at boundaries between shadow and illuminated regions, etc. Moreover, they are not as sensitive to the minor details of the medium as the ray method and, what is more, they remove the time-consuming two-point ray tracing from computations. Numerical examples of synthetic seismograms computed by the wave-packet approach are presented.


Objectives To examine the anthropometric characteristics of an Australian National Rugby League team and identify the relationship to type and incidence of injuries sustained during a professional season. It was hypothesised that body composition would not change discernibly across a season and that injury would be negatively related to preseason bone and muscle mass. Design A repeated measure, prospective, observational, cohort study. Setting Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. Participants 37 professional male Australian National Rugby League players, 24.3 (3.8) years of age were recruited for preseason 1 testing, of whom 25 were retested preseason 2. Primary and secondary outcome measures Primary outcome measures included biometrics; body composition (bone, muscle and fat mass; dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry; XR800, Norland Medical Systems, Inc); bone geometry and strength (peripheral quantitative CT; XCT 3000, Stratec); calcaneal broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA; QUS-2, Quidel); diet and physical activity history. Secondary outcome measures included player injuries across a single playing season. Results Lean mass decreased progressively throughout the season (pre=81.45(7.76) kg; post=79.89(6.72) kg; p≤0.05), while whole body (WB) bone mineral density (BMD) increased until mid-season (pre=1.235(0.087) g/cm2; mid=1.296(0.093) g/cm2; p≤0.001) then decreased thereafter (post=1.256(0.100); p≤0.001). Start-of-season WB BMD, fat and lean mass, weight and tibial mass measured at the 38% site predicted bone injury incidence, but no other relationship was observed between body composition and injury. Conclusions Significant anthropometric changes were observed in players across a professional rugby league season, including an overall loss of muscle and an initial increase, followed by a decrease in bone mass. Strong relationships between anthropometry and incidence of injury were not observed. Long-term tracking of large rugby league cohorts is indicated to obtain more injury data in order to examine anthropometric relationships with greater statistical power.


Modern gas turbines present important temperature distortions in the core-engine flowpath, mainly in the form of hot and cold streaks imputed to combustor burners and components cooling systems. As they highly influence turbines performance and lifetime, the precise knowledge of the thermal field evolution through the combustor and the high-pressure turbine is fundamental. The majority of past studies investigated streaks migrations directly examining the thermal field, while a limited amount of experimental work employed approaches based on the detection of tracer gases. The latter approach provides a more detailed evaluation of the evolution and mixing of the different flows. However, the slow time response due to the employment of sampling probes and gas analysers make the investigation of a whole measurement plane extremely time consuming. To tackle this issue, in this study a commercial oxygen sensor element and its excitation/detection unit were integrated into a newly developed probe to carry out local tracer gas concentration measurements exploiting the fluorescence behaviour. The probe was provided with a Kiel-like shield, a pressure port and a thermocouple, in order to correct the readings in case of 3D flows with pressure, temperature and velocity gradients. The paper summarizes the probe development and calibration activities, with the characterization of its accuracy for different flow conditions. Finally, two probe applications are described: firstly the probe was used to detect tracer gas concentrations on a jet flow; afterwards it was traversed on the interface plane between a non-reactive, lean combustor simulator and the NGV cascade. The probe has proven to provide accurate and reliable measurements both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view even in highly 3D flow fields typical of gas turbines conditions.


The role of marketing communications is to advance the bottom line and the public good – and not necessarily in that order. Giving back is an integral part of the New Normal. And there has never been a better tool to accomplish this mission than social media. But healthcare marketing –and particularly of the regulated variety --is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, marketers understand the importance and opportunity in social media. It's where the people are. It's where the action is. But then there are all those pesky regulatory concerns. As Walter O'Malley –the man who moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles once commented, "The future is just one damn thing after another."


An en banc Federal Circuit is now considering whether Section 112 of the Patent Act as properly interpreted includes a written description requirement that is separate and distinct from the enablement requirement. Although the USPTO has no direct role in the infringement dispute, the government submitted an amicus curie brief arguing that a separate written description requirement is "necessary to permit the USPTO to perform its basic examination function." However, when pressed during oral arguments the government could not point to any direct evidence supporting its contention. This essay presents the results of a retrospective empirical study of the role of the written description requirement in patent office practice. It is narrowly focused on rebutting the USPTO's claim that the separate written description requirement serves an important role in the patent examination process. To the contrary, my results support the conclusion suggested by Chief Judge Michel that it is indeed "exceedingly rare that the patent office hangs its case on written description."For the study, I analyzed 2858 Board of Patent Appeals and Interference (BPAI) patent opinions decided January-June 2009. Written description issues were decided in 123 (4.3%) of the decisions in my sample. Perhaps surprisingly, I found that none of the outcomes of those decisions would have been impacted by a legal change that entirely eliminated the written description requirement of Section 112 so long as the USPTO would still be allowed to reject claims based on the addition of "new matter" (perhaps under 35 U.S.C. Section 132). New-matter style written description requirement rejections were outcome determinative in 20 of the 2858 cases – about 1.0% of the cases in my sample. Although there may be valid reasons for retaining a separate written description requirement, this study safely leads to the conclusion that the government's conclusory statements regarding the doctrine's critical importance for patent examination lack a factual basis.


Neisserial Heparin Binding Antigen (NHBA) is a surface-exposed lipoprotein ubiquitously expressed by genetically diverse Neisseria meningitidis strains and is an antigen of the multicomponent protein-based 4CMenB vaccine, able to induce bactericidal antibodies in humans and to bind heparin-like molecules. The aim of this study is to characterize the immunological and functional properties of NHBA. To evaluate immunogenicity and the contribution of aminoacid sequence variability to vaccine coverage, we constructed recombinant isogenic strains that are susceptible to bactericidal killing only by anti-NHBA antibodies and engineered them to express equal levels of selected NHBA peptides. In these recombinant strains, we observed different titres associated with the different peptide variants. These recombinant strains were then further engineered to express NHBA chimeric proteins to investigate the regions important for immunogenicity. In natural strains, anti-NHBA antibodies were found to be cross-protective against strains expressing different peptides.
To investigate the functional properties of this antigen, the recombinant purified NHBA protein was tested in in vitro binding studies and was found to be able to bind epithelial cells. The binding was abolished when cells were treated specifically with heparinase III, suggesting that the interaction with the cells is mediated by heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPG). Mutation of the Arg-rich tract of NHBA abrogated the binding, confirming the importance of this region in mediating the binding to heparin-like molecules.
In a panel of N. meningitidis strains, the deletion of nhba resulted in a reduction of adhesion with respect to each isogenic wild type strain. Furthermore, the adhesion of the wild-type strain was prevented by using anti-NHBA polyclonal sera, demonstrating the specificity of the interaction. These results suggest that NHBA could be a novel meningococcal adhesin contributing to host-cell interaction. Moreover, we analysed NHBA NalP-mediated cleavage in different NHBA peptides and showed that not all NHBA peptides are cleaved.


Abstract. This work is on development within the framework of the project Eureca: EUropean Region Enrichment in City Archives and collections of the University of Ghent (IDLab, CartoGIS), the Technical University of Vienna (Research Group Cartography) and several city and state archives. Eureca focuses on revealing traces (i.e. origins or influences) of European regions that have shaped the cities in which we live today and will further develop tools to explore these traces when visiting a city. Different historical, architectural, economic, political, and cultural reasons form the base of these traces, and will be used as input to disclose cultural heritage items that can be linked to specific European regions and origins. The enriched metadata that will result in this project will be further usable to perform new fundamental research and applied studies, and to facilitate the exploitation of the collections to a broader public and attract new groups of cultural heritage consumers.The specific focus of this work is on Geo-Social media (GSM) (Ostermann, 2015) as a source of information to identify these European traces of the past. The objective of this research is finding the footprint of Europeans visiting other euro-cities by determining areas of preference in a city for specific nationalities and during certain periods. The footprints represent areas of attraction for visitors in the city and the reasons for this attraction could be multiple: available services, architecture, historical/cultural hotspots, etc. Finding these modern footprints will be a base to identify the most visited cultural heritage points of interest (POIs) for specific nationalities or even cities of origin and during specific periods of the year. Finally, this will contribute to the development of location based services (LBS) that will help users to explore traces of their own region of origin in other European cities.Social media data have been used in research widely and despite their multiple limitations, they have been proven useful for geographic research in different fields. Geotagged social media provide better insights on the spatial behaviour of their users. Some of the most used media in the literature include Foursquare, Twitter or Flickr. Foursquare is the least interesting for us because of its user base and amount of data available. Twitter provides a huge amount of geotagged text for semantic analysis but Flickr's user profile is more suited for tourist behaviour analysis. Furthermore, Flickr provides a well-developed set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable easier access to their data.The first phase of this research involved the data collection from Flickr via two of its APIs. There are several Flickr datasets openly available, nevertheless we opted for building our own collection to avoid problems related to accessibility, accuracy and temporal coverage. Metadata of each uploaded picture such as photo owner, uploading date, geolocation, etc. was retrieved. In a second process, another API will be used to obtain the user name, location (user manually-provided) and other attributes. This location attribute have to be processed because of the heterogeneity of the data format. If only city is provided, the places have to be matched to a gazetteer to determine the country.The data retrieved covered a squared area of 68 Mill. km2 representing a huge area around the continental Europe. In order to determine the nationality of each user the first source of information is the self-reported location included in her profile. Unfortunately, this information is often missing or can be simply false. For the majority of the users, the home location has to be inferred by some kind of method. A simple method based on previous works on home determination from user's GSM data (Li & Goodchild, 2012; Bojic et al., 2015) was developed and tested. To identify a country as user's home location, all the pictures uploaded during a year in each country were considered. If the temporal difference between last and first photo was greater than 6 months, the user was labelled as local resident in that country. For comparison purposes, a second threshold of 3 months was also applied. With both thresholds, in some cases users were labelled with double home location because of being present in both cities in the same year.We are aware of some limitations of this approach. For instance, a user can visit two times the same city in the same year. Besides, those users uploading pictures between the end of one year and the beginning of the following one will not be classified in that country. The nature of the Flickr user is a limitation itself; some individuals can upload one single photo and others may contribute thousands.The method will be improved in future work by requiring a minimum of images uploaded during the chosen period. Also, it will be analysed the continuous stream of uploads during time instead of simply considering natural years. Additionally, the language of the title and tags could be used to infer the nationality. Moreover, the first information that will be taken into consideration is the self-reported home location obtained from the user's profile. This new approach will increase the number of users correctly labelled so that we can get a better differentiation between locals and tourists and between different nationalities. This will be key for our further analysis.The uploaded photos can be visualised as points in the space given that we have their geolocation. We can generate a continuous raster surface from these points using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) (Grothe & Schaab, 2009). These raster are heatmaps that represent areas of high concentration of pictures. These heatmaps represent a footprint of the visitors in the city. Thus, the areas more visited by tourists from a specific origin will be visible and also an analysis of the temporal evolution will be possible. The continuous surfaces built with KDE are very well suited for the task of determining vague areas open enough for further POIs identification in Eureca. In addition, to include areas of interest (AOIs) when dealing with open spaces like parks, squares or large buildings. Figure 1 shows examples of footprints in Vienna and Ghent.The footprints will reveal the most preferred places for specific origins. Furthermore, all the footprints will be compared through spatial analysis. Using map algebra (Tomlin, 1990), we will obtain areas of common interest for Europeans and for instance classify the areas as high, moderate or low "Euro-visitor interest". This can be applied for aggregated groups e.g. Mediterranean nations, German-speaking countries, etc. In further steps, Flickr data from the rest of the world will be collected to apply the same approach for more groups.Regarding the results already obtained, the final number of points retrieved was about 66 million and covered a period (2004–2018) representing Flickr photos from 62 countries. Initial research was done with a selection of 2 European cities and countries: Ghent (Belgium) and Vienna (Austria). Next steps will include all those countries fully retrieved from Flickr and the 10 European capitals with the highest amount of data available.Several conclusions can be drawn from the initial results. The number of photos available for each city can vary greatly; this has to be considered in terms of relative representativeness. The inclusion of the self-reported user information should improve the theoretical accuracy of the user home location determination. It could serve as some kind of ground truth to estimate precision and recall of our own classification method. Increasing the dataset with world coverage and classifying the home location of all the global users should reduce the number of ambivalent cases by applying other strategies. In sum, further work is required but this initial approach seems to be useful for establishing GSM as a valuable modern source of information to identify cultural heritage POIs/AOIs that will reveal European traces of the past within the Eureca project.


In summary, the aim of this research thesis is to fill a gap left by existing 3D GIS: the generation of a meaningful, interactive, three-dimensional presentation of a selected database, especially in terms of the graphical abstraction and progressive transfer in a heterogeneous network environment. The intention here is to expand the concept of an openly distributed GIS infrastructure of the OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) [BuMc96] to three-dimensional geodata. In contrast to previous work such as [Lang99], the main goal is not to depict a virtual landscape and/or an urban region as photorealistically as possible. Rather, the visual processing of the database should strive to support the user's information needs. In contrast to computer-graphics rendering, in which a geometric model is depicted on a two-dimensional surface in proper perspective, the goal of the visualization is to transmit information to the user [Fole92]. Apart from the actual rendering, this process also requires a selection procedure that decides which elements of a scene contribute to the information content. This kind of visualization is called graphical abstraction. In a heterogeneous network environment, the problem of resource-adaptive data transfer and visualization is second to the graphical abstraction problem. The question is not only how to suitably describe the selected data, but also how to develop an adequate data transfer that presents the viewer with an initial visual result as quickly as possible. Additional data can be transferred later. This progressive data transfer is crucial for the use of 3D data on the Internet [Ross98]. Core concepts and components of the 3D geodata server developed within this thesis are the development of a query-oriented data model for efficient analysis of topological relations in three-dimensional spatial data, and a method for evaluating the relevance of single feature based on a user specific query. Based on this, a method to generate a graphical abstraction of the query result is developed. In order to compress the resulting model, a compression technique for triangle meshes for progressive transmission is invented. These concepts are proofed by a prototypical implementation within a 3D geodata server.


This study is intended to examine the star persona of French actor, Jean-Pierre Leaud. By inquiring into both the character on and off screen I have analysed the career and performances of an actor who has laid a significant mark on contemporary French cinema. Whilst Leaud's nouvelle vague image has become an enduring symbol within French cinema, little is known about Leaud from written texts alone. Moreover, he has not been readily accepted as a star in the same way as many of his male contemporaries. Using star studies as a theoretical approach, I am exploring the various characters Leaud has incarnated on screen, his performances, and the strong relationships he has forged with various directors throughout his career in seeking to conceptualise his star image. Looking at Leaud the person and Leaud the actor I hope to establish wherein lies the mythology surrounding this unique actor.

By looking at stardom and spectatorship theory, I have explored the ways in which we can perceive Leaud as actor and star. The central question to this is: how do subjectivity and spectatorship shape our perceptions of what makes a star? Underlying this question are the various ambiguities and sites of contradiction that make up his star image. In examining such contradictions I have taken Richard Dyer's Stars and Edgar Morin's Les Stars as a starting point. This leads to a consideration of Dyer's formulation of "alternative or subversive types" (Dyer 1979: 52) together with questions of gender representations and sexuality. The types embodied by Leaud's characters are not idealised males as seen in the star personae of Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, and Gerard Depardieu among other French stars. Yet even within these more conventional star images, sites of contradiction are present that help qualify the ambiguities presented by Leaud's star status. What is important here is Dyer's notion that stars hold the capacity to bring together the 'ordinary' within sites of contradiction. This is presented by Leaud's androgynous figure, the unlikely occupations undertaken by many of his characters, their awkward attempt to seduce women and subsequent unsatisfactory relationships, the concept of the flâneur, and a certain quirky comic side to these characters.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this article was to examine the relationship between childhood caries, body mass index (BMI) and subsequent changes in BMI over 6 years, and to investigate whether these associations were modified by social class.

METHODS
Data were from the European Youth Heart Study (EYHS) merged with data on caries experience from the Danish National Board of Health, (SCOR register).

RESULTS
At baseline, 26.2% of the children/adolescents were caries free and 39% at follow-up. A larger percentage of normal weight children/adolescents were caries free, compared with the overweight/obese group of children/adolescents. The linear regression analysis showed that childhood caries was generally not associated with either BMI or subsequent changes in BMI. However, among children whose mothers were well educated, there was an inverse association between caries at baseline and subsequent changes in BMI over a period of 6 years, for example, a high caries experience was associated with a smaller increment in BMI, compared with the group of children with a low caries experience. No association was found for those with lower SES.

CONCLUSION
An inverse association between caries and subsequent changes in BMI was found, but only among children with well-educated mothers, suggesting that high caries experience may be a marker for low future risk of overweight among the more advantaged. Associations did not appear to be significant among the less advantaged; however, numbers in this group were low, and an association may have been overlooked. Hence, more studies are needed to confirm these findings.


We explore the link between invention and innovation on the one hand and the level of economic activity and economic growth in Sweden by using patents granted and the quality of patens as our indicators of invention and innovation respectively. Our results indicate that both types of measures are able to explain the level and the changing levelof economic activity equally well. However, an important difference is that the economic activity is affected differently by the two measures. We find that inventions have the strongest marginal effect in regions where economic activity is the highest. Instead, innovations have similar marginal effects across regions with different economic activity. Our interpretation is that quality-adjusted patents sort out "bad" from "good" patents in a manner which reflect economic importance.


Paddlewheel-type carboxylate-bridged dichromium(II,II) complexes possess intriguing properties such as high redox activity and thermally assisted paramagnetism. However, the relationship of their structures with electronic states and physical properties has not been extensively studied. In this work, we investigated a series of one-dimensional chain complexes based on the paddlewheel-type dichromium(II,II) tetraacetate complex ([Cr2II,II(OAc)4] = [Cr2II,II]) with pyridine/pyrazine-type organic linkers (μ2-Lax) having different σ- and π-donating abilities to clarify the electronic structure of [Cr2II,II] assemblies. The chain compounds are stable in air, probably owing to their robust polymerized forms. X-ray crystallographic studies and magnetic measurements revealed that the basicity (p Kb) of Lax, which quantitatively correlates with the σ-donor strength of Lax, modulates the Cr-Cr and Cr-Lax distances and the energy separation ( ES-T) between the diamagnetic (singlet) and thermally populated paramagnetic (triplet) states. The Cr-Cr and Cr-Lax distances are strongly influenced by σ- and π-donation from Lax, while the frontier δ orbital makes only a small contribution to the structural features. Density functional theory calculations were conducted to clarify this issue. The calculations produced the following unanticipated results against the long-known model: (i) the σ bonding orbital is the HOMO and dominates bonding in the [Cr2II,II] unit, (ii) the total Cr-Cr bond order is less than 1.0, and (iii) the δ orbital electron density is almost completely localized on the chromium sites. The computational results accurately predict the magnetic behavior and provide evidence for a new configuration of frontier orbitals in [Cr2II,II(RCO2)4(Lax)2].


A key goal of the fair-ML community is to develop machine-learning based systems that, once introduced into a social context, can achieve social and legal outcomes such as fairness, justice, and due process. Bedrock concepts in computer science---such as abstraction and modular design---are used to define notions of fairness and discrimination, to produce fairness-aware learning algorithms, and to intervene at different stages of a decision-making pipeline to produce "fair" outcomes. In this paper, however, we contend that these concepts render technical interventions ineffective, inaccurate, and sometimes dangerously misguided when they enter the societal context that surrounds decision-making systems. We outline this mismatch with five "traps" that fair-ML work can fall into even as it attempts to be more context-aware in comparison to traditional data science. We draw on studies of sociotechnical systems in Science and Technology Studies to explain why such traps occur and how to avoid them. Finally, we suggest ways in which technical designers can mitigate the traps through a refocusing of design in terms of process rather than solutions, and by drawing abstraction boundaries to include social actors rather than purely technical ones.


Most feminist theorists over the last forty years have held that a basic tenet of feminism is that women as a group are oppressed.  The concept of oppression has never had a very broad meaning in liberal discourse, however, and with the rise of neo-liberalism since 1980 it has even less currency in public debate.  This article argues that, while we may still believe women are oppressed, for pragmatic purposes Michel Foucault's concept of practices of freedom is a more effective way to characterize feminist theory and politics.


Recently, the state of Oregon has used copyright law to threaten people who were publishing its laws online. Can they really do that? More to the point, why would they? This essay will put the Oregon fracas in historical context, and explain the public policies at stake. Ultimately, it'll try to convince you that Oregon's demands, while wrong, aren't unprecedented. People have been claiming copyright in the law for a long time, and at times they've been able to make a halfway convincing case for it. While there are good answers to these arguments, they're not always the first ones that come to hand. It's really only the arrival of the Internet that genuinely puts the long-standing goal of free and unencumbered access to the law within our grasp. This essay, written for nonlawyers and people interested in contemporary debates over access to the law, explains what's at stake in the Oregon dispute, how people have tried such things before, the role of new technologies in improving legal publishing, what the law has to say about it, and where we ought to go from here.


The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between selected sociodemographic variables and overall quality of dietary intake of US adolescents. The Healthy Eating Index, an instrument designed to measure adherence to the US Dietary Guidelines, was used to measure overall quality of dietary intake. Healthy Eating Index scores were computed for a sample of US adolescents (N = 1504) who participated in the 1994-1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. A proportional odds model for an ordered polytomous response was used to assess the relationships between adolescent Healthy Eating Index scores and selected socio-demographic factors. The sociodemographic factors found to be significantly related to overall quality of dietary intake of US adolescents were age, ethnicity, urbanization, region of residence, and education level of household head. The findings of this study suggest that nutrition research and intervention programs relating to US adolescents should include evaluation of sociodemographic/environmental factors.


Subsurface leakage mitigation strategies using ureolytic biofilmor microbiallyinduced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) have been investigated for sealing high permeability or fractured regions. In the subsurface, this technology may help reduce unwanted preferential flow pathways thereby improving the storage security of geologically-stored carbon dioxide or sealing fractures caused by hydraulic fracturing. MICP has been researched for other applications, such as consolidating porous materials, improving construction materials and remediating environmental concerns. Injection strategies to control saturation conditions and region-specific precipitation were developed in sand-filled columns. Sporosarcina pasteurii biofilms were established and calcium and urea solutions were injected to promote mineralization. These injection strategies resulted in (1) promoting homogeneous distribution of CaCO3 along the flow path, (2) minimizing near-injection point plugging, and (3) promoting efficient precipitation by reviving ureolytic activity. Additionally, a Darcy-scale model was calibrated and used to predict experimental results. The developed injection strategies were used to repeatedly seal a hydraulically fractured, 74 cm diameter Boyles Sandstone core under ambient pressures. To study meso-scale samples under relevant subsurface pressure conditions, a high pressure test vessel, rated to pressures of 96 bar, was developed. The hydraulically fractured sandstone core was loaded into the vessel and treated with MICP at 44 bar of confining pressure. After treatment, the permeability was reduced and the sandstone core withstood three times higher well bore pressures before re-fracturing compared to before MICP treatment. Additionally, MICP was promoted in three 2.5 cm diameter Berea Sandstone cores under 76 bar of pressure. The cores' permeabilities were reduced and their minimum capillary displacement pressures (MCDP) were increased. Exposure of the biomineralized cores to 24 hours of supercritical CO2 did not negatively impact the permeability or MCDP achieved after mineralization. These studies suggest MICP may potentially seal and strengthen subsurface high permeability regions or fractures with the advantage that MICP technologies use lowviscosity fluids to penetrate small aperture pores that may not be reachable by traditional cement-based sealing technologies. These studies also point to the need for further research and development activities, particularly under subsurface relevant pressure conditions.


We aimed to investigate the association of two SNPs in the promoter region of IL-18 (IL-18-607C/A rs1946518 and -137G/C rs187238) with the risk of PCOS in a Chinese Han population. A total of 210 patients with PCOS and 408 subjects without PCOS were selected between June 2015 and December 2016. The genotyping of IL-18-607C/A rs1946518 and -137G/C rs187238 polymorphisms was carried out by an iPlex GOLD SNP genotyping analysis using the Sequenom MassARRAY® System. Unconditional multivariate logistic regression analysis was taken to calculate the relationship of IL-18-607C/A rs1946518 and -137G/C rs187238 polymorphisms with risk of PCOS. We found that BMI ≥ 24 (OR=2.78, 95% CI=1.85-4.17), ever smoking (OR=2.51, 95% CI=1.08-5.79) and ever drinking (OR=3.64, 95% CI=2.33-5.69) were associated with higher risk of PCOS. Those carrying the CC genotype were associated with 2.40 fold risk of developing PCOS (OR=2.40, 95% CI=1.22-4.72), and the GC+CC genotype displayed an increased risk of PCOS (OR=2.34, 95% CI=1.23-4.48). We suggest that IL-18-137G/C could be considered as a predictive factor for the pathogenesis of PCOS in the Han population of China.


Back-to-backs were once the commonest form of housing in England. Built in rows or courts or blocks, the back-to-back was home to the majority of working people in our Victorian cities. There were once half a million of them - vermin-infested slums, damp, overcrowded and disease-ridden, as Giles Worsley graphically describes them - yet they have almost entirely vanished from our urban landscape. Using a mixture of documentary evidence and oral history, Chris Upton uncovers a fascinating corner of our common past and tells the story of the folk who lived in Court 15 in central Birmingham. Such people are all in our family trees, but are all unique - the glass-eye maker from Birmingham, the Jewish watch-maker from Poland, the tailor from St Kitts. What was it like to live in a house with only one bedroom and no running water? How did 11 families share two toilets? Dr Upton, well-known in the West Midlands as a broadcaster and public speaker, started work on back-to-backs as a research project ready for the restoration of Court 15. He realised that he had 'stumbled upon a gold mine ...too good a story to leave on an office shelf'. The rise and fall of the back-to-back is a sobering tale - an extraordinary microcosm of life in England from the boom years of Victorian expansion through to the Hungry Thirties, and beyond.


The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, for the pattern is new in every moment and every moment is a new and shocking valuation of all that we have been. — East Coker , T.S. EliotMedicine is not a science: it is a cultural product. As such, the way it is practiced and conceived is much affected by cultural contexts, academic traditions, politics, personal interests, the health industry, experts' and medical bodies' opinions, journalists and medical publishing companies. Obviously, science and research have played and will continue to play a key role in the development and progress of medical knowledge. Science, however, proceeds slowly, requires the test of time and relies on strict methodological principles and in personal integrity; briefly, good science is at stake in a world dominated by technolatry1: a self-imposed commitment for continuous innovation within an industrial culture dominated by planned obsolescence and profit increase for the myriad companies that live on the global health market.

Evidence-based medicine was launched to encourage a scientific and proof-based approach to medical practice.2 As an ideological movement, it has had a significant impact on how doctors read the medical literature, how clinical research should be planned and how new concepts and therapies are scrutinised before being implemented. However, because medicine, in opposition to science, requires bedside decision making, it cannot rely only on hard data. First, because in many domains, such hard, class A data are not available in many instances. Second, the robustness of the data may be challenged by new findings. Third, because the clinical setting is much more complex than the scenario created by clinical trials that, in order to obtain meaningful conclusions, oversimplifiy the decision-making process through strict inclusion and exclusion criteria. Fourth, because the acquisition and implementation of new knowledge is …


Prospect Theory (PT) has become the most credited alternative to Expected Utility Theory (EUT) as a theory of decision under uncertainty. This paper characterises the optimal income tax and audit schemes under tax evasion, when taxpayers behave as predicted by PT. Under reasonable assumptions on the reference income and on the utility function of taxpayers, we show that the optimal audit probability function is non-increasing and the optimal tax function is non-decreasing and concave. The conditions under which those results hold for PT are weaker than the corresponding one for EUT. JEL Codes: D81, H26, K42


During World War II, Portugal played its cards uncommonly well as a neutral and subsequently became a member of NATO. This membership resulted in a modernising of its navy and its integration into the Atlantic Alliance. By 1960, when other colonial powers were abandoning their empires, Portugal made the decision to cling to its possessions, as they had been Portuguese for over 400 years. Without them Portugal saw itself as only a small European country, whereas with them, it would be a great nation. Portugal ultimately would fight a 13-year debilitating war against various nationalist movements in Africa to retain its possessions. By the mid-1950s, it became apparent to the Portuguese Navy that it would fight in Africa, and it began to make preparations. Ultimately, it would perform a near wholesale conversion from the blue water or oceanic navy that supported NATO to a brown water or riverine one to fight in Africa. This is the story of that conversion and the great "battle of the rivers" in Africa. This naval reorientation was a remarkable achievement, in that Portugal not only learned to fight a new kind of war, it built a navy to accomplish this and did so while shouldering its NATO commitments. The Portuguese Navy in developing a specialised naval force clearly foresaw the paramount economic, military, and psychological importance of controlling the interior waterways of Africa, for the infrastructure there was universally primitive. While there was generally a road network radiating from the colonial capital, the primary routes used clandestinely by insurgents were chiefly the waterways. The lessons from this experience tend to be forgotten, as this war was overshadowed by the U.S. conflict in Vietnam. Today, however, riverine operations are experiencing a renaissance in reaction to the"war of the weak." While modern boats are more technologically advanced, and their crews use newer and better equipment and weapons, the problems and their solutions remain largely the same. The operating environment remains the rivers, bayous, salt pans, canals, lakes, and deltas extending inland from the coast. The population remains a vulnerable target, and the need to establish a permissive environment continues as the primary goal. Clearly, the legacy of the Portuguese 'brown water navy' remains relevant today.


Although there have been recent advances in HIV treatment, women still do not have a
means to protect themselves from sexual transmission of HIV discreetly. Microbicides are
products that would be applied vaginally to prevent HIV acquisition. Several microbicide
products are being tested for their effectiveness in preventing HIV, and further studies of
cervical barriers, such as the diaphragm, are planned. If found effective introduction and
distribution systems need to be developed quickly to ensure women can access products and
introduce them into their relationships. This study looks at determinants of women's
demand for different barrier methods for HIV prevention to learn lessons for the
introduction of new technologies such as microbicides and the diaphragm.
A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was undertaken to identify critical factors to women's
uptake of products. An iterative approach to the development of the DCE tool was taken.
Qualitative group and individual interviews with women generated a wide range of
potential factors influential to demand. An attribute identification workshop was introduced
as a systematic method to reduce these attributes to the most important factors and identify
the best way to represent them in the survey; this included the presentation of product
effectiveness by the risk of HIV acquisition and becoming pregnant. During this workshop,
women were given individual worksheets on which to rank the importance of the different
attributes and levels in their decision to introduce, use and collect products. This provided
individual responses in a group interview setting, which generated quantitative ranks on
importance of attributes and their levels. Subsequently, a representative community survey
was conducted among 1017 women in three Johannesburg townships. Women were asked
questions about their socio-demographic backgrounds, their reproductive health histories
and their preferences for different barrier methods and their distribution and promotion
were elicited by a DCE.
This study showed the usefulness of the attribute identification workshop in providing a
structured framework for using women's attribute and level rankings to identify the
importance of attributes generated in qualitative interviews and reduce these into a feasible
and comprehensible DCE instrument. The analysis of women's preferences showed that
there was a strong interest in the new barrier methods, microbicides in particular. The level
of HIV effectiveness was very important in women's choices and will have an important
impact on product uptake. Additionally, women who were successful in using condoms
were predicted to have lower uptake of new products. Preferences for different distribution
channels and ways of collecting product or advertising messages did not vary between products. However there was diversity in women's preferences for advertising messages, in
particular in their valuation of promoting products for enhanced sexual pleasure, where
employed women rated it positively.
This study shows that women are very capable of using hierarchical messages about HIV
effectiveness to make informed choices about how to best protect themselves from HIV in
their situations. The different barrier methods can be distributed through similar distribution
systems, but having a range of advertising strategies is likely to increase uptake of products
by widening their appeal across different groups of women.


Time-stretched analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) have offered revolutionary enhancements in the performance of electronic converters by reducing the signal bandwidth prior to digitization. An inherent limitation of the time-stretched ADC is the frequency-selective response of the optical system that reduces the effective number of bits for ultrawideband signals. This paper proposes a solution based on spatio-temporal digital processing. The digital algorithm exploits the optical phase diversity to create a flat RF frequency response, even when the system's transfer function included deep nulls within the signal spectrum. For a 10times time-stretch factor with a 10-GHz input signal, simulations show that the proposed solution increases the overall achievable signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio to 52 dB in the presence of linear distortions. The proposed filter can be used to mitigate the dispersion penalty in other fiber optic applications as well.


Some stunning headlines followed the International Energy Agency's release earlier this month of its World Energy Outlook 2012 . "U.S. Oil Output to Overtake Saudi Arabia's by 2020," blared Bloomberg, for example. That may be true, but the more significant aspect of the Outlook 's projections was the prospect for world oil. Under the right conditions, the report says, the world could produce increasing amounts of oil through 2035 and meet the world's growing demand for energy as oil. The catch is "under the right conditions."


While mixed methods research is increasingly established as a methodological approach, researchers still struggle with boundaries arising from commitments to different methods and paradigms, and from attention to social justice. Combining two lines of work—social learning theory and the Imagine Program at the University of Brighton—we present an evaluation framework that was used to integrate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders in the program's social interventions. We explore how this "value-creation framework" acts as a boundary object across "boundaries of practice," specifically across quantitative and qualitative methods, philosophical paradigms, and participant perspectives. We argue that the framework's focus on cycles of value creation provided the Imagine Program with a shared language for negotiating interpretation and action across those boundaries.


I. INTRODUCTION On October 31, 1997, eleven-year-old Nathaniel Abraham was at school and enjoying Halloween with his grade school classmates. The festivities ended, however, when members of the Pontiac, Michigan police department entered the classroom and arrested Nathaniel for first degree murder. Two days before, on October 29, eighteenyear-old Ronnie Lee Greene was walking out of a convenience store in Pontiac when a .22 caliber bullet struck him in the head and killed him.' Police suspected Nathaniel who, at the time of his arrest, had over twenty encounters with law enforcement.2 Once in custody, Nathaniel eventually confessed to shooting Greene and signed a form waiving both his right to remain silent and his right to have his attorney present during questioning.3 Prior to trial, however, Family Court Judge Eugene Arthur Moore barred the confession as inadmissible at trial, finding that Nathanial was unable to understand the Miranda rights as they were read to him.4 The court relied on psychological evaluations that placed twelve-year-old Nathaniel's mental and emotional level at that of a six or an eight year old.5 On April 1, 1998, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed, finding that the confession was in fact admissible in court.6 After the appellate court's decision, Nathaniel's trial proceeded and received heavy coverage not only in Michigan but nationally as well.7 During the trial, news cameras followed the 4'9", sixty-five pound boy in and out of Michigan courtrooms.8 In the fall of 1999, a jury convicted Nathaniel Abraham of first degree murder, making him one of the youngest people convicted of murder in the history of the United States9 Amid the publicity stemming from the murder trial, jurists, attorneys and commentators have begun to re-examine the juvenile criminal law system and the constitutional rights afforded juveniles in that system. One of the constitutional rights afforded juveniles and adults alike is the Fifth Amendment right against compelled selfincrimination.10 The constitutional protections afforded citizens in custodial interrogations were described by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Miranda v. Arizona.11 One year later, the Court held in In re Gault that juveniles are entitled to the same constitutional protections as adults in custodial interrogations.12 The Court's decision in Gault followed decisions in Haley v. Ohio13 and Gallegos v. Colorado" in which the Court recognized that juveniles in custody need at least the same constitutional protections that adults enjoy and possibly more. The Court deviated from this trend of evaluating juvenile constitutional rights with a view towards enhanced Fifth Amendment protection in Fare v. Michael C.15 In Fare, the Court held that a juvenile's request to see his probation officer was not necessarily an invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights under Miranda and that the voluntariness of a juvenile's confession must be evaluated using a "totality of the circumstances" test.16 A problematic side effect of the test is that court officials and police officers who are often untrained in even basic psychology must engage in a psychological evaluation of the juvenile to fulfill the ends of the test.17 Fare muddied the constitutional waters for juveniles in custody and for law-enforcement officials. The "totality of the circumstances" test the Court urged in Fare was intentionally subjective18 and leaves the various states to come up with their own formulations of the rule. As one would expect, the way states have dealt with the constitutional mandates handed down by the Supreme Court has varied widely.19 On one end of the spectrum are states that have decided that a juvenile's rights against compelled self incrimination `can be protected only by the presence of an "interested adult."20 In the middle of the spectrum are those states which follow Fare, but also address Miranda's concern that the juvenile be effectively apprised of his rights. …


Tolley's Accounting for Tax Professionals provides an accessible introduction to the accounting rules relevant to tax professionals in the UK. This practical handbook uses worked examples to demonstrate how accounting principles are applied to financial statements in different circumstances, as well as identifying common issues which may arise.

This book also offers extensive coverage of the various accounting standards, highlighting how accounting requirements differ from the previous UK GAAP regime or where there are difficult tax-related issues.

Whether you are a limited company, partnership or sole trader, this book has the relevant guidance required.


Understanding how life histories influence reproductive success under un- certain conditions is necessary to predict population dynamics. For many organisms, pro- tracted reproduction may increase expected offspring recruitment in variable environments, requiring that temporal patterns of reproduction be considered when developing manage- ment or conservation strategies. We explored the interrelationships among birth date, pro- duction of embryos on nests, survival of larvae to the open-water stage, and survival of juveniles through the first fall and winter of life for bluegill and pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis macrochirus and L. gibbosus) in Lake Opinicon, Ontario, during May 1998 through May 1999. Age-0 sunfish were sampled with nesting surveys for embryos, surface tows for free-swimming larvae, and seining/trawling for juveniles. Age of juveniles (days post swim-up) was quantified using otoliths. The abundance of embryos on nests and the density of open-water larvae were unrelated across all dates and sites. Although 40% of larvae had appeared in the open water by 12 June, most juveniles sampled in the fall were produced after that time, suggesting that high mortality of early produced larvae occurred. Larval survival to the juvenile stage was generally unrelated to the abundance of edible zooplankton taxa during swim-up from nests. Larval survival was often highest at tem- peratures .23.58C. Fall length of age-0 sunfish increased with increasing age. Both age- specific length and mean lengths shifted positively between October 1998 and May 1999, suggesting that growth of all individuals and perhaps selective mortality of small juveniles occurred. Although early reproduction may increase sizes reached by fall and thereby improve overwinter survival, early hatched larvae are subject to variable environmental factors that may reduce survival. Late-hatched larvae may reach relatively smaller sizes by fall, but have higher survival probabilities during this life stage. Protracted reproduction appears to be a response to variable environmental factors influencing growth and survival across multiple life stages. As such, all reproducing adults, rather than those perceived to produce offspring during typically favorable times, must be protected from exploitation or other human-induced perturbations.


It is important to evaluate risk of bias of the primary studies included in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Since tools pertinent to surveys are scarce, the goal of the current research was to develop a measure to address this need. In Study 1, an initial list of 10 relevant topics was compiled from previous measures. In Study 2, the list was refined into an eight-item risk-of-bias measure via discussion and a pilot study. In Study 3, experienced researchers used the measure to asses 70 studies, demonstrating high interrater agreement (weighted Kappa = .82). Inexperienced raters also utilized the measure to code 26 different studies included in a prior meta-analysis, which resulted in adequate interrater agreement (weighted Kappa = .64) and excellent convergent validity (r = .66). Thus, the new measure, designed to be accessible and flexible, can increase standardization of risk-of-bias evaluations and contribute to the interpretation of systematic reviews and meta-analytic findings.


Conventional time domain Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) relies on the detection of an interference pattern generated by the interference of backscattered light from the sample and a reference Optical Delay Line (ODL). By referencing the sample interference with the scan depth of the ODL, constructive interference indicates depth in the sample of a reflecting structure. Conventional ODLs used in time domain OCT require some physical movement of a mirror to scan a given depth range. This movement results in instrument degradation. Also in some situations it is necessary to have no moving parts. Stationary ODLs (SODLs) include dual Reflective Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) systems (Type I) and single Transmissive SLM with match-arrayed-waveguide systems (Type II). In this paper, the method of fabrication and characterisation of a number of Stepped Mirrored Structures (SMS) is presented. These structures are intended for later use in proof-of-principle experiments that demonstrate Type II SODL: a six step, 2 mm step depth macro-SMS, an eight step 150 um deep micro-SMS with glue between steps, and a six step 150 um deep micro-SMS with no glue between steps. These SMS are characterized in terms of their fabrication, step alignment and step height increment precision. The degree of alignment of each step was verified using half of a bulk Michelson interferometer. Step height was gauged using a pair of vernier callipers measuring each individual step. A change in notch frequency using an in-fibre Mach-Zhender interferometer was used to gauge the average step height and the result compared to the vernier calliper results. The best aligned SMS was the micro-SMS prepared by method B with no glue between steps. It demonstrated a 95% confidence interval variation of 1% in reflected intensity, with the least variation in intensity within steps. This SMS also had the least absolute variation in step height increment: less than 8 um. Though less variation would be ideal, for producing micro-SMS for proof of principle experiments for Type II stationary ODL, of the method compared, method B, with no glue between steps, produced more reproducible step height increments and step alignment.


International research on the social determinants of health has increasingly integrated a welfare state perspective, comparing and explaining the differing health outcomes of developed countries through reference to the concept of welfare state regimes. Although this is to be welcomed, to date the empirical research has been conducted without reference to much in the way of welfare state theories. In this paper, I situate welfare state regimes and health within the context of political economy theories of the development of the welfare state. Theoretical explanations of the initial emergence of post-war welfare state capitalism are described and the international variants (welfare state regimes) are outlined and compared. The crisis and reform of developed welfare states is examined and contextualised within the wider economic structural shifts from Fordism to post-Fordism. The emergence of new forms of welfare state regimes (post-Fordist workfare state regimes) is also described. Finally, these theories are related to what is already known from the empirical social epidemiology literature about differences in population health by welfare state regime.


Action for wrongful suffering through disability (wrongful life)
While up to H v Fetal Assessment Centre 2015 2 SA 193 (CC) a child's action for "wrongful life" - an inappropriate term which should be replaced by the action for "wrongful suffering through disability" - had been dismissed in our law by the high courts as well as the supreme court of appeal, the constitutional court has now held that the claim may potentially be found to exist. It will be the task of the high court to decide whether it does so exist, and in what form. The latter court must then decide, if the claim is properly formulated in delict, whether all the elements of a delict, namely conduct, harm, wrongfulness, negligence and causation, are present and that damages may consequently be awarded. This has to be done within the imperatives set by the Constitution with regard to the constitutional rights and values, of which the best interests of the child is paramount. Ultimately the court held that the delictual requirements have the potential to be applied to the present action. However, it is unfortunate that the court did not wish to express itself on whether non-patrimonial harm such as pain and suffering and loss of amenities of life may be compensated by the action.
We submit that the action for wrongful suffering through disability (wrongful life) should indeed be recognised within the sphere of the law of delict, as all the elements of a delict can comfortably be accommodated within the field of application of the action. Furthermore, damages for both patrimonial and non-patrimonial harm should be recoverable with the action.


This research examines the relationship between household wellbeing and the use of conservation agriculture (CA) by smallholder farmers in Mozambique. Wellbeing indicators are regressed on household demographic attributes, farm management practices, and a variable indicating farmer adoption of CA. Findings suggest that households using CA have higher wellbeing index scores related to farm tool and implement ownership and housing material quality, but lower index scores related to livestock ownership. The findings present an encouraging, baseline picture of the association between the use of CA technologies by farmers in Mozambique and household wellbeing.


The compositional dependent fracture behavior of soft PZT (Pb0.99Ba0.01(Zr1−xTix)0.98Nb0.02O3) ceramics in the vicinity of the morphotropic phase boundary was characterized using compact-tension specimens. The compositions with 0.40 ≤ x ≤ 0.55 displayed an increasing fracture resistance with crack extension (R-curve behavior). It was observed that the rhombohedral composition and the compositions near the morphotropic phase boundary showed the largest toughness enhancement. R-curve behavior was found to be influenced by the ferroelastic coercive stress, saturated remanent strain, and elastic modulus, which were experimentally measured for each composition. X-ray diffraction measurements were performed and compared to the fracture results to investigate the impact of phase and lattice distortion on ferroelastic toughening behavior.


Hospital Materials Management: Systems and Performance This study was designed to examine the relationship between hospital materials management performance and the use of a computerized inventory control system. Twenty-two general hospitals in the state of Georgia were analyzed. Research findings indicate that those hospitals using computer-based systems exhibited a better fill-rate performance, but also experienced significantly higher inventory and labor costs per average daily census. Implementation and maintenance problems appear to be probable causes for the poor performance. THE ENVIRONMENT OF HOSPITAL MATERIALS MANAGEMENT In most hospitals, the materials management function is responsible for the complete supply process--from purchasing to distribution. Functional areas under the materials management organization typically include purchasing, central service supply, central stores, and the print shop. Other departments sometimes included are the pharmacy and the laundry. Hospital materials management performance centers around four basic goals: * To have material on hand when needed * To pay the lowest possible prices, consistent with quality and value requirements for purchased materials * To minimize inventory investment * To operate efficiently Consequently, a performance measurement approach for a system functioning in this environment must include both purchasing and inventory management.[2] A large number of factors impact the organization and supervision of a hospital materials management department. Large hospital chains offer their individual hospitals volume purchasing contracts and specialized information systems. Materials managers in such systems rarely negotiate prices. Their concern is primarily with contract compliance and inventory management. Nonprofit or independent hospitals may join national or regional group purchasing organizations to obtain price discounts. Rural hospitals tend to have larger inventories than urban hospitals because of the increased lead time from suppliers. Additionally, they also may have difficulty recruiting management talent. These are but a few of the many variable impacting hospital materials management. An effective hospital materials management information system (HMMIS) automates the materials distribution and control process. A fully integrated HMMIS typically includes a computerized inventory control system, a computerized patient supply charge system, and electronic data interchange (EDI) links with many of the hospital's suppliers. The study discussed in this article examined the relationship between a number of materials management performance factors and the use of a computerized inventory control system. The use of computers to manage inventory in hospitals has grown steadily during the past ten years.[3] Software is now readily available to manage inventory with a personal computer. In addition, there has been rapid acceptance of EDI in the hospital industry. Acceptance of computerized patient charge systems has also grown at an increasing rate. It is commonly understood that computers can lead to greater productivity through the replacement of tedious manual tasks. Failures in system implementation, however, can result in diminished performance.[4] Important factors contributing to improved productivity include a successful implementation and follow-up. The neglect of adequate postimplementation review can contribute significantly to system deterioration.[5] METHODOLOGY The American Hospital Association classifies hospitals into five major groups: (1) nonfederal government, (2) federal government, (3) investor-owned for-profit, (4) nongovernment nonprofit, and (5) osteopathic. Institutions participating in this study were "general" hospitals located in the state of Georgia that were classified in the nonfederal government, nongovernment nonprofit, and investor-owned groups. …


We investigate the effect of turbulence on the combined condensational and collisional growth of cloud droplets by means of high-resolution direct numerical simulations of turbulence and a superparticle approximation for droplet dynamics and collisions. The droplets are subject to turbulence as well as gravity, and their collision and coalescence efficiencies are taken to be unity. We solve the thermodynamic equations governing temperature, water vapor mixing ratio, and the resulting supersaturation fields together with the Navier–Stokes equation. We find that the droplet size distribution broadens with increasing Reynolds number and/or mean energy dissipation rate. Turbulence affects the condensational growth directly through supersaturation fluctuations, and it influences collisional growth indirectly through condensation. Our simulations show for the first time that, in the absence of the mean updraft cooling, supersaturation-fluctuation-induced broadening of droplet size distributions enhances the collisional growth. This is contrary to classical (nonturbulent) condensational growth, which leads to a growing mean droplet size, but a narrower droplet size distribution. Our findings, instead, show that condensational growth facilitates collisional growth by broadening the size distribution in the tails at an early stage of rain formation. With increasing Reynolds numbers, evaporation becomes stronger. This counteracts the broadening effect due to condensation at late stages of rain formation. Our conclusions are consistent with results of laboratory experiments and field observations, and show that supersaturation fluctuations are important for precipitation.


Slugs are significant pests in agriculture (as well as a nuisance to gardeners), and it is therefore important to understand their population dynamics for the construction of efficient and effective control measures. Differential equation models of slug populations require the inclusion of large (variable) temporal delays, and strong seasonal forcing results in a non-autonomous system. This renders such models open to only a limited amount of rigorous analysis. In this paper, we derive a novel batch model based purely upon the quantity of eggs produced at different times of the year. This model is open to considerable reduction; from the resulting two variable discrete-time system it is possible to reconstruct the dynamics of the full population across the year and give conditions for extinction or global stability and persistence. Furthermore, the steady state temporal population distribution displays qualitatively different behavior with only small changes in the survival probability of slugs. The model demonstrates how small variations in the favorability of different years may result in widely different slug population fluctuations between consecutive years, and is in good agreement with field data.


The initiative known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) officially became part of the international climate agenda in 2007. At that time, REDD+ was an idea regarding payment to countries (and possibly also projects) for reducing emission from forests, with funding primarily from carbon markets. The initiative has since become multi-objective in nature; the policy focus has changed from a payments for environmental services (PES) approach to broader policies, and international funding primarily originates from development aid budgets. This "aidification" of REDD+ has made the program similar to previous efforts using conditional or results-based aid (RBA). However, the experience of RBA in other sectors has scarcely been addressed in the REDD+ debate. The alleged advantages of RBA are poorly backed by empirical research. This paper reviews the primary challenges in designing and implementing a system of RBA, namely, donor spending pressure, performance criteria, reference levels, risk sharing, and funding credibility. It then reviews the four partially performance-based, bilateral REDD+ agreements that Norway has entered with Tanzania, Brazil, Guyana, and Indonesia. These agreements and the aid experience provide valuable lessons for the design and implementation of future REDD+ mechanisms.


The paper reports the results of an investigation about the UV degradation of carbofuran, a widely used insecticide in Europe. Specific objectives were the identification of the by-products formed and the evaluation of the toxicity of the irradiated solution compared to that of carbofuran. The experimental results, obtained treating an aqueous carbofuran solution (50 mg/L) by high pressure UV lamp (125 W), show that the insecticide is completely removed within 120 min. Several intermediate by-products have been identified by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) as a result of hydroxylation process of the 2,3-dihydro benzofurane ring and other reactions such as the cleavage of the carbamate group, the hydrolysis of ethereal moiety, radical coupling and decarboxylation processes. After 270 min of reaction the identified by-products were completely degraded and COD and TOC removals of 35 and 20% were measured, respectively. Toxicological analyses performed using the comparison procedure of the Microtox TM assay provided interesting clues concerning toxic effects of the photodegradation by-products. The results revealed a substantial increase of the toxicity during the first 15 min proving that photodegradation of organic contaminant could even lead to an increase of the toxicity of treated solution.


This paper examines whether children are better off if their parents have stronger social networks. Using data on high-school friendships of parents, we analyze whether the number and characteristics of friends affect the labor-market outcomes of children. While parental friendships formed in high school appear long lasting, we find no significant impact on their children's occupational choices and earnings prospects. These results do not change when we account for network endogeneity, network persistency and network measurement error. Only when children enter the labor market, we find that friends of parents have a marginally significant but small influence on the occupational choice of children.


Creating entertaining and educational books not only requires providing visually stimulating content but also means for students to interact, create, and express themselves. In this paper we present a new type of mixed-reality book experience, which augments an educational coloring book with user-generated three dimensional content. We explore a "pop-up book" metaphor and describe a process by which children's drawing and coloring is used as input to generate and change the appearance of the book content. Our system is based on natural feature tracking and image processing techniques that can be easily exploited for other AR publishing applications.


In the immediate aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet ideas and interests had been thoroughly discredited, and Russia's domestic political, economic, and social system had only begun its fundamental and painful transformation. As a result, the Westernizing policy of a narrow group of liberal elites was quickly and early challenged by national patriots and derzhavniki (a term derived from derzhava, which literally translates as "power" but evokes "great power") who advocated an assertive policy toward Russia's "near abroad" (the newly independent states of the Soviet Union) and did not shy from confrontation with the West. While attention focused on these colorful and extreme articulations of a Russian great power perspective, a more moderate version developed among the political elites who actually make Russian policy. By 1997, a liberal-statist synthesis emerged based upon several clear premises: Russia as a re-conceived great power, a geostrategic understanding of the international system, and an economically self-interested, integrationist, and instrumental understanding of how Russia can profit from a particular international order. This synthesis, rather than the extremist views easily found in the Russian press, should be understood as the basis for Russian national security policy.


Abstract:  A new type of small, ovoid dinosaur egg, Sankofa pyrenaica oogen. nov. oosp. nov., with a prismatic type eggshell is described from upper Cretaceous (upper Campanian–Maastrichtian) deposits of the Montsec area, South Pyrenean Central Unit, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. This egg type was sub‐vertically laid in only two rich monospecific sites of a single stratigraphic layer from coastal deposits of the Aren Formation, interpreted as an emerged beach ridge of a barrier island – lagoon depositional system. The size and shape of these eggs with their asymmetric poles are roughly similar to modern hen eggs, which is unusual in the Cretaceous fossil egg record. Its phylogenetic position clusters with bird and Troodontid eggs. A morphospace analysis of egg shapes shows the similarity of the new egg to a Campanian fossil bird egg from Argentina, both being intermediate between modern‐bird eggs and extinct nonavian theropod eggs. However, the eggshell microstructure of Sankofa pyrenaica differs from that of bird eggs in its incipient squamatic texture. It has a peculiar pattern of interlocking small crystals in the middle of the palisade layer, instead of the thick squamatic structure commonly present in modern avian eggshells. This new egg type is attributed to a small theropod, probably with a single oviduct like birds and whose mosaic distribution of features is a combination between that of birds and nonavian theropods. This enhances the arguments supporting the close phylogenetic relationships between both groups.


Aims To explore the neuro-cognitive effects of VNS in patients with treatment-refractory epilepsy using the Critical Flicker Fusion (CFF) Test, a neuropsychological measure of cognitive integrative capacity of the central nervous system. Methods Consecutive adult patients with treatment-resistant epilepsy referred to the Epilepsy VNS Implantation Programme at two regional University Hospitals in England were approached. Seven patients entered this pilot study with a prospective design. Observations were recorded at baseline and after 12 months of VNS treatment. All participants completed standardised self-rated behavioural measures, including the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Scale (QOLIE-10), as well as automated neuropsychological tests of attention, concentration, memory, logical thinking and cognitive integrative capacity (CFF Test). Participants were required to keep accurate seizure diaries throughout the duration of the study. Results The group as a whole showed a significant improvement in seizure frequency at 12 months (p=0.05), with three participants reporting a >50% reduction in overall seizure frequency. VNS treatment also resulted in a significant improvement in the "seizure worry" and "memory" domains of the QOLIE-10 (both p<0.05) and a trend towards reduction in the severity of anxiety symptoms measured by the HADS (p=0.107). Neuropsychological testing showed a trend towards improvement in visual recognition and logical thinking, attention and concentration, and memory, however none of these changes were statistically significant. On the other hand, the group as a whole showed a significant improvement in CFF Test scores (p<0.05). Conclusions This prospective pilot study suggests that the CFF Test can be a useful and sensitive tool in detecting subtle cognitive enhancement in patients with refractory epilepsy successfully treated with VNS.


The Unmanaged Internet Architecture (UIA) provides zero-configuration connectivity among mobile devices through personal names. Users assign personal names through an ad hoc device introduction process requiring no central allocation. Once assigned, names bind securely to the global identities of their target devices independent of network location. Each user manages one namespace, shared among all the user's devices and always available on each device. Users can also name other users to share resources with trusted acquaintances. Devices with naming relationships automatically arrange connectivity when possible, both in ad hoc networks and using global infrastructure when available. A UIA prototype demonstrates these capabilities using optimistic replication for name resolution and group management and a routing algorithm exploiting the user's social network for connectivity.