CORSnet-NSW is a network of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) continuously operating reference stations (CORS) that will cover New South Wales and is an expansion of SydNET, which has been successfully operating in the Sydney metropolitan region since 2004. CORSnet-NSW is fully funded and managed by Land and Property Information (LPI), a division of the NSW Land and Property Management Authority (LPMA). In excess of seven million Australian dollars have been committed for capital investment in the Survey Infrastructure Improvement Project – the majority of which will be invested in the CORS network – plus additional recurrent funds to operate the network. CORSnet-NSW currently (January 2010) consists of 29 CORS and is being expanded to include 70 stations by 2013 in order to provide state-wide coverage.
As part of this expansion, LPI has purchased Trimble Navigation's VRS3Net CORS network management software which will significantly enhance the range and quality of services that LPI can provide to its customers. Work is being undertaken to integrate VRS3Net with LPI's existing accounting and delivery systems, which is a first for this system. Currently, dual network control centres are being built at LPI's data centres in Sydney and Bathurst. Once completed, these control centres will provide a fully redundant network with ample capabilities for many years to come. This new infrastructure will also facilitate a wide range of research projects in the areas of geodesy, surveying, positioning, navigation and telecommunications.
CORSnet-NSW will provide users with network real time kinematic (NRTK) services in the extended Sydney metropolitan area as well as other populated regions of the state and single-base RTK elsewhere, as well as supplying GNSS data for post-processing. RTK and NTRK correction data are available in RTCM 3.1 format via the internet using NTRIP (Networked Transport of RTCM via Internet Protocol), providing centimetre-level horizontal positioning in real time. This paper introduces CORSnet-NSW and discusses several issues that need to be addressed in order to provide a reliable GNSS positioning service of homogeneous and high accuracy across the state. These issues include the direct connection to the national datum, legal traceability of CORS coordinates, compatibility with online GNSS processing services and CORS networks in neighbouring states, and the correct use of Antenna Phase Centre Variation (APCV) models.


Although it seems clear that coaches become effective practitioners through idiosyncratic combinations of learning experiences (Werthner & Trudel, 2009), little is known about how and why this occurs and impacts on coaching knowledge and practice (Cushion et al., 2010). This research sought to understand the processes and impact of coaches learning in the context of UK youth football coaching, specifically centring on a formal education course. The research process utilised a pragmatic and integrated perspective, influenced by impact evaluation frameworks (e.g. Coldwell & Simkins, 2011). A group of 25 coaches were investigated at different points over a period of a year and a half, using a mixture of semi-structured interviews, systematic observations, video-based stimulated recall interviews and course observations, to build up increasingly in-depth levels of data. Using the principles of grounded theory methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) as well as mixed analyses of variance (ANOVA), changes in the knowledge use and practice behaviours of course candidates, and equivalent coaches not undertaking formal education, were compared. The course had subtle impacts on coaches knowledge conceptions in interaction with wider knowledge sources, yet impact on practice was generally demonstrated only in the areas of questioning content and individually directed coaching interventions. Mismatches between the espoused theory of the course and what the candidates actually perceived, as well as a lack of individualised support to overcome disjuncture (Jarvis, 2006) created barriers to learning, preventing integration of theoretical conceptions into altered coaching practice. A substantive grounded theory was generated to explain the underpinning double-loop cognitive filter and reflective feedback processes involved in coaches learning. The model demonstrated that practitioners learning, guided by existing biography and driven by a practical focus on what works , was heavily influenced by context. Meaningful learning connected knowledge with implementation in practice through reflection. These processes help explain uneven learning across individuals; addressing for the first time questions of what works , how , 'why', and for whom in coach learning (McCullick et al., 2009). Thus the results generate an understanding of coaches learning which can be practically relevant in fostering better opportunities to enhance the development of capable and creative coaches.


NAKAMA is a two year proficiency-oriented program that emphasizes practical communication and the development of listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. The eleven thematic chapters, plus one preliminary chapter, focus on high-frequency communication situations; while chapter dialogues illustrate typical daily events representative in Japanese life and provide realistic contexts in which to learn vocabulary and grammar.


The Queen 'Mamohato Memorial Hospital in Lesotho was built under a public–private partnership (PPP), which is the first of its kind in a low-income country and has been described as opening a new era for private sector involvement in healthcare in Africa. Instead, the Ministry of Health in one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world is locked into an 18-year contract that already consumes more than half of its health budget. This is a dangerous diversion of scarce public funds from primary healthcare services in rural areas, where three-quarters of the population live. The PPP was developed under the advice of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and is seen as their flagship model to be replicated across Africa. Lesotho's experience supports international evidence that health PPPs of this kind are high risk and costly, and fail to advance the goal of universal and equitable health coverage. Oxfam argues in this report that the IFC should be held to account for the poor quality of its advice to the Government of Lesotho and for marketing this health PPP as a success internationally, despite its unsustainable costs.


For many marine fish species, the average size of individuals increases with depth. This phenomenon, first described a century ago, is known as ontogenetic deepening (1, 2). Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain it: optimal foraging; predation avoidance; and different optimal growth temperature for larger individuals, causing them to seek deeper and cooler waters to optimize growth and reproduction (3). In their recent paper in PNAS, Frank et al. (4) suggest an alternative explanation. They examined age-structured data from Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) on the eastern Scotian Shelf, a stock that has experienced successive periods of intense, and absence of, fishing. In their study, fishing explained 72% of the variation in the observed age-related deepening, with the remaining variability attributed to ontogenetic deepening. They conclude that higher abundances of large fish in deeper waters is an artifact of greater fishing intensity at shallower depths and question whether ontogenetic deepening is a real ecological phenomenon.


Philosophical discussions of the morality of suicide have tended to focus on its justifiability from an agent's point of view rather than on the justifiability of attempts by others to intervene so as to preserve it. This paper addresses questions of suicide intervention within a broadly Kantian perspective. In such a perspective, a chief task is to determine the motives underlying most suicidal behaviour. Kant wrongly characterizes this motive as one of self-love or the pursuit of happiness. Psychiatric and scientifc evidence suggests that suicide is instead motivated by nihilistic disenchantment with the possibility of happiness which, at its apex, results in the loss of the individual's conception of her practical identity. Because of this, methods of intervention that appeal to agents' happiness, while morally benign, will prove ineffective in forestalling suicide. At the same time, more aggressive methods violate the Kantian concern for autonomy. This apparent dilemma can be resolved by seeing suicide intervention as an action undertaken in non-ideal circumstances, where otherwise unjustified manipulation, coercion, or paternalism are morally permitted.


This paper addresses problems in controlling quality of service (QoS) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). QoS is defined as the number of awakened sensors in a WSN. Sensor deaths (caused by battery failure) and sensor replenishments (caused by redeployment of new sensors) contribute to the difficulty of controlling QoS in WSNs. A previous research developed a QoS control scheme based on the Gur Game algorithm. However, this scheme does not consider the energy consumption of sensors, which shortens WSN lifetime. This paper proposes a novel QoS control scheme that periodically swaps active and sleeping sensors to balance power consumption. Our study also uses the distribution manner of the previous work. Our scheme significantly extends WSN lifetime and maintains desired QoS. Simulations that compared our scheme with previous schemes in various environments show that our scheme build a robust and long-lasting sensor network capable of dynamically adjusting active sensors.


Evaluating information accuracy in social media is an increasingly important and well-studied area, but limited research has compared journalist-sourced accuracy assessments to their crowdsourced counterparts. This paper demonstrates the differences between these two populations by comparing the features used to predict accuracy assessments in two Twitter data sets: CREDBANK and PHEME. While our findings are consistent with existing results on feature importance, we develop models that outperform past research. We also show limited overlap exists between the features used by journalists and crowdsourced assessors, and the resulting models poorly predict each other but produce statistically correlated results. This correlation suggests crowdsourced workers are assessing a different aspect of these stories than their journalist counterparts, but these two aspects are linked in a significant way. These differences may be explained by contrasting factual with perceived accuracy as assessed by expert journalists and non-experts respectively. Following this outcome, we also show preliminary results that models trained from crowdsourced workers outperform journalist-trained models in identifying highly shared "fake news" stories.


Identification and Characterization of Serum Biomarkers Associated with Breast Cancer Progression Adhari Abdullah Al Zaabi Department of Physiology and Develomental Biology, BYU Doctor of Philosophy Despite the recognized advances in the treatment of breast cancer, it still accounts for 15% of all cancer-related deaths. 90% of breast cancer deaths are due to unpredicted metastasis. There is neither successful treatment for metastatic patients nor a specific test to predict or detect secondary lesions. Patients with primary tumor will be either overtreated with cytotoxic side effects or under-treated and risk recurrence. This necessitates the need for personalized treatment, which is hard to offer for such heterogeneous disease. Obstacles in treating breast cancer metastasis are mainly due to the gaps exist in the understanding of the molecular mechanism of metastasis. The linear model of metastasis is supported by several observations that reflect an early crosstalk between the primary and secondary tumor, which in turn makes the secondary microenvironment fertile for the growth of disseminated cells. This communication occurs through circulation and utilizes molecules which have not been identified to date. Identifying such molecules may help in detecting initial stages of tumor colonization and predict the target organ of metastasis. Furthermore, these molecules may help to provide a personalized therapy that aims to tailor treatment according to the biology of the individual tumor. Advances in proteomics allows for more reproducible and sensitive biomarker discovery. Proteomic biomarkers are often more translatable to the clinic compared to biomarkers identified using other omics approaches. Further, protein biomarkers can be found in biological fluids making them a non-invasive way to treat or investigate cancer patients. We present in this manuscript our study of the use of a proteomic approach on blood serum samples of metastatic and non-metastatic patients using LC-MS/MS quantitative analysis machine to identify molecules that could be associated with different stages of breast cancer metastasis. We focused on the deferential expression of low molecular weight biomolecules known to reflect diseasespecific signatures. We manually analyzed 2500 individual small biomolecules in each serum sample of total of 51 samples. Comparisons between different sample types (from stage I and III Breast Cancer patients in this case) allows for the detection of unique short peptide biomarkers present in one sample type. We built a multi-biomarker model with more sensitivity and specificity to identify the stage of the tumor and applied them on blinded set of samples to validate prediction power. We hope that our study will provide insights for future work on the collection, analysis, and understanding of role of molecules in metastatic breast cancer.


Purpose
The transition from multichannel to omnichannel retailing requires a better conceptualisation, especially for customer experience in smart shopping malls. Therefore, this study aims to propose a theoretical model that captures customers' omnichannel experiences in smart shopping malls in terms of personal interaction, physical environment and virtual environment encounters. It examines the mediating role of flow experience on the relationship between the three types of encounters and customers' intention to revisit smart shopping malls.

Design/methodology/approach
The study draws on four key theories: the service encounter model, trust-commitment theory, flow theory and experiential value theory. A total of 553 completed questionnaires were collected from customers (millennials) in the United Kingdom (UK). The data was analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling.

Findings
The findings show that physical environment encounters and personal interaction encounters play a significant role in customers' omnichannel experiences in smart malls. Also, of significance are the following aspects of virtual environment encounters: interface design, personalisation, trust, privacy, consumer–peer interaction and relationship commitment. The findings highlight the significant mediating role of flow on the relationships between these three types of encounters and intention, and the effect of flow on omnichannel service usage in smart shopping malls.

Originality/value
The research contributes to the existing literature by proposing a conceptual model: the smart shopping mall omnichannel customer experience (SSMCE) model. The findings offer practical guidance to shopping malls and retailers who wish to enhance the customer omnichannel experience.


Abstract. Hydrological processes are widely understood to be sensitive to changes in climate, but the effects of changes in vegetation and soils have seldom been considered. The response of mountain hydrology to future climate and vegetation/soil changes is modelled in three snowmelt dominated mountain basins in the North American Cordillera. A Cold Regions Hydrological Model developed for each basin was driven with perturbed observed meteorological time series. Monthly perturbations were developed from differences in eleven regional climate model outputs between the present and future scenarios. Future climate change in these basins results in decreased modelled peak snow water equivalent (SWE) but increased evapotranspiration in all basins. All three watersheds became more rainfall-dominated. In Wolf Creek in the Yukon Territory, an insignificant increasing effect of vegetation change on peak SWE was found to be important enough to offset the significant climate change effect on alpine snow. In Marmot Creek in the Canadian Rockies, a combined effect of soil and climate changes on increasing annual runoff becomes significant while their individual effects are not statistically significant. In the relatively warmer Reynolds Mountain East catchment in Idaho, USA, only vegetation change decreases annual runoff volume and changes in soil, climate, or combination of them do not affect runoff. At high elevations in Wolf and Marmot Creeks, modelled vegetation/soil changes moderated the impact of climate change on peak SWE, the timing of peak SWE, evapotranspiration, and annual runoff volume. At medium elevations, these changes intensified the impact of climate change, decreasing peak SWE, and sublimation. The modelled hydrological impacts of changes in climate, vegetation, and soil in mountain environments are similar in magnitude but not consistently in the direction in all biomes; in some combinations, this results in enhanced impacts at lower elevations and latitudes and offsetting effects at higher elevations and latitudes.


Background: Dental caries is an infectious disease related to biofilm formation. Among the microorganisms presents in the oral microbiota, Streptococcus mutans can form biofilm on the tooth surface in the presence of dietary carbohydrates. This study aimed to evaluate the bactericidal kinetics and antibiofilm efficacy of ent-pimara-8(14),15-dien-19-oic acid (compound 1) and ent-8(14),15-pimaradien-3β-ol (compound 2) obtained from Viguiera arenaria against oral pathogens; this study also aimed to determine the effect of these compounds on the morphology and architecture of the S. mutans biofilm by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Materials and Methods: The bactericidal kinetics revealed different results depending on the tested bacteria. Compound 1 eliminated the viable bacteria within 24 hs of incubation. In the antibiofilm assay, compound 1 displayed promising results against S. mitis (ATCC 49456 and clinical isolate) and L. casei (clinical isolate), whereas compound 2 was not active at the evaluated concentrations. Conclusion: Compound 1 is an important metabolite in the search for new antibacterial agents against cariogenic bacteria both in the sessile and planktonic modes. The SEM image of Streptococcus mutans in the presence of compound 1 suggested that this metabolite acts by disrupting the bacterial membrane disrupting the bacterial membrane and/or cell wall and causing microrganism death.


We examined long‐term phytoplankton data records for four oligotrophic boreal lakes situated in the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), western Ontario, for responses to climatic change. ELA experienced a cyclical wet‐dry‐wet pattern from 1968 to 1998, with the early 1970s and 1990s having above‐average precipitation and the 1980s being a period of drought with a 2°C increase in air temperature. During this drought, the length of ice‐free season, duration of stratification, depth of the euphotic zone, and light extinction increased while precipitation and nutrient inputs to the lakes decreased. Phytoplankton assemblages of four study lakes were temporally coherent. During the drought, phytoplankton biomass and the number of phytoplankton species increased despite decreased nutrient inputs. There was a noticeable shift in species composition to greater abundances of dinoflagellates and large chrysophytes—mixotrophic species capable of cycling through the deeper, lower light, high‐nutrient waters, presumably to consume bacteria as an alternative to autotrophic production. These species have slow turnover times; therefore, suspended nutrients were held in the water column for a longer period of time. Phytoplankton photosynthesis was less responsive.


In lieu of an abstract, this is the first paragraph of the chapter: Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs, edited by Tessa Boffin and Jean Fraser and published by Pandora Press in 1991, tells us something about what is at stake in an encounter between lesbian identity and visual culture. The book brought together the work of more than 30 photographers and writers, to look at the subject of lesbian representation at a time when lesbian and gay politics was galvanised by the AIDS crisis and, in the UK, the implementation of Section 28, a law that prohibited the 'promotion' of homosexuality by local authorities. By no means the only book to capture the scope of lesbian cultural production that emerged in this context (e.g. Nothing But the Girl: The Blatant Lesbian Image, co-edited by Susie Bright and Jill Posener in 1996, is another important touchstone), Stolen Glances is a pertinent record of a time when photography, cultural theory and political activism coalesced. The apparently generative spaces in which lesbian photography is shared in 2017 bear witness to the forms of community that underpinned a project like Stolen Glances almost three decades ago. This point can surely be reversed. The visual and theoretical intervention the book makes promises to illuminate the return to these practices and debates in the present.


Background: Some evidence suggests that altered hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis functioning in cocaine users might play a role in the pathophysiology of substance abuse. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between exposure to negative life events and cortisol hair concentrations in crack cocaine users during the 3 months prior to admission to a detoxification program. Methods: A total of 23 treatment-seeking, crack cocaine-dependent women were selected for this study 1 week after admission to an inpatient treatment at a locked treatment facility. The Paykel Life Events Scale measured the occurrence of stressful life events 3 months before admission. Hair cortisol concentration was measured during these three previous months. Results: The partial correlations, using severity of dependence as control variable, revealed that there is a positive association between hair cortisol concentration and the number of negative life events exposure 90 days (r = .56; p = .007) and 30 days (r = .42; p = .048) prior to admission at the hospital. One-way ANOVA suggests that hair cortisol levels and stress load significantly increase over 3 months prior to hospitalization. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that there is a positive association between measures of long-term cumulative cortisol secretion and the number of stressful events reported by women receiving inpatient treatment for crack cocaine dependence. Therefore, this study suggests that stress load can be objectively quantified and noninvasively assessed. Scientific Significance: This study is the first to investigate HPA axis functioning using hair cortisol concentrations among crack cocaine-dependent users. It is a promising strategy to assess stress load in substance abusers.


Values are the elements of life prevailing in a society. They
provide motivation and ground for choice. They shape and determine
individual's and group's decision to like or dislike, favour or
disfavour,change or not to change. Thus, knowing people's value
orientation will guide planners, policy-makers, and change agents
in the planning and implementation of responsive development
programmes capable of evoking maximum affirmative public response.
Conducted to 143 randomly sampled household heads from two
barangays in North Cotabato, Philippines, using interview schedule,
group discussions, informal interview and participant observation,
the study aimed primarily at determining barangay people's value
orientation towards rural living and its implications to rural
development. Specifically, it investigated the association between
the following sets of variables: value orientation and age, sex cosmopoliteness, mass media exposure, and group membership; value
orientation and responsiveness to rural development programmes; and
two different groups' rank-ordering according to importance of Rokeach's
Terminal and Instrumental values.


OBJECTIVE: To identify clinical and demographic factors predictive of midurethral sling failure. METHODS: Overall treatment failure was defined by one or more of the following objective outcomes: a positive stress test, positive 24-hour pad test or retreatment for stress urinary incontinence (SUI); subjective outcomes: self reported SUI by the Medical, Epidemiologic and Social Aspect of Aging questionnaire, incontinent episodes by 3-day diary, or retreatment for SUI, or a combination of these. Logistic regression models adjusting for sling type and clinical site were used to predict odds of overall treatment failure after univariable analysis. Models were also fit to compare factors associated with objective failure and subjective failure only. RESULTS: Previous UI surgery (odds ratio [OR] 1.99, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.14–3.47); maximum Q-tip excursion<30° (OR 1.89, 95% CI 1.16–3.05); Medical, Epidemiologic and Social Aspect of Aging questionnaire urge score per 10 points (OR 1.97, 95% CI 1.21–3.21); and pad weight per 10 g (OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.02–1.10) were predictors of overall failure. Having concomitant surgery (OR 0.44, 95% CI 0.22–0.90) was predictive of subjective failure only rather than objective failure. Age per 10 years (OR 1.48, 95% CI 1.14–1.90); Urogenital Distress Inventory score per 10 points (OR 1.09, 95% CI 1.02–1.17); pad weight per 10 g (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.10) were predictive of objective failure compared with subjective failure only. Associations of risk factors and failure were similar independent of sling type (retropubic or transobturator). CONCLUSION: Twelve months after surgery, risk factors for overall and objective treatment failure were similar in women undergoing retropubic and transobturator sling procedures. This information may assist in counseling patients regarding efficacy of sling procedures and in setting expectations for women at increased odds for treatment failure. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, www.clinicaltrials.gov, NCT00325039. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


The topochemical distribution of lignin and cellulose in individual cell wall layers of Populus nigra stem was determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and confocal Raman microscopy. TEM images exhibited the fiber wall as being typically differentiated into three layers: middle lamella (ML), primary wall (P), and secondary wall (S1, S2, and S3). Higher magnification views showed the S2 layer to be differentiated into electron lucent and dense areas in the radial direction. In situ Raman images calculated by integrating over the intensity of characteristic spectral bands enabled visualization of the spatial variation in lignin and cellulose. Raman images acquired by integrating over the spectral band at 1605 cm-1 suggested that higher lignin content was visualized in the cell corner (CC), the compound middle lamella (CML), and the secondary wall of ray parenchyma. Cellulose distribution followed by taking the band regions around 2897 cm-1 into account showed the opposite pattern, with the highest content in fiber secondary wall. The SEM-EDXA provided semi-quantitative results, showing that the lignin content ratio in various cell wall layers was 1.4 (CC):1.1(CML):1(S2).


Abstract. This paper presents a review of applications of electrochemical methods in ocean sensing. It follows the white paper presented at the OceanSensors08 workshop held at the Leibniz-Institut fur Ostseeforschung, Warnemunde, Germany, from 31 March to 4 April 2008. The principles of electrochemical techniques are briefly recalled and described. For each technique, relevant electrochemical sensors are discussed; known successful deployments of electrochemical sensors are recalled; challenges experienced when taking sensors from the research lab to the field are raised; future trends in development and applications are proposed and assessed for their potential for oceanographic applications; where possible technological readiness levels are estimated. The document is supported with references drawn from both the electrochemical and oceanographic literature.


This article shows that a version of the Condition on Extraction Domain (Huang 1982) can be derived from the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC; Chomsky 2001, 2008) if the following assumptions are made: (a) All syntactic operations are driven by features of lexical items. (b) These features are ordered on lexical items. (c) All phrases are phases. (d) Edge features that trigger intermediate movement steps can only be added before the phase head becomes inert. Given (a–d), it follows from the PIC that extraction from XP is blocked if the operation that has merged XP is the final operation taking place in a phase: a last-merged specifier is a barrier because no edge feature can be inserted that might extract some item out of it; this induces a PIC violation on the following cycle. The analysis can be extended to cover freezing effects. Furthermore, it predicts the existence of the melting effect, illustrated in German and Czech: local scrambling in front of what would otherwise qualify as a last-merged specifier renders the specifier transparent for extraction. The most important assumption made here is that the timing of edge feature insertion is crucial (before vs. after in (d)). Accordingly, the analysis can be viewed as an argument supporting a strictly derivational organization of grammar.


For a stochastic variable x(s) the probability density function P(x,s;x₀,0) is solved in closed form by summing over all possible paths parametrized by a random white noise variable modulated by a memory function. We apply this white noise functional approach to fluctuating observables in complex systems ranging in scale from nanometer to Megameter. In particular, we investigate: (a) the distribution of nucleotides in bacterial genomes; (b) the motion of tracer particles embedded in an ageing fibrin polymer network; (c) the fluctuating values of protein diffusion coefficients as a function of protein length; and (d) the Great Barrier Reef degradation resulting from increasing atmospheric CO₂ levels and sea surface temperatures. Each case exhibits a particular memory behavior where a close match between empirical and theoretical mean square deviation (MSD) is obtained. For all cases, the probability density function satisfies a modified diffusion equation of the form
∂P/∂s = ½(∂MSD/∂s) (∂²P/∂x²).
The derived probability density function allows us to predict probable values of subsequent data points not yet measured, or to gain insight on the dynamics and memory property of the systems considered.


The saturation behavior of absorption and fluorescence spectra on the D2 line of Cs is presented, demonstrating a significant difference between open and closed transitions. Cs vapor is confined in an extremely thin cell (ETC) with widely tunable thickness L=(0.5-3)λ, where λ is the light wavelength. In the saturation regime, the closed transition demonstrates enhanced absorption in a narrow spectral interval due to the Dicke effect, while the open one demonstrates only a velocity-selective dip in the absorption. The fluorescence of open transitions shows reduced fluorescence dips, enhancing their contrast with ETC thickness. The closed transition exhibits only a small plateau around the optical transition center. Applying two-level theoretical modeling based on optical Bloch equations, a qualitative agreement with experimental observations is achieved. The rate of contrast enhancement with cell thickness is larger for the theoretical than for the experimental dips. In addition, for the closed transition a tiny peak in the fluorescence is theoretically predicted, with the first experimental confirmation presented. The sub-Doppler spectra of vapor layers with a thickness of several light wavelengths show potential for realization of precise frequency references and photonics sensors.


This work reports the experimental and numerical study of the thermal management of Li-ion battery packs under the context of electric vehicle (EV) or hybrid EV (HEV) applications. Li-ion batteries have been extensively demonstrated as an important power source for EVs or HEVs. However, thermal management is a critical challenge for their widespread deployment, due to their highly dynamic operation and the wide range of environments under which they operate. To address these challenges, this work developed several experimental platforms to study adaptive thermal management strategies. Parallel to the experimental effort, multi-disciplinary models integrating heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and electro-thermal dynamics have been developed and validated, including detailed CFD models and lumped parameter models. The major contributions are twofold. First, this work developed actively controlled strategies and experimentally demonstrated their effectiveness on a practical sized battery pack and dynamic thermal loads. The results show that these strategies effectively reduced both the parasitic energy consumption and the temperature non-uniformity while maintaining the maximum temperature rise in the pack. Second, this work established a new two dimensional lumped parameter thermal model to overcome the limitations of existing thermal models and extend their applicable range. This new model provides accurate surface and core temperatures simulations comparable to detailed CFD models with a fraction of the computational cost. Experimental and Modeling Study of the Thermal Management of Li-ion Battery Packs


Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel, by Michael N. Barnett. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. xiii + 261 pages. Appends. to p. 269. Notes to p. 343. Bibl. to p. 368. Index to p. 378. $16.95 paper. Reviewed by Ruth Margolies Beitler According to Michael Barnett, conventional wisdom dictates that war will contribute to a state's aggrandizement by increasing its control over society. Although he cites other authors, including Theda Skocpol and Charles Tilly, who have countered this "ratchet effect" argument, Barnett contends that most studies concentrating on the influence of war on state power "have failed to recognize how the transformative possibilities reside in the government's manner of mobilizing security-related resources" (p. 6). Thus, the key to understanding the change in state power stems not from the results of the crisis itself, but from a clear understanding of "the activities associated with preparing for war" (p. 7). By establishing a theoretical framework to examine direct, causal linkages between war preparation and state power. Barnett expects to account for the enigmatic findings that war-related processes can either increase or decrease state power. Barnett cogently argues that a state must perform a masterful balancing act when implementing war preparation strategies by considering three important state interests: national security. political stability, and economic development. His typology of a government's determinants for selecting a war preparation strategy is useful to illustrate the direct connection between the domestic and international realms. For war preparation, although a state must generate revenue, mobilize manpower, and get supplies, societal actors can constrain the state's ability to extract these resources. Thus, with these elements in mind, a government can choose from three broad mobilization strategies. The accommodational strategy maintains or modifies slightly existing policies, while the international strategy diffuses the costs of war onto foreign actors. Since these strategies circumvent societal constraints, state power is not transformed. State-society relations alter only when the state increases war preparation demands on the societal actors using the restructural strategy. Taking Israel, from 1948-77, and Egypt, from 1952-77, as case studies, Barnett assesses the determinants of state war preparation strategies and their effects on state power. …


The results of laboratory experiments on unsteady deep-water breaking waves are reported. The experiments exploit the dispersion of deep-water waves to generate a single breaking wave group. The direct effects of breaking are then confined to a finite region in the wave channel and the influence of breaking on the evolution of the wave field can be examined by measuring fluxes into and out of the breaking region. This technique was used by us in a preliminary series of measurements. The loss of excess momentum flux and energy flux from the wave group was measured and found to range from 10% for single spilling events to as much as 25% for plunging breakers. Mixing due to breaking was studied by photographing the evolution of a dye patch as it was mixed into the water column. It was found that the maximum depth of the dye cloud grew linearly in time for one to two wave periods, and then followed a t 1/4 power law (t is the time from breaking) over a range of breaking intensities and scales. The dyed region reached depths of two to three wave heights and horizontal lengths of approximately one wavelength within five wave periods of breaking. A detailed velocity survey of the breaking region was made and ensemble averages taken of the non-stationary flow. Mean surface currents in the range 0.02-0.03 C (C is the characteristic phase speed) were generated and took as many as 60 wave periods to decay to 0.005 C. A deeper return flow due to momentum lost from the forced long wave was measured. Together these flows gave a rotational region of approximately one wavelength. Turbulent root mean square velocities of approximately 0.02 C were measured near the surface and were still significant at depths of three to four wave heights. More than 90 % of the energy lost from the waves was dissipated within four wave periods. Subsequently measured kinetic energy in the residual flow was found to have a t-1 dependence. Correlation of all the above measurements with the amplitude, bandwidth and phase of the wave group was found to be good, as was scaling of the results with the centre frequency of the group,. Local measures of the breaking wave were not found to correlate well with the dynamical measurements.


Ion sputtering of Zerodur material often results in the formation of nanoscale microstructures on the surfaces, which seriously influences optical surface quality. In this paper, we describe the microscopic morphology evolution during ion sputtering of Zerodur surfaces through experimental researches and theoretical analysis, which shows that preferential sputtering together with curvature-dependent sputtering overcomes ion-induced smoothing mechanisms leading to granular nanopatterns formation in morphology and the coarsening of the surface. Consequently, we propose a new method for ion beam smoothing (IBS) of Zerodur optics assisted by deterministic ion beam material adding (IBA) technology. With this method, Zerodur optics with surface roughness down to 0.15 nm root mean square (RMS) level is obtained through the experimental investigation, which demonstrates the feasibility of our proposed method.


Aqueous ethanol extracts prepared from 19 apple (Malus ×domestica Borkh.) cultivars were studied to explore their antiproliferative activity. Half of them showed strong inhibition on proliferation of human leukemic HL-60 cells, while the others were weak. Total polyphenols, 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity, and total anthocyanins were measured and the results indicated that the antiproliferative activity was more strongly correlated to the polyphenols and radical scavenging activity than to the anthocyanin content. Several polyphenols in 'Jonathan' were identifi ed and quantifi ed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis. Among those compounds found during HPLC, catechin and epicatechin seemed partially responsible for HL-60 antiproliferation. A careful examination on parentage of the apple cultivars tested revealed that 'Jonathan' and its progeny showed high antiproliferation toward HL-60. This is the fi rst observation about the relationship between antiproliferative activity and parentage of apples, and the information would be useful to create new apple cultivars that posses more anticancer potential.


Performing Spanishness delves
into the theatre of Spanish
dramatist Jose Maria Rodriguez
Mendez, one of the most significant Spanish playwrights of the
twentieth century and an acerbic
cultural commentator.
This book traces the development
of Rodriguez Mendez's
work from the hard times of the
Franco dictatorship through the
uncertainties of the transition
to democracy. Rodriguez
Mendez's theatre is saturated by
the socially explosive concept
of Spanishness, dramatized
as a dazzling range of popular
performances of cultural identity
in various periods from the
middle ages to the present. The
author locates this impression in
Rodriguez Mendez's interpretation
of 'machismo espanol' as a
volatile, universal articulation
of Spanish identity charged with
the dissident voice of popular resistance
to constraining political
and ideological structures.
The analysis of Rodriguez
Mendez's work from the late
1950s to the mid-70s is enriched
by detailed evidence from
censors' reports, providing
fascinating case studies of the
unpredictability of censorship
under a dictatorial regime.


There is a growing national consensus about the urgent need to shrink the population of pretrial detainees and to fix our broken money bail system. Even as scholars and reformers are showing renewed interest in pretrial detention and bail, however, they have neglected a fundamental pretrial problem: the conflation (by judges and in statutes) of flight risk and danger. Reformers have offered up an array of proposals and increasingly sophisticated risk assessment tools that promise to improve judicial decision-making, but many of these tools merge flight risk and danger in ways that reinforce problematic legislative and judicial practices. This Article identifies the legal and practical reasons that judges must evaluate flight risk independently of danger. Federal and state constitutions and statutes include detention and bail provisions that require judges to make separate determinations of flight risk and dangerousness. There are also compelling policy arguments for separating flight from danger. First, combining risks may cause judges to overestimate both kinds of risks. Second, forcing separate analyses of pretrial risks may provide judges with much-needed political cover (alleviating pressure to detain). In addition, isolating the two types of risks offers an opportunity to improve judicial accountability and system legitimacy. Finally, the conditions of release that judges employ to mitigate flight risk are different from those that are used to manage danger. Disentangling flight risk from dangerousness will be a critical piece of efforts to improve pretrial decision-making and reduce unnecessary pretrial detention.


A computational model of the glucagon/insulin-driven liver glucohomeostasis function, focusing on the buffering of glucose into glycogen, has been developed. The model exemplifies an 'engineering' approach to modelling in systems biology, and was produced by linking together seven component models of separate aspects of the physiology. The component models use a variety of modelling paradigms and degrees of simplification. Model parameters were determined by an iterative hybrid of fitting to high-scale physiological data, and determination from small-scale in vitro experiments or molecular biological techniques. The component models were not originally designed for inclusion within such a composite model, but were integrated, with modification, using our published modelling software and computational frameworks. This approach facilitates the development of large and complex composite models, although, inevitably, some compromises must be made when composing the individual models. Composite models of this form have not previously been demonstrated.


Highly pathogenic coronaviruses (CoVs) induce acute respiratory distress syndrome, and the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV)-2 has caused a pandemic since late 2019. The diversity of clinical manifestations after SARS-CoV-2 infection results in great challenges to diagnose CoV disease 2019 (COVID-19). There is a growing body of published research on this topic; however, effective medications are still undergoing a long process of being assessed. In the search for potential genetic targets for this infection, we applied a holistic bioinformatics approach to study alterations of gene signatures between SARS-CoV-2-infected cells and mock-infected controls. Two different kinds of lung epithelial cells, A549 with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) overexpression and normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells, were infected with SARS-CoV-2. We performed bioinformatics analyses of RNA-sequencing in this study. Through a Venn diagram, Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery, Gene Ontology, Ingenuity Pathway Analysis, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, the pathways and networks were constructed from commonly upregulated genes in SARS-CoV-2-infected lung epithelial cells. Genes associated with immune-related pathways, responses of host cells after intracellular infection, steroid hormone biosynthesis, receptor signaling, and the complement system were enriched. Dysregulation of the immune system and malfunction of interferon contribute to a failure to kill SARS-CoV-2 and exacerbate respiratory distress in severely ill patients. Current findings from this study provide a comprehensive investigation of SARS-CoV-2 infection using high-throughput technology.


Previously published vector equations describing angle-resolved scattering from single-layer- and multilayer-coated optics have been integrated numerically and analytically over all angles in the reflecting hemisphere to obtain numerical results and analytical expressions for total integrated scattering (TIS). The effects of correlation length, polarization, angle of incidence, roughness height distribution, scattered light missed by the collecting hemisphere, and roughness cross-correlation properties of the multilayer stack on the TIS expression are considered. Background material on TIS from optics coated with single opaque reflecting layers is given for completeness and comparison to corresponding multilayer TIS results. It is shown that errors can occur in calculating the true rms surface roughness from actual TIS measurements; ways to correct these errors are discussed.


The study of the effect of mechanical destratifiers on water quality in Toowoomba's reservoirs is urgently needed to understand the behaviour of the reservoirs for management purposes. In this study, a 1-D hydrodynamic model
(DYRESM) coupled with an aquatic ecosystem model (CAEDYM) is adopted for water quality prediction in the water column for the next 50 years. The AWBM hydrological model and the ClimGen weather generator model are used to support the
data preparation for water quality prediction. The simulation results are separated into two periods which are the period November – April represented by the warm period
and the period May – October represented by the cold period. The results are used to assess the sustainability aspect and risk factors in the vertical profiles of the reservoirs. A new water quality index is introduced to assess the water quality level in the storages without and with the use of the mechanical destratifiers.

The main conclusions of this study are summarized below: (1) A strong thermal stratification occurs in the storages during the warm period. In this period, Cyanobacteria have a high concentration. (2) The water quality index (WQI) in Cooby storage will be a good or an excellent level. The WQIs of Cooby tend to decrease from an excellent level to a good level without the use of the mixers. The continuous
operation of the artificial mixers is able to increase the WQI values by an average of 15 grade points and produces excellent water quality for the next 50 years. (3) The
WQIs of Cressbrook storage will be a good or an excellent level. The WQIs of Cressbrook reservoir have a tendency to increase from a good to an excellent level.
The WQIs in the surface layer remain the same without and with the use of the mechanical mixers. The artificial mixers are able to slightly increase the WQI values
at the pumping elevation and the average of all layers by an average of four grade points. (4) Without artificial mixers, safe levels of raw water from the Cooby storage
can be attained at 8 – 10 m depth. The best/optimal water quality can be achieved with multi-level withdrawals. The use of the artificial mixers can extend the withdrawal
range to 9 – 20 m depth. The optimal water quality can be achieved with a fixed pumping elevation at 15 m depth. (5) Without surface mixers, the safe levels can be attained at the layer between 14 m and 30 m depth all the time. The nitrate and total phosphorus levels have a high probability of being unsafe. The use of the mechanical
surface mixers is able to widen the range of the safe level between 16 m and 37 m depth. This can give more alternative layers for withdrawals.


Due to fast-paced urbanization and rural exodus, speakers of different dialects of the Ewe language are thrown together in Lome, the capital city of Togo. Using various theoretical approaches that attempt to address such phenomena, I provide a quantitative analysis suggesting that urban Ewe in southern Togo is undergoing processes of leveling and simplification. I investigate the use of bilabial fricatives, alveolar affricates, and reduplication (as dependent variables) to show that ethnicity, community setting, and gender are influential factors in Ewe language variation in southern Togo.


We propose a novel computational model for GPUs. Known parallel computational models such as the PRAM model are not appropriate for evaluating GPU-based algorithms. Our model, called AGPU , abstracts the essence of current GPU architectures such as global and shared memory, memory coalescing and bank conflicts. Using our model, we can evaluate asymptotic behavior of GPU algorithms more efficiently than the known models and we can develop algorithms that run fast on real GPU devices. As a showcase, we analyze the asymptotic behavior of basic existing algorithms including reduction, prefix scan, and comparison sorting. We further develop new algorithms by detecting and resolving performance bottlenecks of the existing algorithms. Our reduction algorithm has the optimal time and I/O complexities and works with non-commutative operators. Our com- parison sorting algorithm has the optimal I/O complexity. Additionally, we show our algorithms run faster than the existing algorithms not only in theory but also in practice.Â


Widespread urban expansion around the world, combined with rapid demographic and climatic changes, has resulted in serious pollution issues in many coastal water bodies. To help formulate coastal management strategies to mitigate the impacts of these extreme changes (e.g., local land-use or climate change adaptation policies), research methodologies that incorporate participatory approaches alongside with computer simulation modeling tools have potential to be particularly effective. One such research methodology, called the "Participatory Coastal Land-Use Management" (PCLM) approach, consists of three major steps: (a) participatory approach to find key drivers responsible for the water quality deterioration, (b) scenario analysis using different computer simulation modeling tools for impact assessment, and (c) using these scientific evidences for developing adaptation and mitigation measures. In this study, we have applied PCLM approach in the Kendrapara district of India (focusing on the Brahmani River basin), a rapidly urbanizing area on the country's east coast to evaluate current status and predict its future conditions. The participatory approach involved key informant interviews to determine key drivers of water quality degradation, which served as an input for scenario analysis and hydrological simulation in the next step. Future river water quality (BOD and Total coliform (Tot. coli) as important parameters) was simulated using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) tool, considering a different plausible future scenario (to 2050) incorporating diverse drivers and pressures (i.e., population growth, land-use change, and climate change). Water samples (collected in 2018) indicated that the Brahmani River in this district was already moderately-to-extremely polluted in comparison to the desirable water quality (Class B), and modeling results indicated that the river water quality is likely to further deteriorate by 2050 under all of the considered scenarios. Demographic changes emerged as the major driver affecting the future water quality deterioration (68% and 69% for BOD and Tot. coli respectively), whereas climate change had the lowest impact on river water quality (12% and 13% for BOD and Tot. coli respectively), although the impact was not negligible. Scientific evidence to understand the impacts of future changes can help in developing diverse plausible coastal zone management approaches for ensuring sustainable management of water resources in the region. The PCLM approach, by having active stakeholder involvement, can help in co-generation of the coastal management options followed by open access free software, and models can play a relevant cost-effective approach to enhance science-policy interface for conservation of natural resources.


The cellular-growth curves for distinct cell lines (tumor and non-tumor) were established, evaluating the population of doubling time (DT) and maximum growth rate (μmax). These curves define the growth characteristics for each cell line; they allow determination of the best time range for evaluating the effects of some biological compounds. Subsequently, the biological activities of three ethanolic extracts of Phoradendron californicum were evaluated in these cells lines; two extracts were of Prosopis laevigata (Mesquite tree) from two distinct geographic zones, and the other one was of Quercus ilex (Encino/Oak tree). We also evaluated the cytotoxic activity and nitric oxide (NO) scavenging ability of these extracts. The results showed the RAW 264.7 cell-line had the highest growth rate in all experiments. For the rest of cell-lines, we found μmax in the following order: L929 > A549  ARPE-19 ≥ 22Rv1; while the DT was in the order: RAW 264.7 > A549 ≥ L929  ARPE-19 > 22Rv1. With respect to the anti-proliferative activity of the P. californicum ethanolic extracts, we observed that the most sensitive cell line was RAW 264.7 (with all three extracts), and the least sensitive was the ARPE-19 cell line; the first one was the fastest growing and the second was the one of the slowest. The antioxidative studies by NO scavenging were evaluated in RAW 264.7 cell-line, the best extracts were the ethanolic extracts of P. californicum from P. laevigata and were geographic zone no-dependent for these biological activities.


Two different approaches to achieving controlled reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerisation in water-borne dispersions have been attempted, both giving reasonable control over molar mass evolution. Molar mass increased linearly with conversion, and the colloidal instability that has sometimes been observed in similar systems (e.g. [de Brouwer, H.; Monteiro, M. J.; Tsavalas, J. G.; Schork, F. J. Macromolecules 2000, 33, 9239]) was avoided. The similarity of results for the two quite different approaches can largely be reconciled utilising the theory of Luo et al.[Luo, Y.; Tsavalas, J.; Schork, F. J. Macromolecules 2001, 34, 5501] The average number of radicals per particle, in terms of both propagating and RAFT intermediate radicals were compared, using two current models in the literature for the ratio of propagating to intermediate species.[Barner-Kowollik, C.; Quinn, J. F.; Morsley, D. R.; Davis, T. P. J. Polym. Sci. Part A: Polym. Chem. 2001, 39, 1353; Monteiro, M. J.; de Brouwer, H. Macromolecules 2001, 34, 349; Kwak, Y.; Goto, A.; Tsujii, Y.; Murata, Y.; Komatsu, K.; Fukuda, T. Macromolecules 2002, 35, 3026] Possible implications for water-borne dispersions under such conditions are that the maximum value of the average number of propagating radicals per particle may be significantly lower than 0.5, depending on the dominant mechanism for radical loss.


We explore the impact of health shocks on criminal behavior. Exploiting variations in the timing of cancer diagnoses, we find that health shocks elicit an increase in the probability of committing crime by 13%. This response is economically significant at both the extensive (first-time criminals) and intensive margin (re-offenders). We uncover evidence for two channels explaining our findings. First, diagnosed individuals seek illegal revenues to compensate for the loss of earnings on the legal labor market. Second, cancer patients face lower expected cost of punishment through a lower survival probability. We do not find evidence that changes in preferences explain our findings. The documented pattern is stronger for individuals who lack insurance through preexisting wealth, home equity, or marriage. Welfare programs that alleviate the economic repercussions of health shocks are effective at mitigating the ensuing negative externality on society.


SUMMARY Rapid, effective communication between colony members is a key attribute that enables ants to live in dominant, fiercely protected societies. Their signals, however, may be mimicked by other insects that coexist as commensals with ants or interact with them as mutualists or social parasites. We consider the role of acoustics in ant communication and its exploitation by social parasites. Social parasitism has been studied mainly in the butterfly genus Maculinea, the final instar larvae of which are host-specific parasites of Myrmica ants, preying either on ant grubs (predatory Maculinea) or being fed by trophallaxis (cuckoo Maculinea). We found similar significant differences between the stridulations of model queen and worker ant castes in both Myrmica sabuleti and Myrmica scabrinodis to that previously reported for Myrmica schencki. However, the sounds made by queens of all three Myrmica species were indistinguishable, and among workers, stridulations did not differ significantly in two of three species-pairs tested. Sounds recorded from the predatory caterpillars and pupae of Maculinea arion had similar or closer patterns to the acoustics of their host Myrmica sabuleti than those previously reported for the cuckoo Maculinea rebeli and its host Myrmica schencki, even though Maculinea rebeli caterpillars live more intimately with their host. We conclude that chemical mimicry enables Maculinea larvae to be accepted as colony members by worker ants, but that caterpillars and pupae of both predatory and cuckoo butterflies employ acoustical mimicry of queen ant calls to elevate their status towards the highest attainable position within their host's social hierarchy.


Nepal suffered with severe shortage of electricity supply or load shedding in the last decade. Electricity load shedding is considered one of the major barriers to the country's economic development. This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the economic costs of electricity load shedding the country faced during 2008-16. The study shows that if there had been no load shedding, annual gross domestic product, on average, would have been almost 7 percent higher than it was during 2008-16. The worst effects of load shedding were on the investment environment. If there had been no load shedding, investment would have been 48 percent higher than it was. Although electricity load shedding has been reduced recently in the residential sector through better electricity load management and increased electricity production and imports, the industrial sector, one of the main sources of economic growth in the country, still faces load shedding. Unless the electricity load shedding is eliminated, Nepal will continue to suffer a heavy economic loss.


Invasive non-native species (INS) are found in every city around the globe, but their impacts in urban settings as biological agents of visual pollution that block views of natural landscapes and disconnect citizens from nature are not as often addressed as comprehensively as their impacts in natural areas or agricultural settings. The multiple impacts of INS in cities make them ideal candidates for aspects of Civic Ecology Practice, where local environmental stewardship action is taken to enhance green infrastructure and community well-being in urban and other human-dominated systems. We present details of a community driven program focused on removal of an INS, Amur bush honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii), from banks of a creek in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the midwestern USA. Unlike many civic ecology practices, this project was motivated by community response to the long-developing environmental, social, and economic impacts of an INS and includes involvement of a major corporation. In response to local residents' concerns and following months of planning, over 2,000 volunteers removed more than 760 m3 of Amur bush honeysuckle from 30 acres of land along Fall Creek during a single day. The honeysuckle removal served ecological and environmental goals of removing an invasive species, but it also helped foster in citizens a sense of place and connection with Indianapolis' waterways, reflecting local history and culture. Aspects of the project can serve as a model for action in other cities.


Extracted from text ... W
Women in leadership:
building personal capacity
6 Management Today March 2006
"Women have lived with the burden of hope, they shoulder eagerly
the challenge of as yet unrealised dreams, their work seeks
acknowledgement and cries out for its rightful place in the new
democracy. They yearn for empowerment recognition and acknowledgement."
This was the message given at the launch of the University of
the Free State programme on Creating Leadership and Personal
Capacity in Women in Johannesburg recently, by Louisa Mojela,
founder and CEO of Wiphold.
She said, "The role of women in the economies of nations,
regions ..


Introduction Our goal was to investigate trends in computed tomography (CT) utilization in emergency departments (EDs) and its association with hospitalization. Methods We conducted an analysis of an administrative claims database of U.S. privately insured and Medicare Advantage enrollees. We identified ED visits from 2005 through 2013 and assessed for CT use, associated factors, and hospitalization after CT, along with patient demographics. We used both descriptive methods and regression models adjusted for year, age, sex, race, geographic region, and Hwang comorbidity score to explore associations among CT use, year, demographic characteristics, and hospitalization. Results We identified 33,144,233 ED visits; 5,901,603 (17.8%) involved CT. Over time, CT use during ED visits increased 59.9%. CT use increased in all age groups but decreased in children since 2010. In propensity-matching analysis, odds of hospitalization increased with age, comorbidities, male sex, and CT use (odds ratio, 2.38). Odds of hospitalization over time decreased more quickly for patients with CT. Conclusion CT utilization in the ED has increased significantly from 2005 through 2013. For children, CT use after 2010 decreased, indicating caution about CT use. Male sex, older age, and higher number of comorbidities were predictors of CT in the ED. Over time, odds of hospitalization decreased more quickly for patients with CT.


: Resource pulsing is a widespread phenomenon, but its effects on ecosystem dynamics are often difficult to predict. Hydrological pulsing, in particular, is known to influence the structure and dynamics of fluvial and coastal ecosystems, but little information is available about its effects on trophic connectivity between wetlands and estuaries. We investigated the hypothesis that hydrologic pulsing drives 1-way trophic subsidies (e.g. suspended organic matter and freshwater fish) from wetland to estuary. Our study system is a coastal lagoon with an ephemeral mouth that, when closed, stores freshwater as a sustained flood pulse that is subsequently released when a connection with the sea is reestablished. We monitored isotopic composition of consumers and food sources over the course of an entire flood pulse to infer trophic linkages and spatial subsidies. Before the flood peak (April and May), freshwater and estuarine zones were largely dependent on local primary production sources (seston and C 3 plants vs. C 4 plants and microphytobenthos, respectively), essentially functioning as disconnected compartments. A sustained pulse of freshwater inflow (June to August) induced greater habitat connectivity and a net flow of biomass and energy from the freshwater zone into the estuarine zone. The opening of the lagoon outlet channel abruptly terminated the flood pulse and reduced freshwater subsidies to estuarine consumers, and both zones returned to dependence on autochthonous production. Our findings contribute to current concerns that artificial opening of sandbars in coastal lagoons alters natural ecological dynamics with significant effects on biodiversity and ecosystem processes.


NATO's future is intimately connected to both its past and present. It has, after all, survived half a century of extraordinary change in very good order. It spectacularly proved its enduring relevance on September 12, 2001, when Article 5, the collective defense clause designed to save Europe from the Soviet Union, was invoked to help the United States from the new and evil scourge of mass terror. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As the organization's tenth Secretary General, in 2002 I saw the final divisions and stereotypes of the Cold War smashed around the NATO-Russia Council table at its first meeting in Rome and NATO's largest ever enlargement in Prague. In the rubble of the World Trade Center, I saw what the terrorists could do as well as how NATO could regroup to help defeat them. I saw NATO troops bringing hope to the streets of Kabul, a continent and a half away from the old Iron Curtain. Most of all, I saw a transformed Atlantic Alliance doing what it has done best since 1949: delivering safety and security where it matters and when it matters. In 1949, the Washington Treaty, on which the Atlantic Alliance is based, was written. The authors wanted the language to be as clear and concise as possible. Most writers claim this as the goal, but few deliver. However, one of the authors had a benchmark: that the Treaty should be written so that it could be understood by a milkman from Omaha. That Nebraskan dairyman turned out to be an excellent editor, because the Washington Treaty is a model of clarity and brevity. How would the Alliance's first editorial influence react to the new NATO, 55 years on? What would he understand? Or, indeed, completely fail to comprehend? First of all, our milkman would be surprised to find that the Alliance is still in business. Based on his own experience, he would have expected the Yanks to come home and the Europeans to fall out, but neither happened. More recently, historians told us that alliances between free nations do not survive the disappearance of the threat that first brought them together. NATO has disproved that argument. The Warsaw Pact disintegrated and NATO modernized. The first reason was to help spread security and stability eastwards across Europe. Then NATO went on to use its unique multinational military capabilities to bring peace to Europe's bloody and chaotic Balkan backyard. Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia are no longer in the headlines because NATO acted, learned lessons, and put them into practice. NATO helped stop civil war in Bosnia, acted to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and intervened to prevent a civil war in Macedonia. In each successive crisis, NATO's involvement came at an earlier stage and was therefore increasingly effective in saving lives and preventing overspill. The Alliance was prepared to stay the course. Today, the new threats of terrorism in our post-September 11 world must be confronted. The challenges have changed, but so too has NATO. Our milkman would understand and approve. He would do the math: 12 members in 1949 and 26 today, a clear message of success. He might, however, wonder what had happened to the old adversary, the Soviet Union. Here, however, his perspective would be different from ours. From his 1949 vantage point, only four years after the end of the common struggle against fascism and with the Iron Curtain only beginning to fall across Europe, he might not be that surprised to hear that we are once again partners with Russia. But for the children of the Cold War, the journey from the shadow of mutual extinction to a NATO-Russia Council in which Russia sits as an equal with 26 NATO members to deal with the common threats of the 21st century is nothing less than epic. We might still have our differences with Russia, but they are the signs of politics and diplomacy, not of mutually assured destruction. No matter how capable NATO is, it cannot meet today's challenges on its own. …


This paper advances the argument that institutional investors, particularly mutual funds can play a vital role in enhancing corporate governance in emerging economies. Accordingly, regulatory framework need to be structured in a manner that would encourage the growth of the mutual fund industry and enable it to play a proactive role in corporate governance. The paper reviews and evaluates the regulation of mutual funds in Pakistan in the light of the above propositions. The Role of Mutual Funds and Non-Banking Financial Companies in Corporate Governance in Pakistan.


The quest for the sources of the Nile had been -already since the antiquity- a major issue regarding the exploration of Africa by both locals and foreigners. This makes no surprise, if the importance of the river is taken into account, not only from a strictly economical point of view but also from a political, historical and cultural one.
Since Ptolemy introduced the Mountains of the Moon, the whole issue got a more stable basis; the quest had a specific aim from then on. Those mountains, either existing or product of a false translation tantalized the researchers for ages. On the other hand, the difficulties of such a risky expedition helped the Ptolemaic authority remain unchanged within the cartographic depictions long after the Age of Discovery.
This paper aims only to outline the framework of this great issue, highlighting also a few points and proposing answers to questions which, though not of high priority, are really important: Did Ptolemy himself have first-hand geographic knowledge of that area? Did the ancient people of that part of Africa have adequate knowledge of such a complicated hydrological phenomenon? Was the Ptolemaic text in its original form when Planoudis discovered it, or had it got updated with fresh geographic knowledge through the ages?


Zinc is an essential trace element for organisms, but an excessive concentration can cause serious toxicity problems affecting their metabolism. It is one of the most widely-spread metals in aquatic ecosystems, and often its concentration exceeds the established thresholds for European and American legislation (59-210 ppb / 30-500 ppb respectively, in function of water hardness).
The total metal concentration present in the aquatic environment doesn't provide information about its distribution, mobility, biological availability and toxicity. Therefore, the bioavailable metal amount for an organism is proportional to the free or labile metal fraction present in the environment. Nowadays different analytical methods are being developed related to the trace elements speciation, applicable to the free metal quantification, such as supported liquid membranes. In this study, it has been used a system based on a supported liquid membrane of tubular configuration, hollow fiber (HF) for free zinc determination in aquatic environment.
HF device consists in a three-phase system composed of two separate aqueous phases which are in contact with each other through a microporous polypropylene hollow fiber, with a solvent immobilized in its pores. The organic solution containins an extractant which facilitates metal transport through the membrane. Various studies are performed to evaluate Zn2+ transport efficiency of the device with ZnSO4 aqueous solutions. On one hand, it is studied the best composition of the organic and stripping phase, making trials with different concentrations of the extractant D2EHPA 0,5M / 0,25M / 0,1M membrane, and changing stripping phase composition using acidified aqueous solutions HNO310-1M / HNO310-2M + Ca(NO3)2 3,6 ·10-2M / HNO310-4M + Ca(NO3)2 4·10-2M. The best Zn transport efficiencies are obtained with a chemical system composition of 0,1M D2EHPA in the membrane and HNO310-2M + Ca(NO3)2 3,6 ·10-2M in the stripping phase. On the other hand, it is studied the effect of the presence of different ligands (EDTA and citric acid) in the donor phase 30,60 μM Zn, 15 μM EDTA and citric acid 8 μM, where observed that the EDTA influence about the amount free zinc, is more important than citric acid. Finally, it is studied the chemical system selectivity with respect to Zn2+ in the presence of other divalent ions, such as Cu2+. The results show that the system is selective for Zn extraction under the tested conditions.
The device is applied in river water samples, getting low rates of Zn2+ transport due to the presence of humic acids, chlorides, sulfates that can form zinc complexes decreasing its free labile fraction and other metals such as Fe3+ that can also bind to the extractant


Background The importance of early perceptual alterations with regards to higher-level perceptual and cognitive functioning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is increasing. This increase is due in part to several studies demonstrating altered autistic sensitivity to a variety of non-social visual, auditory and tactile stimuli whose perception is contingent on the functional integrity of early, local neural mechanisms. However, although atypical performance on non-social, visuo-spatial tasks is a defining characteristic of ASD, few biologically plausible hypotheses are available to explain them. Some have theorized that individuals with ASD may have atypical local connectivity resulting in altered response properties of early visual feature detectors, such as those processing simple visual patterns. The goal of these studies was to assess this hypothesis by measuring brain activity to simple visual information that is mediated by local, lateral interactions. To do so, steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) to visual information mediated by lateral connectivity was measured in a group of adults diagnosed with ASD.MethodsNine participants with ASD and 11 typically developing participants, matched for full-scale IQ and age (18-35 years), were asked to passively view visual stimuli during Windmill-Dartboard (Ratliff & Zemon, 1982) and lateral masking paradigms (Polat, Sagi, & Norcia, 1997) while ssVEPs from four electrodes over the occipital cortex (Oz, POz, O1 and O2) were collected. For the Windmill-Dartboard paradigm, first- and second-harmonic components of the steady-state responses were used to calculate indices reflecting local facilitatory (FI) and inhibitory (SI) cortical interactions for all participants. For lateral masking paradigm, ssVEP data was collected while participants viewed low-contrast Gabor patches presented ether in isolation (target), or flanked by collinear/orthogonal Gabors at different contrasts (8, 16, 30%) and target-flanker distances (1.5λ, 3 λ, 6 λ). ResultsGroup differences were not evidenced for either FI or SI cortical interaction indices obtained during the Windmill-Dartboard task. For the lateral masking paradigm, the results demonstrated between group differences in lateral interactions under specific experimental conditions. There were statistically significant facilitatory responses at a distance of 3λ, for both the ASD (at a contrast of 30%) and comparison group (at a contrast of 8%). However, only the comparison group demonstrated statistical significance of a suppression response at a contrast of 16%. In addition, only the comparison group demonstrated statistical significance of a suppression response at a contrast of 16% at a distance of 6 λ. ConclusionThe current studies attempted to directly examine lateral interactions by measuring steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) elicited by Windmill-Dartboard and lateral masking paradigms. A lack of between group differences in ssVEP responses elicited by the Windmill-Dartboard task suggests unremarkable local…


This paper attempts to provide a conceptual framework for the analysis of counterfactual scenarios using macroeconometric models. As an application we consider UK entry to the euro. Entry involves a long-term commitment to restrict UK nominal exchange rates and interest rates to be the same as those of the euro area. We derive conditional probability distributions for the difference between the future realisations of variables of interest (e.g UK and euro area output and prices) subject to UK entry restrictions being fully met over a given period and the alternative realisations without the restrictions. The robustness of the results can be evaluated by also conditioning on variables deemed to be invariant to UK entry, such as oil or US equity prices. Economic interdependence means that such policy evaluation must take account of international linkages and common factors that drive fluctuations across economies. In this paper this is accomplished using the Global VAR recently developed by Dees, di Mauro, Pesaran and Smith (2005). The paper briefly describes the GVAR which has been estimated for 25 countries and the euro area over the period 1979-2003. It reports probability estimates that output will be higher and prices lower in the UK and the euro area as a result of entry. It examines the sensitivity of these results to a variety of assumptions about when and how the UK entered and the observed global shocks and compares them with the effects of Swedish entry. JEL Code: C32, C35, E17, F15, F42.


The purpose of this paper is to assess the adequacy of the Australian retirement system to fund the needs of retirees by taking into account both the Knightian risk arising from market volatility under normal market conditions as well as the Knightian uncertainty arising from rare but severe market shocks. We have also taken into account changes in employment during the pre-retirement phase. Given the low frequency, high impact of market shocks, the result is that cohorts of Australian retirees will enjoy very different levels of retirement income and there will be consequent shocks to the demand for the Age Pension supplement and potentially, significant variations in the standard of living in retirement for Australian employees. Whilst the Australian retirement system has been put forward as a model for other economies to follow, we find there is a fundamental flaw in the system.


Siberia and Western Russia are home to over 40 culturally and linguistically diverse indigenous ethnic groups. Yet, genetic variation of peoples from this region is largely uncharacterized. We present whole-genome sequencing data from 28 individuals belonging to 14 distinct indigenous populations from that region. We combine these datasets with additional 32 modern-day and 15 ancient human genomes to build and compare autosomal, Y-DNA and mtDNA trees. Our results provide new links between modern and ancient inhabitants of Eurasia. Siberians share 38% of ancestry with descendants of the 45,000-year-old Ust'-Ishim people, who were previously believed to have no modern-day descendants. Western Siberians trace 57% of their ancestry to the Ancient North Eurasians, represented by the 24,000-year-old Siberian Mal'ta boy. In addition, Siberians admixtures are present in lineages represented by Eastern European hunter-gatherers from Samara, Karelia, Hungary and Sweden (from 8,000-6,600 years ago), as well as Yamnaya culture people (5,300-4,700 years ago) and modern-day northeastern Europeans. These results provide new evidence of ancient gene flow from Siberia into Europe.


In 1982, Duncan Kennedy's essay on hierarchies in legal education appeared in the Journal of Legal Education and publicly recognized what many had acknowledged to be problems and gaps in contemporary legal education. At the time the article was written, academic support as an institution in legal education was in its infancy. Looking back at the development of the academic support movement demonstrates that, in many respects, it was designed to address at least some of the issues raised by Kennedy. This essay looks at the emergence of academic support in legal education in the context of Kennedy's article, examining the genesis of academic support programs, their development in the last two decades, possible future directions, and their implications for legal education and the broader legal profession. It concludes that academic support programs that focus on learning and empowering students to develop the skills to practice law in a complex and diverse society while developing positive, meaningful professional identities will become more central to the education mission of the law school and in so doing some of the existing hierarchies in legal education may be challenged and the issues raised by Duncan Kennedy positively addressed.


Numerous studies have been conducted to explore the potential usage of natural ventilation in buildings. However, this issue has not yet been effectively resolved due to the inconsistency of air flow patterns and the extent of the parameters involved in the studies. This paper aims to identify the usefulness of the ventilation optimization model framework that intends to assess the natural ventilation performance within an office space through allocation of passive designs. An administration office of nursery unit known as Tapak Semaian Mantin located in the outskirt of Seremban District which consists of 17 respondents was selected in this study. Feedback in Likert scales set in questionnaires was collected, analyzed and evaluated throughout this study. The final findings of this study show that the findings generated through the framework are able to provide an alternative estimation approach to assist the designer and the building management professionals to justify the applicability of passive design to enhance the natural ventilation performance in office buildings in the future.


We investigate the seasonal, local solar time, and geomagnetic activity variations of the average Doppler ve- locity measured by an HF digital ionosonde deployed at Bun- doora, Australia (145.1 E, 37.7 S, geographic; 49 S mag- netic). The Doppler velocities were heavily averaged to sup- press the short-term effects (<3 hours) of atmospheric grav- ity waves, and thereby obtain the diurnal variations attributed to the tidally-driven ionospheric dynamo and electric fields generated by magnetic disturbances. The observed seasonal variations in Doppler velocity were probably controlled by variations in the lower thermospheric winds and ionospheric conductivity above Bundoora and in the magnetically conju- gate location. The diurnal variations of the meridional (field- perpendicular) drifts and their perturbations exhibited a com- plex structure, and were generally smaller than the variations in the zonal drifts. The latter were basically strongly west- ward during the evening to early morning, and weakly east- ward during the late morning to just past noon. The zonal perturbations were strongly enhanced by increasing geomag- netic activity, and closely resembled the perturbation drifts measured by the incoherent scatter radar (ISR) at Millstone Hill (71.5 W, 42.6 N; 57 N). There was also some re- semblance between the diurnal variations in the meridional drifts. Overall, the comparisons suggest that with sufficient averaging, Doppler velocities measured with digital ionoson- des at mid-latitudes correspond to true ion motions driven by ionospheric electric fields. This is a useful result because apart from the ISRs located in the American-European sec- tor, there are no ground-based instruments capable of mea- suring electric fields in the mid-latitude ionosphere.


Within the domain of tourism, tourist-host relationships are dynamic and complex. The nature of interaction between tourist and host potentially renders a destination more or less desirable to tourists and this, in turn, may impact upon the development and promotion of tourism for that destination. In particular, differences between tourists and hosts will influence the kind of relationship that emerges at the points of contact between them. In 'intra-national' settings, where tourists from one country interact with hosts from another, such differences will inevitably be in evidence. Thus, understanding the relevance of nationalism to tourist-host relationships is fundamental to the management of tourism in these contexts.

To date, however, little academic attention has been paid to nationalistic determinants of tourist-host encounters. The purpose of this thesis is to address this gap in the literature. Critically exploring the influences of nationalism within tourist-hosts relationships, it focuses specifically on the case of Bala, a small community and tourist destination in North Wales, identifying and appraising the extent and implications of nationalism on the relationship between English tourists and Welsh hosts. Utilising Q method, a technique designed for the systematic study of subjectivity, the research seeks to elicit English tourists' and Welsh hosts' subjectivities concerning nationalism, and by association, uncover subjectivities towards national identities, culture and tourism. It reveals that, fundamentally, nationalism does influence the nature of the relationship between English tourists and Welsh hosts in a number of ways, particularly with respect to nationalistic understanding, perceptions of self in relation to others and perception of others. However, the research also indicates that the nature of relationships between tourists and hosts is essentially an ongoing social process which, given time, will reach an organic equilibrium condition. As a consequence, tourism policy and process interventions to manage tourist-host relationships are considered futile within 'intra-national' environments.


Recent studies have shown that Korean Red Ginseng (KRG) suppresses dopaminergic neuronal death in the brain of a Parkinson's disease (PD) mouse model, but the mechanism is still elusive. Using a 2-dimensional electrophoresis technique, we investigated whether KRG can restore the changes in protein expressions in the striatum (ST) of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP)-injected mice. Male C57BL/6 mice (9 weeks old) were injected with 20 mg/kg MPTP intraperitoneally four times at 2-h intervals. KRG (100 mg/kg) was orally administered once a day for 3 days from one hour after the first MPTP injection. Two hours after the third KRG administration a pole test was performed to evaluate motor function, after which the brains were immediately harvested. Survival of dopaminergic neurons in the nigrostriatal pathway and protein expression in the ST were measured by immunohistochemistry and 2-dimensional electrophoresis. KRG suppressed MPTP-induced behavioral dysfunction and neuronal death in the nigrostriatal pathway. Moreover, 30 proteins changed by MPTP and KRG in the ST were identified and shown to be related to glycolysis/gluconeogenesis and neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease and PD. KRG has neuroprotective effects against MPTP toxicity and alleviates protein expression profiles related to enhancing energy metabolism in the ST of MPTP-treated mice.


The power quality in distribution systems becomes deteriorated due to an increase in nonlinear loads. This paper presents a new method, based on interactive multiobjective nonlinear programming (MONLP), using genetic algorithms (GAs) to study passive filter planning. The short-circuit capacity of the point of common coupling (PCC) and the individual bus loads are modeled with the fuzzy sets. The harmonic voltages and the filter cost are minimized while satisfying the harmonic standard and harmonic power flow equations with the harmonic Y-matrix. An 18-bus system is used as a test system for showing the applicability of the proposed method.


The aim of this dissertation is to discuss recent theoretical insights into information behavior of Catholic and other Christian priests in the world, offer research methodology, conduct research and critically analyze results of the research which will identify information needs and behavior patterns of Catholic priests in Croatia in their pastoral work (liturgy, catechesis, counseling, parish management). Study will be conducted using quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative methodology (semi structured interviews). Keywords : information needs, information behavior, pastoral roles, parish priests, Roman Catholic church


This article addresses research conducted in Portugal on the application of Rand Spiro's Cognitive Flexibility Theory, describing work developed in the last decade. The studies presented range from the theory itself and the pedagogical and technological principles it defends as applied to learning, to how teachers interpret and translate it in the development of teaching materials, or even on how it can be used for setting up communities of learning an practice. Still other studies address how CFT can be used as a cognitive tool for deconstructing knowledge and lead students to reflect upon this process in distributed learning environments.


One possible form of how children use parental models in their social relations would be if children showed more willingness to make friendships with peers resembling their parents. To test this possibility, composite faces created from 3 to 6 year old children's photos were trans- formed to resemble facial images of their parents. The children were asked to show which one of the two same-sex transforms they find more appealing: the familial or the control face. Children who lived in emotional proximity to their parents, and in particular to their mothers, were at- tracted more to father-resembling faces than to unfamiliar ones. These results suggest that child- hood experiences influence face preferences. This bias may affect social decisions later in adult- hood, and could help to explain preferences for parent-resembling mates.


The military had been concerned about military patriotic education for a long time when Putin's Patriotic Education Programme was published. As soon as the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred, followed a few years later by the creation of the Russian armed forces, they had already been developing patriotic education programmes aimed primarily at youth, aided by veterans of local wars, both volunteers and recruits. The aim of this article is to show that the military version of patriotic education aims openly to encourage military service, and that the Russian state will try to enlist veterans of the Afghanistan and Chechen wars in activities linked to military patriotic education and its spread in military and civilian spheres. Our hypothesis is that the determination to bring veterans together around a common project has two aims: (1) to federate veterans around the authorities and (2) to channel a population that escapes government control and some of whose excesses on their return to civilian life (violence towards the population in the context of their function, for veterans of the Interior Ministry in particular) have darkened the image of the ministries known as the "power" ministries.


For the past few years, Deep Neural Network (DNN) robustness has become a question of paramount importance. As a matter of fact, in sensitive settings misclassification can lead to dramatic consequences. Such misclassifications are likely to occur when facing adversarial attacks, hardware failures or limitations, and imperfect signal acquisition. To address this question, authors have proposed different approaches aiming at increasing the robustness of DNNs, such as adding regularizers or training using noisy examples. In this paper we propose a new regularizer built upon the Laplacian of similarity graphs obtained from the representation of training data at each layer of the DNN architecture. This regularizer penalizes large changes (across consecutive layers in the architecture) in the distance between examples of different classes, and as such enforces smooth variations of the class boundaries. Since it is agnostic to the type of deformations that are expected when predicting with the DNN, the proposed regularizer can be combined with existing ad-hoc methods. We provide theoretical justification for this regularizer and demonstrate its effectiveness to improve robustness of DNNs on classical supervised learning vision datasets.


This paper proposes that word minimality, correlated with a bimoraic foot, provides a unitary account of three separate historical developments in the Hispano-Romance languages, to date considered unrelated: the preservation of a word-final nasal, the change /ee/ > /ej/, and yod augmentation in four present 1st person verb forms: soy, doy, voy and estoy . It is suggested that two otherwise regular sound changes, -m deletion and identical vowel simplification (/ee/ >/e/), failed to occur in a small number of lexical items in order to avoid their impeding reduction to a subminimal size, and that yod accretion in the Old Spanish monosyllabic forms do, so, vo , and esto was also driven by compliance with a minimal word requirement. In support of this analysis is the empirical evidence from the historical evolution of Hispano-Romance, which points to a weight-sensitive metrical system in which the bimoraic foot can be identified as the minimal prosodic word.


The performance of deep neural models can deteriorate substantially when there is a domain shift between training and test data. For example, the pre-trained BERT model can be easily fine-tuned with just one additional output layer to create a state-of-the-art model for a wide range of tasks. However, the fine-tuned BERT model suffers considerably at zero-shot when applied to a different domain. In this paper, we present a novel two-step domain adaptation framework based on curriculum learning and domain-discriminative data selection. The domain adaptation is conducted in a mostly unsupervised manner using a small target domain validation set for hyper-parameter tuning. We tested the framework on four large public datasets with different domain similarities and task types. Our framework outperforms a popular discrepancy-based domain adaptation method on most transfer tasks while consuming only a fraction of the training budget.


With a foreword by Richard E. Vander Ross In recent years, dramatic increases in racial intermarriage have given birth to a generation who refuse to be shoehorned into neat, pre-existing racial categories. Energized by a refusal to allow mixed-race people to be rendered invisible, this movement lobbies aggressively to have the category multiracial added to official racial classifications. While applauding the self-awareness and activism at the root of this movement, Jon Michael Spencer questions its ultimate usefulness, deeply concerned that it will unintentionally weaken minority power. Focusing specifically on mixed-race blacks, Spencer argues that the mixed-race movement in the United States would benefit from consideration of how multiracial categories have evolved in South Africa. Americans, he shows us, are deeply uninformed about the tragic consequences of the former white South African government's classification of mixed-race people as Coloured. Spencer maintains that a multiracial category in the U.S. could be equally tragic, not only for blacks but formultiracials themselves. Further, splintering people of color into such classifications of race and mixed race aggravates race relations among society's oppressed. A group that can attain some privilege through a multiracial identity is unlikely to identify with the lesser status group, blacks. It may be that the undoing of racial classification will come not by initiating a new classification, but by our increased recognition that there are millions of people who simply defy easy classification.


This paper describes sleep and adaptive link rate (ALR) control functions to reduce the power consumption of optical network units (ONUs) in 10 Gb/s Ethernet passive optical network (10G-EPON) systems. A hybrid mechanism that includes both sleep and ALR control functions is proposed with a view to further improving the power-saving performance. The sleep control function switches the ONU mode, i.e., active or sleep, depending on the presence or absence of traffic. The ALR control function switches the downlink rates between an optical line terminal (OLT) and an ONU, i.e., 1 Gb/s or 10 Gb/s, depending on the quantity of traffic. The proposed hybrid mechanism offers effective power management of ONUs on the basis of the traffic conditions. The proposed hybrid mechanism is validated by a numerical simulation and an experiment.