Background & objectives: Construction of new service centers including hospitals is expensive and requires optimal site selection for these centers so that all citizens benefit from its increased productivity. It can also help them lower their costs. This study investigates the optimal locations for construction of hospitals in Ardabil using GIS software. Methods: This is an applied research which incorporates a descriptive-analytic methodology. The data is made up of 11 criteria; proximity to densely populated areas, proximity to green space, closeness to main thoroughfares, proximity to fire departments and distance from existing hospitals, industrial centers, slopes, learning centers, cemetery, military bases and from sport facilities. They were all weighted using analytic network process (ANP) model. Results: After performing the necessary calculations and evaluations, the highest and lowest weight of criteria belonged to the proximity to densely populated areas (0.229) and distance from the cemetery (0.033), respectively. According to the criteria weights and overlapping of layers, the most and least favorable locations for the establishment of hospitals were identified. Conclusion: Results of the classification showed the best location for construction of hospitals in Ardabil city based on four municipal regions. In region one it belongs to the 8, 5, 2, and 11 districts in region two districts of 6 and 7 which cover southeastern edge of the city, in region 3 districts of 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 10 which contain the western part of the city, and in region four it belongs to districts of 1, 2, 6, 7, 10 and 11 that encompass the blocks in the northern and north-western route of the city. These regions can be used for construction of new hospitals in order to improve people's access to healthcare services.


In recent years, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has achieved considerable success within the academic community with respect to advocacy of the concept. As a result, many organisations such as the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), UNESCO and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), in partnership with academic institutions, have produced large volumes of OER. However, due to the disconnected nature and the constant expansion of volume, many repositories hosting these resources are less frequented or completely ignored by OER users. i.e. only the more popular OER repositories such as Connexions and WikiEducator are frequent stops in the search for academically useful resources. This limitation, in turn, reduces the access to high quality resources hidden away in isolated repositories hosted by lesser known sources. Furthermore, the time and labour required to trawl these repositories with a view of identifying the most suitable OER is tantamount to creating ones" own material from scratch. As a solution to these issues, this paper discusses how the OERScout technology framework uses a "faceted search" approach to locate the most desirable OER from sources spread throughout the globe. It also highlights how focused searching can greatly improve access to OER readily useable in teaching and learning.


Acoustic exposure to high intensity and/or prolonged noise causes temporary or permanent threshold shifts in auditory perception, reflected by reversible or irreversible damage in the cochlea. Aminoglycoside antibiotics, used for treating or preventing life-threatening bacterial infections, also induce cytotoxicity in the cochlea. Combined noise and aminoglycoside exposure, particularly in neonatal intensive care units, can lead to auditory threshold shifts greater than simple summation of the two insults. The synergistic toxicity of acoustic exposure and aminoglycoside antibiotics is not limited to simultaneous exposures. Prior acoustic insult which does not result in permanent threshold shifts potentiates aminoglycoside ototoxicity. In addition, exposure to subdamaging doses of aminoglycosides aggravates noise-induced cochlear damage. The mechanisms by which aminoglycosides cause auditory dysfunction are still being unraveled, but likely include the following: 1) penetration into the endolymphatic fluid of the scala media, 2) permeation of nonselective cation channels on the apical surface of hair cells, and 3) generation of toxic reactive oxygen species and interference with other cellular pathways. Here we discuss the effect of combined noise and aminoglycoside exposure to identify pivotal synergistic events that can potentiate ototoxicity, in addition to a current understanding of aminoglycoside trafficking within the cochlea. Preventing the ototoxic synergy of noise and aminoglycosides is best achieved by using non-ototoxic bactericidal drugs, and by attenuating perceived noise intensity when life-saving aminoglycoside therapy is required.


This paper examines on a global scale how important it is for young democracies to deliver economic welfare to win the hearts of their citizens. A decoupling of popular support for democratic form of government from economic performance is believed to be conducive to the consolidation of young democracies. We found an encouraging global pattern that clearly shows evaluations of economic condition are relatively unimportant in explaining level of popular support for democracy. However, high-income East Asian countries register a glaring exception to this global generalization, suggesting that their distinctive trajectory of regime transition has imposed on democratic regimes an additional burden of sustaining a record of miraculous economic growth of the past.


The focus of this paper is to present a case study of an integrated course approach to student transition in an undergraduate agricultural business management program. This wholistic approach is particularly relevant to courses with small student intake (defined here as less or equal to 20 full time students). These small intakes represent approximately 38% of all intakes in Australian universities. Most universities have an orientation week with generic and course specific activities to assist students in their transition to university life but very few have a 'total package' of sustained transitional support with an overnight tour, mentoring program, curriculum mapping and course design for all of the first stage subjects as just some of their strategies. The transition was planned to take place over the entire first stage of the course. A course team working collaboratively and cohesively was paramount to the success of this project. The approach was first implemented in 2010 and three years of data are presented here. These data clearly demonstrate that although student grades did not significantly improve, student satisfaction and perception of the "worth" of the various fundamental subjects taught in the first year of their course increased. This is associated with a recent decrease in first year student attrition. Finally and perhaps more importantly, academics reported that students seemed to display a higher standard of academic literacy and deeper critical thinking in their various assessment tasks.


Objective: The aim of this study was to elucidate the mechanism of cerebral injury and to evaluate selective antegrade cerebral perfusion (SACP) as a superior neuroprotective strategy for prolonged deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA). Methods: Twelve pigs (6–8-week old) were randomly assigned to DHCA alone (n=6) and DHCA with SACP (n=6) at 18°C for 80 min groups. Serum S100 was determined using an immunoassay analyzer. The concentrations of cerebral dialysate glucose, lactate, pyruvate, glycerol, and glutamate were measured using a microdialysis analyzer. Results: Compared with a peak at T4 (after 60 min of rewarming) in the DHCA group, the serum S100 in the SACP group was significantly lower throughout the study. The DHCA group was susceptible to significant increases in the levels of lactate, glycerol, and glutamate and the ratio of lactate/pyruvate as well as decreases in the level of glucose. These microdialysis variables showed only minor changes in the SACP group. There was a positive correlation between cerebral lactate and intracranial pressure during reperfusion in the DHCA group. However, the apoptosis index and C-FOS protein levels were lower in the SACP group. Conclusion: Metabolic dysfunction is involved in the mechanism of cerebral injury. SACP is a superior neuroprotective strategy for both mild and prolonged DHCA.


Lorraine Hansberry began drafting Les Blancs (The Whites) as early as 1960, soon after the publication of her remarkably successful A Raisin in the Sun (1959). But it was not until 1970 that Robert Nemiroff, her former husband, put together the published version of the drama. In Les Blancs Hansberry expands on the attention given to Africa in Raisin, where Asagai, the Nigerian intellectual and activist, is used to fortify and scrutinize the familial, political, and cultural bond between Africa and Black America - subsequently portraying an African ancestral milieu that is credited but not idealized. Raisin is the first major play by an African American to translate into dramatic form the European exploitation of the lands and peoples of Africa, and the ensuing rebellion against European rule. When Raisin was produced in 1959, African struggles for independence had begun to receive international attention; by the 1960s, African nationalist movements had assumed vast and powerful proportions. In recreating an African colonial scene in Les Blancs, Hansberry advances the need for dialogue between the oppressed and the oppressor, yet she insists on action and commitment, supports the procurement of sovereignty at any cost, and visualizes the genesis of a new black world. The play does not resolve any problem but raises thought-provoking questions about history, Africa, America, anger, and confrontation; it shows that people are largely a fusion of evil and good, valor and fear, conviction and confusion, indifference and involvement. Hansberry argues for humanism even as she directs her themes through a predominantly African historical and socio-artistic experience. African-based folklore, chanting, drumming, and dancing in Les Blancs energize the action and tempo of the plot, heighten the tone and moods transmitted through dialogue, and celebrate indigenous African practices. Such musical patterns reaffirm the everyday impulsive role of music and dance in traditional African life, where they are used interactively during occasions such as work, war, ceremonies, and storytelling sessions. The musical quality of Les Blancs makes information accessible and provides an outlet for expressing creative talent. As in her play A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry's thematic and textural approach in Les Blancs is structured on standard realism.(1) But she occasionally intersperses this realism with an expressionistic slant,(2) sustained mostly by a dancing African Woman who animates and sensationalizes Hansberry's thematic vision, and who embodies and actualizes the African socio-aesthetic attributes and belief systems that Hansberry advances. The Woman's role is paradoxical - on one level initiating and preserving principal African prototypes, and on another level perpetuating a European-generated literary doctrine. Instances of expressionism rarely and briefly, but notably, digress from, but do not distort, the predominant realistic frame. Herein lies the peculiarity of Hansberry's dramatic vision: her success at reevoking and reenacting history through an essentially Western model, yet ritualizing and mythologizing history through the use of certain African cultural and folkloric devices that exhibit an African and human yearning for, and attainment of, the rite-of-passage from servitude to affirmation. The juxtaposition among the play's realism, sporadic expressionism, and black aesthetic ritualism, situated in key folkloric practices and the ceremonious maturation of some principal characters, corroborates Hansberry's ability to tap African and Western constructs, and to fuse history with myth, drama, and folklore. She achieves what would become a central goal of the 1960s Black Arts Movement in its pursuit of a black aesthetic, and what Paul Carter Harrison in the 1980s - in reference to African-rooted ritual dramas - would describe as "the urgency to formulate an aesthetic based upon the American experience but informed by the ethical sensibilities of Africa" (xliv). …


Title of dissertation: MULTIMEDIA SOCIAL NETWORKS: GAME THEORETIC MODELING AND EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS Yan Chen, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Dissertation directed by: Professor K. J. Ray Liu Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Multimedia content sharing and distribution over multimedia social networks is more popular now than ever before: we download music from Napster, share our images on Flickr, view user-created video on YouTube, and watch peer-to-peer television using Coolstreaming, PPLive and PPStream. Within these multimedia social networks, users share, exchange, and compete for scarce resources such as multimedia data and bandwidth, and thus influence each other's decision and performance. Therefore, to provide fundamental guidelines for the better system design, it is important to analyze the users' behaviors and interactions in a multimedia social network, i.e., how users interact with and respond to each other. Game theory is a mathematical tool that analyzes the strategic interactions among multiple decision makers. It is ideal and essential for studying, analyzing, and modeling the users' behaviors and interactions in social networking. In this thesis, game theory will be used to model users' behaviors in social networks and analyze the corresponding equilibria. Specifically, in this thesis, we first illustrate how to use game theory to analyze and model users' behaviors in multimedia social networks by discussing the following three different scenarios. In the first scenario, we consider a non-cooperative multimedia social network where users in the social network compete for the same resource. We use multiuser rate allocation social network as an example for this scenario. In the second scenario, we consider a cooperative multimedia social network where users in the social network cooperate with each other to obtain the content. We use cooperative peer-to-peer streaming social network as an example for this scenario. In the third scenario, we consider how to use the indirect reciprocity game to stimulate cooperation among users. We use the packet forwarding social network as an example. Moreover, the concept of "multimedia social networks" can be applied into the field of signal and image processing. If each pixel/sample is treated as a user, then the whole image/signal can be regarded as a multimedia social network. From such a perspective, we introduce a new paradigm for signal and image processing, and develop generalized and unified frameworks for classical signal and image problems. In this thesis, we use image denoising and image interpolation as examples to illustrate how to use game theory to re-formulate the classical signal and image processing problems. MULTIMEDIA SOCIAL NETWORKS: GAME THEORETIC MODELING AND EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS


Background: Children's nurses claim to practice family-centred care in which care is centred on the needs of the whole family and to work in partnership with parents to care for the sick child. Fathers of acutely ill children have been overlooked in prior research on parents' experiences in which samples have been predominantly mothers, yet recent years have seen an increasing focus in other professional fields on the significance of fathers' involvement in their children's lives.

Aim: To understand how fathers experience their child's hospitalisation and explore relationships between children's nurses and fathers in the acute in-patient setting.

Method: An ethnographic study took place on two children's wards consisting of participant observation (150 hours) and interviews with both n resident and non- resident fathers (n=12) and nurses (n=7). Thematic analysis yielded understanding of the complexities of fathers' experiences.

Findings: Nurses had no specific preparation for working with fathers and yet had clear expectations of how a good father would act on the ward, based on their experiences with mothers. Fathers, whether resident on the ward or not, played significant roles in their child's care, yet were largely overlooked by health professionals unless the mother was not present. Fathers also experienced maternal, institutional and structural barriers to partnership in the care of their sick children in hospital.

Conclusions and implications: The study begins to redress gaps in knowledge about parents in hospital. Children's nurses need to recognise that parents are in reality fathers and mothers and that they may therefore have different needs and respond to their child's illness in different ways.


AIMS
To explore pivotal moments and changes during the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music from the perspective of patients with depression.

BACKGROUND
Depression has been described as an extremely difficult experience for people and is characterised by emotional distress and suffering. As depression progresses, symptoms increase and gradually influence all aspects of the lives of those affected. Few studies have been undertaken into the essence of inner and pivotal experiences during Guided Imagery and Music in patients with depression.

DESIGN
A qualitative research design and discovery-oriented approach were used as the method of both data gathering and textual analysis.

METHODS
This study conducted semi-structured interviews with five patients with depression after each of eight sessions of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music. Each session took place in a music therapy laboratory. Forty transcripts were organised into categories and analysed according to the discovery-oriented approach of Mahrer and Boulet, considering the dimensions of the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music. Results. Nine patients with depression were recruited from a medical centre in southern Taiwan from 2004-2005. Five successfully completed eight Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music sessions. There were 141 statements coded into 10 subthemes and three themes describing pivotal moments: pushing aside the barrier, gaining new insight, moving forward. Each category was supported by three-four themes. The analysis also yielded three meaningful moments: releasing mind-body rigidity, awareness and inspiration, acceptance and inner transformation. Patients described personal emotional, cognitive and behavioural transformation during the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music experiences.

CONCLUSIONS
The discovery-oriented approach fulfilled the aim of gaining a valuable understanding of the psychological growth experiences of patients with depression during the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Patients with depression particularly need comfort and caring. It is important that nurses offer interventions as adjuvants to medication. This study supports the feasibility of incorporating the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music into the nursing management of patients with depression. Future studies are suggested to examine the interactive process of music stimulus and the multidimensional nature of imagery.


This thesis presents experimental and modeling studies of creep performance of modified 9Cr-1Mo steel with and without an oxidation-resistant coating. A deformation-mechanism-based true-stress (DMTS) creep model is proposed for predicting creep rate and creep life of modified 9Cr-1Mo steels. The DMTS model considers three well-recognized deformation mechanisms: dislocation glide, dislocation climb, and grain boundary sliding. Constant-load creep testing is conducted on modified 9Cr-1Mo steel in forged form, F91 (9Cr-1Mo-V-Nb). The creep performance of three types of F91 coupons, pristine, coated, and aged coupons is studied. The creep data obtained in the present study and those reported from the literature are used to validate the DMTS model. Four major achievements are obtained from this study. (i) The creep rate behavior of nine modified 9Cr-1Mo steels in various product forms including tubes, pipes, plates, and forging is systematically characterized in terms of power-laws representing the above-identified deformation mechanisms; (ii) The creep strain-time behavior of the pristine and coated F91 steel is analyzed to verify the basic DMTS model and the modified DMTS model with consideration of oxidation, showing excellent agreement with the experimental observations; (iii) The effect of microstructural evolution is studied using aged F91 coupons, showing that Lave phase formation associated with grain boundary sliding is mostly responsible for the increased creep rate and shortening of creep life as compared to the pristine material; (iv) Last but not the least, long-term creep lives (>104 hours) of modified Grade 91steels are predicted using the modified DMTS model, showing pronounced improvement over the basic model, indicating that oxidation effect is significant in long-time creep, whereas direct extrapolation from short-term creep test data is not correct for modified 9Cr-1Mo steels, because short-term creep life does not include enough oxidation effect.


Question and answer pairs in Community Question Answering (CQA) services are organized into hierarchical structures or taxonomies to facilitate users to find the answers for their questions conveniently. We observe that different CQA services have their own knowledge focus and used different taxonomies to organize their question and answer pairs in their archives. As there are no simple semantic mappings between the taxonomies of the CQA services, the integration of CQA services is a challenging task. The existing approaches on integrating taxonomies ignore the hierarchical structures of the source taxonomy. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that is capable of incorporating the parent-child and sibling information in the hierarchical structures of the source taxonomy for accurate taxonomy integration. Our experimental results with real world CQA data demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods.


First decribed by Sir Goeffrey Jefferson in London in 1924, the term Jefferson's fracture has become an eponym for all fractures of the Atlas. Complex Jefferson fractures and unstable Jefferson fractures require surgical fusion to maintain stability of the spinal axis. This however results in debilitating loss of movement at the crucial C1C2 joint, the most versatile of spinal joints where stability and mobility are intricately balanced into a complex yet supremely agile structure. The desire to attempt in some way to preserve a degree of movement and to spare the patient the crippling loss of movement at this joint has led to many attempts at innovation, both surgical and technological. This has led to the discovery of C1 osteosynthesis. This revolutionary technique enables the anatomical fixation of the defect thus allowing motion preservation without compromising on stability, which is a major advantage given the extreme importance of both to the proper functioning of the C1C2 and C1C0 joints. We present a case report of a 54 year old man with an isolated Jefferson's fracture which was treated successfully by this technique. We also present an overview of the biomechanics of C1 injury and the relevant review of literature regarding options for management of complex C1C2 injuries.


In model-based process optimization one uses a mathematical model to optimize a certain criterion, for example the product yield of a chemical process. Models often contain parameters that have to be estimated from data. Typically, a point estimate (e.g. the least squares estimate) is used to fix the model for the optimization stage. However, parameter estimates are uncertain due to incomplete and noisy data. In this article, it is shown how parameter uncertainty can be taken into account in process optimization. To quantify the uncertainty, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling, an emerging standard approach in Bayesian estimation, is used. In the Bayesian approach, the solution to the parameter estimation problem is given as a distribution, and the optimization criteria are functions of that distribution. The formulation and implementation of the optimization is studied, and numerical examples are used to show that parameter uncertainty can have a large effect in optimization results.


In this paper we applied the eXtended Classifier System (XCS) on a novel real world problem, namely digital Design Verification (DV). We witnessed the inadequacy of XCS on binary problems that contain high overlap between optimal rules especially when the focus is on population and not system level performance. The literature attempts to underplay the importance of the aforementioned weakness and in short, supports that a) XCS can potentially learn any Boolean function given enough resources are allocated (right parameters used) and b) the main metric deciding the learning difficulty of a Boolean function is the amount of classifiers required to represent it (i.e. |[O]|). With this work we experimentally refuted the aforementioned propositions and as a result of the work, we introduce new insights on the behavior of XCS when solving two-valued Boolean functions using a binary reward scheme (1000/0). We also introduce a new population metric (%[EPI]) that should necessarily be used to guide future research on improving XCS performance on the aforementioned problems.


The purpose of this article is to provide an advance starting point on civil RICO claims. An additional purpose is to push the jurisprudential envelope forward and to inspire scholarship. Since 1985 RICO has been the weapon of choice for civil plaintiffs because of the broad and liberal construction of the statute and the potential of the litigation equivalent of terror or a thermonuclear device - the availability of treble damages.Civil RICO can be utilized by institutions, corporations, banks, brokerage firms and a bevy of other individuals and associations as plaintiff and counterclaims by defendants. The Civil RICO cause of action is created by 18 U.S.C. Section 1984(c). Civil RICO is intended for use by general practitioners, private law firms, in house corporate law departments and government agencies.The civil racketeering provisions of RICO involve three main sections of the statute: section 1961 provides the definitions, section 1962 describes the prohibited conduct and section 1964 details the remedies. Federal subject matter jurisdiction is conferred by section 1964(c) which creates the civil RICO cause of action. Personal jurisdiction is conferred by section 1965(a), the principal venue provision, permits a party to institute a civil RICO action in any district in which a defendant resides, is found, has an agent, or transacts his affairs. Civil RICO actions are subject to a four-year statute of limitations.The U.S. Supreme Court 1985 decision in Sedima is the most frequently cited RICO precedent. A RICO based complaint must be drafted with the following instructions from Sedima as a guide. A violation of section 1962(c), the section on which Sedima relies, requires (1) conduct (2) of an enterprise (3) through a pattern (4) of racketeering activity. The plaintiff must allege each of the elements to state a claim. They are all equally essential components and the complaint will fail if any one of them is not adequately pleaded. To recover damages requires proof of a concrete financial loss and not injury to a valuable intangible property right. The federal mail fraud statute is one of the frequently utilized federal criminal statutes and is also one of the predicate offenses for RICO purposes.Because of RICO's broad definition of racketeering activity the plaintiff is only limited by his or her creativity and FRCP 11. FRCP 11 imposes an obligation on a lawyer not to assert a claim unless he or she has a good faith in the validity of the claim.


Encapsulating the absorber of a flat plate solar thermal collector in vacuum by an enclosure that can be evacuated can result in a significant increase in collector performance and achievable operating temperatures. This is a result of the thermal insulation effectiveness of the vacuum layer surrounding the absorber, as less heat is lost during collector operation. This work describes experimental thermal insulation characterization tests of prototype vacuum flat plate solar thermal collectors that demonstrate the improvement in absorber heat loss coefficients. Furthermore, this work describes the selection and sizing of a getter, suitable for maintaining the vacuum inside the enclosure for the lifetime of the collector, which can be activated at low temperatures.


Word-of-mouth is playing an important role in marketing to the extent that some of marketers believe that this form of advertising is among the most effective and efficient ones. With respect to importance of this issue and significant role of word-of-mouth in today marketing it seems necessary to manage this phenomenon in an effective way and exploit its benefits with taking appropriate actions. In present research it was tried to identify factors influencing spread of online word-of-mouth. To this end, six hypotheses were formulated. After introducing general framework of present descriptive research, data were collected using library and field methods. In order to collect data using field study, a questionnaire with 21 items was developed and distributed to statistical population of the research. The mentioned statistical population comprised of customers with experience of purchasing services from Iran Insurance Company in Khuzestan Province. Then completed questionnaires were analyzed using student's t-test with software LISREL. Results showed that knowledge self-efficacy, sense of belonging and enjoyment of helping others influenced internet word-of-mouth.


Hôpital Fernand Widal, 200, rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, 75475 Paris cedex 10  Abstract: Omega-3 fatty acids participated in the first coherent experimental demonstration of the effect of dietary substances (nutrients) on the structure and function of the brain. Experiments were first of all carried out on ex-vivo cultured brain cells, then on in vivo brain cells, finally on physiochemical, biochemical, physiological, neurosensory, and behavioural parameters. These findings indicated that the nature of polyunsaturated fatty acids (in particular omega-3) present in formula milks for infants (both premature and term) determines the visual, cerebral, and intellectual abilities, as described in a recent review in OCL [1]. In view of the high omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid content of the brain, it is evident that these fats are involved in brain biochemistry, physiology and functionning; and thus in some neuropsychiatric diseases and in the cognitive decline of ageing. Though omega-3 fatty acids appear effective in the prevention of stress, their role as regulator of mood and libido is a matter for discussion pending experimental proof in animal and human models. Dietary omega-3 fatty acids could play a role in the prevention of some disorders including depression, as well as in dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease. Their direct role in major depression and bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disease) and schizophrenia is not yet established. Their deficiency can prevent the renewal of membranes, and thus accelerate cerebral ageing; nonetheless, the respective roles of the vascular component on one hand (where the omega-3's are active) and the cerebral parenchyma itself on the other, have not yet been clearly resolved. The role of omega-3 in certain diseases such as dyslexia and autism is suggested. The role of omega-3 in certain diseases such as dyslexia, autism, and schizophrenia seems to suggest a problem of diet. Indeed, the insufficient dietary supply of omega-3 fatty acids in today's French diet raises the problem of how to correct dietary habits so that the consumer will select foods that are genuinely rich in omega-3/the omega-3 family; mainly rapeseed and walnut oils on one hand and fatty fish on the other.


In literacy learning situations, teachers frequently fix errors before helping children find errors. This can be a source of confusion for students, especially when they are experiencing difficulty or when a task is hazy. This article describes a process of self-monitoring that helps children identify errors. It is based on three crucial steps - noticing, questioning and judging one's own concrete behaviour in relation to a current task.


The flexibility of mixed methods research strategies makes such approaches especially suitable for multisite case studies. Yet the utilization of mixed methods to select sites for these studies is rarely reported. The authors describe their pragmatic mixed methods approach to select a sample for their multisite mixed methods case study of a statewide education policy initiative in the United States. The authors designed a four-stage sequential mixed methods site selection strategy to select eight sites in order to capture the broader context of the research, as well as any contextual nuances that shape policy implementation. The authors anticipate that their experience would provide guidance to other mixed methods researchers seeking to maximize the rigor of their multisite case study sampling designs.


As Osho points out in the foreward to this book, historically, the creative person has been all but forced to rebel against the society.But nowadays, the situation has dramatically changed. In today's world, the ability to respond creatively to new challenges is demanded of everybody, from corporate CEOs to "soccer moms." Those whose toolbox for dealing with life includes only what they have learned in the past from their parents and their teachers are at a distinct disadvantage both in their relationships and in their careers. Making a switch from imitative and rule-bound behavior to creative innovation and flexibility requires a profound change in our attitudes about ourselves and our capabilities."Creativity "is a handbook for those who understand the need to bring more creativity, playfulness, and flexibility to their lives. It's a manual for thinking "outside the box"-and learning to live there as well.


In this article, I argue that if one closely follows Hobbes' line of reasoning in Leviathan, in particular his distinction between the second and the third law of nature, and the logic of his contractarian theory, then Hobbes' state of nature is best translated into the language of game theory by an assurance game, and not by a one-shot or iterated prisoner's dilemma game, nor by an assurance dilemma game. Further, I support Hobbes' conclusion that the sovereign must always punish the Foole, and even exclude her from the cooperative framework or take her life, if she defects once society is established, which is best expressed in the language of game theory by a grim strategy. That is, compared to existing game-theoretic interpretations of Hobbes, I argue that the sovereign plays a grim strategy with the citizens once society is established, and not the individuals with one another in the state of nature.


Incidence of metabolic disorders increases when dairy cows (Bos taurus) are fed forages that have a high dietary cation-anion difference (DCAD) (>250 mmol c kg -1 dry matter, DM) or high grass tetany (GT) index (>2.2), both associated with high forage K concentration, often caused by applications of liquid swine manure (LSM). We determined how DCAD and GT index of timothy (Phleum pratense L.), grown on two soils with different K availability, were affected by mineral or LSM fertilization. Experimental treatments were: unfertilized control, mineral fertilizer, raw LSM, and liquid fractions of four treated LSM types (decanted, filtered, anaerobically digested, and flocculated), applied in spring and after the first of two harvests each year. Forage DCAD was lowest (-108 mmol c kg -1 DM) with the flocculated LSM due to its higher Cl content. Forage DCAD with other LSM types was similar to that with mineral fertilizer. Forage GT indices with LSM and mineral fertilizer were higher than that of the unfertilized control but still within an acceptable range for cows. The DCAD and GT index were greater on soils with high K availability. From spring growth to summer regrowth, these values decreased for soils with low K availability and increased for soils with high K availability. Compared with mineral fertilizer, LSM applied to timothy did not increase the risk of metabolic disorders for dairy cows; a Cl-enriched LSM can substantially decrease DCAD and lower the risk of milk fever.


The purposes of this study were to develop and provide the normative data of Arabic screening tool for screening the children with auditory processing disorders: an Arabic version of Adaptive Auditory Speech Test (AAST) in quiet for screening the peripheral hearing in dB SPL units; an Arabic AAST in binaural noise for screening the temporal interaction deficit: listening speech in binaural noise in dB SNR units, then teetaatoo test with a five subtests for screening the Modern Standard Arabic language phonemes identification ability. Participants included 338 children aged from 5 to 7 years old (138 males, 200 females; mean age = 6.08 years with standard deviation = 0.8) from a regular nursery school which called Baroot Summer Club in Beni-Suef in Egypt were recruited to participate in the study. According to the calculated Norms of AAST in quiet and through a meeting with the teachers of children in the nursery school, 129 children were sift out with no hearing loss, negative histories of neurological disorders, head trauma or surgery, dizziness, and attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. 129 children were screened for listening in binaural noise using the Arabic AAST in binaural noise, then the left 94 children, because 35 children couldn`t complete the testing, was screened for phonemes identification ability using teetaatoo test(the five sub tests). For the AAST in quiet, 21 to 33 dB SPL is the normal range of the hearing peripheral loss, especially, for the AAST in binaural noise, there are three different norms; -9 to -13 dB SNR is the normal range of children aged 5 years old, -10 to -13 dB SNR is the normal range of children aged 6 years old, and -10 to -14 dB SNR is the normal range of children aged 7 years old. Finally, for the five subtests (teetaatoo): > 85% (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Cons-A, >62& (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Cons-B1, >76% is the normal percentage of the Cons-B2, >63% (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Cons-B3, and 84% (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Vow-A. Further, according to the previous norms, 23 children represent 17,8% from the whole sample (N=129) with a normal speech recognition threshold have scored abnormally on the speech listening in bin-noise (AAST in bin-noise) or on at least one subtest from teetaatoo subtests and were considered at risk for learning disability because of their scores on a SIFTER.


Abstract. The region of the Middle East around the Red Sea (between 32° E and 44° E longitude and 12° N and 28° N latitude) is a currently undocumented hotspot for atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs). Satellite imagery shows evidence that this region is prone to relatively high occurrence of AGWs compared to other areas in the world, and reveals the spatial characteristics of these waves. The favorable conditions for wave propagation in this region are illustrated with three typical cases of AGWs propagating in the lower troposphere over the sea. Using weakly nonlinear long wave theory and the observed characteristic wavelengths we obtain phase speeds which are consistent with those observed and typical for AGWs, with the Korteweg-de Vries theory performing slightly better than Benjamin-Davis-Acrivos-Ono theory as far as phase speeds are concerned. ERS-SAR and Envisat-ASAR satellite data analysis between 1993 and 2008 reveals signatures consistent with horizontally propagating large-scale internal waves. These signatures cover the entire Red Sea and are more frequently observed between April and September, although they also occur during the rest of the year. The region's (seasonal) propagation conditions for AGWs, based upon average vertical atmospheric stratification profiles suggest that many of the signatures identified in the satellite images are atmospheric internal waves.


In the Flanders' region too it became apparently necessary to centralise (parts of) the library collections on Environment and to put them at the disposal of the general public. In the first half of the '90-ies, following a private initiative called Ekonet, based on the actual knowledge about electronics, a modest attempt was undertaken to cope with those needs. A Bulletin Board System and an Interface enabled third parties to consult the automatised catalogues of a few libraries on-line via Ekonet. Despite these efforts, interested persons were at loss due to the rather uncontrollable distribution of environmental information. A better solution, although requiring several steps, was the Environmental Library Network (Felnet). This aforementioned team, consisting of several private and public libraries and documentation centers, created a website which contained at first only a few addresses and spheres of interest. In a later stage, a common database-structure encompassing several catalogues of the Felnet-team, was created thanks to the software company HEMMIS. From time to time, the software was improved according to the needs. The professional skills of Felnet did not escape the attention of the originators of the Unicat project. This team was considered as almost a unique network of specialised libraries by all the Belgian scientific (university) libraries to operate as an alternative for the United Catalogue of the Scientific Libraries of Belgium (CCB). In this field, the search protocols Z39.50 and the Open Archives Metadata Harvesting (OAMH) will play an important role.


The effect of single or repetitive linear energy depositions in front of a supersonic blunt body is computed using the CEDRE flow solver. The CFD Code models the effect of a laser-induced energy deposition, as obtained for example using the long filaments created by a femtosecond laser. Single energy depositions show that significant transient drag reductions are obtained, due to the interaction of the heated core, created by the energy release, with the bow shock. When the deposition is repeated, cumulative effects are important and quasi-steady or unsteady flow regimes are obtained, depending on the power and repetition frequency. This behavior is similar to that obtained with supersonic spiked blunt bodies, acting like a laser spike. This system can lead to 15%-20% fuel savings, depending on the energy deposition efficiency.


We study students' motives for educational attainment in a unique survey of 885 secondary school students in the UK. As expected, students who perceive the monetary returns to education to be higher are more likely to intend to continue in full-time education. However, the main driver is the perceived consumption value, which alone explains around half of the variation of the intention to pursue higher education. Moreover, the perceived consumption value can account for a substantial part of both the socio-economic gap and the gender gap in intentions to continue in full-time education.


In this study we test how different ways of composing collaborative action networks influence food innovation. Networks have received considerable attention in the literature and are perceived to enhance the likelihood of innovation success by overcoming resource and capability deficiencies. While previous studies of collaborate innovation in the food sector have been mostly qualitative case studies of one or a few networks, we compare 96 networks which were all structured according to the same network template. After content-analysing archive data, we estimated a vector-generalised linear model with binomial response distributions and probit link functions; with network composition as the predictor and the innovation process charateristics and outcomes as response variables. Our findings show that differently composed manufacturer networks lead to different outcomes and different process characteristics. We find that strong management and coordination of activities are more important for heterogeneous manufacturer networks than for homogeneous manufacturer networks, and that vertically composed networks with suppliers contribute to efficiency gains to a higher extent than networks consisting solely of manufacturers.


This volume addresses the controversial nature of the relationship between science and environmental law. Much as politicians might wish otherwise, environmental decisions cannot be made solely by a scientific analysis of the situation, since they ultimately involve political choices, frequently between fundamentally divided interests. There is an increasingly apparent tension between the need for independent expert input, in technical areas such as cost benefit assessment as well as in the natural sciences, and adequate public involvement. The second part of this volume looks at the area of waste, in particular the Landfill Directive and the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive and their implementation in Italy and the UK. These essays demonstrate very clearly that waste regulation is far from a simple technical or scientific issue, but is capable of provoking serious political and cultural questions.


Designing mechatronic systems is challenging. Even so, mechatronicproducts are regarded as one of the most important means in order toinnovate in many large industries, e.g. automobile and aerospace. Theinherent difficulty lies in the multiple engineering domains involved and howthese are treated during the development process. A holistic approach, whichtreats these domains concurrently, is needed in order to find hidden synergiesbetween domains and in the end find an optimal product design based ongiven requirements.Traditional product development methodologies, even ones with amechatronic design focus, rely on treating the individual domains separatelyand only integrating them at a point in time rather far into the detailed designphase of the development process. In addition, in order to solve problems thatarise in later design stages, the design engineers need to backtrack to earlierstages and in the worst case repeat substantial parts of the work. This is bothtime and cost inefficient.This dissertation summarizes and extends previously published research bythe author about a novel mechatronic design methodology and a supportingsoftware tool. The goal of the design methodology is to enable design of betterproducts, in terms of e.g. development cost, size, and sustainability, by findingsynergies and reducing backtracking through better analysis of systemconcepts. The methodology relies on using an optimizer to efficientlydetermine the potential of a system concept, described by combining a numberof component models, e.g. motors, transmissions, and structural ones, from acomponent library and specifying their parameters.A number of design cases have been evaluated, some of which are presentedin this dissertation, including both one where a physical prototype is built, anda few virtual ones. These design cases have been instrumental in evaluating themethodology as well as the software tool.It is concluded that the design methodology is able to properly evaluate aconcept against competing concepts, and that it is a useful addition to existingmethodologies. However, as always, a number of improvements are possible,some of which are presented in a concluding section.


A mesocosm experiment was conducted to evaluate the influence of photosynthetic performance on the energetic balance of coastal phytoplankton, in relation to community production and autotrophic phytoplankton biomass in future coastal oceans. Natural phytoplankton assemblages were incubated in field mesocosms under ambient condition (control: ca. 400 μatm CO 2 and ambient temperature), and two sets of potential future ocean conditions (acidification: ca. 900 μatm CO 2 and ambient temperature; greenhouse: ca. 900 μatm CO 2 and 3 °C warmer). The photosynthetic performances were estimated by in vivo fluorometry (effective quantum yield (Φ PSII ), steady-state light response curves (LCs)) and in situ incorporation of 14 C (photosynthesis-irradiance curves). The Φ PSII and rETR m,LC (relative maximum electron transport rate) clearly reduced under acidification, in particular, when phytoplankton were exposed to high light levels. However, P B max (maximum photosynthetic rate) was the same in the ambient and acidification conditions. Thus, phytoplankton utilized less light under acidification condition, but could still assimilate a similar amount of carbon compared to the ambient condition. The P B max and α (photosynthetic efficiency) under greenhouse condition were significantly higher than those under ambient condition without any difference in Φ PSII , rETR m,LC and α ,LC (electron transport efficiency) between the treatments. Therefore, phytoplankton utilized the same amount of light under greenhouse condition, but could assimilate more carbon than under ambient condition. As a result, Chl a normalized primary production was higher in greenhouse than in other conditions. Nevertheless, the community production did not change between the experimental treatments. The main reason for the lack of a change in primary production under future climate conditions is the control of autotrophic phytoplankton biomass by grazing. Consequently, acidification and greenhouse environments have a potential to increase growth and primary production of phytoplankton by enhancing inorganic carbon assimilation efficiency when top-down regulation is negligible.


Despite the values of freedom and openness, the free culture movement's gender balance is as skewed (or more so) as that of the computing culture from which it arose. Based on the collection and analysis of discourse on gender and sexism within this movement over a six–year period, I suggest three possible causes: (a) some geek identities can be narrow and unappealing; (b) open communities are especially susceptible to difficult people; and, (c) the ideas of freedom and openness can be used to dismiss concerns and rationalize the gender gap as a matter of preference and choice.


Lyme borreliosis is the most common tick-borne, human infection across the Northern
hemisphere. The agent responsible, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.) covers a family of
Spirochaetes with unique characteristics which are shared by both Gram-negative and Grampositive
bacteria. The outer membrane (OM) is rich in lipoproteins but contains a relatively
low density of integral membrane proteins (OMPs), of these OMPs very few have been
identified and even fewer are well characterised. The OmpA-like transmembrane domain
defined by the Pfam family PF01389 is a 8-stranded membrane spanning β-barrel and is well
conserved among Gram-negative bacteria but to date remains unknown in Spirochaetes.
Building from previous computational work which had sought to identify possible OMPs from
B. burgdorferi s.l. four OmpA-like proteins, BAPKO_0422 (Borrelia afzelii), BB_0562,
BB_0406 (B. burgdorferi) and BG0408 (Borrelia garinii) have been identified and structurally
characterised. The four proteins are encoded by chromosomal genes and highly conserved
between Borrelia species and may be of diagnostic or therapeutic value. Structural
characterisation by both circular dichroism and small angle X-ray scattering suggests these four
proteins adopt a compact globular structure rich in β-strand (~40%) with Ab initio molecular
envelopes resembling a cylindrical peanut shape with dimensions of ~25x45 A consistent with
an 8-stranded β-barrel. The present work demonstrates that BAPKO_0422 can bind human
factor H (hfH) and some evidence for a further interaction between the BAPKO_0422 protein
and heparin. The interaction with hfH may contribute to the spirochaete's immune evasion
mechanisms by the inhibition of the complement response.

The zoonotic life-cycle of Borrelia and challenges by the host's immune system causes an ever
changing environment which often leads to fluctuations of O2 exposure. Although B.
burgdorferi s.l. have a distinct lack of metabolic systems including peroxidases and catalase
enzymes the Spirochaetes genome does encode a single superoxide dismutase gene (sodA -
bb_0157). Previously assigned as a Fe-SOD there has been some debate whether this protein
requires iron or manganese as a co-factor. The present work demonstrates that the B.
burgdorferi enzyme SodA requires manganese for activity and does not display cambialistic
behaviour. Structural and proteomic characterisation suggests the B. burgdorferi SodA enzyme
shares significant sequence similarity to a superoxide dismutase from Thermus thermophilus.


Recent years have seen enormous growth of online educational videos, spanning K-12 tutorials to university lectures. As this content has grown, so too has grown the number of presentation styles. Some educators have strong allegiance to handwritten recordings (using pen and tablet), while others use only typed (PowerPoint) presentations. In this paper, we present the first systematic comparison of these two presentation styles and how they are perceived by viewers. Surveys on edX and Mechanical Turk suggest that users enjoy handwriting because it is personal and engaging, yet they also enjoy typeface because it is clear and legible. Based on these observations, we propose a new presentation style, TypeRighting, that combines the benefits of handwriting and typeface. Each phrase is written by hand, but fades into typeface soon after it appears. Our surveys suggest that about 80% of respondents prefer TypeRighting over handwriting. The same fraction of respondents prefer TypeRighting over typeface, for videos in which the handwriting is sufficiently legible.


Importance
If we assume that women and men exhibit variations of the same fundamental vascular physiology, then conventional analyses of subclinical measures would suggest that women catch up to men by midlife in the extent of potentially important vascular disease. Alternatively, under the assumption that vascular physiology may fundamentally differ between women and men, a sex-specific analysis of existing data could offer new insights and augment our understanding of sex differences in cardiovascular diseases.

Objective
To evaluate whether longitudinal patterns of blood pressure (BP) elevation differ between women and men during the life course when considering baseline BP levels as the reference.

Design Setting, and Participants
We conducted sex-specific analyses of longitudinal BP measures (144 599 observations) collected for a period of 43 years (1971 to 2014) in 4 community-based US cohort studies. The combined total included 32 833 participants (54% female) spanning ages 5 to 98 years. Data were analyzed between May 4, 2019, and August 5, 2019.

Exposures
Age and serially assessed longitudinal BP measures: systolic BP, diastolic BP, mean arterial pressure (MAP), and pulse pressure (PP).

Main Outcomes and Measures
Sex-specific change in each primary BP measure compared with baseline BP levels, derived from multilevel longitudinal models fitted over the age span, and new-onset cardiovascular disease events.

Results
Of the 32 833 participants, 17 733 were women (54%). Women compared with men exhibited a steeper increase in BP that began as early as in the third decade and continued through the life course (likelihood ratio test χ2 = 531 for systolic BP; χ2 = 123 for diastolic BP; χ2 = 325 for MAP; and χ2 = 572 for PP; P for all <.001). After adjustment for multiple cardiovascular disease risk factors, these between-sex differences in all BP trajectories persisted (likelihood ratio test χ2 = 314 for systolic BP; χ2 = 31 for diastolic BP; χ2 = 129 for MAP; and χ2 = 485 for PP; P for all <.001).

Conclusions and Relevance
In contrast with the notion that important vascular disease processes in women lag behind men by 10 to 20 years, sex-specific analyses indicate that BP measures actually progress more rapidly in women than in men, beginning early in life. This early-onset sexual dimorphism may set the stage for later-life cardiovascular diseases that tend to present differently, not simply later, in women compared with men.


I conducted an experiment to assess the effects of aeration on the growth of bullfrog tadpoles (Rana catesbeiana). Tadpoles in the non-aerated treatment grew slower than tadpoles in the aerated treatment. Tadpoles in the nonaerated treatment were observed at the water's surface more often and on food resources less often than tadpoles in the aerated treatment. Oxygen concentrations in natural aquatic habitats varied greatly (encompassing the range of the experimental treatments), suggesting the results of this study may be applicable to natural situations. The results suggest oxygen content (and/or disturbance) of aquatic habitats may influence the distribution and success of Rana catesbeiana.


Currently, with the advance of technology, a recurring theme of discussion in education is its relationship with technology. Technology is instrumental to both face-to-face and distance education, contributing to the teaching and learning process. The objectives of this study were to investigate the training of tutors in the use of technology, the technology used in distance education, the advantages and disadvantages of using technology, and the convergence and divergence of the use of technology in classroom teaching and distance learning. This is a qualitative study, with data collected through an online questionnaire and with the collaboration of thirteen distance education tutors working in two federal universities in southern Brazil. The study has revealed that education for working with technology occurs through training courses for tutors and they use these technologies in their pedagogical activity. They recognize the advantages and disadvantages in the use of technology and they understand that there is a wide discrepancy between the use of technologies in face-to-face and distance education.


Spectral clustering is popular among practitioners and theoreticians alike. While performance guarantees for spectral clustering are well understood, recent studies have focused on enforcing ``fairness'' in clusters, requiring them to be ``balanced'' with respect to a categorical sensitive node attribute (e.g. the race distribution in clusters must match the race distribution in the population). In this paper, we consider a setting where sensitive attributes indirectly manifest in an auxiliary \textit{representation graph} rather than being directly observed. This graph specifies node pairs that can represent each other with respect to sensitive attributes and is observed in addition to the usual \textit{similarity graph}. Our goal is to find clusters in the similarity graph while respecting a new individual-level fairness constraint encoded by the representation graph. We develop variants of unnormalized and normalized spectral clustering for this task and analyze their performance under a \emph{fair} planted partition model induced by the representation graph. This model uses both the cluster membership of the nodes and the structure of the representation graph to generate random similarity graphs. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first consistency results for constrained spectral clustering under an individual-level fairness constraint. Numerical results corroborate our theoretical findings.


How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialization of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture's utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today. Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the 'golden age' of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica's Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries. Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises.


The aim of the present study is to assess changes in the Baltic Sea climate based on different available meteorological data sources (ERA40 and ERA-INTERIM) and various published Baltic Sea climate indices. This regional assessment will be presented in relation to global climate change and assessments available from the literature. The climate of the Baltic Sea which is located between 50N and 70N is mainly influenced by the competition of westerly humid air flow and easterly continental type air masses and is therefore highly variable. We are investigating air temperature, wind speed, cloud cover, solar radiation and precipitation. Comparisons to climate indices of general relevance as the Baltic ice cover will be conducted. Using regression analysis we could confirm the following basic trends, increase in air temperature, increase in precipitation, increase in cloudiness. The increase in air temperature in the Baltic Sea area (0.02K/year) is much more rapid then the warming trend for the global air temperature (0.005K/year). The increase in cloudiness has resulted in an effective reduction of incoming solar radiation therefore the accelerated warming is not a result of increased solar radiation, but likely due to an increased net long wave radiation input. Further it has to be mentioned that not all available data sets confirmed the trend in cloudiness, ERA40 data show a nonsignificant decrease instead. No clear trend in the wind velocities could be detected, but wind velocities from ERA40 reanalysis project show an insignificant increase in wind speeds. Results from model runs with the GETM model (General Estuarine Transport Model, http://getm.eu) show sea surface warming consistent with the increase in heat flux forcing and with satellite observations. The warmer sea surface without an adequate warming in the deeper parts results in a much stronger vertical density stratification and consequently to reduced vertical mixing. A more thorough inspection of the available regional and global data provides some reasonable doubt concerning the application of least square regression analysis to the available time series. Indeed it can be shown by a test based on the F statistics that most of the analyzed time series cannot be considered as stationary and therefore drawing simple regression lines trough these datasets is statistically incorrect. Testing for structural breakpoints in these time series reveals for many investigated parameters and also for many tested climate indices the existence of such breakpoints in the 70–80ties of the last century. Therefore it has to be concluded that the simple trend estimation for many climate parameters is statistically incorrect. Instead for statistical investigations it has to be assumed that there exist either 2 different climate states with either 2 different means or alternatively with 2 different trends which have to be estimated separately.


We know there are tons of online games available on the internet. However, as a parent, we forgot to know the different types of games available on the internet. Every game must require a minimum age to login. Nevertheless, there are many strategies to go around the age verification, and children under the minimum age group started to play adult games without any concern. In that, massively multiplayer online game is unbelievably widespread among everyone in the different age group who is a frequent visitor to the internet and the social media because they are the one who searches for different excitements in their life and relationship online. A massively multiplayer online game concept is getting thousand or even more into the same server and make them play simultaneously. More MMO categories like roleplaying(MMORPG), real-time strategy (MMORTS), first-person shooter MMOFPS, social game(MMOSG) are available for the users. MMOSG is mainly focusing on socialization; it differs from other gaming concepts. Imagine if everyone has a virtual life; actually, it is possible. There are a lot of virtual reality world games allows the user to have a virtual life. One can live a virtual life as an avatar, in which one can do anything; making friends with other virtual users from all parts of the world, besides the user can virtually love, dance, sex with other avatars, Parents focus only on the timing or restrict the usage of computers to play games. It shows their lack of experience in mediation. Safeguarding and educating the children from identifying the safe game or how to be safe on online games are done only through Parental Mediation. The philosophy of MMOSG now and then aspects reproaches for an atmosphere that can encourage violence against women and children, cyberbullying, and chauvinism, gaming addiction, and public humiliation.


The IMOTION system is a content-based video search engine that provides fast and intuitive known item search in large video collections. User interaction consists mainly of sketching, which the system recognizes in real-time and makes suggestions based on both visual appearance of the sketch (what does the sketch look like in terms of colors, edge distribution, etc.) and semantic content (what object is the user sketching). The latter is enabled by a predictive sketch-based UI that identifies likely candidates for the sketched object via state-of-the-art sketch recognition techniques and offers on-screen completion suggestions. In this demo, we show how the sketch-based video retrieval of the IMOTION system is used in a collection of roughly 30,000 video shots. The system indexes collection data with over 30 visual features describing color, edge, motion, and semantic information. Resulting feature data is stored in ADAM, an efficient database system optimized for fast retrieval.


In this paper, an approximate axisymmetric method is developed which can reliably calculate fully viscous hypersonic flow over blunt-nosed bodies. In this method, a Maslen's second-order pressure expression is used instead of the normal momentum equation. The combination of Maslen's second-order pressure expression and viscous shock layer equations is developed to accurately and efficiently compute hypersonic flow fields of perfect gas around blunt-body configurations. The results show that, this combination leads to more accurate solutions and less extensive computer run times in the preliminary design environment. Furthermore, the utility of Cebeci-Smith turbulence model is adequate for application to long slender bodies. The results of these computations are found to be in good agreement with available numerical and experimental data.


Compared with riverine systems, the influence of groundwater on the global carbon cycle has remained underexplored. Here, we provide a new estimate of the bicarbonate fluxes from fresh groundwater to the ocean by coupling a statistical and hydrological analysis of groundwater and river samples across the contiguous United States with a study of global groundwater characteristics. We find that the mean concentration ([]) in groundwaters exceeds that in surface rivers by a factor of 2–3 throughout the contiguous United States. Based on estimates of fresh groundwater discharge to the ocean and scaling up our estimated mean [] in groundwaters from the United States and around the world, we arrived at a mean global flux from groundwaters ranging from 7.4 × 1012 (25th percentile)–1.8 × 1013 mol/yr (75th percentile) to 2.8 × 1013–8.3 × 1013 mol/yr, which is 22%–237% of the global flux from river systems, respectively. We also estimated that the global carbon flux derived from subsurface silicate weathering could be comparable to 32%–351% that from surficial silicate weathering, depending on groundwater discharge rates. Despite large uncertainties due to data limitation, this study highlights that groundwater weathering could be an important carbon sink in both the short- and long-term carbon cycle. Therefore, additional work on groundwaters is needed to develop a well-constrained view of the global carbon cycle.


We report that two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal nickel oxide (NiO) nanosheets have been successfully synthesized using the electrolysis of nickel plate as the anode in deionized water. The electrolysis processes first produced 2D nickel hydroxide (Ni(OH)2) nanosheets, which were transformed to 2D NiO by calcination. Contrary to the classical crystallization mechanism, contiguous SEM observations revealed that the Ni(OH)2 were produced via a multistep oriented attachment (MOA) mode, in which the [Ni(OH)6]4− coordination octahedron serves as the building block. Hydrothermal experiments further showed that the technique can be applied to the synthesis of 3D Ni(OH)2 nanoflowers with the aid of introduced Ni(OH)2 nanosheets. A growth mechanism based on the selective-surface adsorption and intercalation of nitrate ions (NO3−) and hydroxyl ions (OH−) as well as the adsorption of free ammonia molecules (NH3), was proposed. The crystal morphologies and thickness can be controlled by a charging magnetic field, suggesting that the crystal growth mechanisms are dominated by micromechanics such as the magnetic dipole force, Van der Waals force and magnetic force.


, ABSTRACT We perform a detailed investigation of sources from the Cold Cores Catalogue of Planck Objects (C3PO). Our goal is to probe the reliability of the detections, validate the separation between warm and cold dust emission components, provide the first glimpse at the nature, internal morphology and physical characterictics of the Planck -detected sources. We focus on a sub-sample of ten sources from the C3PO list, selected to sample di ff erent environments, from high latitude cirrus to nearby (150 pc) and remote (2 kpc) molecular complexes. We present Planck surface brightness maps and derive the dust temperature, emissivity spectral index, and column densities of the fields. With the help of higher resolution Herschel and AKARI continuum observations and molecular line data, we investigate the morphology of the sources and the properties of the substructures at scales below the Planck beam size. The cold clumps detected by Planck are found to be located on large-scale filamentary (or cometary) structures that extend up to 20 pc in the remote sources. The thickness of these filaments ranges between 0.3 and 3 pc, for column densities N H 2 ∼ 0 . 1 to 1 . 6 × 10 22 cm − 2 , and with linear mass density covering a broad range, between 15 and 400 M (cid:4) pc − 1 . The dust temperatures are low (between 10 and 15 K) and the Planck cold clumps correspond to local minima of the line-of-sight averaged dust temperature in these fields. These low temperatures are confirmed when AKARI and Herschel data are added to the spectral energy distributions. Herschel data reveal a wealth of substructure within the Planck cold clumps. In all cases (except two sources harbouring young stellar objects), the substructures are found to be colder, with temperatures as low as 7 K. Molecular line observations provide gas column densities which are consistent with those inferred from the dust. The linewidths are all supra-thermal, providing large virial linear mass densities in the range 10 to 300 M (cid:4) pc − 1 , comparable within factors of a few, to the gas linear mass densities. The analysis of this small set of cold clumps already probes a broad variety of structures in the C3PO sample, probably associated with di ff erent evolutionary stages, from cold and starless clumps, to young protostellar objects still embedded in their cold surrounding cloud. Because of the all-sky coverage and its sensitivity, Planck is able to detect and locate the coldest spots in massive elongated structures that may be the long-searched for progenitors of stellar clusters.


The study originated from an independent evaluation of a Local Education Authority (LEA) project on multicultural education undertaken by a team of four teachers in two schools; a predominantly white, co-educational rural grammar school and a multi-racial, co-educational urban secondary modern. The thesis examines some key aspects of the conceptualisation, establishment, management and operationalisation of the project. The concepts of multicultural and antiracist education and the related research literature on their initiation in schools are considered. The procedures for the recruitment and selection of the project team are also examined along with the selection of the project schools, their organisation and ethos. The study focuses on the work of the team and their attempt to facilitate and initiate change at departmental and whole-school levels. The difficulty of the team's task and the complexity of racism are highlighted through a senior teacher's life history which examines his perspectives on 'race' and education.

The research findings question the adoption of low-key multicultural approaches suggesting that they might marginalise the ability to address the issue of racism in schools and thus be counter-productive. Variables are also identified, in particular the occupational culture of teachers, which might have restricted the team's access to departments, the facilitation of collaborative teaching strategies and the implementation of whole-school policy. It is suggested that a team approach needs to be planned, executed and continually re-evaluated according to clear goals and shared objectives. It is also suggested that it might be advantageous for a team to possess subject-specific expertise and an ability to relate it to racism in the departmental curriculum. Moreover, throughout the process of change the issue of racism needs to remain explicit and, whenever possible, involve the black community in the decision-making process.


abstract:This essay addresses three key moments in the history of Japan's representation at the Venice Biennale: the introduction of "Japanese art" in the early stages of the exposition's development, in the late nineteenth century; Japan's official participation in the postwar Biennale, starting in 1952 and through the end of the 1960s; and the Japanese pavilion's program during the Biennale's so-called experimental period in the decade following the student demonstrations of 1968. While seemingly distinct, these three episodes evince a structural continuity: the demand for and performance of cultural difference within the space of the exhibition. This essay argues that Japan's (self-)representation of cultural alterity was mediated by the idea of pluralism promoted by the exhibition. Such representation was functional to the Biennale's mandate as well as to Japan's shifting world-historical aspirations. In the postwar period, Japanese artists and critics—including some individuals directly involved in the planning of Japan's submissions—came to diagnose what they saw as the limitations of the Biennale-Pavilion system. In doing so, they intuited a fundamental problem with the discourse of world in art as articulated in this exposition. This was, namely, the "pseudo-objectivity" of the international: the discourse of heterogeneity found in the Venice Biennale concealed inequalities based on the power differentials of the hegemonic world-system.


Mushrooms health benefit was recognized in the Orient from several thousand years ago as globally consumption and has third largest commercially production. The genus Pleurotus (oyster mushroom) is an organoleptic fast growing fungus which belongs to basidiomycota group. Although 70 species is discovered until now for this genus, but only few of them are available in market such as Pleurotus florida, P. sajor-caju and P. ostreatus. They have been used in human diet throughout the world due to their rich nutrients such as protein, fiber carbohydrate, minerals, vitamins and lipid. It should be noted that low amount calories, Sodium, fat and cholesterol is reported in this genus. Many pharmaceutical companies in the Far East and China are viewing the medicinal mushrooms as a rich source of innovative biomedical molecules. These molecules can be extracted from different part of oyster mushroom such as fruiting body, mycelia and culture broth. Mainly they are biopolymers including polysaccharides, proteins and nucleic acids as they are more variable to carry biological information. The medicinal properties of Pleurotus spp studied by several authors, as a result antitumor, immunomodulating, antiviral, antibacterial, antigenotoxic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hypocholesterolamic, antihypertensive, antiinociceptive, anti-hyperglycaemic, anti-platelet-aggregating, antihepatoma, anti poliferative and antiatherosclerotic. In this chapter, biodivertsity of genus Pleurotus will be discussed regarding nutritional and bioactive compounds. Furthermore the prospective of oyster mushroom for therapeutic application and concept will be highlighted.


The background of the research program presented here is several contemporary trends. On the one hand, the present dynamic and competitive society requires new approaches to risk management. On the other hand, the rapid development of information technology offers new opportunities for designing effective decision support tools. Risk management in the present context is directed towards control of the risk related to the dynamic course of events following a disturbance of a potentially hazardous physical process. Risk related to long term exposure to the influence of hazardous substances or improper work conditions is not considered. The following chapters discuss the requirements for an effective risk management strategy and suggest some promising avenues for the development of operational tools for accident analysis, organizational safety reviews, and proactive risk management strategies for various different hazard domains. A taxonomy of hazard sources and their respective controlrequirements is suggested to have a consistent basis for the development of proactive risk management strategies suitable for a dynamic, competitive society


Extending research on the protective effect of flavonoids in cell culture and animal studies, we examined the association between consumption of flavonoids and flavonoid-rich foods and development of exocrine pancreatic cancer within the α-Tocopherol, β-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study cohort. Of the 27,111 healthy male smokers (50-69 years) who completed a self-administered dietary questionnaire at baseline, 306 developed exocrine pancreatic cancer during follow-up (1985-2004; median, 16.1 years). Intakes of total flavonoids, three flavonoid subgroups, seven individual flavonoids, and flavonoid-rich foods were estimated from a validated food frequency questionnaire. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated using Cox proportional hazards models. Overall, flavonoid intake was not significantly associated with pancreatic cancer. However, in stratified analysis, greater total flavonoid intake was associated with decreased pancreatic cancer risk in participants randomized during the trial to placebo (fourth versus first quartile: hazard ratio, 0.36; 95% confidence interval, 0.17-0.78; Ptrend = 0.009) and not to supplemental α-tocopherol (50 mg/d) and/or β-carotene (20 mg/d; Pinteraction = 0.002). Similar patterns and significant interactions were observed for flavonols, flavan-3-ols, kaempferol, quercetin, catechin, and epicatechin. Our data suggest that a flavonoid-rich diet may decrease pancreatic cancer risk in male smokers not consuming supplemental α-tocopherol and/or β-carotene. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(3):553–62)


This thesis writes back against the representation of the island in colonial discourse as a tabula rasa, easily possessed and inscribed. In colonial narratives island possession also emerges as explicitly gendered: the male castaway seeks to control the permissive, feminised territory of the island. It is this interpretation of the island, this gendered process of possession and inscription, that my thesis interrogates and subverts.
My critical thesis is an analysis of Robinson Crusoe and three of its revisionary texts –– J M Coetzee's Foe, Jane Gardam's Crusoe's Daughter and Julieta Campos' The Fear of Losing Eurydice. I conduct a 'ground-clearing' exercise of Robinson Crusoe, critically remapping the island from a tabula rasa to an embodied construction of appetite and desire. My analysis of Foe and Crusoe's Daughter explores how the texts' women protagonists navigate the masculine terrain of Crusoe's island, and how their authors negotiate an intertextual relationship with Robinson Crusoe. My analysis of The Fear of Losing Eurydice shows how Campos draws upon a discourse of desire to delegitimise linear narratives of colonial island possession. The desire for the island becomes a call uttered across multiple times and spaces, leading to Campos' creation of the 'archipelago of desire'; a motif which remaps Western insular cartographies to stress the relationality between the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, and Africa. I trace these cartographies of desire, charting the ways in which these novels disturb the terrain, and transgress the boundaries of Crusoe's island.
My novel, Bodeg, is set on a fictional island in the Arctic circle. Remote, desolate, bubbling with a molten undercurrent of menace, Bodeg is a volcanic island which has claimed the lives and minds of travellers. The novel follows Rebecca and her adult twins, Anna and Daniel, who visit the island. Rebecca is retracing the steps of an old love, Jake, whilst Anna seeks respite from a stale marriage. Daniel suffers from a mental health disorder that causes aural and visual hallucinations. Soon he becomes convinced the island is talking to him – that he understands Bodeg in a way nobody else can. But his sister and mother are too caught up in their own problems to notice. Rebecca's search for answers produces only more questions. Meanwhile, Anna has become obsessively attracted to the strange, stormy Ferryman. Over the course of their trip the family find their lives intersecting with the island in ways that are both alluring yet deadly. In Bodeg they each find something they crave, not realising the island is wielding its own magnetic influence, steadily pulling them closer and closer and threatening to never let them go.


ABSTRACT In autumn 2016, Malmö University started two "fast track" trajectories for teachers with refugee backgrounds. The participants were offered an education of 26 weeks as an introduction to the Swedish school system, consisting of content courses, professional Swedish and workplace learning. The aim of this small explorative study was to get an impression of the participants' views and understanding of the role of becoming a teacher in Swedish schools, realising the characteristics of pedagogy aimed for in the curriculum, specifically the interaction patterns and student participation in learning processes. Main research questions addressed participants' expectations of differences and challenges in the Swedish school context as compared to their experiences in Syrian contexts. A combination was chosen of focus groups interviews with a small number of teachers and students on their views and experiences with pupils' involvement in classroom communication as well as quantitative data gathering. The quantitative survey measured teachers' acquisition and participation-oriented views on learning. Open-ended reflection on learning questions was also given to the students. Results showed significant development towards more participation-oriented beliefs on learning. Interview data and written statements reveal varied differences between the Swedish context and the participants' experiences from schools in Syria.


Abstract People are usually born into their political communities, and only a minority of them become member of the given community by naturalisation. Sovereign states enjoy a great margin of appreciation in defining the rules of both birthright and acquired political membership. Most states employ some form of cultural affinity-based criteria relating to ethnic identity that differentiate between applicants that seek to acquire the nationality of the state. Indeed, such distinctions seem to be growing with the revival of ethnic and nationalist aspirations that Europe has witnessed for some years. We argue that human rights principles, first and foremost non-discrimination guarantees, should be taken seriously and effectively applied to these cases of naturalisation, and show what such a scrutiny entails. While the arguments presented here should apply more generally, special attention will be paid to events that primarily triggered the authors' interest, the case of Hungary.


Co-management is of increasing interest for fisheries management. We explore possibilities for, and barriers to, developing a co-management system, using threatened populations of landlocked Atlantic Salmon and Brown Trout as examples. Good management of natural resources requires not only knowledge about the resource, but also suitable tools to collect information and make decisions. In large ecosystems this can be difficult because many actors are involved, and various societal borders and traditions become barriers. Vänern is the largest lake in the European Union and it holds several distinct populations of large-bodied landlocked Atlantic Salmon and Brown Trout. The lake is used for commercial, subsistence, and sport fishing as well as for other recreational activities; in Klarälven, the largest river entering Vänern, sport fishing is popular. These salmonid populations were at critically low levels during the 1960s, but a stocking program since then has maintained the fishery. At least one wild stock appears to be recovering since being protected in 1993. Ecosystem users all have different needs: in the lake, sport fishermen say that catches of hatchery fish have declined, and commercial fishermen have focused on other species. In the river, wild salmon may be recovering: sport fishing is popular and an ongoing project investigates the possibilities for salmon to be able to circumvent hydro-electrical plants and reach historical Norwegian spawning areas. Not only do we lack information about the salmonids' different life stages, we also lack a suitable socio-political organization to find sustainable solutions to the different needs of diverse user groups. We argue that a co-management system that enfranchises user groups in the Vänern-Klarälven ecosystem will improve sustainable management of wild and hatchery fish.


This article takes a more holistic perspective on the regulation of peaceful protest, one that is different to that usually taken in Anglo-American literature. It will show how private law rules are as much capable of affecting our ability to engage in protest as is public law regulation through the criminal law or the exercise of administrative discretion. That latter will only ever paint a partial and simplistic picture of how protest is regulated. The first part plots the ways in which private law rights and remedies can shape the exercise of the public right of peaceful protest. It comprises three aspects: the criminalisation of what are essentially private, civil law relationships; the differentiated reality of protest resulting from private law rules and concepts relating to land; and the privatisation of the regulation of protest by which the commercial targets of a protest utilise their own private law rights and remedies to control and constrain protesters. The second part considers some of the ramifications of this privatising of the regulation of protest. It concludes by locating these shifts within contemporary domestic politics and the ideological tensions that lie at the heart of the Conservative-LibDem government in the UK. The case will be made in this article that full restoration of the right to non-violent protest, as was pledged in the coalition agreement in May 2011, will require several contentious decisions to be taken.


MOF materials, as new catalysts, show high catalytic activity and size-, regio-, and stereo-selectivity. However, artificially controlling their catalytic process by convenient external stimulus such as light is still unexploited. Such photocontrol over an organic reaction may enable switchable catalytic activities and/or selectivities, consequently producing desired products from a pool of building blocks according to the order and type of stimuli applied. In this study, we present a novel MOF catalyst, which not only offers ultrahigh photocontrol with the on/off ratio as high as 407, but also displays disparate photomodulation in reaction kinetics towards various aldehyde substrates in light of their sizes, thus creating the first example of MOFs showing photoswitchable catalysis. The origin, as unveiled by photoswitching adsorption experiments and density functional theory calculations, is due to photoswitching storage of guest molecules in the metal–organic framework (MOF).


The geopolitical significance of the Sahara is becoming painfully clear. Islamist militant groups and transnational criminal networks are operating in the region's most fragile states, exploiting widespread corruption, weak government capacity, crushing poverty, and entrenched social and ethnic tensions. The unrest spills over borders and aggravates protracted regional crises. This insecurity raises urgent concerns for the broader Sahara and the West. Perilous Desert details the sources of instability and what can be done to minimize the threat of simmering conflicts. Leading experts, through comprehensive accounts of the changing landscape, demonstrate how foreign assistance that relies exclusively on counterterrorism will only exacerbate the problems. Solutions require understanding and combatting the roots of the Sahara's many challenges.


ABSTRACT The technology to recover natural gas depends on undisclosed types and amounts of toxic chemicals. A list of 944 products containing 632 chemicals used during natural gas operations was compiled. Literature searches were conducted to determine potential health effects of the 353 chemicals identified by Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) numbers. More than 75% of the chemicals could affect the skin, eyes, and other sensory organs, and the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. Approximately 40–50% could affect the brain/nervous system, immune and cardiovascular systems, and the kidneys; 37% could affect the endocrine system; and 25% could cause cancer and mutations. These results indicate that many chemicals used during the fracturing and drilling stages of gas operations may have long-term health effects that are not immediately expressed. In addition, an example was provided of waste evaporation pit residuals that contained numerous chemicals on the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) lists of hazardous substances. The discussion highlights the difficulty of developing effective water quality monitoring programs. To protect public health we recommend full disclosure of the contents of all products, extensive air and water monitoring, coordinated environmental/human health studies, and regulation of fracturing under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act.


For several years road vehicle autonomous cruise control (ACC) systems as well as anti-collision radar have been developed. Several manufacturers currently sell this equipment. The current generation of ACC sensors only track the first preceding vehicle to deduce its speed and position. These data are then used to compute, manage and optimize a safety distance between vehicles, thus providing some assistance to car drivers. However, in real conditions, to elaborate and update a real time driving solution, car drivers use information about speed and position of preceding and following vehicles. This information is essentially perceived using the driver's eyes, binocular stereoscopic vision performed through the windscreens and rear-view mirrors. Furthermore, within a line of vehicles, the frontal road perception of the first vehicle is very particular and highly significant. Currently, all these available data remain strictly on-board the vehicle that has captured the perception information and performed these measurements. To get the maximum effectiveness of all these approaches, we propose that this information be shared in real time with the following vehicles, within the convoy. On the basis of these considerations, this paper technically explores a cost-effective solution to extend the basic ACC sensor function in order to simultaneously provide a vehicle-to-vehicle radio link. This millimetre wave radio link transmits relevant broadband perception data (video, localization…) to following vehicles, along the line of vehicles. The propagation path between the vehicles uses essentially grazing angles of incidence of signals over the road surface including millimetre wave paths beneath the cars.


This article concerns radical leftist subversive organizations in Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s and their transnational shared imagination. It shows that despite the scarcity of direct contacts, there existed a sense of belonging to the same transnational current, the "imagined community." On selected criteria (Images – Semantics – Practice), the article provides analysis of the shared tropes in self-perception and in the communication. The patterns were shared among the Western European subversive organizations but also imported from the countries of the Global South. The article further presents the lack of eff ort of the subversive organizations to create their own mark and graphic identity, whether consciously or not, to become a part of the "global anti-imperialist front." It puts into question the utility of the traditional categorization of subversive organizations and discusses the use of the term "terrorism" regarding its self-perception and global context.


In presenting the methods used by us in the treatment of malaria the writer feels that there exists a necessity at this time for a concise statement of exact methods which have been used successfully on a large scale since the comparatively recent advent of new antimalarial remedies. It is desired to present only the practical side of treatment as developed and used in the American Tropics during the past fourteen years, and recently used during a two year period in the medical care of 30,000 men, nearly all of whom had malaria. Accurate statistics and followup for determination of relapse rates are not available in this large group of cases treated. Inasmuch as most of the work was of a temporary nature and located in unsanitated regions, most of the cases of malaria when cured did not return to work. However, the labor law of the countries did not permit the laborer to be returned to his home until completely cured.


The retrieval of atmospheric temperature and water vapor profiles from infrared Sounder are severely limited by the presence of cloud. Therefore, retrieval from infrared sounding observations is performed only over clear-sky atmospheric conditions. The probability of finding a clear-sky pixel at spatial resolution of 10 km is found to be very small globally. This study presents a quantitative analysis of the clear-sky probability that is carried out for different months over the Indian region for INSAT-3D Sounder. The probability of a clear-sky is found to be ~7 % for the field of view of 10 km corresponding to the INSAT-3D Sounder. This statistical analysis is established using MODIS cloud mask having 95 % confidence level at 1 km resolution spread in the region between 50E–110E and 30S–30N. This necessitates cloud clearing to remove the effect of partial clouds in the Sounder FOV to provide a clear-sky equivalent sounding retrieval. Various methods were explored to derive the cloud-cleared radiances using supplementary information such as high resolution infrared or microwave observations. This study presents an effort to use the existing traditional method to derive optimal cloudcleared radiances for INSAT-3D Sounder, by estimating the fractional cloud cover using collocated high resolution INSAT-3D Imager window channel observation. The final Sounder cloud-cleared radiances have been validated with the operational AIRS L2 cloud-cleared radiance products. Nevertheless, the statistical analysis of clear-sky probability over Indian region also provides a significant insight towards the dependency of spatial resolution and the considerable field-of-regard (FOR) in obtaining the clear-sky area in the satellite observations. This, in a way, necessitates the cloud-clearing for coarser resolution sensors and at the same time, states the benefits of using very high resolution sensors. It has been observed that FOV of 1km and by choosing a reasonably good FOR can eliminate the cloudy-sky hindrances by increasing the probability of clear-sky from 5 % to 50 %.