The counterdiffusion of gases across a composite layer can lead to supersaturation and development of bubbles within the layer. A physicochemical model has been derived to predict the extent of such supersaturation; experiments with inert liquid layers confirm predictions. These findings explain the evolution of cutaneous lesions observed in man during simulated deep-sea dives and the cutaneous lesions and intravascular bubbles experimentally induced in pigs by exchanging certain inert gases across the skin. The phenomena associated with counterdiffusion have widespread physical and biological implications.


Consider a population of citizens uniformly spread over the entire plane, that faces a problem of locating public facilities to be used by its members. The cost of every facility is financed by its users, who also face an idiosyncratic private access cost to the facility. We assume that the facilities' cost is independent of location and access costs are linear with respect to the Euclidean distance. We show that an external intervention that covers 0.19% of the facility cost is sufficient to guarantee secession-proofness or no cross-subsidization, where no group of individuals is charged more than its stand alone cost incurred if it had acted on its own. Moreover, we demonstrate that in this case the Rawlsian access pricing is the only secession-proof allocation.


Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease characterized by the breakdown of immune tolerance towards autoantigen in the myelin sheath surrounding the neurons. Current therapies for MS and other autoimmune diseases focus on treating the symptoms and not the cause of the disease. A major setback in improving current therapeutics for autoimmunity is the lack of antigen specificity. Successful antigen-specific immunotherapy (ASIT) would allow for improved treatment of autoimmune diseases. This thesis investigates the creation of ASIT for autoimmunity through the co-delivery of an immunomodulator and autoantigen. First, immunomodulatory peptides targeting the B7 costimulatory pathway and cell adhesion were tested for their ability to suppress a murine model of MS, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), utilizing a co-delivery vehicle developed in our lab, soluble antigen arrays. Peptides targeting different surface markers were all found to suppress EAE when codelivered with autoantigen, demonstrating the ability of different immunomodulators to create effective ASIT. Expanding upon the idea of combinational ASIT, eleven different small molecules immunomodulators were screened for properties indicative of autoimmune suppression in an antigen-specific splenocyte system. This screen revealed that several compounds, most notably dexamethasone, had the ability to skew the antigen-specific immune response towards autoimmune suppression. The ability of dexamethasone to act as an effective immunomodulator in ASIT for autoimmunity was confirmed in vivo in the treatment of EAE. Co-delivery of dexamethasone and autoantigen in an oil-in-water emulsion, incomplete Freund's adjuvant, was found to suppress EAE and shift the immune response. Overall, the results presented dissertation provide evidence for the successful creation of ASIT for autoimmunity by combining immunomodulator and autoantigen.


Background: Evolutionary changes in natural populations can occur on ecological time scales. Investigators have become very interested in characterizing short-term fluctuations in selection pressure, in identifying the circumstances under which the opportunity for selection is greatest, and in determining whether this opportunity is realized. Aims: Introduce a new metric to explore how the opportunity for selection on the mean of a phenotypic character varies with time. Using data from two long-term studies of marked individuals, examine how the opportunity for and the selection on a character mean and variance covary with population growth. Metrics: The traditional opportunity for selection metric (OS) is defined as the variance in relative fitness or the variation in absolute fitness divided by the square of the mean absolute fitness. This metric might not be appropriate to evaluate the maximum selection acting on a quantitative character because individual variation in both quantitative characters and in fitness underpins evolution by natural selection. We therefore develop a new metric, the opportunity for selection on a quantitative character (OSM), which considers variation in both character and fitness distributions. Methods: Determine selection, OS, and OSM, in both simulated and empirical data. Compare the results for the traditional OS metric with the new OSM. Results: The classical measure of the OS correlates with the OSM when calculated on simulated data but their association was curvilinear for non-normally distributed fitness components. Similar results were found for empirical data but their correlations were lower. Selection is strongest in declining populations and is greatest when the OSM is large, as in harsh environments. Conclusions: Because most fitness components are non-normally distributed, OS will only approximately capture the maximum possible selection differential on phenotypic characters over a time step. The OSM should be a more useful metric for determining how selection will alter the distribution of characters.


The specification of controller setting for a standard controller typically requires a trade-off between set point tracking and disturbance rejection. For this reason, two simple strategies can be used to adjust the set point and disturbance responses independently. These strate- gies are referred as controllers that have two degree of freedom. Unfortunately, the tuning parameters of the model uncertainty at two degree of freedom structure controller are difficult to obtain. Maximum peak-gain margin (Mp-GM) tuning method has been intro-duced to obtain the setting parameters of two degree of freedom structure controller based on model uncertainty. This tuning method is able to obtain reasonable controller parameters even under process uncertainties on standard two degree of freedom IMC. This research was conducted to develop maximum peak-gain margin tuning method for another two degree of freedom structure controller such as two degree of freedom IMC by Kaya [9] and two degree of freedom PID. The simulation results show that the maximum peak-gain margin tuning method can give a good target set point tracking, disturbance rejection, and robustness in two degree of freedom structure controller system.


Abstract Overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear weapons creates danger. The passing of the last elite witness of the most dangerous nuclear crisis, that is, the 'Cuban Missile Crisis', and the current Trump administration only make this more salient. In this context, this article reviews the scholarly literature about the limits of predictability and controllability of nuclear crises and investigates three failures of learning from them. Given that France displays in particularly acute form some of the sources of overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear crises that can been found in other nuclear armed states, this article offers the first study of the French experience and evolving interpretation of the Cuban missile crisis in comparative perspective, based on untapped primary material. In security studies, this article makes three contributions. First, the publication and interpretation of primary sources is a contribution in itself given the frequent misconceptions about nuclear dynamics due to theory-driven extrapolations. Second, it challenges a widespread assumption of automaticity linking a fear-induced deterrent effect and the presence of nuclear weapons. Third, empirically, this article studies part of a regime of valuation of nuclear weapons. It finally outlines a research agenda to take luck seriously in security studies.


Background: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine abnormality in women, there is an increasing evidence for an oxidative stress in PCOS that induce genomic and mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid damage that leads directly to reduced fertility. The objectives of this study are to assess and compare the periodontal health status by measuring clinical periodontal parameters (PLI, GI and BOP)as well as serum levels of superoxide dismutase at gingivitis ,gingivitis with PCOS and healthy periodontium groups, then correlate between clinical and biochemical parameters. Materials and Methods: 60 females with an age range between (25-40) years old had been tested and divided into3 groups ,the control group consists of (20) females with healthy periodontium, group of (20) females with gingivitis and group of (20) females with gingivitis and PCOS. After completion of clinical periodontal parameters recording (PLI, GI& BOP), blood samples were collected and biochemical analysis of serum samples were carried out by using [Super oxide dismutase Assay kit] to evaluate serum super oxide dismutase levels. Results: The highest mean values of PLI,GI and BOP score1 were found in gingivitis+PCOS group. Highly significant difference was revealed among the groups regarding mean values of Superoxide dismutase with the highest mean value at gingivitis+ PCOS followed by gingivitis groups. Non-significant correlation were demonstrated between clinical and biochemical parameters except the significant moderate positive correlation of BOP at gingivitis+PCOS group. Conclusion: It could be certified that severity of gingivitis may increase in patients with PCOS. The concentration of serum SOD increased with the severity of gingival inflammation as well as the presence of PCOS. Serum SOD may be useful biochemical marker for early detection of periodontal disease and PCOS.


This paper discusses three main issues, namely (a) some basic facts on the access of females and males to higher education in Africa (b) participation of men and women with higher education in the labour market particularly, in the civil service, higher education and in entrepreneurial activities; and (c) some of the reasons why there is disparity in the percentages of men and women who have access to higher education. These issues are explored with emphasis on the social and cultural impediments, and the dis-empowering effects of the curriculum and methodology of education. Emphasis is placed on what takes place in the home at primary and secondary school, and during higher education. It is concluded that once females have overcome the cultural and social impediments at the household level, education itself becomes a stumbling block in their progress through school. This is because the curriculum and methodology at all levels of the system teaches technical knowledge and skills without ensuring that students acquire basic skills in social justice and developmental work.


Selective laser melting (SLM) is a nonlinear process which involves melting of powder metal using laser to manufacture intricate metallic parts. During laser melting, the meltpool dynamics are influenced by initial laser processing parameters such as laser power and scan speed. Understanding of the meltpool flow physics and associated heat transfer is important for producing stable meltpool and hence high quality layers and parts. This research work focuses on the steady state numerical simulation of heat flux driven flows in the meltpool of pure metal (24 carat gold powder). Experimental observations indicated a relationship between the sizes of balling and the laser energy density, while no such relationship could be deduced for the change in the spatial gap between the droplets or balling. The splitting of meltpool away from the path of scan and first line balling was also observed. Simulation results predict the formation of different types of balling at different scan speeds and heat flux to be linked with heat transfer from the meltpool. Results indicate that the size of meltpool is largely dependent on the applied heat flux and its rate of transport to the surroundings i.e. boundary conditions. The steady state velocity patterns in the meltpool, driven by heat flux from the neighbouring surfaces, match well with experimental results.


Intoxications are a common problem all over the world and cause acid-base balance disturbances, dysionias or acute renal failure; they can develop rapidly leading to severe cellular dysfunction and death. Intoxications and drug overdoses often require the intervention of Nephrologists, for the correction of acidosis, the administration of selective inhibitory enzymes and also hemodialysis treatment. Extracorporeal therapies have been used to remove toxins for over fifty years and have acquired an increasing role, thanks to the use of new treatment modalities in intoxicated patients. In our clinical practice in the Covid period we have found an increase in clinical cases of intoxication with psychiatric drugs, including benzodiazepines, clozapine, lithium, quetiapine and cocaine.


Background: Very few direct comparative studies evaluating the results after unicompartmental knee replacement (UKA) and total knee replacement (TKA) are available. Only three previous studies have reported the results of UKA and TKA performed in the same patient. We report our results of simultaneous UKA and TKA in the same patient, performed under the same anaesthetic, at same the time, by the same surgeon. This is the first study to assess the results of UKA and TKA in the same patient, where all the patients had the procedures performed under the same anaesthetic at the same time Materials and methods: Twenty-one patients who had simultaneous primary UKA in one knee and primary TKA in the other knee were evaluated prospectively by means of the SANE (Single Assessment Numerical Evaluation) rating. In addition each patient was asked the simple question: "Which is your preferred knee?" Results: The follow-up period was a mean of 26 months (range 12-58 months). We found a statistically significant improvement in the SANE in both the UKAs and TKAs. Eleven patients had no preference between the UKA and the TKA (52.4%), seven patients preferred the TKA (33.3%) while three patients stated that the UKA was their preferred knee (14.3%). The trend for patients to prefer the TKA was not statistically significant (p= 0.27). Conclusions: UKAs have been shown to be kinematically superior and the preservation of the cruciate ligaments affords better proprioception than a TKA. However, the findings of this study suggest that this does not translate to a better patient preference. In view of this finding, and considering the documented inferior survival rates of UKAs, we propose that the role of UKA in the treatment of gonarthrosis be reassessed.


Abstract: The purpose of this study is to analyze the tenets that relate to Dada's self-understanding of art. The phenomenon Dada is notoriously difficult to describe; some critics hesitate even to use the term "movement." Focusing on Dadaists' reflections about the phenomenon itself, we will try to delineate a general image of the Dada in the context of the European avant-gardes of the 20-th century. We will also try to analyze the historical and political context inside which the dada phenomenon occurred. Our main focus will be on two main tenets of Dadaism: the "self-critical" feature of Dada's self-image as it emerges during the main phases of its history, especially during its early phase, and the political commitment of Dada during its last phases of development. Key Words: Dada, art, Romania, Hasidism, modernity, mostmodernity, politics, critique, ideology, propaganda The Meaning(s) of Dada The montage, the collage, the photomontage, the ready-made, or the happening have all developed nowadays into typical artistic techniques, occasionally cliched to the point of tasteless kitsch. Surely, since the beginnings of XX-th century mass-culture, these techniques have been, in various forms and concentrations, entering the mainstream production lines of consumerist cultural objects. Despite all these, to the usual contemporary reader of art literature, it is relatively unknown that these modes of expression and these techniques were, basically, inventions of groups of artists at the beginning of the XX-century, "revolutionary" artists that rebelled against societal conventions, political structures, and social norms, against bourgeois institutions, narrow habits and mindless ideologies, and finally, against the situation of the "art" itself, which they considered artificial, immoral, false, and depraved. These artists were later labeled "avant-garde" artists. In its earliest use, "avant-garde" denominated the artistic groups around 1825, commonly associated with Saint-Simonism and Fourierism. The pre-socialist Olinde Rodrigues called upon artists "to serve as an avant-garde" for social change and for a "glorious future." He considered that art had the power to affect its audience and to produce sensations that would ennoble thought as well as provide the energy for social change towards the common good. Richard Murphy, in his Theorizing the Avant-Garde (2004), produces evidence of a number of texts from the English Romantic writers, such as Wordsworth or Shelley. They echoed the humanitarian ideas of their age and held that the function of the work of art is to generate enlightening and civilizing emotions, which would "bind people together, strengthening and purifying the affections and so enlarging the individual's capacity to resist early modernity's negative effects - most notably those of alienation." In the German-speaking world, the most influential Romantic writer who encouraged this form of utopian aestheticism was Friedrich Schiller.1 In France, the utopian ideas about art were discussed earlier by Condorcet and Rousseau and put into practice by the French Revolutionaries, especially Gracchus Babeuf and Pierre Sylvain Marechal (see their famous Manifesto of the Equals, 1796). Different from the German or the English writers, the French intellectuals of the Revolution were more interested in the propagation of real political goals or social policies. Purifying passions through art and seeking virtuous instruction in the artistic oeuvres were not their main concern. Commenting on different meanings of the term "avant-garde," Richard Murphy differentiates between the "idealist" avant-garde of the XIX-th century, characterized by the "goal of reducing distance from art and life" and by the "elevation of the worldly to the ideal sphere of art," and the "historical avant-garde" of the early XX-th century, delineated by its cynical attack on the once progressive function of "social-based," utopian art. …


The ability to predict the effect of dimension and thickness variability on the dynamic
response of realistically uncertain engineering structures is examined in this thesis.
Initially, available methods for predicting key response statistics and probabilities, for
both low and high frequencies are examined to establish their strengths and limitations
for specified levels of random dimension variability. For low frequency applications,
the ability of Direct Integration (DI) and the First-Order Reliability Method (FORM) to
predict exceedance probability is examined. For high frequency applications, the ability
of the methods of Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) and DI to predict the mean and
standard deviation of the energy response is examined.

The use of Extreme Value (EV) theory is included as a way to bound responses using
simulated or measured responses. The strengths and limitations of Monte Carlo
simulation methods are explored for both low and high frequency responses of
randomly uncertain structures using both simple mode superposition plate-structure
solutions and (commercially available) finite element solutions for coupled plate
structures.

To address, without the need to undertake expensive Monte Carlo simulation, the
problem of predicting response bounds for structures with varying levels of uncertainty,
a novel DI-EV method is developed and examined. It is tested first on a simple plate
structure, then on a coupled plate structure, with low-level and high-level random
dimension and thickness uncertainty. In addition, the method is compared with the
SEA-EV method.

The thesis shows that the results from the existing SEA-EV bounding approach gives
good bounds only at particular frequencies and mainly for low levels of dimension
variability. In contrast, the proposed DI-EV bounding approach compare extremely well
with Monte Carlo simulations, which is not only at all frequencies but also with both
low-level and high-level uncertainties, for simple and coupled plate structures with
dimension and thickness variation.


Microfit 5.0 is an interactive, menu-driven program with a host of facilities for estimation, hypothesis testing, forecasting, data processing, file management, and graphic display. These features make Microfit 5.0 one of the most powerful menu-driven time-series econometric packages currently available. It is a major advance over Microfit 4 and offers a unique built-in interactive, searchable econometric text. It provides users with technical, functional and tutorial help throughout the package. Another key feature is that it can be used at different levels of technical sophistication. For experienced users of econometric programmes, it offers a variety of univariate methods, multivariate techniques for cointegration, principal components, canonical correlations and multivariate volatility modelling, and provides a large number of diagnostic and non-nested tests not readily available in other packages. The interaction of excellent graphics and estimation capabilities in Microfit 5.0 allows important econometric research to be carried out in a matter of days rather than weeks. This comprehensive and accessible manual outlines and explains all of Microfit's features and functionality and is a valuable resource in its own right for those new to Microfit and those who want to use and understand its more advanced features.


Commensal yeast from the genus Candida is part of the healthy human microbiota. In some cases, Candida spp. dysbiosis can result in candidiasis, the symptoms of which may vary from mild localized rashes to severe disseminated infections. The most prevalent treatments against candidiasis involve fluconazole, itraconazole, miconazole, and caspofungin. Moreover, amphotericin B associated with prolonged azole administration is utilized to control severe cases. Currently, numerous guidelines recommend echinocandins to treat invasive candidiasis. However, resistance to these antifungal drugs has increased dramatically over recent years. Considering this situation, new therapeutic alternatives should be studied to control candidiasis, which has become a major medical concern. Limonene belongs to the group of terpene molecules, known for their pharmacological properties. In this study, we evaluated in vitro the limonene concentration capable of inhibiting the growth of yeast from the genus Candida susceptible or resistant to antifungal drugs and its capacity to induce fungal damage. In addition, intravaginal fungal infection assays using a murine model infected by Candida albicans were carried out and the fungal burden, histopathology, and scanning electron microscopy were evaluated. All of our results suggest that limonene may play a protective role against the infection process by yeast from the genus Candida.


A efficient method of entering the state is the Friction stir welding (FSW).The joining temperature is lower than that and the phase used Inside the types of Welding via selection. With this one way, FSW is deemed to have give over combination welding, a few focal points for separate metal with welding. This research focuses on the impacts of material location and rotational speed on tensile strength. This study focuses on the latest test of the unit. For the welding process, material alloys for AA2014 and AA7075 are selected. The welded ones aluminium compounds are materials6.0 mm thick and are not used by conventional manufacturing equipment. Three sets of Varying rotational speeds have created joints of the system and by replacing the fixed situation on advancement and progress with drawing sides of the material. The study found that If AA7075aluminium amalgams with clear surface appearance and no surface appearance were set at a rotational speed of 1000 rpm on the propelling side. internal deformity over welding region, the greatest rigidity of 207 MPa has been achieved sample for sample C, while the most reduced elasticity was 160 MPa when it was AA7075,mounted on the retreating side with extreme passage deserts in the welding field contributing spread to be divided, it was obtained for sample A. Along these lines, more fragile materials should on the propelling hand, set it in specific welding to cause warmth from the revolution of the instrument and smoothness of the arrangement of the stream of content in the mixed region.


Excerpt] Despite the resumption of economic (output) growth in June 2009, the unemployment rate remains at an historically high level more than two years into the recovery from the 11th recession of the postwar period. The unemployment rate, which is the number of unemployed persons divided by the number of persons in the labor force, has settled at about 9.0% during the first three quarters of 2011. The stalled rebound of the labor market through September 2011 has prompted speculation about a doubledip recession and renewed calls for measures to stimulate the economy beyond those Congress has previously enacted. From a public policy perspective, the main driver of the unemployment rate is the pace of output growth. This report first examines the long-run relationship between the two economic variables and then narrows its focus to the periods of recovery from the postwar recessions.


The cave-temple complex popularly known as the Dunhuang caves is the world's largest extant repository of Tang Buddhist art. Among the best preserved of the Dunhuang caves is the Zhai Family Cave, built in 642. It is this remarkable cave-temple that forms the focus of Ning Qiang's cross-disciplinary exploration of the interrelationship of art, religion, and politics during the Tang. In his careful examination of the paintings and sculptures found there, the author combines the historical study of pictures with the pictorial study of history. By employing this two-fold approach, he is able to refer to textual evidence in interpreting the formal features of the cave-temple paintings and to employ visual details to fill in the historical gaps inevitably left by text-oriented scholars. The result is a comprehensive analysis of the visual culture of the period and a vivid description of social life in medieval China. The original Zhai Family Cave pictures were painted over in the tenth century and remained hidden until the early 1940s. Once exposed, the early artwork appeared fresh and colorful in comparison with other Tang paintings at Dunhuang.


Video sequence resolution enhancement became a popular research area during the last two decades. Although traditional super-resolution techniques have been successful in dealing with image sequences, many constraints such as global translation between frames, have to be imposed to obtain good performance. In this paper, we present a new wavelet-based nonlocal-means (WNLM) framework to bypass the motion estimation stage. It can handle complex motion changes between frames. Compared with the nonlocal-means (NLM) super-resolution framework, the proposed method provides better result in terms of PSNR and faster processing.


We propose a new scheme for quantum computation using flying qubits--propagating photons in a one-dimensional waveguide interacting with matter qubits. Photon-photon interactions are mediated by the coupling to a four-level system, based on which photon-photon π-phase gates (CONTROLLED-NOT) can be implemented for universal quantum computation. We show that high gate fidelity is possible, given recent dramatic experimental progress in superconducting circuits and photonic-crystal waveguides. The proposed system can be an important building block for future on-chip quantum networks.


This paper explores the latest developments in key spheres of the RussiaIndia relationship in order to identify the state of bilateral ties at a time when South Asia has turned into an area of geopolitical contest of both global and regional powers. While preserving some elements of "old friendship", current Russia-India cooperation lacks any significant engagement in trade and economy, scientific and cultural exchanges, while their political outlook toward the regional processes in South Asia is not in full congruence. The strategic partnership between the two countries boils down to their collaboration in two major spheres: defense and energy. Yet, despite resembling a purely sectoral cooperation, the bilateral ties have been quite resistant to an array of internal and external challenges: from the instability of the 1990s to the US sanctions against Russia that emerged as a problem for both Moscow and New Delhi in 2018.


Teilhard de Chardin has shown that the world and man evolve in stages toward perfection. Each stage shows an improvement from the previous stage. The evolution of man is relatively recent compared to the evolution of the world and the universe. Therefore, man's evolution towards perfection is still going to take a long time. In this perspective, it appears to be too premature for Francis Fukuyama to predict the end of history with the victory of the ideas of liberalism-capitalism-democracy over socialism-communism-autocracy.


Title of Document: Chemotherapeutic Treatment Options to Manage Xylella fastidiosa in Shade Trees Darren DeStefano Master of Natural Resource Sciences 2005 Directed By: Associate Professor Joseph Sullivan Natural Resource Sciences and Landscape Architecture Xylella fastidiosa is a fastidious, xylem-limited, broad spectrum, bacterial plant pathogen native to the Americas, causing substantial economic losses to the viticulture, citrus, and shade tree industries. In shade trees the disease is manifested as a chronic late season leaf scorch largely confined to urban areas of southeastern North America. Proposed treatments include antibiotics and growth regulators. Recently paclobutrazol, a diastereomeric triazole with fungistatic and growth regulation properties has been associated with symptom remission. Investigation into direct interaction of paclobutrazol with X. fastidiosa show no significant reduction in growth at the manufacturers recommended dosage of 20 μg ml-1; however significant reductions in growth were observed at a dosage of 200 μg ml-1. Therefore high levels of paclobutrazol may have a direct effect on X. fastidiosa while other plant physiological effects induced by paclobutrazol merit investigation for association in symptom mitigation of X. fastidiosa.


Modern large scale technology, such as electric vehicles, has put increasing pressure on the need to develop improved energy storage systems capable of sustaining these powerful devices. One efficient way to store electrical energy is using high energy density batteries such as those based on metal-air electrochemistry. Metal-air batteries such as zinc-air rely on oxygen being the cathode reactant. The oxygen can enter from the atmosphere rather than being stored within the battery, therefore allowing the active anode, i.e. zinc, to occupy more space in the device and increasing the storage capacity of the battery. In terms of metal selection for these devices, metals such as zinc are safer, more stable and cheaper, when compared to lithium and sodium. While zinc-air batteries have the capacity to store a large amount of energy, they are disadvantaged by poor rechargeability. One of the main opportunities in metal-air battery research lies in the development of novel electrolyte systems that could improve the long-term cycling of the device. Such novel electrolytes are the topic of this thesis, focussing on solvents and ionic liquids containing ether based functional groups; the broad hypothesis of the work is that the ether functionality can provide some control over zinc coordination in an electrolyte and therefore facilitate zinc electrochemistry. The physical and electrochemical properties of an ether based solvent, tetraglyme, containing increasing concentrations of zinc chloride, were characterised in Chapter 2. By allowing the zinc ions to coordinate with the ether-oxygen atoms of the tetraglyme molecule, it was hypothesized that the formation of any unfavourable by-products in the electrolyte, that result in less reactive zinc and a lower capacity for the battery, would be eliminated. It was demonstrated through the thermal and physical properties of the solutions that zinc ions do coordinate to tetraglyme. However, spectroscopic data indicated that this coordination competes with the formation of zinc-chloro species, implying that the concentration and the type of zinc salt used (i.e. the anion it carries) plays a significant role in the interactions taking place. Nevertheless facile zinc oxidation and reduction were observed from this ethereal solvent, which suggests that ether based systems such as tetraglyme are promising candidates for zinc batteries. The concepts of Chapter 2 were then used as the basis for incorporating ether functional groups into an ionic liquid in order to improve the thermal stability, safety and the long-term cycling of zinc in the following chapters. Moreover the introduction of the electron-donating oxygen atom on one of the alkyl chains of the cation causes a weaker electrostatic interaction between the cation and the anion and reduces the viscosity of the ionic liquid. Much of the work presented in this thesis describes the synthesis and characterisation of alkoxy ammonium based ionic liquids that incorporate such ether based functional groups in the cation, as described in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. Chapter 3 investigates the role of increasing the ether chain length, to optimise the number of oxygen atoms, and the optimum anion required to support reversible zinc electrochemistry. This work shows that ILs containing alkoxy-cations with shorter ether chains, such as [N222(20201)]+, with weakly coordinating anions such as [NTf2] produce positive electrochemical properties for rechargeable zinc battery applications. The use of longer ether chains in the alkoxy-cations of the IL, such as [N222(202020201)]+, was found to strongly chelate the Zn2+ ions, thus decreasing the ability of the metal ions to be reduced. Chapter 4 then explores the role of ILs containing alkoxy-cations with multiple shorter ether chains with [NTf2]- based anions. It was proposed that, in addition to the mono-alkoxy cation [N222(20201)]+, the use of multiple short ether-based alkyl chains on the cation, such as the di-alkoxy [N22(20201)(20201)]+ and the tri-alkoxy [N2(20201)(20201)(20201)]+ based cations, could mitigate the tendency towards strong chelation observed with the single longer ether chain cations, such as [N222(202020201)]+. Additionally, following recent findings in the literature on the role of additives in ionic liquid electrolytes for rechargeable zinc batteries, water was also added to the IL/Zn(NTf2)2 mixtures to further enhance the physical properties of the ILs synthesised in Chapter 4. The results revealed that all three RTILs acquire similar physical properties and zinc is successfully reduced and oxidized from all of the systems. However, the spectroscopic studies and physical property data suggest that water is acting mostly as a diluting agent, as no substantial changes could be observed in the 1H NMR and the FT-IR spectra. A more extensive electrochemical study of Zn cycling in these electrolytes is described in Chapter 5 of this thesis. The morphology of the Zn deposits was observed using Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) was performed to confirm the composition of the deposits. Extended cycle tests showed that the tri-alkoxy based [NTf2]- IL electrolyte can undergo at least 750 charge and discharge cycles at 0.1 mA/cm2. It thus appears that these materials have potential as electrolytes for long-term cycling in secondary zinc batteries and other energy storage applications.


Fuel cell stacks produce a DC output with a 2:1 variation in output voltage from no load to full load. The output voltage of each fuel cell is about 0.4 V at full load and several of them are connected in series to construct a stack. An example 100 V fuel cell stack consists of 250 cells in series and to produce 300 V at full load requires 750 cells stacked in series. Since fuel cells actively convert the supplied fuel to electricity, each cell requires proper distribution of fuel, humidification, coupled with water/thermal management needs. With this added complexity stacking more cells in series decreases the reliability of the system. For example, in the presence of bad or mal-performing cell/cells in a stack, uneven heating coupled with variations in cell voltages may occur. Continuous operation under these conditions may not be possible or the overall stack output power is severely limited. In this paper a modular fuel cell powered by a modular DC-DC converter is proposed. The proposed concept electrically divides the fuel cell stack into various sections, each powered by a DC-DC converter. The proposed modular fuel cell powered by modular DC-DC converter eliminates many of these disadvantages, resulting in a fault tolerant system. A design example is presented for a 150 W, three section fuel cell stack and DC-DC converter topology. Experimental results obtained on a 150 W, three section PEM fuel cell stack powered by a modular DC-DC converter are discussed.


Using textual analysis and data from federal court opinions, I explore the relationship between collective bargaining and antitrust litigation in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Since collective bargaining began in these sports in the 1960s, there have been 21 strikes or lockouts. Baseball and football have had the most labor strife, with 8 work stoppages apiece – but their experiences have been very different. Because the Supreme Court ruled that baseball is completely exempt from antitrust law, players have had to use the strike weapon under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to liberalize free agency and increase team competition for their services. Football players, in contrast, staged several unsuccessful strikes in the 1970s and 1980s. Because of their weak bargaining power, they decertified their union in 1991 and 2011. This gave them standing as individuals under the Sherman Act to challenge NFL restrictions on their labor market mobility. Using detailed case materials, I show how a district court constantly supervised their labor agreement from 1993-2011.My study draws from legal and industrial relations theories to explain how labor agreements in pro sports are settled by collective bargaining or antitrust litigation. First, when courts do not define the antitrust-labor law boundary so that labor disputes are exempt from their jurisdiction, they open an alternative path to bargaining these agreements. Second, when courts entertain antitrust lawsuits, they raise the odds that economic weapons under the NLRA will not be used because of judicial inclination to protect players from irreparable harm and injury resulting from league-imposed labor market restrictions. Third, as this behavior becomes a pattern, collective bargaining is disrupted by faulty information as players, unions, and leagues guesstimate the odds that their differences will be settled at a collective bargaining table or in a court supervised negotiation. Fourth, as players negotiate better agreements in court compared to the bargaining table, they become addicted to this settlement process. To apply these theories, I use data from 82 federal antitrust court opinions from 1965-2011. Individual players are the most common antitrust plaintiff (65.5%), compared to player unions (8.6%). This means the dispute resolution processes of collective bargaining are supplanted by litigation in federal courts. And except for baseball players, pro athletes often lose labor disputes when economic weapons are used. Their dismal bargaining experience substantially improves, however, by suing under the Sherman Act. In court, players win 43.9% of the rulings, compared to 46.3% for the leagues. These rulings – for example, an injunction that ends a league's restrictions on free agency – can have dramatic consequences for antitrust settlements that are later codified in a collective bargaining agreement. Textual analysis of cases supports this conclusion. Applying the "narcotic effect" theory from industrial relations, I conclude that antitrust litigation addicts players in football and basketball to the adjudicatory procedures of the Sherman Act – thereby replacing collective bargaining. This is undesirable because Congress intended, under the NLRA, to leave labor and management free from government interference as they adjust their differences. In contrast, baseball's total exemption from antitrust law, combined with its high frequency of work stoppages, shows what happens when the opiate of antitrust litigation is not available to players: In time, labor and management establish an informed bargaining protocol, and work through their issues by making difficult concessions on their own. As long as courts entertain these sports lawsuits under the Sherman Act, collective bargaining will be subverted.


Non-intrusive appliance load monitoring is the process of disaggregating a household's total electricity consumption into its contributing appliances. In this paper we propose an approach by which individual appliances can be iteratively separated from an aggregate load. Unlike existing approaches, our approach does not require training data to be collected by sub-metering individual appliances, nor does it assume complete knowledge of the appliances present in the household. Instead, we propose an approach in which prior models of general appliance types are tuned to specific appliance instances using only signatures extracted from the aggregate load. The tuned appliance models are then used to estimate each appliance's load, which is subsequently subtracted from the aggregate load. This process is applied iteratively until all appliances for which prior behaviour models are known have been disaggregated. We evaluate the accuracy of our approach using the REDD data set, and show the disaggregation performance when using our training approach is comparable to when sub-metered training data is used. We also present a deployment of our system as a live application and demonstrate the potential for personalised energy saving feedback.


Text to speech (TTS) has made rapid progress in both academia and industry in recent years. Some questions naturally arise that whether a TTS system can achieve human-level quality, how to define/judge that quality and how to achieve it. In this paper, we answer these questions by first defining the human-level quality based on the statistical significance of subjective measure and introducing appropriate guidelines to judge it, and then developing a TTS system called NaturalSpeech that achieves human-level quality on a benchmark dataset. Specifically, we leverage a variational autoencoder (VAE) for end-to-end text to waveform generation, with several key modules to enhance the capacity of the prior from text and reduce the complexity of the posterior from speech, including phoneme pre-training, differentiable duration modeling, bidirectional prior/posterior modeling, and a memory mechanism in VAE. Experiment evaluations on popular LJSpeech dataset show that our proposed NaturalSpeech achieves -0.01 CMOS (comparative mean opinion score) to human recordings at the sentence level, with Wilcoxon signed rank test at p-level p>>0.05, which demonstrates no statistically significant difference from human recordings for the first time on this dataset.


As a result of innovative technologies designed to enhance learning, today's teachers must learn to incorporate the newer technologies into instructional strategies. The present study examined the impact of certain personality types and secondary education teachers' inclination to use technology. A sample of 200 Emergency Permit teachers were surveyed using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and a questionnaire designed to determine willingness to use technology. A one-way ANOVA test was applied to group means. Findings indicate that intuitive/thinking types of personalities were more likely to use technology in teaching while the sensory/feeling types were the least likely. Rapid technological transformations highlight the importance of a technology-based and integrated learning environment for students (Reed & Sautter, 1987; Crow & Buckley, 1988; Riley, 1993). However, in a recent study conducted by the U. S. Department of Education (2000), only 23% of public school teachers felt well prepared to use computers and the Internet in their teaching. In order to meet future challenges, it is vital that increasing numbers of teachers integrate technology into the curriculum. It is essential for educational programs that prepare teachers to provide those fundamental technology skills for candidates. Wise, Leibbrand, and Williams (1997) suggest a major challenge facing teacher education programs concern technology acquisition issues. Grindler and Straton (1990) found that the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) results could be used to help teachers develop different teaching methods and more readily accept using various teaching resources and technology. The instrument can also be used to help educators understand how individuals process information, and make decisions and adaptations through self-reflection (Lyons, 1984: Thompson & Borrello, 1986; McNickle & Veltman, 1986; Clark & Peterson, 1986). Erdle, Murray, and Rushton (1985) found that specific personality traits of teachers are reflected in classroom instruction, especially through the teacher's use of various learning materials and instructional strategies. Meisgeier and Richardson (1996) concluded that teachers and preservice teachers who understand various personality implications may have a more global understanding of a useful framework for modeling instructional technology. They also are more likely to include the newer technologies as a tool to integrate the curriculum. Research results support the use of the MBTI as a valid means to identify different types of cognitive styles. Studies indicate that extroverted, stable, and tough-minded personalities were receptive to the use of the computer (Grant & Cambre, 1990; Katz, 1992). "Intuitive/thinking" (NT) types of intermediate/secondary teachers were snore receptive to the use of technology than the "sensory/feeling" (SF) types (Sudol, 1991: Katz, 1992; Smith, Monday & Windham, 1995). Teachers identified as SF have been identified as least comfortable with technology (Grindler & Straton, 1990; Smith, Munday & Windham, 1995). Given the importance of teacher technology skills acquisition and technology usage, the present study was undertaken to further investigate personality types and willingness to embrace technology. The study was also designed to obtain relevant information from the growing number of emergency permit teachers. Methodology The MBTI and a questionnaire designed to measure teachers' willingness to use technology were utilized in the present investigation. The MBTI is a widely used personality inventory with positive evidence of its construct validity (Thompson & Borrello, 1994). Mendelsohn (1965) reported that 11 an unusually large body of reliability and validity data"(p. 321) has been completed on the MBTI. Test-retest correlation of approximately 0.70 was obtained for three of the indices and 0. …


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most frequent form of dementia in western countries. An early detection would be beneficial, but currently diagnostic accuracy is relatively poor. In this study, differences in information content between cortical areas in 12 AD patients and 11 control subjects were assessed with Kullback-Leibler (KL) entropy. KL entropy measures the degree of similarity between two probability distributions. EEGs were recorded from 19 scalp electrodes and KL entropy values of the EEGs in both groups were estimated for the local, distant and interhemispheric electrodes. KL entropy values were lower in AD patients than in age-matched control subjects, with significant effects for diagnosis and brain region (p < 0.05, two-way ANOVA). No significant interaction for diagnosis X region was found (p = 0.7671). Additionally a one-way ANOVA showed that KL entropy values were significantly lower in AD patients (p < 0.05) for the distant electrodes on the right hemisphere. These results suggest that KL entropy highlights information content changes in the EEG due to AD. However, further studies are needed to address the possible usefulness of KL entropy in the characterisation and early detection of AD.


Although it is commonly accepted that investing in technology and research and development (R&D) is a basic catalyst for the genesis of economic activity, there is less consensus on the spatial significance and returns of the R&D effort for regional and local economies. It is often argued that innovation resulting from allocating local resources to R&D is likely to spill over to other areas, especially in the framework of open national economies. Hence, the incentive to free-ride increases at the subnational level. This paper shows, however, that in the Western European regional context, regions with higher resources devoted to R&D tend to grow at a greater pace than the remaining spaces. Nevertheless, the passage from R&D to innovation and growth is not achieved in a similar way across Europe. Local social conditions play an important role in the formation of what can be defined as 'innovation prone' and 'innovation averse' societies. Innovation prone regions are those featured by a weak social filter, which facilitates the transformation of innovation into growth. Conversely, regions burdened by rigid labor markets, shortage of skills, outward migration of able individuals, and an aging of the workforce are less prone to assimilate innovation and to transform it into economic activity. They make up the innovation averse societies in Europe.


Amounts of DNA per nucleus were estimated by microphotometry in Feulgen-stained tissue sections from several species of poeciliid fish and their hybrid offspring. In terms of average nuclear volumes as well as relative DNA levels, the all-female gynogenetic species P. formosa was indistinguishable from the related bisexual species P. sphenops, confirming the essentially diploid nature of the amazon molly, P. formosa. Although DNA values from the less closely related species P. vittata were about 15% higher than those from P. sphenops, both species showed expected patterns of DNA behavior in several somatic tissues and in developing male sex cells.

Somatic nuclei from two types of interspecific hybrids contained more DNA than corresponding types of nuclei from typical maternal P. formosa, the additional amount being equivalent to the haploid DNA value characteristic of the participating paternal species. The results strongly suggest that these hybrids are genetic triploids, probably containing diploid maternal and haploid paternal chromosome contributions. The high incidence of chromosomal stickness, bridging, and fragmentation observed during metaphase I of spermatogenesis, and the occurrence of both "giant" and "micro" spermatids in testis of the hybrid P. formosa X P. vittata may well account for the apparent sterility of amazon molly offspring which show transmission of paternal characteristics.

Production of triploid interspecific hybrids in poeciliid fish and corollary implications for interpreting previous tissue transplantation studies are discussed.


Since 1997, the U.S. government has attempted to use the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on telecommunications services as a vehicle for exporting American principles of telecommunications regulation to other nations. The United States took the position in 1997 that the WTO telecommunications agreement requires its signatory nations to follow the practices of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on telecommunications regulatory policy. Subsequently, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has sought to influence, under the implicit threat of trade sanctions, Japan's domestic regulatory policy on the pricing of mandatory competitor access to the unbundled elements of the local network belonging to the operating companies of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). In this Article, we examine the substantive difficulties of engrafting the FCC's interconnection policy onto the telecommunications marketplace of another nation. For more than six years, many American experts on telecommunications policy have disagreed whether American consumers have benefited from the very FCC policies that the USTR would have Japanese regulators emulate. The USTR's initiative appears to ignore that the transition to cost-oriented rates for interconnection and retail telecommunications services has been a difficult and unfinished process in the United States; that the cost models used by the FCC to set interconnection prices have significant deficiencies; that actual interconnection prices both within and outside the United States diverge considerably from the estimates of the FCC's cost models; that variations across countries in the prices of inputs have a significant effect on the costs of interconnection; and that, with respect to depreciation in particular, regulators treat this cost differently -- and, from an economic perspective, more reasonably -- in Japan than in the United States. Such substantive economic considerations suggest why the FCC's policy in this area has generated continuous litigation, including two Supreme Court cases since 1996, and consequently is too unresolved at this point in the American experience for the United States to force on its trading partners. Next, we ask whether the USTR has the detailed knowledge required to negotiate trade agreements on interconnection pricing. We question the propriety of using the USTR to influence the domestic regulatory policy of another country on a topic as complex as the efficient pricing of mandatory access to unbundled network elements. The USTR's power to formulate trade policy on this subject resides in officials who are unlikely to possess the economic expertise and resources necessary to evaluate the consumer-welfare implications of the policies that they would have Japan and other nations adopt. For these reasons, the USTR cannot credibly make the interconnection pricing policies of another nation a legitimate concern of U.S. trade policy.


With the rapid advancement of technology, robots could now be easily equipped with the state of art computing, electronics and communications technologies, with the potential to act as intelligent companions and with important applications in the education, entertainment, games and healthcare industries. The integration of all these technologies is the first step to realizing social robots – robots which will walk amongst humans, playing out their assigned roles whilst interacting with humans in a humanistic way. Social robots can have definite roles and tasks, such as educators, cleaners or guides, with a profound impact on human daily life. This advanced class of robots, just as we humans do, is made up of a complex array of interconnected modules – electronics (inner physical workings), sensing, planning and cognition, and finally, intelligence, interaction and communications. This paper provides an overview of each of these individual aspects, and how advanced technology in these areas can be integrated to form a social robot that can meld seamlessly into the human society.


Mg alloy AZ31 is an attractive candidate for coronary artery stents, as it possesses excellent biocompatibility in human body and good mechanical properties. However, AZ31 magnesium alloys generally have poor corrosion resistance in the body environment. This paper reports on the early stages of an investigation into the corrosion mechanism and the morphology of corrosion of AZ31 in simulated body fluid (SBF). The investigation will also consider ways of improving corrosion resistance of this alloy in SBF through the use of ionic liquids. The results to date have shown that AZ31 suffers severe localized pitting corrosion in SBF. The pits mainly develop adjacent to the Al-Mn intermetallic second phase in the α matrix. Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy results revealed the presence of Mg, O, Ca, and P in the layer of corrosion product. Treatment of the AZ31 alloy prior to corrosion testing in SBF with the ionic liquid trimethyl (butyl) phosphonium diphenyl phosphate (P1444DPP) produced some increase in the corrosion resistance of the alloy.


ABSTRACT: We present a programmatic interface (SKOS API) and editor for working with the Simple Knowledge Organisation System SKOS. The SKOS API has been designed to work with SKOS models at a high level of abstraction to aid developers of applications that use SKOS. We describe a SKOS editor (SKOSEd) that is built on the Protege 4 framework using the OWL and SKOS API. As well as exploring the benefits of the principled extensibility afforded by this approach, we also explore the limitations placed upon SKOS by restricting SKOSEd to OWL-DL.


Urban transportation is an important factor in energy consumption and pollution, and is of increasing concern due to its complexity and economic significance. Its importance will only increase as urbanization continues around the world. In this article, we explore drivers' refueling behavior in urban areas. Compared to questionnaire-based methods of the past, we propose a complete data-driven system that pushes towards real-time sensing of individual refueling behavior and citywide petrol consumption. Our system provides the following: detection of individual refueling events (REs) from which refueling preference can be analyzed; estimates of gas station wait times from which recommendations can be made; an indication of overall fuel demand from which macroscale economic decisions can be made, and a spatial, temporal, and economic view of urban refueling characteristics. For individual behavior, we use reported trajectories from a fleet of GPS-equipped taxicabs to detect gas station visits. For time spent estimates, to solve the sparsity issue along time and stations, we propose context-aware tensor factorization (CATF), a factorization model that considers a variety of contextual factors (e.g., price, brand, and weather condition) that affect consumers' refueling decision. For fuel demand estimates, we apply a queue model to calculate the overall visits based on the time spent inside the station. We evaluated our system on large-scale and real-world datasets, which contain 4-month trajectories of 32,476 taxicabs, 689 gas stations, and the self-reported refueling details of 8,326 online users. The results show that our system can determine REs with an accuracy of more than 90%, estimate time spent with less than 2 minutes of error, and measure overall visits in the same order of magnitude with the records in the field study.


Technological developments in healthcare have been at the center of focus during last decade. The rise of Nano therapeutic platforms has seen recent advancements in combating deadly diseases like cancer. A lot of research is already done on nanotechnology systems like liposomes, Nano emulsions, dendrimers and micelles, and recently carbon nanotubes and quantum dots have been in focus for their therapeutic and diagnostic capabilities. Most of these systems are utilized to improve the solubility and bioavailability profiles of certain drugs along with targeting capabilities to some extent. However, toxicological and environmental concerns of the nanomaterial used in these systems have raised alarm among researchers and thus forcing investigators for finding new gateways to delivery of drugs to target sites. During this decade there's been a sharp rise in bio-inspired and biomimetic drug delivery systems. Bio-inspired platforms mimic the natural components inside the body making them more safe and effective in delivering drugs.


Most patients with proven or suspected enteric infection with the common hookworm of dogs, Ancylostoma caninum, produce immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgE antibodies to an immunodominant excretory/secretory antigen (Ac68) of the parasite. These antibodies were detected in both enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blots; the Western blot to detect IgG antibodies to Ac68 was the most specific and sensitive. The subclasses of IgG of the antibody response to the parasite were analyzed using Western blots with anti-IgG subclass-specific monoclonal antibodies as marker systems in an attempt to further improve the specificity of the assay. Eight patients with confirmed enteric infections with A. caninum (positive controls) were tested; six had antibodies in all IgG subclasses against Ac68. Twenty sera from patients with suspected enteric infection with A. caninum (manifested as eosinophilic enteritis or unexplained abdominal pain with peripheral eosinophilia) were tested; 16 had total IgG antibodies to Ac68, while IgG1, IgG2, IgG3, and IgG4 responses were found in 11, 10, 9, and 12 of these sera, respectively. Small numbers of sera from groups of patients infected with other helminths and from healthy blood donors had various combinations of IgG, IgG1, IgG2, and IgG3 antibodies to Ac68, but none of these sera had IgG4 antibodies to Ac68. Sera from all nine patients with human hookworm infection had IgG, IgG1, IgG2, and IgG3 antibodies to Ac68 and eight of the nine were also positive for IgG4 antibodies. These results indicate the Western blot to detect IgG4 antibodies to Ac68 is the most reliable immunodiagnostic test yet described for enteric infection with A. caninum, although this test does not discriminate between infections with human and canine hookworms.


To organize information, librarians create structures. These structures grow from a logic that goes back at least as far as Aristotle. It is the basis of classification as we practice it, and thesauri and subject headings have developed from it. Feminist critiques of logic suggest that logic is gendered in nature. This article will explore how these critiques play out in contemporary standards for the organization of information. Our widely used classification schemes embody principles such as hierarchical force that conform to traditional/Aristotelian logic. Our subject heading strings follow a linear path of subdivision. Our thesauri break down subjects into discrete concepts. In thesauri and subject heading lists we privilege hierarchical relationships, reflected in the syndetic structure of broader and narrower terms, over all other relationships. Are our classificatory and syndetic structures gendered? Are there other options? Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982), Women's Ways of Knowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986), and more recent related research suggest a different type of structure for women's knowledge grounded in "connected knowing." This article explores current and potential elements of connected knowing in subject access with a focus on the relationships, both paradigmatic and syntagmatic, between concepts.


İn seasonaly breeding mammals that use changes in the photoperiod to time their reproductive cycles, temporal signals to the reproductive system are controlled by the daily rhythm in melatonin production. There is a daily rhythm in the production of the pineal hormone melatonin in all mammalian species. Production is stimulated by darkness and inhibited by light. This provides a signal reflecting the changing environmental lighting cycle.


This study aims to investigate the relationship of good public governance and ease of doing a business performance. The motivation of the study was driven by slowing down global economy and competition among countries around the world to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Foreign investors will consider investing their capital in a certain country if in that country adopting ease of doing business practice. The study was intended to reveal, whether the country that applies the good practice of public governance will also lead to good performance in terms of ease of doing business. The study adopted exploratory research design which is public governance and ease of doing business performance treated as two independent variables. Public governance variable was represented by attributes namely public accountability, effectiveness government, regulatory quality, control of corruption, rule of law and political stability. World Governance Index (WGI) was adopted to measure Public Governance and Distance to Frontier (DtF) value is representing a measurement of ease of doing a business performance. The study applied bivariate correlation analysis and involved 188 countries member of World Bank. The results showed that all public governance attributes were positively and significantly associated with ease of doing a business performance. Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that all attributes of public governance had a strong correlation ( r  > 0.6, p<0.01), except for political stability attribute (r = 0.584, p<0.01).  The result implies that practice of good public governance in governmental institution have potential impact on performance of the government in terms of streamlining bureaucracy of doing business in that country.


Published in conjunction with an exhibition of masterworks from The Museum of Modern Art at the High Museum, Atlanta, this catalogue features artwork produced during six key years, from 1913 to 2013. By concentrating on groundbreaking moments when major movements and radical strategies emerged, the book provides an overall sense of the innovations and achievements of the last century. With 1913 came new visual languages like Cubism and Futurism; 1929 focuses on the convergence of Surrealism and New Vision photography; in 1950 the emphasis was on large-scale abstract painting; in 1961 assemblage epitomized the merging of art and life; and 1988 witnessed the simultaneous embrace of identity politics and appropriation. A series of new commissions by three contemporary artists will represent the art to come in 2013. With its juxtapositions and disjunctions, Fast Forward shows an art history that unfolds messily but masterfully. Each of the six richly illustrated sections features a close reading of one major work from the period, complemented by an exploration of that years aesthetic zeitgeist. The publication also includes an introduction by Jodi Hauptman, Curator, The Museum of Modern Art, and a timeline illustrated with documentary photographs that provide historical context.


If the public library catalogue is to continue to have relevance to its users, it needs to move beyond its current inventory model, where all content is designed and controlled by library staff and client interaction with catalogue content is limited, to a social catalogue, where users can contribute to, and interact with information and with each other. The goal of this report is to present the results of an analysis of four months worth of log analysis of two social discovery systems used in two Canadian public libraries to examine: (a) how public library users interact with social discovery systems; (b) how usage compares between the two social discovery systems; and (c) whether the use of the features in social discovery systems is consistent over time. Results suggest that clients are making limited use of the social features of the system that allow them to interact with the catalogue records and with one another.


The purpose of the current article is to support the investigation of linguistic relativity in second language acquisition and sketch methodological and theoretical prerequisites toward developing the domain into a full research program. We identify and discuss three theoretical-methodological components that we believe are needed to succeed in this enterprise. First, we highlight the importance of using nonverbal methods to study linguistic relativity effects in second language (L2) speakers. The use of nonverbal tasks is necessary in order to avoid the circularity that arises when inferences about nonverbal behavior are made on the basis of verbal evidence alone. Second, we identify and delineate the likely cognitive mechanisms underpinning cognitive restructuring in L2 speakers by introducing the theoretical framework of associative learning. By doing so, we demonstrate that the extent and nature of cognitive restructuring in L2 speakers is essentially a function of variation in individual learners' trajectories. Third, we offer an in-depth discussion of the factors (e.g., L2 proficiency and L2 use) that characterize those trajectories, anchoring them to the framework of associative learning, and reinterpreting their relative strength in predicting L2 speaker cognition.


This casebook presents interdisciplinary, critical perspectives on race and racism and covers the roles of law and history in shaping the meanings of race in the United States. Updates the second edition with new material on implicit bias in the workplace; President Obama's election and "post-racialism;" the Voting Rights Act and restrictions on voting; recurring violence against and harassment of Latino immigrants; book-banning in Arizona; demographic changes and their implications; and the future of affirmative action. Includes new cases such as Shelby County v. Holder and Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, current statistics, and updated references. Features rich historical treatment of major racialized groups in the United States: African Americans, Indians, Latinos/Latinas, Asian Americans, and Whites. Contains chapters on differing implications of enslavement, conquest, colonization, and immigration, as well as on equality, education, freedom of expression, family and sexuality, stereotyping, and crime.


A proposal from an international mining company to establish a copper mining operation in the Caribbean island of Dominica could be highly favourable, given the potential for financial benefits associated with such a project. On the downside, such projects are often associated with environmental damage. The area targeted for this copper mine was a rainforest in the north-eastern portion of Dominica occupying around 12 percent of the island's total land area. A critical question is therefore whether copper mining could be a viable alternative to agrarian uses of the targeted area, if both financial and environmental costs are taken into consideration. A Contingent Valuation Survey of Dominicans and Visitors allowed for inclusion of non-market costs in the analysis. Cost-Benefit and sensitivity analyses were carried out to assess project feasibility. The results indicated that NPV was negative under conservative assumptions. NPV was sensitive to changes in the price of copper and the inclusion of environmental costs did affect the level of price increase required to make NPV positive.


Tardigrades entering a state of anhydrobiosis (cryptobiosis) show considerable interspecific variation in desiccation tolerance, lower lethal humidities for initial desiccation ranging from 78 to 53 %. Species most tolerant of rapid initial drying also show the most rapid acquisition of tolerance to low humidities (25–31 %) following drying in high humidity.

Surface area reduction during tun formation shows a significant positive regression against desiccation tolerance in the Eutardigrada. The most desiccation-tolerant species thus infold the largest areas of cuticle. By comparison, the heterotardigrade Echiniscus testudo shows a very poor capacity for surface area reduction. The thick dorsal plates may restrict cuticle intucking in this species.

When hydrated tardigrades are desiccated in 80 % relative humidity they show a characteristic profile of mass loss, dehydrating rapidly in the first few minutes and then showing an abrupt reduction in transpiration (the 'permeability slump'). This applies to living animals, which form tuns when desiccated, and to dead animals remaining extended. The permeability slump is not, therefore, a metabolic phenomenon and is not related to tun formation. Subsequent transpiration rates are very low and decline exponentially. The permeability slump allows animals to retain considerable amounts of internal water when desiccated, although less water is retained if the desiccation rate is increased. This may determine upper tolerable desiccation rates if a certain minimum quantity of water is required for the metabolic synthesis of membrane protectants. A significant positive regression between water retention and desiccation tolerance supports this hypothesis.


We present results from a large-scale experiment on pretraining encoders with non-embedding parameter counts ranging from 700M to 9.3B, their subsequent distillation into smaller models ranging from 17M-170M parameters, and their application to the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) component of a virtual assistant system. Though we train using 70% spoken-form data, our teacher models perform comparably to XLM-R and mT5 when evaluated on the written-form Cross-lingual Natural Language Inference (XNLI) corpus. We perform a second stage of pretraining on our teacher models using in-domain data from our system, improving error rates by 3.86% relative for intent classification and 7.01% relative for slot filling. We find that even a 170M-parameter model distilled from our Stage 2 teacher model has 2.88% better intent classification and 7.69% better slot filling error rates when compared to the 2.3B-parameter teacher trained only on public data (Stage 1), emphasizing the importance of in-domain data for pretraining. When evaluated offline using labeled NLU data, our 17M-parameter Stage 2 distilled model outperforms both XLM-R Base (85M params) and DistillBERT (42M params) by 4.23% to 6.14%, respectively. Finally, we present results from a full virtual assistant experimentation platform, where we find that models trained using our pretraining and distillation pipeline outperform models distilled from 85M-parameter teachers by 3.74%-4.91% on an automatic measurement of full-system user dissatisfaction.


Traditional cognitive tests may not be sensitive for the early detection of executive and social cognitive impairments in the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia. The aim of this study was to detect specific executive and social cognitive deficits in patients with early behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia using a battery of tests previously shown to be sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction. Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia patients and paired controls were assessed with a complete standard neuropsychological battery evaluating attention, memory, visuospatial abilities, language and executive functions. All participants were then assessed with our Executive and Social Cognition Battery, which included Theory of Mind tests (Mind in the Eyes, Faux Pas), the Hotel Task, Multiple Errands Task-hospital version and the Iowa Gambling Task for complex decision-making. Patients were divided into two groups according to their Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination scores, a measure of general cognitive status. Low Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination patients differed from controls on most tasks of the standard battery and the Executive and Social Cognition Battery. While high Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination patients did not differ from controls on most traditional neuropsychological tests, significant differences were found between this high-functioning behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia group and controls on most measures of our Executive and Social Cognition Battery. Our results suggest that the Executive and Social Cognition Battery used in this study is more sensitive in detecting executive and social cognitive impairment deficits in early behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia than the classical cognitive measures.


Decision making is a practical task. Clearly, all aspects of any approach to decision analysis and decision support should be considered with respect to their ease of application as well as their value. The work presented in this thesis is motivated by such a viewpoint. The field of decision analysis is broad, and this is reflected by the consideration of four linked aspects. Cross-sections have been taken through the research literature in an attempt to consider the most important aspects of decision analysis and decision support. These research findings are examined with respect to how things might function in practice. Specifically the aspects which I consider are: a comparison of underlying mathematical theories; the elicitation and application of preference data; facilitation as a group decision support tool; and the development of hypothetical scenarios.

The purpose of decision analysis and decision support is to improve problem solving. With a pragmatic approach in mind, two normative models are compared on the basis of the assumptions they make about a decision maker. Further, how these alternative techniques have worked in practice is discussed. In order to make use of such methods, particular data are required. Perhaps a major criticism of decision analysis concerns its use of subjective preference data. Therefore, an investigation of the ease with which these data can be elicited is conducted. The nature of the data is considered via an application. Having concentrated upon decision analysis, i.e. the examination of a formulated problem, I take a broader view of the field by considering decision support.

Supporting decision making requires the setting of aims and objectives in addition to establishing a problem model from a problem mess. Supporting a group adds complexity to the analysis's role. Group decision making and group decision support are examined. Particular attention is given to the technique of group facilitation and some pertinent issues for successful decision support are established. In order to strengthen these findings a further study of group decision making is made. Case study work provides a more realistic view of supporting an actual group in a live setting. In addition, I am able to describe the development and use of hypothetical scenarios to promote decision analysis and decision support.

Decision analysis and decision support is no different from any other technology in that it is not a 'quick fix'. Users are faced with a learning curve as they are required to approach their problem in a novel way. From an analysis's perspective, the needs of each decision maker may be different, so any technique must be flexible. This thesis demonstrates the ability of both decision makers and analysts to rise to such challenges, resulting in successful applications of decision analysis and support. It also reinforces the value of employing these techniques. Further, I identify aspects which can make this undertaking easier.


This is the first guide and introduction to the extraordinary range of languages in Amazonia, which include some of the most the most fascinating in the world and many of which are now teetering on the edge of extinction. Alexandra Aikhenvald, one of the world's leading experts on the region, provides an account of the more than 300 languages, comparing their common and unique features, setting out their main characteristics, and describing the histories and cultures of the people who speak them. The languages abound in rare features and in most cases have been in contact with each other for generations, giving rise to complex patterns of linguistic influence. The author draws on her own extensive field research to tease out and analyse the patterns of their genetic and structural diversity. In the process she shows how they reflect the interrelations of language and culture: different kinship systems, for example, produce different linguistic outcomes. She also explains the roles and workings of their unusual features including evidentials, tones and whistles, and elaborate positional verbs. The book ends with a glossary of terms, and a comprehensive list of references for those interested in following up a language or linguistic phenomenon.


Motivated by the famous Skolem-Mahler-Lech theorem we initiate in this paper the study of a natural class of determinantal varieties, which we call Vandermonde varieties. They are closely related to the varieties consisting of all linear recurrence relations of a given order possessing a non-trivial solution vanishing at a given set of integers. In the regular case, i.e., when the dimension of a Vandermonde variety is the expected one, we present its free resolution, obtain its degree and the Hilbert series. Some interesting relations among Schur polynomials are derived. Many open problems and conjectures are posed.


This chapter analyzes the discourse of leading politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the occasion of national holidays from 2000 to 2010. Fifteen years after the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina has no common law on national holidays at the state level. This lack is due to varying concepts of history and how the state should be organized, and reveals deep-rooted conflicts in a society consisting of Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. Each of the two administrative parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, referred to as entities, has its own holidays that are contested by the other entity. Within the Bosniak-Croat entity, there is a conflict between the two groups that constitute it. The discourse used to mark holidays is usually aimed at legitimizing one's own holidays and delegitimizing others' holidays. The analysis shows how the (de)legitimization strategies relate to time, space, and modality.


PURPOSE
To determine the prevalence, nature, and degree of accommodative dysfunction among children with different types and severities of cerebral palsy (CP) in Northern Ireland.

METHODS
Ninety subjects with CP (aged 4-15 years) were recruited through the Northern Ireland CP Register (NICPR). Modified Nott dynamic retinoscopy was used to measure lag and lead of accommodation at three test distances: 25 cm (4 D), 16.7 cm (6 D), and 10 cm (10 D) with the distance correction in place. Accommodative function was also assessed in an age-matched control group (n = 125) for comparison. Each subject's neurologic status was derived from the NICPR.

RESULTS
Children with CP demonstrate significantly reduced accommodative responses compared with their neurologically normal peers. Of the subjects with CP, 57.6% demonstrated an accommodative lag outside normal limits at one or more distances. Reduced accommodative responses were significantly associated with more severe motor and intellectual impairments (ANOVA P = 0.001, P < 0.01, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS
Brain injury such as that present in CP has a significant impact on accommodative function. These findings have implications for the optometric care of children with CP and inform our understanding of the impact of early brain injury on visual development.


In this paper, using the rich household panel data of urban and rural Ethiopia that covers the period from 1994 to 2000, we attempted to establish the link between finance and poverty in Ethiopia. Our results show that access to finance is an important factor in consumption smoothing and hence poverty reduction. We also found evidence for a poverty trap due to liquidity constraints that limits the ability of the rural households from consumption smoothing. The empirical findings from this study could inform finance policies aimed at addressing issues of poverty reduction.


We formalize with Isabelle/HOL a proof of a theorem by J. Hančl asserting the irrationality of the sum of a series consisting of rational numbers, built up by sequences that fulfill certain properties. Even though the criterion is a number theoretic result, the proof makes use only of analytical arguments. We also formalize a corollary of the theorem for a specific series fulfilling the assumptions of the theorem.


The development of a rapid response time, plastic optical fiber (POF) based oxygen sensor for the measurement of oxygen partial pressure (pO2) is described. The POF oxygen sensor is based on the luminescence quenching of a luminophore by oxygen and consists of PMMA plastic optical fibre and a polymer matrix medium that contains immobilized Pt (II) complexes. The performance of the POF oxygen sensors was evaluated using luminescence intensity measurement. In order to accurately determine the response time of the POF oxygen sensors, a test chamber was used to provide rapid step changes in the partial pressure of oxygen. The details of the sensor chemistry, experimental system and the results are presented.


A large body of work studies the complexity of selecting the j-th largest element in an arbitrary set of n elements (a.k.a. the select(j) operation). In this work, we study the complexity of select in data that is partially structured by an initial preprocessing stage and in a data structure that is dynamically maintained. We provide lower and upper bounds in the comparison based model. For preprocessing, we show that making at most (n) n comparisons during preprocessing (before the rank j is provided) implies that select(j) must make at least (2 + )(n=e2 (n) ) comparisons in the worst case, where > 2 40 . For dynamically maintained data structures, we show that if the amortized number of comparisons executed with each insert operation is bounded by i(n), then select(j) must make at least (2 + )(n=e2 i(n) ) comparisons in the worst case, no matter how costly the other data structure operations are. When only insert is used, we provide a lower bound on the complexity of findmedian. This lower bound is much higher than the complexity of maintaining the minimum, thus formalizing the intuitive dierence between findmin and findmedian. Finally, we present a new explicit adversary for comparison based algorithms and use it to show adversary lower bounds for selection problems. We demonstrate the power of this adversary by improving the best known lower bound for the findany operation in a data structure and by slightly improving the best adversary lower bound for sorting.


This research into the effectiveness of 'best value' procurement in the social housing sector analyses and critiques current procurement methods and assesses the potential ramifications of legal challenges to the strategic management of the best value process. The overarching aim of the research is to produce a contractor selection method that is; mathematically robust, transparent, open to audit and assists the user in the selection procedure. To date, the research indicates that the inherent problem with best value selection is that the measurement of quality is a subjective process and can therefore be defined and interpreted in numerous ways. In order to formalise a more appropriate measurement system, two case studies were carried out, to assess the pragmatic difficulties being encountered by stakeholders within the social housing sector. The conclusions of this research has laid the foundations to further ongoing research into the formation of an innovative best value contractor selection process based on the mathematical representation of rational preference, with the decision maker's attitude to the uncertainty factor in the selection process being represented by a utility function. When refined, it is anticipated that the model will be generic enough to add value to any construction procurement process within the social housing sector.


Currently a new term in the cosmetic industry is 'Cosmeceuticals', which is the fastest growing segment of the natural personal care trade. They are the next generation of skin care. 'Cosmeceuticals' are the advances made within the world of skin products and the new paradigm in skincare. All cosmeceutical claims to contain functional ingredients with either therapeutic, disease-fighting or healing properties. There is no regulatory category for Cosmeceuticals; hence this review tries to understand regulatory scenario as well the difference between drug and cosmetics is enlightened. The paper is an earnest endeavor for commonly use of botanicals as skin cosmeceutical, classification of cosmeceutical, examples of some most important Botanicals for skin care and other cosmeceutical product that claims a beneficial physiologic effect. This review paper is to give recent knowledge about the latest trend of botanical Cosmeceuticals and their advantages over synthetic cosmetics.


Sweet potatoes have a fairly diverse varieties and the difference in varieties is assumed to influence the starch physicochemical properties. The objective of this research was to optimize the sweet potato vermicelli production using a cooking-forming extruder. The starch characterization included proximate analysis, starch content, amylose content and gelatinization profile. Sweet potato vermicelli was made with the starch of sweet potaoto Ace variety. Meanwhile, process and formula optimization was carried out using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The amount of starch used was in the range of 62.5–69.0 g, the amount of water was 31.0–37.5 g, extruder temperature of 80-90°C and screw rotation of 90-120 rpm. The starch of sweet potato Ace variety had the highest level of carbohydrate, total starch and amylose (99.16, 86.91, and 8.77% db, respectively). It also had the most excellent cooking endurance as shown by the lowest breakdown viscosity (5183.33 cP), and the best tendency of retrogradation as shown by the highest setback viscosity (1328.00 cP). The optimum combination for the vermicelli making was 65.2 g of starch, 34.8 g of water, extruder temperature of 85°C and screw rotation of 115 rpm. The sweet potato vermicelli from the optimum condition resulted in 20.85% actual cooking loss and 164.98% elongation. Process improvement with freezing and fan drying of the vermicelli produced a better quality of vermicelli with 12.90% cooking loss and 196.42% elongation.


Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system that typically strikes young adults. It is often associated with a wide range of functional deficits and progressive disability. Common symptoms of multiple sclerosis include vision problems, spasticity, weakness, ataxia, bladder and bowel dysfunctions, fatigue, pain syndromes, tremors, vertigo, cognitive impairment, and mood disorders. Multiple sclerosis has a major negative impact on patient health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Quality of life (QoL) is a multidimensional construct composed of functional, physical, emotional, social and spiritual well-being. Researches have reported that individuals with multiple sclerosis have lower QoL than non-diseased and diseased populations. The inclusion of HRQoL questionnaires in the patient follow-up is a relevant issue to optimize treatment, facilitate treatment decisions and improve adherence, as well as to reduce the inconveniences derived from medication such as side effects.


The global financial crisis of 2008–2009 illustrates how financial turmoil in advanced economies could trigger severe financial stress in emerging markets. Previous studies dealing with financial crises and contagion show the linkages through which financial stress are transmitted from advanced to emerging markets. This paper extends the existing literature on the use of financial stress index (FSI) in understanding the channels of financial transmission in emerging market economies. Using FSI of 25 emerging markets, our panel regression estimates show that not only advanced economies FSI, but also regional and nonregional emerging market FSIs significantly increase domestic financial stress. Our findings also suggest that there is a common regional factor significantly affecting domestic FSI in emerging Asia and emerging Europe. Furthermore, the results from a structural vector autoregression model with contemporaneous restrictions indicate that although a domestic financial shock still accounts for most of the variation in domestic FSI, regional shocks play an important role in emerging Asia.


Background Elbow epicondylar tendinosis is a common problem that usually resolves with nonoperative treatments. When these measures fail, however, patients are interested in an alternative to surgical intervention. Hypothesis Treatment of chronic severe elbow tendinosis with buffered platelet-rich plasma will reduce pain and increase function in patients considering surgery for their problem. Study Design Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods One hundred forty patients with elbow epicondylar pain were evaluated in this study. All these patients were initially given a standardized physical therapy protocol and a variety of other nonoperative treatments. Twenty of these patients had significant persistent pain for a mean of 15 months (mean, 82 of 100; range, 60-100 of 100 on a visual analog pain scale), despite these interventions. All patients were considering surgery. This cohort of patients who had failed nonoperative treatment was then given either a single percutaneous injection of platelet-rich plasma (active group, n = 15) or bupivacaine (control group, n = 5). Results Eight weeks after the treatment, the platelet-rich plasma patients noted 60% improvement in their visual analog pain scores versus 16% improvement in control patients (P =. 001). Sixty percent (3 of 5) of the control subjects withdrew or sought other treatments after the 8-week period, preventing further direct analysis. Therefore, only the patients treated with platelet-rich plasma were available for continued evaluation. At 6 months, the patients treated with platelet-rich plasma noted 81% improvement in their visual analog pain scores (P =. 0001). At final follow-up (mean, 25.6 months; range, 12-38 months), the platelet-rich plasma patients reported 93% reduction in pain compared with before the treatment (P <. 0001). Conclusion Treatment of patients with chronic elbow tendinosis with buffered platelet-rich plasma reduced pain significantly in this pilot investigation. Further evaluation of this novel treatment is warranted. Finally, platelet-rich plasma should be considered before surgical intervention.


This paper proposes the use of service-based architectures as a way to bring the benefits of ubiquitous computing solutions to real world problems. We compare this services approach to the traditional view of computer applications as user tools, noticing that service providers can bring significant economies of scale not only in monetary terms but also in computational simplifications based on multiple user data aggregation and large scale data information processing and gathering. We argue for such ubiquitous services by analyzing the evolution of the World Wide Web in the last two decades and the success of service providers such as Google, eBay, and Mapquest in changing the way people live; and by showing how a services approach can make feasible many solutions to real problems such as urban congestion, preventive health care, and global trade.


The present article is an attempt to study theoretical aspects of justice in the precept of the holy Prophet of Islam, by focusing on practical and objective results. In the first place, the necessity and significance of political justice has been explained in three parts. In the next step, the nature, levels and foundation of justice in the viewpoint of the holy Prophet are discussed. For purpose of this study, equality is considered as the foundation of justice in human societies. Finally, the main indexes of justice and signs of justice are elaborated. In this paper, political justice in the viewpoint of the holy Prophet has two foundations, three levels, a starting point and one main index. The foundations of justice are reason; levels of justice are the universal system of being, society and human beings. The starting point of justice is the power center at any level of political system and naturally the higher levels are more important. Human beings, on the basis of their four important characteristics and their generalization at the level of political system, which is in charge of realization of justice, achieve two results pertaining to method of justice and objective of justice. These two results prepare the grounds for the society to get close to justice. These two results are lack of extremism and welfare and relief which are congruent with the ultimate objective of justice, i.e., happiness and felicity of human beings in the world and the hereafter.