Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and analyze novice researchers' experiences of the Glaserian grounded theory methodology. Design/methodology/approach – The grounded theory analytical procedures were applied. Findings – The paper suggests that the creative freedom inherited in the Glaserian grounded theory approach empowers novice researchers, and many students reported positive emotions related to this freedom. At the same time, this freedom can represent a difficulty. Several students thought the tabula rasa instruction was something of a paradox, and the instructions within the methodology to "be without preconceptions," "let the theory emerge," and "find the social process" was difficult for most students to understand. However, some students found that they could counteract this difficulty via a systematic coding process and by working in pairs that enabled them to conduct an analytical dialogue. Originality/value – This is the first study that investigates the way that novice ...


Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have been widely used in portable devices and electric vehicles as power sources due to their high energy density, long lifespan, no memory effect, and low self-discharge rate. However, when overheating occurs, the performance, reliability, durability, and safety of Li-ion batteries can be seriously deteriorated.
Overheating of Li-ion batteries typically takes place during normal high-rate discharges and abnormal discharges such as short circuits. For high-rate discharges, the parasitic heat generation of Li-ion batteries can accelerate the capacity fading. In abnormal discharges, the overheating issue becomes more severe, and the battery temperature could even reach the threshold for exothermic reactions and trigger thermal runaway.
In this thesis, phase change material (PCM)-based and heat pipe-based battery thermal management (BTM) systems were designed to dissipate the heat generated by cylindrical and prismatic batteries respectively during normal discharges. The proposed PCM-based BTM system was developed through innovatively embedding PCM cores in the cylindrical battery centers. Compared to conventional PCM-based BTM systems using PCM externally to batteries, the proposed design consumes less PCM while achieves better cooling effects. For prismatic batteries, ultra-thin heat pipes were sandwiched between the batteries to manage their temperature rises. The implementation of heat pipes notably alleviates the heat accumulation in battery packs, and the cooling performance can be further enhanced when an evaporative cooling strategy is applied to dissipate the heat.
Regarding the more severe overheating issues caused by abnormal discharges, internal and external short circuit experiments were performed on Li-ion batteries, and a modified electrochemical-thermal coupling model was developed to simulate the short circuits. Good correlations were found between experimental and numerical results for non-thermal runaway batteries. For batteries with thermal runaways, the model can predict whether and when the thermal runaway will occur. Besides, strategies that can hinder thermal runaway and its propagation in battery packs were also investigated and verified through experiments.


Previous work has shown how to insert fences that enforce sequential consistency. However, for many concurrent algorithms, sequential consistency is unnecessarily strong and can lead to high execution overhead. The reason is that, often, correctness relies on the execution order of a few specific pairs of instructions. Algorithm designers can declare those execution orders and thereby enable memory-model-independent reasoning about correctness and also ease implementation of algorithms on multiple platforms. The literature has examples of such reasoning, while tool support for enforcing the orders has been lacking until now. In this paper we present a declarative approach to specify and enforce execution orders. Our fence insertion algorithm first identifies the execution orders that a given memory model enforces automatically, and then inserts fences that enforce the rest. Our benchmarks include three off-the-shelf transactional memory algorithms written in C/C++ for which we specify suitable execution orders. For those benchmarks, our experiments with the x86 and ARMv7 memory models show that our tool inserts fences that are competitive with those inserted by the original authors. Our tool is the first to insert fences into transactional memory algorithms and it solves the long-standing problem of how to easily port such algorithms to a novel memory model.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate waste management practices of purchasing, handling, storage, and
disposal of agricultural chemicals, petroleum products, and maintenance residuals. One-hundred surveys were returned
by agricultural producers from three Nebraska counties selected based on unique environmental and waste management
issues. Twenty-four questions concerning agricultural chemicals and 16 questions directed to petroleum products and
maintenance residuals are discussed. A follow-up interview with 45 respondents was conducted "on-site" to gain insight
into their reported practices, perceptions, and actual practices. Most farmers (66%) tended to purchase pesticides in 3.8
to 10 L (1-2.5 gal) containers and most (79%) were willing to participate in a recycling program for pesticide containers.
Most of the respondents burned soft/hard plastic and paper pesticide containers, or returned the metal containers to the
supplier. Few farmers took pesticide containers to landfills, or buried or stored containers in their field. Most farmers
(76%) applied left-over diluted chemical residues or rinsates evenly on the field just sprayed. Eighty-one percent of the
farmers stored pesticides and 89% stored fertilizers at locations greater than 31 m (101 ft) from a water source. Only 9%
of the respondents indicated they had containment barriers for stationary bulk pesticides, fertilizer storage tanks, or
transportable nurse tanks. Seventy-nine percent of the respondents and 84% of the interviewed farmers did not record or
monitor volumes of petroleum storage. Farmers tended to have trash dumps (62%) and junk piles (57%) on their
farmsteads. Geographic location within the state and size of the farmstead had an effect on whether the farms had dumps.
Most farmers (94%) felt they used appropriate recycling methods to deal with waste products. However, over half of the
farmers were unaware of the location of the petroleum (oil) recycling station. Most farmers (94%) indicated they felt they
purchased replacement items based on long life instead of lowest price.


This study investigated the extent to which teachers' questioning techniques and the way teachers handled students' responses facilitated students' learning and promoted their thinking skills. The study focused on three secondary schools in Dar es Salaam. The data collection process involved classroom observations during chemistry lessons and interviews of 10 chemistry teachers. The findings showed that 80% of the observed teachers had a moderate ability in using questioning techniques to measure students' understanding. The interesting observation in all schools was that teachers interacted frequently with active students and bothered less to involve the least active ones. Moreover, above 80% of all teachers had problems of promoting students' thinking by maintaining a balance between the openended and close-ended questions or between convergent and divergent questions. Also, the teachers indicated severe weaknesses in guiding classroom discussions through effective questioning as their abilities in probing were low. Thus, in-service program for these teachers may improve their classroom questioning behaviour.


In rats with dihydrotestosterone (DHT)-induced polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), repeated low-frequency electrical stimulation of acupuncture needles restores whole-body insulin sensitivity measured by euglycemic hyperinsulinemic clamp. We hypothesized that electrical stimulation causing muscle contractions and manual stimulation causing needle sensation have different effects on insulin sensitivity and related signaling pathways in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue, with electrical stimulation being more effective in DHT-induced PCOS rats. From age 70 days, rats received manual or low-frequency electrical stimulation of needles in abdominal and hind limb muscle five times/wk for 4–5 wks; controls were handled but untreated rats. Low-frequency electrical stimulation modified gene expression (decreased Tbc1d1 in soleus, increased Nr4a3 in mesenteric fat) and protein expression (increased pAS160/AS160, Nr4a3 and decreased GLUT4) by western blot and increased GLUT4 expression by immunohistochemistry in soleus muscle; glucose clearance during oral glucose tolerance tests was unaffected. Manual stimulation led to faster glucose clearance and modified mainly gene expression in mesenteric adipose tissue (increased Nr4a3, Mapk3/Erk, Adcy3, Gsk3b), but not protein expression to the same extent; however, Nr4a3 was reduced in soleus muscle. The novel finding is that electrical and manual muscle stimulation affect glucose homeostasis in DHT-induced PCOS rats through different mechanisms. Repeated electrical stimulation regulated key functional molecular pathways important for insulin sensitivity in soleus muscle and mesenteric adipose tissue to a larger extent than manual stimulation. Manual stimulation improved whole-body glucose tolerance, an effect not observed after electrical stimulation, but did not affect molecular signaling pathways to the same extent as electrical stimulation. Although more functional signaling pathways related to insulin sensitivity were affected by electrical stimulation, our findings suggest that manual stimulation of acupuncture needles has a greater effect on glucose tolerance. The underlying mechanism of the differential effects of the intermittent manual and the continuous electrical stimulation remains to be elucidated.


The Parachute Project was a Swedish multi-centre project that included 175 First Episode Psychosis patients who were followed over five years. The aim was to provide "need adapted care" with low medication and based on out-patient support in order to positively affect long-term outcome. One historical and one prospective "treatment-as-usual" group provided comparison follow-up data. The aim of this thesis is to describe outcome from various perspectives in FEP patients. Study I compared symptoms, functional outcome, care consumption and costs between the Parachute patients with a baseline schizophrenia syndrome and the comparison groups at three-year follow-up. Study II examined the relation of background variables to patients' satisfaction with care (PSC) at 1-year follow up. Study III and IV explored the relation between background variables, baseline status gender and 5-year outcome. Study V examined the associations between perceived financial strain and qualitative and quantitative network to level of recovery after 5-years. After three years the consumption of inpatient care had been significantly lower in the Parachute group than in the prospective comparison group. In spite of increased outpatient care in the Parachute patients' group the total mean cost was about half of the cost in the Prospective comparison group. Symptoms and functional outcome were better compared to the Historical group but there were no differences compared to the Prospective group. At one year follow-up the Parachute Project patients showed a high satisfaction with the received care. Factors that were shown to be predictors of PSC were "educational level", "social network", "duration of untreated psychosis" (DUP) and "Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) the year prior to onset" together with negative symptoms and lack of hope at admission. Twenty-nine percent of the variance in PSC was explained by these factors. At five year follow-up 85 patients (37 males, 48 females) showed a good outcome and 68 patients (44 males, 24 females) a poor outcome. The relative contribution of the baseline characteristics to the 5-year outcome was analyzed. The variables found to have unique contributions were: "GAF the year before first admission ≤ 70", "highest educational level is compulsory school", "GAF at first admission ≤30", "male gender" and "contact with friends ≤ 2-3 times/month". Furthermore, gender differences in the predictors were examined. "GAF the year before first admission ≤ 70" and "GAF at first admission ≤30" explained most of the variance of a poor 5-year outcome for males, whereas for females the corresponding items were "highest educational level is compulsory school", "living with parents" and "contact with friends ≤ 2-3 times/month". A predictive rating scale (PRS) was constructed from the results. After five years the Parachute Project patients answered a questionnaire from the PART study, a population-based study of mental ill health, which included questions about qualitative and quantitative network and experience of financial strain. The relation between these variables and outcome group (PART participants, recovered FEP patients and non-recovered FEP patients) was examined. The results showed that financial strain, quantitative social-network and qualitative social-network explained 16% of the variance in the outcome groups. In summary, the results showed that it is possible to provide "need-adapted care" to persons suffering from psychosis, but further studies with a naturalistic design are needed to increase knowledge regarding what ingredients are effective and how various interventions interact. In addition it is important with early intervention to decrease the prodromal period and DUP. Outcome depended on various factors present before the first contact with psychiatry and those factors differ between the genders. Thus outcome measures have to be comprehensive and cover various aspect of a person's life. It is not enough to measure outcome, i.e. only with symptom levels or diagnosis. More factors have to be examined and taken into account, such as gender, age, quality of life, amount of medication, social adversity and financial strain, both in treatment choices as well as in outcome measures.


Serial Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging can reveal structural atrophy in the brains of
subjects with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Methods of
computational neuroanatomy allow the detection of statistically significant patterns of
brain change over time and/or over multiple subjects. The focus of this thesis is the
development and application of statistical and supporting methodology for the analysis
of three-dimensional brain imaging data. There is a particular emphasis on longitudinal
data, though much of the statistical methodology is more general.
New methods of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) are developed for serial MR data,
employing combinations of tissue segmentation and longitudinal non-rigid registration.
The methods are evaluated using novel quantitative metrics based on simulated data.
Contributions to general aspects of VBM are also made, and include a publication concerning
guidelines for reporting VBM studies, and another examining an issue in the
selection of which voxels to include in the statistical analysis mask for VBM of atrophic
conditions.
Research is carried out into the statistical theory of permutation testing for application
to multivariate general linear models, and is then used to build software for the analysis
of multivariate deformation- and tensor-based morphometry data, efficiently correcting
for the multiple comparison problem inherent in voxel-wise analysis of images. Monte
Carlo simulation studies extend results available in the literature regarding the different
strategies available for permutation testing in the presence of confounds.
Theoretical aspects of longitudinal deformation- and tensor-based morphometry are
explored, such as the options for combining within- and between-subject deformation
fields. Practical investigation of several different methods and variants is performed for a
longitudinal AD study.


What is it 'to move' a photograph? Artistic tactics for destabilising and transforming images. This dissertation presents the findings of practice-led research that explores how artistic practices intervening in existing images 'move' images — in the sense of destabilise and transform. The notion 'to move' has guided this investigation and it has offered new insights on artistic tactics regarding the operations of de-contextualisation and re-contextualisation, montage, the categories of the still and the moving image and the 'affective encounter' that stems from touching. In parallel to exploring the artistic tactics of gleaning, working with archives, the performance-lecture, montage and the tactic I have called 'performing documents', this enquiry has also examined how images function, as this was crucial to conduct operations with them. Artistic practices that stemmed from existing images have been common over the last three decades. In the 1980s they operated through an understanding of the notion of 'appropriation' as 'pastiche'. In contrast, this investigation, which also begins from working with existing images, explores photography through performance. These two artistic forms have often been defined in oppositional terms. This enquiry argues for a 'performative materiality' to renovate the discourse on images instead of the usual privileging position of the 'textual'. This renovation deterritorialises and reterritorialises territories that are usually separated, in this case photography and performance, representation and presentation: putting these categories under pressure. As a result, this investigation re-conceptualises the notion of appropriation, through the practice of gleaning, towards an ethical and regenerative mode based on 'invocation', 'restitution' and 'profanation'. Specifically, the work/research makes evident a form of 'affective encountering' of images which acknowledges their materiality, advocating that the materiality of images contributes to the functioning of images as much as the indexicality (image content). Through a focus on the materiality of images, this enquiry has provided new, nuanced insights on the issue of the agency (and resistance) of images, on the images that challenge the categories still and moving image, and a shift from photographs as containers of time to producers of time. This investigation, based on the question "What is it 'to move' an image?", has generated new insights and reflections which allow us to understand images in a way that is more nuanced and dynamic, and yet grounded in their material properties. Rather than approaching these problems through prevailing methods, this enquiry has undertaken an innovative performative approach that explores the space in-between images, criss-crosses the margins and touches photographs. This performative approach—these affective encounters—have been central to challenge assumptions and offer new understandings of what images are and, more importantly, 'how they do what they do'.


This work experimentally examines the phenomenon of leading-edge vortex (LEV) burst in a low aspect ratio rotating plate. Through stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (SPIV) about chrodwise planes, the evolutionary track of the vortex is detailed from inception to completion of a single revolution at Reynolds number Re=2500. The plate is driven at fixed incidence angle α = 45 ◦ with angularvelocity derived from a simple ramp-up, hold, ramp-down profile. Of particular interest is the SPIV analysis about the midspan and the 60% span positions. As demonstrated by the LEV core dye visualization of Figure 1, the burst process entails a topological shift about the midspan from a well-behaved swirl near the plate root to a more complex formation within the latter half of the plate, showcasing a loss of coherency. The ubiquity of unsteady flow phenomena exploited in biological flight and propulsion has prompted a recent surge in unsteady aerodynamics research. Such phenomena remain integral to the agile capabilities observed in bio-locomotion. However, proposed airborne platform designs aspire to perform beyond the operational limitations of biological counterparts. This includes elevated kinematic and flight speeds. In the pursuit of greater operational speeds, researchers are faced with a fundamental shift in flow characteristics as vortical structures approach saturation where stability may be an issue. Stability here is reserved to the context of flapping flight to indicate prolonged attachment of a given vortex to the airfoil and is not to be confused with the growth or decay of perturbations. Of primary interest has been the production of the leading-edge vortex to which much of the lift generation is attributed, owing to dynamic-stall effects. Under the burst mechanism, the leading-edge vortex experiences an abrupt expansion of cross-sectional area about the midspan. The complexity of the resulting vortex is elevated further with radial position approaching the plate tip. The previously simple homogeneous vorticity composition of the pre-burst vortex is now replaced by homogeneity where opposite-sign vorticity elements are incorporated into the leading-edge vortex. Concurrently, the burst process is cause for stagnation of the axial flow components within the leading-edge vortex core. Subsequently, the core flow undergoes flow reversal as entrained vorticity elements are are deposited within the LEV core. The counter-rotating vorticity composition of the leading-edge vortex presents a unique challenge in identifying a coherent LEV and quantifying its respective attributes. Determination of LEV circulation depends on the selected of contributing regions. The results of three different schemes using a rectangular fixed boundary, a vorticity threshold method and a λ 2-guided convex hull were compared and showed only small variations in magnitude while preserving agreement with established trends. In addition, a proper orthogonal decomposition of the vorticity and out-of-plane velocity field reveal dominant flow patterns characteristic of the pre-burst, bursting and post-burst regimes including of the onset of an inhomogeneous vorticity field hosting an array of entrained opposite-signed elements.


Competitive dialogue (CD) is a seldom-practised procurement procedure in Norway. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) plans to use it in complex and mega infrastructure project in the future. This study investigates how CD has contributed to the implementation of lean in the public sector by answering the following two research questions: What are the motives for using CD?; and How was the CD carried out (timeline, main activities etc.)? With a supporting literature study, four cases were studied by conducting a document study and semi-structured in-depth interviewees with eight key informants. Several motives why CD has been used in the target projects were identified. However, none the identified motives were to directly implement lean. Furthermore, eleven major activities of CD and two project implementation models that have used CD were identified in the case projects. The motives behind implementing CD are found to be comparable to the motives for implementing lean construction principles. In addition, the dialogue phase is found to be at the core of the process and could contribute to reducing significant waste. The findings provide a contribution of how CD can be used to implement lean in public procurement.


We present a time series of coastline change for the Irrawaddy delta region of Myanmar using the earliest available navigation chart from 1850, and a set of topographic maps and satellite imagery dating from 1913 to 2006. Despite the large sediment load delivered annually to the gulf by the Irrawaddy and Salween Rivers, the coastline has been largely stable for 156 years, advancing at an average rate of no more than 0.34 km per century since 1925. The long-term average rate of increase in land area across the study area between 1925 and 2006 is 4.2 k²/year, but this masks a period of more rapid accumulation between 1925 and 1989 (8.7 k²/year), followed by a period of net erosion at a rate of 13 k²/year until 2006. Less than 9% of the sediment load delivered to the study region by the Irrawaddy, Salween and Sittoung Rivers has contributed to the observed progradation, with the remainder being exported into the Gulf of Martaban to depths below low tide level, or filling any accommodation space created due to subsidence or sea level rise. In contrast to many deltas worldwide, we suggest that the coastline encompassing the Irrawaddy delta and the Salween River is more or less in equilibrium, and that sediment deposition currently balances subsidence and sea level rise. Myanmar has fewer large dams relative to its Asian neighbours, and the Salween is currently undammed. This is forecast to change in the next 5-10 years with extensive damming projects on the mainstem of the Salween under consideration or construction, and the sediment retention will cause losses in sediment supply to the Gulf of Martaban, and retreat of the delta. This could impact the densely populated delta region and Yangon, and further exacerbate the impacts of extreme events such as Cyclone Nargis in 2008.


The present research focuses on analysing the judicial uncertainty in the
implementation, interpretation and application of the ICC Statute both in
international and national arenas. In this context examined are the parameters
of state sovereignty as the main source of theoretical as well as practical
contemporary debate on the relationship between lex specialis character of
ICC norms and domestic legal regimes. Varying and frequently inconsistent
degrees of international and national compliance with international criminal
law due to the multiplicity of legal regimes are scrutinised by analysing the
relationship between national and ICC measures with regard to aspects of pretrial
proceedings, such as surrender of accused persons and transfer of criminal
proceedings, rights of suspects and defendants as well as some aspects of
sentencing in so far as they affect the prima facie jurisdiction.
One of the main objectives of the ICC Treaty is to advance the unification of
international criminal law. Whilst it may be contended that this body of law is
acquiring a great degree of specificity and uniformity in content through the
Statute, both its development and importantly its scope are fundamentally
reliant on interpretation and application at national level; it is here that
international criminal law is fragmented. Consequently, its understanding and
enforcement are inconsistent.
The ICC Statute presents issues that are the result of the fusion of common and
civil law traditions as well as a blend of diverse criminal laws within each one
of those systems. Distinguishing between Anglo-American and Continental
European criminal procedures has become increasingly complex and
transgressed. Such blend of legal traditions, whilst it must ensure that justice is
rendered with equality, fairness and effectiveness, generates nevertheless everincreasing
lack of legal orientation. The aim of this pastiche is therefore to
establish an international, uniform standard across contemporary justice
systems. However, the application of the ICC provisions will depend on
particular method of implementation of the Rome Treaty into domestic law,
local political situation, the nature of a conflict (armed conflict is where most
of the ICC crimes are likely to occur), any peace process involving regional
amnesties and pardons and domestic policies and rules on sentencing.
The general perception of the ICC and the law it represents is that of a
powerful, centralised regime. Contrary to this belief, a proposition is made
here for a less hierarchical international criminal justice that is fundamentally
reliant upon national courts and law enforcement agencies. Such a proposition
emphasises the need for the ICC involvement at a local level. In this context,
the thesis sets out to clarify the ICC law and related Statute enforcement
issues.


We consider a source-destination pair assisted by parallel regenerative decode-and-forward relays operating in orthogonal channels. We investigate distributed power allocation strategies for this system with limited channel state information at the source and the relay nodes. We first propose a distributed decision mechanism for each relay to individually make its decision on whether to forward the source data. The decision mechanism calls for each relay that is able to decode the information from the source to compare its relay-to-destination channel gain with a given threshold. We identify the optimum distributed power allocation strategy that minimizes the total transmit power while providing a target signal-to-noise ratio at the destination with a target outage probability. The strategy dictates the optimum choices for the source power as well as the threshold value at the relays. Next, we consider two simpler distributed power allocation strategies, namely the passive source model where the source power and the relay threshold are fixed, and the single relay model where only one relay is allowed to forward the source data. These models are motivated by limitations on the available channel state information as well as ease of implementation as compared to the optimum distributed strategy. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed distributed power allocation schemes. Specifically, we observe significant power savings with proposed methods as compared to random relay selection.


The probability distribution of the shortest path cost from a source node to an arbitrary destination node is considered for a random network model consisting of a complete digraph with positive integer random edge costs. Edge costs are chosen according to a common probability distribution for each direction. For this model, the joint distribution of the number of nodes which have a given sequence of shortest path costs from an arbitrary source node is determined explicitly. An expression is then obtained for the distribution of the shortest path cost between two arbitrary nodes using this joint distribution. The main result is the derivation of tight bounds and a sharp limit result for the distribution of the shortest path cost as the number of nodes tends to infinity. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate these results.<<ETX>>


Two experiments were carried out with the objective to determine the effect of replacing corn by dried citrus pulp and wet brewer grain on apparent digestibility of nutrients of the diet, ruminal parameters and performance of sheep. The diets were defined by the replacement of corn (control) by dried citrus pulp or by a mixture of wet brewer grain and citrus pulp. In experiment 1, for evaluation of intake, apparent digestibility of nutrients and ruminal parameters, 12 Santa Ines ram lambs fitted with canulas in the rumen were assigned to a randomized complete block design with three diets and four replicates. In experiment two, for performance evaluation, 48 ewe lambs were confined and fed the same diets of experiment 1. Replacement of corn by dried citrus pulp did not affect intake or digestibility of nutrients in the diet. However, the inclusion of wet brewer grain reduced intake and apparent digestibility of nutrients, with exception of NDF. Apparent digestibility of NDF was similar among diets. Inclusion of wet brewer grain in the diet decreased ruminal concentration of acetate and propionate and increased acetate/propionate ratio and ruminal pH. In general, there is no difference between the diet containing corn and that containing citrus pulp in total replacement to corn. The use of wet brewer grain, however, reduces average daily gain, final body weight and feed efficiency.


Islamist militants based in Pakistan pose a major threat to regional and international security. Although this problem has only recently received widespread attention, Pakistan has long used militants as strategic tools to compensate for its severe political and material weakness. This use of Islamist militancy has constituted nothing less than a central component of Pakistani grand strategy; supporting jihad has been one of the principal means by which the Pakistani state has sought to produce security for itself. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the strategy has not been wholly disastrous. Rather, it has achieved important domestic and international successes. Recently, however, Pakistan has begun to suffer from a "jihad paradox": the very conditions that previously made Pakistan's militant policy useful now make it extremely dangerous. Thus, despite its past benefits, the strategy has outlived its utility, and Pakistan will have to abandon it to avoid catastrophe. Other weak states, which may also be tempted to use nonstate actors as strategic tools, should take the Pakistani case as a cautionary lesson.


This thesis presents an exploration of how to develop independent functioning for children and adults who are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Two core areas of research are presented in a series of four published papers. Together with the introduction, literature review, discussion and conclusion chapters, eight chapters form the thesis via publication. All data included in this thesis has been extracted from systematic searches of peer-reviewed published literature and has drawn from self-management, exercise, and goal setting interventions. The first area of research explored how to measure the strength of treatment effect in single-case design (SCD) research. Over two sequential studies, data collection trends over time, and a subsequent sensitivity analysis of three appropriate treatment effect calculation methods was conducted. The widely reported percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) served as the basis of comparison, and in addition both the percentage of all non-overlapping data (PAND) and non-overlap of all pairs (NAP) were examined. The second area of research explored the use of self-management techniques to increase independent functioning for individuals diagnosed with ASD. A meta-analysis of these SCD interventions was conducted for studies that targeted the development of a new skill or the improvement of an existing skill. The U.S. Department of Education, What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) single-case design technical documentation guidelines were adopted to evaluate the quality of studies included in this review. PND was used to measure strength of treatment effect. One important finding of the meta-analysis indicated that goal setting skills were infrequently reported within the self-management literature for participants with ASD. It was argued that goal setting skills are an important component of independent functioning for children and adults with ASD, and a systematic review of the broader goal setting literature was conducted. Results were examined with respect to their implications for participants on the autism spectrum, and a future research agenda was proposed.


The modelling of large systems of spiking neurons is computationally very demanding in terms of processing power and communication. SpiNNaker is a massively-parallel computer system designed to model up to a billion spiking neurons in real time. The basic block of the machine is the SpiNNaker multicore System-on-Chip, a Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) system with 18 ARM968 processor nodes residing in synchronous islands, surrounded by a light-weight, packet-switched asynchronous communications infrastructure. The MPSoC contains 100 million transistors in a 102 mm2 die, provides a peak performance of 3.96 GIPS and has a power consumption of 1W at 1.2V when all processor cores operate at nominal frequency. SpiNNaker chips were delivered in May 2011, were fully operational, and met power and performance requirements.


This paper presents the work on a fully nonlinear body-exact unsteady three-dimensional boundary element method (BEM) for free-surface flows with forward speed based on potential flow theory. The BEM is coupled with free-surface markers updated in a semi-Lagrangian way. Time-dependent nonlinear boundary conditions are applied on the instantaneous position of the free-surface and the wetted surface of the
body and the boundary value problem (BVP) is solved at each time step in an earth-fixed reference frame, thus using a moving grid technique. A fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme is used for the time-integration of the free-surface boundary conditions controlling the free-surface markers.

The ongoing development of this method is done with the outlook of computing ship motions although this paper only discusses captive hull computations with forward speed in calm water for the purpose of validating the forward speed effects in a controlled manner, thus keeping the same mathematical model and approach developed for the wave-body interaction.


This paper introduces a new method based on the diagnostic plot (Alfredsson et al., Phys. Fluids, vol. 23, 2011, 041702) to assess the convergence towards a well-behaved zero-pressure-gradient (ZPG) turbulent boundary layer (TBL). The most popular and well-understood methods to assess the convergence towards a well-behaved state rely on empirical skin-friction curves (requiring accurate skin-friction measurements), shape-factor curves (requiring full velocity profile measurements with an accurate wall position determination) or wake-parameter curves (requiring both of the previous quantities). On the other hand, the proposed diagnostic-plot method only needs measurements of mean and fluctuating velocities in the outer region of the boundary layer at arbitrary wall-normal positions. To test the method, six tripping configurations, including optimal set-ups as well as both under- and overtripped cases, are used to quantify the convergence of ZPG TBLs towards well-behaved conditions in the Reynolds-number range covered by recent high-fidelity direct numerical simulation data up to a Reynolds number based on the momentum thickness and free-stream velocity $Re_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}$ of approximately 4000 (corresponding to 2.5 m from the leading edge) in a wind-tunnel experiment. Additionally, recent high-Reynolds-number data sets have been employed to validate the method. The results show that weak tripping configurations lead to deviations in the mean flow and the velocity fluctuations within the logarithmic region with respect to optimally tripped boundary layers. On the other hand, a strong trip leads to a more energized outer region, manifested in the emergence of an outer peak in the velocity-fluctuation profile and in a more prominent wake region. While established criteria based on skin-friction and shape-factor correlations yield generally equivalent results with the diagnostic-plot method in terms of convergence towards a well-behaved state, the proposed method has the advantage of being a practical surrogate that is a more efficient tool when designing the set-up for TBL experiments, since it diagnoses the state of the boundary layer without the need to perform extensive velocity profile measurements.


In coastal salt marshes, mats of wrack (dead plant stems) that are deposited on the marsh by high tides can kill underlying vegetation and initiate secondary succession. The importance of wrack disturbance in northwest Atlantic salt marshes has been a topic of recent debate. The importance of wrack disturbance in southwest Atlantic salt marshes, which experience a very different climate regime than do northern marshes, has rarely been examined. Working in a Georgia salt marsh, we documented a pattern of positive association between wrack and Batis maritima biomass, and conducted experiments that indicated that wrack was beneficial to Batis maritima. Sampling indicated that natural wrack deposition was correlated with areas of vigorous Batis growth and mild soil conditions. Natural wrack deposition occurred primarily at the highest elevations occupied by Batis maritima (the high Batis zone). Batis plants in the high zone were taller, with more and larger leaves, and contained several times the biomass/unit area than Batis plants at lower elevations. High zone soils had lower salinities, better percolation rates, and a lower organic content than did soils from lower elevations. Experimental manipulations demonstrated that deposition of wrack was partially responsible for these patterns. In each of two experiments, soil salinities were lower and plants taller and larger in the presence of wrack compared to in its absence. Although wrack lowered salinities and enhanced plant growth, the effects were not large enough to completely explain the differences between Batis zones. Instead, wrack probably reinforced pre-existing gradients in flooding and salinity caused by differences in elevation and terrestrial runoff.

Our results contrast with previous studies from northern marshes. Because of geographic differences in climate and plant phenology, northern marshes are more likely than southern marshes to receive patches of wrack thick enough to kill underlying vegetation. Plants covered by thin layers of wrack, as commonly occurs in southern marshes, may often grow through the wrack rather than suffer mortality. Also because of climatic differences, wrack is more likely to benefit plants by ameliorating salinity stress in southern marshes, where soil salinities are often hypersaline, than in northern marshes where soils are rarely hypersaline. Although ecological processes may differ between northern and southern salt marshes, these differences may be predictable based on an understanding of geographic variation in climate.


We present a nonparametric prior over reversible Markov chains. We use completely random measures, specifically gamma processes, to construct a countably infinite graph with weighted edges. By enforcing symmetry to make the edges undirected we define a prior over random walks on graphs that results in a reversible Markov chain. The resulting prior over infinite transition matrices is closely related to the hierarchical Dirichlet process but enforces reversibility. A reinforcement scheme has recently been proposed with similar properties, but the de Finetti measure is not well characterised. We take the alternative approach of explicitly constructing the mixing measure, which allows more straightforward and efficient inference at the cost of no longer having a closed form predictive distribution. We use our process to construct a reversible infinite HMM which we apply to two real datasets, one from epigenomics and one ion channel recording.


Chlamydia spp. cause a variety of human and animal diseases and are one of the most prevalent causes of sexually transmitted diseases. By 16S rRNA analysis, chlamydiae fall into one of about 40 "divisions," or main relatedness groups, that make up the bacterial phylogenetic domain. The application of PCR coupled with rRNA-based phylogenetic techniques has resulted in a substantial accumulation of Chlamydia-related sequences. Phylogenetic analyses from several laboratories generally concur in their assessments of the phylogeny of the group. The Chlamydia species are all relatively closely related, yet until recently they have represented an entire bacterial division. Phylogenetic analyses carried out with the RNase P RNA sequences from C. trachomatis, C. pneumoniae, and C. psittaci, the only ones available, support the rRNA tree, showing that C. pneumoniae and C. psittaci are more closely related to each other than either is to C. trachomatis. All known members of the Chlamydiales phylogenetic division are intracellular parasites, although it is possible that free-living instances of the division exist in the environment. Members of the Planctomycetales and Verrucomicrobiales divisions are little-studied organisms that recent molecular studies show to be conspicuous in the environment. Although their relatedness through sequence comparisons is currently ambiguous, an additional similarity between members of these groups and members of Chlamydiales is the apparent lack of peptidoglycan in their cell walls. Complete genome sequences of representatives of the Planctomycetales and Verrucomicrobiales will facilitate a better analysis of their possible specific relationships with the Chlamydiales, and increase knowledge of bacterial division-level diversity.


Android rooting enables device owners to freely customize their own devices and run useful apps that require root privileges. While useful, rooting weakens the security of Android devices and opens the door for malware to obtain privileged access easily. Thus, several rooting prevention mechanisms have been introduced by vendors, and sensitive or high-value mobile apps perform rooting detection to mitigate potential security exposures on rooted devices. However, there is a lack of understanding whether existing rooting prevention and detection methods are effective. To fill this knowledge gap, we studied existing Android rooting methods and performed manual and dynamic analysis on 182 selected apps, in order to identify current rooting detection methods and evaluate their effectiveness. Our results suggest that these methods are ineffective. We conclude that reliable methods for detecting rooting must come from integrity-protected kernels or trusted execution environments, which are difficult to bypass.


The purpose of this paper is to develop a reputation model for higher education programmes, provide empirical evidence for the model and illustrate its application by using Copenhagen Business School (CBS) as the recurrent case. The developed model is a cause-and-effect model linking image to reputation via rational and emotional evaluations as well as relevant corporate identity determinants. As reputation, image and identity are very complex concepts, it is important to determine which of the many elements should be included in the model. This paper discusses why a given aspect is important for higher education reputation and which relations exist between the included determinants from a theoretical perspective. It is demonstrated how the model and measurement system may be a useful management tool for the improvement of the reputation of a higher education. In this way, the model can help leaders of higher education institutions to set strategic directions and support their decisions in an effort to create even better study programmes with a better reputation. Finally, managerial implications and directions for future research are discussed.


Perspectivation – verbal practices to represent perspectives – can be used in personal storytelling to negotiate moral claims which are crucial to the teller's self. The perspectives of different interactants in the story-world can show up in complicated fusions or as contested battlefields, contrasting, backing or commenting each other. Preferably in reported speech and scenic re-stagings of episodes, the narrator as "almighty author" can shape or frame the voices of problematic interactants within the story by means of rhetorical devices, which enables him to gain authentification and persuasive power while refraining from explicit evaluations.


Abstract Piracy is a significant source of concern facing software developers, music labels, and movie production companies, to name a few. Digital goods producers and government entities argue that there are victims of piracy, whereas pirates may perceive their actions to be victimless. Regarding implications of our research, we extend the theory of planned behavior (TPB) by theorizing that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control could influence perceptions of moral obligations as a consequence of the desire to rationalize unethical behavior. Unlike prior literature, we manipulate the rationalization of moral obligations due to the victimless view toward piracy and show how moral obligations become important determinants of piracy behavior. Accordingly, our demonstrated malleability of morals may be an important path through which individuals are able to continue past behaviors. We also conduct a second study to identify the effect of implementing an educational message from a fictitious software company to exogenously nudge the pirate and influence the impact of perceived moral obligations on intentions to pirate. Our results show that the introduction of an exogenous educational message is an effective piracy mitigation strategy.


Detailed insight into the structure and composition of industrial (technical) lignins is needed to devise efficient thermal, bio- or chemocatalytic valorisation strategies. Six such technical lignins covering three main industrial pulping methods (Indulin AT Kraft, Protobind 1000 soda lignin and Alcell, poplar, spruce and wheat straw organosolv lignins) were comprehensively characterised by lignin composition analysis, FT-IR, pyrolysis-GC-MS, quantitative 31P and 2D HSQC NMR analysis and molar mass distribution by Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC). A comparison of nine SEC methods, including the first analysis of lignins with commercial alkaline SEC columns, showed molar masses to vary considerably, allowing some recommendations to be made. The lignin molar mass decreased in the order: Indulin Kraft > soda P1000 > Alcell > OS-W ∼ OS-P ∼ OS-S, regardless of the SEC method chosen. Structural identification and quantification of aromatic units and inter-unit linkages indicated that all technical lignins, including the organosolv ones, have considerably been degraded and condensed by the pulping process. Importantly, low amounts of β- ether linkages were found compared to literature values for protolignin and lignins obtained by other, milder isolation processes. Stilbenes and ether furfural units could also be identified in some of the lignins. Taken together, the insights gained in the structure of the technical lignins, in particular, the low β-O-4 contents, carry implications for the design of lignin valorisation strategies including (catalytic) depolymerisation and material applications.


This article is a localized ethnographic exploration of African American Muslims within the context of a broad and diverse national movement surrounding police violence and related issues of racial justice: "Black Lives Matter." Through fieldwork conducted simultaneously in physical spaces in the Northeast and Mid‐Atlantic region of the United States and on social media platforms, this work explores some of the internal diversity of Black Lives Matter through a focus on the lived experiences of Black Muslims as they engage with the movement and their unique positioning in relationship with the issues it aims to address. Through attention to the ways that they are rendered doubly liminal and intersectionally impacted as a result of the prevalence of both anti‐Black racism and Islamophobia, police violence as well as faith‐based profiling and surveillance, I examine the fusion of spirituality and protest that informs the worship and activism of my interlocutors, the crafting of protest repertoires that draw upon the legacies of African American freedom struggles and Islamic mandates to social justice for the purposes of resisting, reimagining, and reshaping the marginalization that they experience.


Title of Document: CLIMATE ACTION PLANS – FACT OR FICTION? EVIDENCE FROM MARYLAND Timothy F. Welch, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Directed By: Dr. Frederick W. Ducca Urban and Regional Planning and Design On a sweltering summer day in 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen sounded the alarm, in a congressional hearing, that human activity was changing our climate and without action, the world would face grave danger. Since that time, the United States government has ignored international climate policy efforts and failed multiple times to enact federal guidelines to address this serious problem. In the last decade, state governments have begun to formulate their own climate policy in an effort called Climate Action Planning. Climate action plans seek aggressive reductions and form the backbone of most statewide environmental policies but they often suffer from a lack of scientific analysis, unrealistic expectations, little funding, non-existent implementation strategies, and have no enforcement mechanisms. While plans have proliferated across the nation, little has been done to examine closely the ability of the policies to achieve climate change mitigation goals through enumerated strategies. This thesis fills part of the research void by examining all of the built environment emissions reduction strategies specified in the Maryland CAP. The analysis proceeds by developing multiple models calibrated with local empirical data. The results of this analysis show that Maryland, even with a successful implementation of its CAP will not meet its carbon mitigation targets. Further analysis reveals that a full state, national, and global implementation of similar carbon reduction targets would not alter the trajectory of climate change. To address climate change adequately, Maryland should take a three-prong approach. First, strengthen the mitigation strategies that show the greatest potential to reduce CO2 while abandoning strategies that do not. Second, extend the current set of strategies to include the low hanging and quickly implementable mitigation 'fruit'. Third, in the face of serious and inevitable climate change, begin to adapt the built environment for better resiliency to more extreme conditions. The thesis concludes with a call to action for urban planners to address ambiguities that relate to the climate change and the build environment. The timing is "ripe" for planners to take the lead in what will certainly become the next great wave of planning. CLIMATE ACTION PLANS – FACT OR FICTION? EVIDENCE FROM MARYLAND


Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) are a set of low level linear algebra kernels widely adopted by applications involved with the deep learning and scientific computing. The massive and economic computing power brought forth by the emerging GPU architectures drives interest in implementation of compute-intensive level 3 BLAS on multi-GPU systems. In this paper, we investigate existing multi-GPU level 3 BLAS and present that 1) issues, such as the improper load balancing, inefficient communication, insufficient GPU stream level concurrency and data caching, impede current implementations from fully harnessing heterogeneous computing resources; 2) and the inter-GPU Peer-to-Peer(P2P) communication remains unexplored. We then present BLASX: a highly optimized multi-GPU level-3 BLAS. We adopt the concepts of algorithms-by-tiles treating a matrix tile as the basic data unit and operations on tiles as the basic task. Tasks are guided with a dynamic asynchronous runtime, which is cache and locality aware. The communication cost under BLASX becomes trivial as it perfectly overlaps communication and computation across multiple streams during asynchronous task progression. It also takes the current tile cache scheme one step further by proposing an innovative 2-level hierarchical tile cache, taking advantage of inter-GPU P2P communication. As a result, linear speedup is observable with BLASX under multi-GPU configurations; and the extensive benchmarks demonstrate that BLASX consistently outperforms the related leading industrial and academic implementations such as cuBLAS-XT, SuperMatrix, MAGMA.


Winter sea ice plays a major role in the Antarctic ecosystem due to its influence on the
abundance and recruitment of keystone species and the secondary production associated
with the ice edge on which many Antarctic predators rely. For one of these predators,
the Weddell seal, long term data sets indicate that the population dynamics of this
species is closely tied up with the winter ice environment. However, very little
information exists on the winter movements of Weddell seals or their interactions with
the winter ice environment. Over 3 years, adult female Weddell seals were equipped
with satellite relay data loggers at Dumont d'Urville and the Vestfold Hills to determine
winter behaviour and the role of the local environment, including ice concentration and
weather, on this behaviour.
Satellite relay data loggers transmit information via the Argos satellite system
on seal location and behaviour. However, the ability to answer spatial questions of this
data and the role of the environment in animal movement is hampered by aspects of the
animal's behaviour and Argos location error. For Weddell seals, it was found that
haulout locations were over represented in the data set. As such, any spatial analyses
that include haulout locations of Weddell seals run the risk of overestimating the
importance of haulout sites. In addition, when extracting environmental information at
highly uncertain Argos locations, there is a high probability of extracting the wrong
information leading to inaccurate assessments of the role of the environment in animal
behaviour. A state-space modelling approach was applied to the Weddell seal tracks to
address this. The resulting locations were a vast improvement on Argos locations when
compared to GPS tracks of the same individuals and haulout locations were fixed to
avoid over estimation of their importance. The error distribution associated with each
location was incorporated into an approach whereby the extraction of a location specific environmental variable was weighted by the location's error distribution. This method
of extracting environmental variables was then applied to assess the role of the local
environment on the winter behaviour of Weddell seals.
The local environment influenced both winter haulout and foraging behaviour
with Weddell seals tending to haulout more under conditions of low wind speed and
higher temperatures and remain submerged when the opposite was true. Seals were also
more likely to terminate diving bouts under conditions of very heavy ice concentration
when compared to lighter ice concentrations in the fast ice environment. Whilst winter
foraging could be classed as either predominantly benthic or pelagic with a high level of
individual variability, all Weddell seals employed both foraging strategies at some stage
throughout the tracking period.
These results reveal that aspects of the local environment have the ability to
drive the winter behaviour of Weddell seals and must be considered in conjunction with
the influence of prey availability and larger scale climatic phenomena. Individual
foraging strategies imply that Weddell seals within the one population may display
varied responses to climate-mediated changes in prey availability. As such, Weddell
seals are vulnerable to changes in the ice environment that are long term and large scale
as well as short term and local.


The Cocos-Nazca spreading center is one of the few examples of the formation of a spreading center by splitting of oceanic lithosphere. It was created when the Farallon plate broke up in the early Miocene following the collision of the Pacific-Farallon spreading center with the North American continent. Much of the ancient Farallon plate corresponding to the area of opening is lost to subduction beneath Central America and South America, but new data from the conjugate area on the Pacific plate allow the first detailed reconstruction of the break-up process. The opening began after chron 7 (25 Ma) at a location of focused crustal extension caused by overlapping spreading centers that had evolved in response to a slight reorientation of a Pacific-Farallon ridge segment. Beginning at chron 6B (22.7 Ma), eastward progressing seafloor spreading started along an axis that most likely migrated toward the region of weak lithosphere created by the Galapagos hotspot. By chron 6 (19.5 Ma), plate splitting from the spreading center to the trench was complete, allowing the fully detached Cocos and Nazca plates to move independently. This kinematic change resulted in a significant ridge jump of the newly established Pacific-Nazca spreading center, a change in plate motion direction of the Nazca plate by 20° clockwise, and a large increase in Pacific-Cocos plate velocity in the middle Miocene.


Background: Postoperative pain is poorly studied in developing countries. At a Western Cape referral hospital, it was aimed to determine the incidence of acute postoperative pain, to identify populations associated with a higher risk thereof (in order to guide resource allocation) and to investigate whether inexpensive analgesic modalities are currently utilised maximally. Methods: Patients completed visual analogue scales 24 h after surgery for pain immediately after surgery, maximum pain since surgery and current pain. The incidence of moderate or severe pain and median pain scores were calculated for each scale and for different patient populations. Post hoc logistic regression was performed. Morphine prescriptions were compared with the actual administration thereof. Results: Of 1 231 patients, 62% indicated their maximum pain as moderate or severe. Procedures with the highest incidences were caesarean section and lower limb orthopaedic surgery (> 80%). Younger age, female gender, emergency surgery, and surgery to the abdomen and lower limbs were associated with higher incidences. Patients experiencing moderate or severe pain received 46% of their prescribed morphine. Conclusion: In this institution, the incidence of postoperative pain is high as expected. Associations with postoperative pain are identified, which may guide resource allocation. At least one low-cost analgesic modality is currently underutilised.


The book provides readers with a snapshot of the state of the art in the field of nature-inspired computing and its application in optimization. The approach is mainly practice-oriented: each bio-inspired technique or algorithm is introduced together with one of its possible applications. Applications cover a wide range of real-world optimization problems: from feature selection and image enhancement to scheduling and dynamic resource management, from wireless sensor networks and wiring network diagnosis to sports training planning and gene expression, from topology control and morphological filters to nutritional meal design and antenna array design. There are a few theoretical chapters comparing different existing techniques, exploring the advantages of nature-inspired computing over other methods, and investigating the mixing time of genetic algorithms. The book also introduces a wide range of algorithms, including the ant colony optimization, the bat algorithm, genetic algorithms, the collision-based optimization algorithm, the flower pollination algorithm, multi-agent systems and particle swarm optimization. This timely book is intended as a practice-oriented reference guide for students, researchers and professionals.


In recent years, there has been increased interest in real-world event detection using publicly accessible data made available through Internet technology such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. In these highly interactive systems, the general public are able to post real-time reactions to "real world" events, thereby acting as social sensors of terrestrial activity. Automatically detecting and categorizing events, particularly small-scale incidents, using streamed data is a non-trivial task but would be of high value to public safety organisations such as local police, who need to respond accordingly. To address this challenge, we present an end-to-end integrated event detection framework that comprises five main components: data collection, pre-processing, classification, online clustering, and summarization. The integration between classification and clustering enables events to be detected, as well as related smaller-scale "disruptive events," smaller incidents that threaten social safety and security or could disrupt social order. We present an evaluation of the effectiveness of detecting events using a variety of features derived from Twitter posts, namely temporal, spatial, and textual content. We evaluate our framework on a large-scale, real-world dataset from Twitter. Furthermore, we apply our event detection system to a large corpus of tweets posted during the August 2011 riots in England. We use ground-truth data based on intelligence gathered by the London Metropolitan Police Service, which provides a record of actual terrestrial events and incidents during the riots, and show that our system can perform as well as terrestrial sources, and even better in some cases.


Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is one of the most important methods to handle high-dimensional data. However, the high computational complexity makes it hard to apply to the large scale data with high dimensionality, and the used l2-norm makes it sensitive to outliers. A recent work proposed principal component analysis based on l1-normmaximization, which is efficient and robust to outliers. In that work, a greedy strategy was applied due to the difficulty of directly solving the l1-norm maximization problem, which is easy to get stuck in local solution. In this paper, we first propose an efficient optimization algorithmto solve a general l1-norm maximization problem, and then propose a robust principal component analysis with non-greedy l1-norm maximization. Experimental results on real world datasets show that the nongreedy method always obtains much better solution than that of the greedy method.


Trend forecasting could be one of the most challenging things in stock market analysis, as the data associated with stock is the time series data characterized in high intensity, noise, uncertainty, etc. In addition, beyond the time series data, from a macroscopic point of view, the influences of the external environment, such as national economy, technical progress, legal and political events, social and demographic factors, even the natural environment, are significant as well regarding the future trend forecasting. The literatures show the successes of the machine learning methods in stock analysis, but at the same time, the literatures also show that, from the historical data of a stock observed simply extracting some rules that the stock follows, and thereby forecasting the stock movements within a certain future time period, is rather difficult and exhibits lower accuracy. However, while studying a stock with its graphical representation (zigzag curve), the researchers often found the similarities of the stock movements. Thus, a geometric method for extracting the movement similarity from the past data is developed this this research, the key improvement of the correlation extraction method proposed is the graphical trend similarity approximation, using an arc to represent the trend of a portion of the whole time series, the evaluation of the trend similarities is turned to calculate the distances of the two arcs of the two time series to the arc of the time series observed. This means, the new method extracts correlations from general variation trends, avoids extracting correlation form the time series directly, the mismatch problem is thus solved. To verify the proposed method, based on SVR an experiment is conducted with the real world stock data. Based on the analysis results, the paper concludes that our method improves the performance of stock price prediction. Some future work, which is capable of promoting our method, has been discussed in the thesis.


Background and Objectives: To provide efficient recommendation for the prevention of childhood obesity and eating disorders, it is necessary to understand and explore their dietary patterns (DPs). The main aim of the current study was to explore dietary patterns among primary school aged children and determine the relationship between different dietary patterns and factors including anthropometric measurements, family size, school performance, weekly consumption of breakfast and physical activity. Materials and Methods: Male and female primary school children aged 7-11 (n=761) were recruited in a cross-sectional study from all districts of Tehran(2003-2004). The students and their caregivers (mainly their mothers) were interviewed to complete a 24 h recall. Dietary patterns were explored by exploratory factor analysis of the 23 food groups. Results: Three major DPs were identified: healthy, transitional and western. The tendency of children towards western diet increased with their age (P<0.001). In larger families, the tendency towards healthy DP was lower (P<0.001). Class performance score of the children was positively correlated to healthy DP (P=0.009). Frequency of weekly consumption of breakfast was negatively correlated to western DP (P<0.001). BMI was positively associated with healthy and western DPs. Conclusions: Effective interventions for adapting older children and larger families to healthy eating is urged. For better judgment about correlation of DPs and adiposity more studies are recommended.


This RFC is being distributed to members of the DARPA research
community in order to solicit their reactions to the proposals
contained in it. While the issues discussed may not be directly
relevant to the research problems of the DARPA community, they may be
interesting to a number of researchers and implementors. This RFC
suggests a proposed protocol for the ARPA-Internet community, and
requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.


Nuclear desalination is considered one of the viable sources of producing the fresh water needed in arid areas. Nowadays, several countries have shown interest in the use of nuclear energy for seawater desalination, because recent studies have demonstrated that nuclear desalination is not only feasible but also economical, and this has already been demonstrated in several countries. Although the future requires the effective integration of energy resources to produce power and desalinated water economically with proper consideration for the environment, the significant increase in fuel energy cost and material cost has resulted in a dramatic impact on the capital and operational costs of desalination and power plants. The impact of any increase in the price of fossil fuels (as in the case before mid-2008) and the high demand for raw materials (e.g., steel, copper, nickel) will increase the pressure to develop novel solutions to minimise fossil energy consumption and reduce the capital expenditure of desalination plants. This, in turn, is causing a renewed global interest in nuclear energy. However, nuclear desalination may face some challenges, among which are public perception, financing, the transfer of nuclear technology and considerations for the safety of the coupling options selected.


Mobile edge computing (MEC) enables to provide relatively rich computing resources in close proximity to mobile users, which enables resource-limited mobile devices to offload workloads to nearby edge servers, and thereby greatly reducing the processing delay of various mobile applications and the energy consumption of mobile devices. Despite its advantages, when a large number of mobile users simultaneously offloads their computation tasks to an edge server, due to the limited computation and communication resources of edge server, inefficiency resource allocation will not make full use of the limited resource and cause waste of resource, resulting in low system performance (the weighted sum of the number of processed tasks, the number of punished tasks, and the number of dropped tasks). Therefore, it is a challenging problem to effectively allocate the computing and communication resources to multiple mobile users. To cope with this problem, we propose a performance-aware resource allocation (PARA) scheme, the goal of which is to maximize the long-term system performance. More specifically, we first build the multiuser resource allocation architecture for computing workloads and transmitting result data to mobile devices. Then, we formulate the multiuser resource allocation problem as a Markova Decision Process (MDP). To achieve this problem, a performance-aware resource allocation (PARA) scheme based on a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) is adopted to derive optimal resource allocation policy. Finally, extensive simulation experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the PARA scheme.


Tourists frequently undertake multidestination trips to maximize the benefits of travel. A more detailed understanding of this phenomenon contributes to destination marketing by enabling identification of potential multidestination marketing synergies. For individual destinations lacking the critical mass of attractions, such synergies provide a foundation for leveraging strategies. While research has revealed a range of factors associated with variations in travel patterns, no attempt has been made to explore the relative contribution of each factor in a specific context. Research conducted to date has focused primarily on domestic recreational travel (largely in the United States) rather than international tourism. This study uses an Australian database on international visitor travel patterns in Queensland to do this. It is revealed that risk-reduction tendencies associated with long-haul travel, variations in mobility, multiple-benefit seeking, and information sources used by visitors prior to their trip all have a bearing on the level of multidestination travel.


This thesis describes an investigation into the conceptual
understanding of algebra by early learners (age 11-13 years) and
how a computer-based approach may be used to improve such,
without any consequent loss of manipulative skills.
The psychological framework for the investigation centred on the
importance of the individual child's construction of a cognitive
framework of knowledge and the relevance of the current state of
this to the facilitating of concept acquisition. As such it
incorporates elements of the developmental psychology of Piaget,
Ausubel and Skemp. Furthermore, in order to assist in the
synthesis of a sufficiently broad psychological theory of
education it was necessary to postulate the formulation of a new
integrated bi-modal model of learning. This is described, along
with details of its application and significance to a theory of
cognitive integration which is designed to promote versatile
learning (after Brumby, 1982) in mathematics through a
relational linking of global/holistic and serialist/analytic
schemas.

The research comprised two initial investigations followed by
the main experiment. The results of the initial investigations
with early learners of algebra showed that the dynamic algebra
module written for the research produced a significant
improvement in the children's conceptual understanding of
algebra. The main experiment sought to further clarify this
improvement and to compare and contrast it with that produced by
a traditional skill-based algebra module. In order to facilitate
this comparison, the performance of 57 matched pairs of pupils
from two groups of three parallel forms of the first year of a
12+ entry co-educational secondary school was analysed.

The results of the investigation confirmed the value of the
dynamic algebra module as a generic organiser (in the
sense of Tall, 1986) for the understanding of algebraic
concepts, producing a significant difference in conceptual
understanding, without any detrimental effect on manipulative
skills. Furthermore, the beneficial effects of the programme
were such that its results showed that it had provided a better
base than the skill-based approach for the extension of
algebraic understanding past the initial stages and into more
involved areas such as linear equations and inequalities.

The findings of this research show that the use of a
module based on a computer environment, with its many
advantages for conceptual learning, prior to the more formal
introduction of algebraic techniques, is of great cognitive
value. They also provide evidence for the theoretical model of
learning proposed in the thesis, and suggest that for the
production of a versatile learner in mathematics, more attention
should be paid to the integration of the global/holistic
abilities of the individual with his/her serialist/analytic
abilities. The implications for the future are that such
abilities, and hence mathematical competence may well be
improved in other areas of the curriculum by the use of the
computer within a similar theoretical framework.


Identity harm refers to the anguish experienced by consumers who learn that their efforts to consume in line with their personal values have been undermined by a company's false or exaggerated promises about its wares. When broken, other-regarding "virtuous promises" about products (e.g. eco-friendly, responsible, fair-trade, cruelty free, conflict free) give rise to identity harm by making consumers unwittingly complicit in hurting others. A leading example is the Volkswagen emissions scandal: when environmentally-conscious purchasers of Volkswagen's "clean diesel" cars learned that the vehicles were in fact hyper-polluting, they experienced identity harm because of their complicity in a scheme that hurt the planet and the health of their communities.

As more people become sensitized to environmental and social (labor and human rights) sustainability challenges, they are also becoming increasingly concerned about their role in aggravating these challenges through their individual consumption. Identity harm surfaces against the backdrop of an under-regulated market for virtuous goods that is expanding to meet the demands of conscious consumers. Troublingly, those who experience identity harm currently have little recourse in private law, which reveals a serious deficit in our legal regime. This Article, one in a series, recommends correcting this protective deficit by operationalizing identity harm under tort, contract, and state consumer law, with a particular focus on the latter.


The future telecommunications world will induce significant changes to the involved actors as well as to the quality and quantity of offered services. This article points out the determining factors, trends, and demands for infrastructure functionality of future service architecures and then motivates why an agent-based approach is adequate as underlying technology. We present the toolkit JIAC as a potential candidate for realizing such future services and applications as agent-based systems. It provides a scalable agent architecture, which integrates telecommunication-specific management functionality, cooperative service usage, and strong security mechanisms. A runtime environment adds further service infrastructure, authentication, and authorization. The toolkit is completed by a set of tools for rapid development and deployment of services as well as for managing purposes.


Software repositories provide rich information about the construction and evolution of software systems. While static data that can be mined directly from version control systems has been extensively studied, dynamic metrics concerning the execution of the software have received much less attention, due to the inherent difficulty of running and monitoring a large number of software versions. In this paper, we present Covrig, a flexible infrastructure that can be used to run each version of a system in isolation and collect static and dynamic software metrics, using a lightweight virtual machine environment that can be deployed on a cluster of local or cloud machines. We use Covrig to conduct an empirical study examining how code and tests co-evolve in six popular open-source systems. We report the main characteristics of software patches, analyse the evolution of program and patch coverage, assess the impact of nondeterminism on the execution of test suites, and investigate whether the coverage of code containing bugs and bug fixes is higher than average.


The health care delivery system in this nation continues to spiral out of control. Statistics report on the shocking number of people who are harmed or die due to medical errors. This project will focus on one process in the armamentarium, the Rapid Response Team (RRT). The purpose of the study was to explore staff nurse perceived barriers and enhancers to an effective RRT. Qualitative design was employed and individual semi-structured interviews were conducted at a 359 bed community hospital. The sample consisted of 15 medical-surgical nurses who had experienced a rapid response (RR) event at this site. Potential subjects were excluded if they had worked in the emergency department or a critical care unit or if they stated a belief that they had not been significantly affected by a RR event. Findings showed that the study participants were exceptionally appreciative of their RRT. They encountered minimal barriers and shared some poignant suggestions that may make valuable contributions to the institution's RRT. Participants expressed a significant desire for more education to develop their self-efficacy and skills in these emergency events. Conclusions and implications for advanced practice are identified and discussed.


In this paper, we examine the impacts of casual copying in the market for goods that have strong network externalities and/or are strong complements with goods in another market. By allowing casual copying to occur, the monopolist triggers two effects. The "copying effect'' reduces demand (and thus profits) due the introduction of a better outside alternative to consumers. However, a "network augmenting'' effect works to increase demand through the larger size of a network that allows copying. We find that if the marginal network externality is large enough, the monopolist will find it profitable to allow some level of casual copying to occur among non-purchasers of the good. And in a simplified dynamic setting, we find that as time passes and the good's network becomes more mature, the monopolist will seek higher and higher levels of copy protection. This implies that firms in newly formed markets should be more willing to allow copying to occur than those in established markets.


The inverse-filtering of acoustic impulse responses (AIRs) can be achieved with existing methods provided a good estimate of the channel is available and the observed signals contain little or no noise. Such assumptions are not generally valid in practical scenarios, leading to much interest in the issue of robustness. In particular, channel shortening (CS) techniques have been shown to be more robust to channel estimation error than existing approaches. In this paper we investigate CS using the relaxed multichannel least-squares (RMCLS) algorithm in the presence of both channel error and additive noise. It is shown quantitatively that shortening the acoustic channel to a few ms duration is more robust than attempting to equalize the channel fully, giving better resultant sound quality for dereverberation. A key point of this paper is to provide an explanation for this added robustness in terms of the equalization filter gain. We provide simulation results and results for practical settings using speech recordings and room impulse response measurements from a real acoustic environment.


Calculating the current distribution and radiation patterns for ground-penetrating radar antennas is a challenging problem because of the complex interaction between the antenna, the ground, and any buried scatterer. Typically, numerical techniques that are well suited for modeling the antennas themselves are not well suited for modeling the heterogeneous grounds, and visa versa. For example the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique is well suited for modeling fields in heterogeneous media, whereas the method of moments (MoM) is well suited for modeling complex antennas in free space. This paper describes a hybrid technique, based upon the equivalence principle, for calculating an antenna's current distribution radiation pattern when the antenna is located near an air-ground interface. The original problem is decomposed into two coupled equivalent problems: one for the antenna geometry and the other for the ground geometry, with field information passing between them via a rapidly converging iterative procedure. The fields in each region may be modeled using numerical techniques best suited to them. Results for several test cases are presented, using FDTD to model the ground problem and MoM for the antenna problem, that demonstrate the accuracy of this hybrid technique.


It happens over and over again. Some innovation (a new product, a management trend) comes along that captures the public's imagination. Everybody joins the parade with great fanfare and high expectations. This "next big thing" promises to transform the companies that adopt it -- and inflict great peril on those that don't. Then, when the innovation fails to deliver as promised immediately, everyone starts bailing out. Investments are wasted; stock prices plunge; disillusionment sets in. It doesn't have to be this way. In Mastering the Hype Cycle, Jackie Fenn and Mark Raskino explain what drives this pattern and how your company can avoid its potential dangers. By understanding the hype cycle, you can ride it more skillfully -- timing your investment decisions so that the innovations you adopt stand the best chance of succeeding in the long-term. Drawing on company examples and Gartner's proven STREET (Scope, Track, Rank, Evaluate, Evangelize, Transfer) framework, the authors show how to orchestrate the key steps in the innovation-adoption process -- from choosing which innovations to take on and when in their life cycle you should adopt, to paving the way for a successful introduction. The hype cycle isn't going away. But this book arms you with the strategies you need to ride the crest of a new idea to success -- and steer clear of the trough of disillusionment.


We investigate the advantages and disadvantages of different loopback buffer architectures for optical switches and compare their performance via simulation. The simulation results show that, without the use of virtual output queuing, the head-of-line blocking can be alleviated by wavelength parallelism when each separate queue in a loopback buffer has multiple transmitters. Furthermore, the proposed two-level flow control can eliminate packet drop at the switch, resolve rate mismatching due to output queuing at switch outputs, and ensure that congestion occurring at the hotspot port will not affect the performance of non-congested ports.


Complex interactions among components of a watershed system necessitate the evaluation of management options within a watershed framework in order to realize the full impact of management decisions. A generic optimization model was developed to evaluate a broad range of technical, economic and policy management options within a watershed context. The model integrates natural and human elements of a watershed system. Since there are concurrent requirements for both water quantity and quality, both flow and concentrations are modeled. We expect that the model will suggest a different management strategy than the evaluation of simple cost-benefit analyses for each management option. This will not only demonstrate the relative efficacy of undervalued management options, but also document the merits of integrated water resources management.


Battleships were the ultimate icons of British power, massive symbols of imperial sway. They were also the largest and most advanced engineering achievements of the age, home to crews that could be more than 1000 strong, and, occasionally, massive archaeological artefacts. Originally published in 1986 and 1993 respectively, Ray Burt's books on the First World War and inter-war British battlefleet have been out of print for two decades, and consequently hard to find. In the interval the author has updated the text and illustrations, making the new editions a significant improvement. There are more than 50 new photographs, additional line drawings and textual revisions in each book. The new metric format is slightly larger, and the reproduction crisper. The First World War volume begins with the epochal Dreadnought and Invincible, the all-big-gun, turbinepowered capital ships that defined the last era of big-gun warships. They were created by Admiral Sir John Fisher, as part of a strategic revolution that realigned the Royal Navy to meet the German challenge, and ensure the protection of the empire and the vital trade routes that linked Britain with her Colonies, Dominions and markets. From 1906 to 1914 the development of the British capital ship saw an increase in gun calibre from 12-inch to 13.5-inch and then 15-inch, the move to oil-fired boilers, increased speed for battleships from 21 knots to 24, and for battle cruisers from 26 to 29 knots, along with steadily thicker armour, and improved underwater protection. In the process ships almost doubled in size, and cost. The Queen Elizabeth of 1915 was 10,000 tons larger than the Dreadnought, four knots faster, and far more heavily armed—a 'Super Dreadnought'. By 1912 Britain had defeated Germany in a major naval arms race, having built more ships, and built them faster. The decisive year was 1909, when Britain built eight capital ships, using all the resources of the world's greatest shipbuilding industry, the second and third largest armour and armaments companies, and the willingness of the British taxpayer to sustain the legacy of Nelson. To reinforce the last point the fleet carried names made famous at the Armada fight, and at Trafalgar. Three of the first four Dreadnought battleships carried Trafalgar names, the fourth, HMS Superb, honoured a '74' that fought in other battles, and only just missed the greatest battle because of a refit! Every single battleship built while Fisher ran the Admiralty had a named steeped in history, recording great battles, and the great Admirals who commanded. This was a deliberate attempt to reinforce Fisher's overtly deterrent posture. The German High Seas Fleet had to face 300 years of naval glory, and a much bigger fleet. Consequently, when the First World War broke out in August 1914, there was little prospect of the High Seas Fleet attempting to reach any high seas. By Christmas 1914 the Royal Navy had annihilated the German Navy outside the North Sea, the crushing victory at the Falkland Islands on the 8th of that month reflecting British control of global communications, and the strategic power of the new capital ships. The battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible had been sent from Britain to intercept Admiral von Spee's ships. While von Spee was being crushed the High Seas Fleet waited in harbour. It finally met the British Grand Fleet by accident on 31 May 1916, off the coast of Jutland. While many have argued that British ships were inferior to their German contemporaries in armour protection and internal subdivision, Burt offers robust defence of well-designed, well-built ships that met the challenge of war. Recent scholarship on the battle of Jutland, magazine protection and questions of gunnery fire control, which has not been accessed for the revised edition, adds significantly to our understanding of the catastrophic loss of three battle cruisers in that engagement. Andrew Gordon's essential book The Rules of the Game of 1997 provides a vital re-assessment of this much-studied action, and the systemic failings that occurred in command, communication and procedure. Critically, several of the lightly armoured battle cruisers had removed part of the anti-flash interlock system that prevented an explosion in the main working chamber of the heavy-gun turret from passing bs_bs_banner


Grazing by domestic stock has altered and degraded natural grassland ecosystems worldwide, directly and indirectly impacting the endemic plant and animal species occupying those grasslands. The pygmy bluetongue lizard Tiliqua adelaidensis is an endangered species, restricted now to fragments of native grassland habitat in South Australia, which are predominantly grazed by sheep. These lizards exclusively occupy burrows dug by spiders, and use them as refuges, basking sites and ambush points. They do not dig their own burrows and rely on coexisting spiders for this essential resource. We asked how sheep grazing influences construction and persistence of spider burrows by comparing burrow dynamics in adjacent grazed and ungrazed grassland habitats. In ungrazed plots, spider burrows increased over one spring and summer period, particularly after a summer rain event that softened the soil. In grazed plots, more existing burrows were destroyed, presumably by sheep trampling, and fewer new burrows were constructed, leading to a net loss in burrow numbers over the same period. However, in this short study, grazing did not affect the number of pygmy bluetongue lizards or the number of lycosid spiders. Burrows that were lost tended to be shallower and to have smaller diameter entrances than those that were retained, suggesting that the best burrows for lizard refuges were more likely to persist despite sheep activity. However, heavy grazing may have negative impacts on both lizards and spiders, resulting from a reduction in available burrows and in spider digging behaviour.


Abstract Recent Palestinian Authority (PA) initiatives to help Palestine adapt to climate change help shine light on the role that climate uncertainties play in how political futures can be represented. UN-led adaptation has occasioned opportunities for new networks of actors to make claims about Palestinian futures and to perform PA readiness for statehood. These actors weigh scientific uncertainties about climate against uncertainties over if and when settler colonialism in Palestine will end. How they do so matters because it is the foundation of requests for capital that could be translated into some of the most important institutions and infrastructures of Palestinian governance over the next several years, including those that provide Palestinians with access to water. It also matters because it constitutes the image with which PA officials represent what needs to be "fixed" in Palestine in important international forums such as the UN. Climate change adaptation is a new approach to the management of uncertain environmental futures. This analysis offers insight into how this approach shapes and is shaped by practices of statecraft in places marked by the volatilities of war, economic crisis, and occupation.


Abstract. The switching in deformation mode (from distributed to localized) and mechanisms (viscous versus frictional) represent a relevant issue in the frame of crustal deformation, being also connected with the concept of the brittle– ductile transition and seismogenesis. In a subduction environment, switching in deformation mode and mechanisms and scale of localization may be inferred along the subduction interface, in a transition zone between the highly coupled (seismogenic zone) and decoupled deeper aseismic domain (stable slip). However, the role of brittle precursors in nucleating crystal-plastic shear zones has received more and more consideration being now recognized as fundamental in some cases for the localization of deformation and shear zone development, thus representing a case in which switching deformation mechanisms and scale and style of localization (deformation mode) interact and relate to each other. This contribution analyses an example of a millimetre-scale shear zone localized by brittle precursor formed within a host granitic protomylonite. The studied structures, developed in ambient pressure–temperature (P–T) conditions of low-grade blueschist facies (temperature T of ca. 300 °C and pressure P ≥ 0. 70 GPa) during involvement of Corsican continental crust in the Alpine subduction. We used a multidisciplinary approach by combining detailed microstructural and petrographic analyses, crystallographic preferred orientation by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), and palaeopiezometric studies on a selected sample to support an evolutionary model and deformation path for subducted continental crust. We infer that the studied structures, possibly formed by transient instability associated with fluctuations of pore fluid pressure and episodic strain rate variations, may be considered as a small-scale example of fault behaviour associated with a cycle of interseismic creep and coseismic rupture or a new analogue for episodic tremors and slow-slip structures. Our case study represents, therefore, a fossil example of association of fault structures related to stick-slip strain accommodation during subduction of continental crust.