The most important clines for marine organisms are formed by temperature and salinity. They separate water layers of different conditions and put constraints on the dispersal of zooplankton species. While stenoecious species are bound to a layer euryoecious can even live under non optimal conditions and enter adjacent strata. The spatial overlap of predators with the zooplankton defines the prey-field. Consequently clines may cause inhomogeneous resource distribution in the water column and affect energy transfer within the food web.The hydrography of the central Baltic Sea is characterised by a permanent halocline in approximately 60m depth and a summer thermocline which separates the winter water from the warm surface layer. While the brackish water above the halocline is permanently renewed, the haline waters often face long stagnation before they are replaced during inflow events from the North Sea. To analyse the vertical zooplankton composition in relation to the hydrography of the Bornholm Basin we used a GLOBEC-Germany time series of vertically stacked multinet samples. It covers the period between March 2002 and May 2003 in the Bornholm Basin and includes data from an inflow event.By means of multivariate discriminant function and canonical analysis we show a vertical zonation of the composition in the water column. In this mathematical analysis species contribute with different loadings to distinguish between samples. Three dominant distribution patterns are found:(1) Species inhabiting the warm summer surface layer above the thermocline.(2) Species inhabiting the layer of the winter water, which is temporarily constrained in volume when the thermocline develops.(3) Species inhabiting water masses below the halocline.


It is well known that, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, there is a strong seasonal element in the annual pattern of bird strikes. This study undertakes a statistical analysis of an 11year data set collected at Dublin Airport, Ireland. It attempts to identify statistically significant trends in the seasonal trajectories of bird strikes, both in general and in respect of individual species and in comparison with seasonal trends in the abundance of birds generally and at Dublin Airport in particular. Hypotheses relating to the idea of "open" (i.e. intervals of through-put of naïve and young birds) and "closed" (i.e. intervals when throughput is declining or at a minimum) periods are tested. The results are discussed in the context of the probable ability of birds to learn to avoid aircraft. If birds possess a spatio-temporal memory then it is likely that this ability, or the lack of it, may explain some of the observed trends in the seasonal distribution of bird strikes.


A comparative study of in vitro chitin synthase activity in mucoraceous hosts of a mycoparasite: Chitin synthase, the enzyme responsible for the synthesis of chitin in fungal cell wall was extracted from young hyphae of Choanephora cucurbitarum and Phascolomyces articulosus, susceptible and resistant hosts, respectively, to the mycoparasite, Piptocephalis virginiana. Crude enzyme was identified and characterized by measuring the incorporation of the substrate [14C]-UDP-N-acetylglucosamine, into chitin. Most activity occurred in mixed membrane fraction. Inhibition of activity with Polyoxin D and activation with proteases, N-acetyl-glucosamine and magnesium and other ions was observed. Properties of the crude enzyme preparation such as cofactor requirement, Vmax , apparent Km value for UDP-GlcNAc, inhibition by Polyoxin D, response to pH and to temperature, and stability at 4°C were determined. Enzyme activity from both fungi displayed basically the same features as the corresponding enzymes reported from other mucoraceous fungi. However, the two preparations from P. articulosus and C. cucurbitarum differed from each other in their expressed activity (i.e., the preparations from ~ articulosus exhibited higher latency and higher specific chitin synthase activity than the corresponding preparations from ~ cucurbitarum). Trypsin was effective in activation only over a narrow concentration range. Acid protease was the most effec.tive activator. En.dogenous protease estimation


Hispanics are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States to lack health insurance. This paper draws on quantitative and qualitative research to evaluate the extent to which health reforms in Massachusetts, a model for the Affordable Care Act of 2010, have reduced disparities in insurance coverage and access to health care. We found that rates of coverage and the likelihood of having a usual provider increased dramatically for Massachusetts Hispanics after the state's reforms, but disparities remained. The increase in insurance coverage among Hispanics was more than double that experienced by non-Hispanic whites. Even so, in 2009, 78.9 percent of Hispanics had coverage, versus 96 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Language and other cultural factors remained significant barriers: Only 66.6 percent of Hispanics with limited proficiency in English were insured. One-third of Spanish-speaking Hispanics still did not have a personal provider in 2009, and 26.8 percent reported not seeing a doctor because of cost, up from 18.9 percent in 2005. We suggest ways to reduce such disparities through national health care reform, including simplified enrollment and reenrollment processes and assistance in finding a provider and navigating an unfamiliar care system.


China's state-led model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) does not seem to present a promising environment for the participation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Nevertheless, we observe recent examples of NGO involvement in CSR initiatives. Chinese NGOs are using the CSR platform to challenge the environmental practices of firms operating in China. We take a field-theoretical approach that focuses on the agency of actors. We show how an international NGO proposes a new standard and how Chinese NGOs use local environmental information disclosure laws to engage with firms in the textile supply chain. We find that NGOs leverage the power of brands to influence the practices of Chinese suppliers. However, we find differences in the framing and tactics employed by international NGOs versus their Chinese counterparts. Field analysis helps better understand the actors in the field of CSR, along with their motivations and their resources, and it offers a useful perspective on civil society development in China.


A total of 138,869 lactation milk yields (305 d, milked twice daily, mature equivalent) from the first three parities of 68,063 New York Holstein cows were used to estimate variance components that were due to additive direct genetic effects, cow permanent environmental effects (cow within sire for sire model), sire by herd interaction effects, and cytoplasmic line effects. The original data were assigned to 10 random samples, which were each analyzed using an animal model and a sire model. From each sample of original data, 20 other samples were analyzed with levels assigned randomly to cytoplasmic and interaction effects (data with randomly simulated levels). Ten of those samples were analyzed with an animal model and 10 with a sire model. The models also included fixed effects of herd-year-seasons. For the animal model and sire model, average fractions of phenotypic variance and average standard errors were, respectively, for additive direct genetic effects 0.300 (0.029) and 0.228 (0.040) for original data and 0.325 (0.025) and 0.262 (0.039) for data with randomly simulated levels. For cow permanent environmental effects the respective averages were 0.242 (0.024) and 0.444 (0.014) for original data and 0.235 (0.025) and 0.492 (0.016) for data with randomly simulated levels. The averages for sire by herd interaction effects were 0.015 (0.008) and 0.018 (0.007) for original data and 0.003 (0.007) and 0.004 (0.009) for data with randomly simulated levels. For cytoplasmic line effects, the respective averages were 0.011 (0.007) and 0.043 (0.008) for original data and 0.003 (0.006) and 0.003 (0.007) for data with randomly simulated levels. The differences between estimates of variance components for original data and data with randomly simulated levels suggest that estimates of fractions of total variance caused by sire by herd interaction and cytoplasmic effects estimated with REML may be biased upward by 0.003 to 0.004.


The COVID-19 pandemic has caused migrant workers worldwide to face numerous and specific challenges. This study aims to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic and its societal impact have influenced temporary and circular migrants from Serbia and North Macedonia. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 50 participants to gain a deeper understanding of their challenges and migration practices. Temporary circular labour migration from Serbia and North Macedonia are most intensive towards EU countries, which are geographically close and well-connected by traffic, and with which migrants have well-established migration ties. The results show that after the outbreak of the pandemic, respondents faced termination of employment contracts, reduced working hours and earnings. Most of the respondents returned and only a few found formal employment in the country of origin. Job-related impacts of COVID-19 on respondents are determined by temporary residence, a form of employment and the employment sector. Temporary and circular migrant workers from Serbia and North Macedonia involved in the essential sectors in EU countries are less likely to be severely affected by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that temporary and circular migration schemes should be improved after the pandemic, in a way that is sustainable even in times of sudden changes. In that regard, in addition to considering the needs of the labour markets of countries of origin and destination, the needs and the rights of migrants, should be prioritized in common solutions. © 2021 University of Craiova, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Geography. All rights reserved.


Slavery and apprenticeship came to an end in the British West Indies in 1838, the year photography was developed as a fixed representational process. No photographs of slavery in the region exist or have been found. Despite this visual lacuna, some recent historical accounts of slavery reproduce photographs that seem to present the period in photographic form. Typically these images date to the late nineteenth century. Rather than see such uses of photography as flawed, or the absence of a photographic archive as prohibitive to the historical construction of slavery, both circumstances generate new understandings of slavery and its connection to post-emancipation economies, of history and its relationship to photography, and of archival absence and its representational possibilities.


We study the efficiency of Thompson sampling for contextual bandits. Existing Thompson sampling-based algorithms need to construct a Laplace approximation (i.e., a Gaussian distribution) of the posterior distribution, which is inefficient to sample in high dimensional applications for general covariance matrices. Moreover, the Gaussian approximation may not be a good surrogate for the posterior distribution for general reward generating functions. We propose an efficient posterior sampling algorithm, viz., Langevin Monte Carlo Thompson Sampling (LMC-TS), that uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to directly sample from the posterior distribution in contextual bandits. Our method is computationally efficient since it only needs to perform noisy gradient descent updates without constructing the Laplace approximation of the posterior distribution. We prove that the proposed algorithm achieves the same sublinear regret bound as the best Thompson sampling algorithms for a special case of contextual bandits, viz., linear contextual bandits. We conduct experiments on both synthetic data and real-world datasets on different contextual bandit models, which demonstrates that directly sampling from the posterior is both computationally efficient and competitive in performance.


The luminance threshold for a white test field, 1° in diameter, was measured before, coincident with, and immediately after the extinction of white adapting fields of various luminance levels. Foveal and parafoveal measurements were made on several subjects. The threshold begins to rise about 0.2 sec before the onset of darkness, rises to a maximum at about the time of darkness, then falls in the dark-adaptation curve. The early part of the dark-adaptation curve shows an initial very rapid drop, whose slope may be different for rods and cones. The theoretical implications of the data, especially the anomalous threshold rise, are considered with respect to their general bearing on Hecht's photochemical theory.


Smart cities present a substantial growth opportunity in the coming years. The role of GIS in the smart city ecosystem is to integrate different data acquired by sensors in real time and provide better decisions, more efficiency and improved collaboration. Semantically enriched vision of GIS will help evolve smart cities into tomorrow's much smarter cities since geospatial/location data and applications may be recognized as a key ingredient of smart city vision. However, it is need for the Geospatial Information communities to debate on "Is 3D Web and mobile GIS technology ready for smart cities?" This research places an emphasis on the challenges of virtual 3D city models on the road to smarter cities.


The diet and the foraging behaviour of the British Storm Petrel Hydrobates pelagicus during the breeding period were studied from proventriculus contents obtained from adults belonging to two populations in the Bay of Biscay. The observed prey had various ecological affinities in two main groups. The first group were oceanic and neritic organisms, such as ichthyoplankton (Gadidae, Ammodytidae, Myctophidae) and microzooplankton (Copepoda, Euphausiacea, Chaetognatha, Anthomedusae, and meroplanktonic larvae), including bioluminescent species migrating vertically at night from deep water to the surface. The second group were littoral (Gobiidae) and suprabenthic intertidal organisms (mainly isopods Cirolanidae). 52% of total prey was zooplancton, and a further large percentage (37%) were littoral and intertidal benthic organisms. Our results show that British Storm Petrels regularly forage inshore during summer nights. This behaviour is not only linked to the necessity for breeders to feed their chick, but seems to be part of the foraging strategy of this species, enabling individuals to optimize their time-energy budgets. A relationship between the importance of inshore food resources and both colony location and colony size is suggested.


Covering all the media that Rembrandt worked in throughout his career, "Rembrandt's Faith" is the only art-historical study to address the full breadth of the artist's religious imagery. Rembrandt weighed in on important religious issues of his day and was a close student of the Bible, using traditional approaches based on Saint Paul to employ typology between the Old and New Testaments. He also shared the Dutch propensity to draw analogies between the biblical tales of the 'chosen people' and Dutch society, including commentary on righteous leadership under God's covenant. Rembrandt's close reading of the Bible and biblical commentary by Calvin and other theologians was greatly abetted by the publication, in 1637, of the "Dutch States Bible" translation with notes. He also avidly studied seventeenth-century reconstructions of the Jerusalem Temple and frequently located his biblical narratives in re-creations of these spaces. "Rembrandt's Faith" raises essential questions about the complex relationships among Rembrandt's art, religion, and the theological debates of his time.


Language-processing software is becoming increasingly present in our society. Making such tools available to the greater number is not just a question of access to technology but also a question of language as they need to be adapted, or localized, to each linguistic community. It is thus important to make the tools necessary to the engineering of language-processing systems as accessible as possible, for instance through automation. Not so much to help the traditional software creators but more importantly to enable communities to bring their language use into the digital world on their own terms. Smart paradigms are created in the hope that they can decrease the amount of work for the lexicographer who wishes to create or update a morphological lexicon. In the first paper, we evaluate smart paradigms implemented in GF. How good are they to guess the correct inflection tables? How much information is required? How good are they at compressing the lexicon? In the second paper, we take some distance from the smart paradigms, although they have been used in this work, they are not the main focus of the study. Instead, we compare two rule-based machine translation systems based on different translation models and try to determine the potential of a possible hybridization. In the third paper we come back to the smart paradigms. If they can reduce the work of the lexicographer, someone still needs to create the smart paradigms in the first place. In this paper we explore the possibility of automatically creating smart paradigms based on existing traditional paradigms using machine-learning techniques. Finally, the last paper presents a collection of tools meant to help grammar engineering work in the Grammatical Framework community: a tokenizer; a library to embedded grammars in Java applications; a build server; a document translator and a kernel to Jupyter notebooks.


While a natural fit for modeling and understanding mobile networks, time-varying graphs remain poorly understood. Indeed, many of the usual concepts of static graphs have no obvious counterpart in time-varying ones. In this paper, we introduce the notion of temporal reachability graphs. A (tau,delta)-reachability graph is a time-varying directed graph derived from an existing connectivity graph. An edge exists from one node to another in the reachability graph at time t if there exists a journey (i.e., a spatiotemporal path) in the connectivity graph from the first node to the second, leaving after t, with a positive edge traversal time tau, and arriving within a maximum delay delta. We make three contributions. First, we develop the theoretical framework around temporal reachability graphs. Second, we harness our theoretical findings to propose an algorithm for their efficient computation. Finally, we demonstrate the analytic power of the temporal reachability graph concept by applying it to synthetic and real-life datasets. On top of defining clear upper bounds on communication capabilities, reachability graphs highlight asymmetric communication opportunities and offloading potential.


The uranium and thorium decay series (hereafter "U-series") include the nuclides of ten elements, all of which can be found at trace levels in rocks and minerals. The relatively short half-lives of the U-series nuclides give them considerable potential to decipher a wide variety of natural processes. The common observation of secular radioactive disequilibrium between parent and daughter nuclides provides a time dimension that is not possible with the more commonly used trace elements. However, just like conventional trace elements, the behavior of U-series elements depends on their partitioning between coexisting phases, such as minerals and melts. Interpreting radioactive disequilibrium behavior of the U-series critically requires an understanding of how parent and daughter nuclides of these elements are fractionated one from another under the conditions of interest. Without appropriate partition coefficients ( D ) it is difficult to separate that part of any disequilibrium signal that is due to process and that part which is due to time. This problem is minimized, but by no means eliminated, by the use of activity ratios rather than concentration ratios, as conventionally used for trace elements. But still, there is very little point in determining isotopic concentrations at the sub-femtogram level, if the data themselves cannot be interpreted or modeled with comparable precision and accuracy. Unfortunately, with the partial exception of U, Th and Pb, our knowledge of partitioning of the U-series elements lags well behind our ability to measure them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, because nearly all of the elements of interest are highly incompatible ( D << 1) in all common silicate and oxide minerals, and many lack stable or long half-life isotopes, there are serious technical difficulties associated with determining their partition coefficients experimentally

The purpose of this chapter is to first establish a case for the importance of …


This research explores the alternative media ecosystem through a Twitter lens. Over a ten-month period, we collected tweets related to alternative narratives — for example, conspiracy theories — of mass shooting events. We utilized tweeted URLs to generate a domain network, connecting domains shared by the same user, then conducted qualitative analysis to understand the nature of different domains and how they connect to each other. Our findings demonstrate how alternative news sites propagate and shape alternative narratives, while mainstream media deny them. We explain how political leanings of alternative news sites do not align well with a U.S. left-right spectrum, but instead feature an anti-globalist (versus globalist) orientation where U.S. Alt-Right sites look similar to U.S. Alt-Left sites. Our findings describe a subsection of the emerging alternative media ecosystem and provide insight in how websites that promote conspiracy theories and pseudo-science may function to conduct underlying political agendas.


Technology is revolutionizing our lives. With the touch of a button or a simple voice command, we can instantly order groceries, get directions, or find the nearest sushi restaurant. Sensibly, the private sector has capitalized on these recent innovations to drive up profits. To sell more laundry detergent, Amazon now enables consumers to order refills by simply pressing the "dash button" mounted above their laundry machines. Starbucks lures more customers by allowing them to pre-order online and have their drink waiting when they arrive at the store. The theory behind this approach is simple: if you want someone to use your product or service, you should make it as quick and easy as possible for them to do so. This Article makes a novel argument to extend this line of reasoning to encourage better compliance with the tax laws. In making this argument, the Article draws upon behavioral science research showing that complexity impacts individuals' decision making and encourages dishonesty. The Article then offers a number of proposals for how policymakers could simplify individuals' interactions with the tax system. For example, the IRS could allow taxpayers to easily record their income and deductions online during the year using smart phones or tablets. Those items could be stored in an online personal taxpayer account and, at the end of the year, automatically uploaded to an electronic return. Easing the burden of taxpaying should encourage more taxpayers to report honestly, in addition to reducing their compliance costs. In the same way that designing products or websites to be user-friendly encourages their use, making the tax system more user-friendly should attract more voluntary participation.


We examined fungi associated with decomposing leaves in streams to understand the effects of mine drainage on this community and to test a general model of ecological response to stress. The community composition and biomass of fungi and microbial activity associated with decomposing willow leaves were determined for 20 Colorado mountain stream sites, some of which were affected by mine drainage. The pH, concentration of dissolved zinc, and deposition rate of metal oxides were measured at each site. The community composition of fungi on willow leaves from litterbags was determined by analysis of conidia from aerated leaves and a particle-plating method. As with other communities in streams, diversity of fungal communities was sensitive to low pH and high concentrations of zinc from mine drainage, whereas biomass and functioning were stable under stress from pH or zinc. Diversity was low at sites with high concentrations of dissolved zinc (>1 mg/L) or low pH (<6). Fungal biomass (concentration of ergosterol) and microbial activity, in contrast, often were high despite the chemical conditions of the streams and the limited diversity of fungi. Microbial respiration was negatively related to the physical stress of metal oxide deposition. The concentration of ergosterol was significantly related to rates of respiration on leaves at pristine sites. Leaves from sites with high concentrations of dissolved zinc often had higher fungal biomass and microbial respiration than leaves from pristine sites. Several sites of low pH had high rates of respiration on leaves and visible fungal growth, but little or no measurable ergosterol. Leaves at these sites had ergosterol-like compounds that have yet to be identified.


Technological determinism and media specificity have profoundly shaped the history of photography—two strands of thought inherited from nineteenth century predecessors. Media archaeological approaches—while not always explicitly and perhaps, as Thomas Elsaesser has recently suggested, rather as symptom—have been taken up in the history of photography in response to long held narratives shaped by a disciplinary media determinism. This article explores discourses of futurity and historicity in early photographic writing in France, examining one thread in the early trajectory of media determinism in the history of photography. Taking up Eric Kluitenberg's concept of "imaginary media", this article argues that early photographic discourse employed both historical and future-oriented narratives in order to define photography as a discreet medium. Medium specificity—photography as a unified set of technologies with a shared history and a set of specific aesthetic characteristics—can therefore be understood as one characteristic of the media imaginary. The story of photography's medium specificity is most often (and not incorrectly) told as a narrative of photography's acceptance as a fine art form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, this article aruges that a parallel genealogy of photography's medium specificity can be outlined based upon the construction of photography as a progressive technology with a unified technical history. Building on recent work focusing on future-oriented rhetoric and the technological imagination in nineteenth century photographic discourse, this paper will examine roots of this historiography of photography in Enlightenment thought and Utopian philosophies of technology of the early nineteenth century, asking what photography's history would look like if photographic hopes, dreams, and failures were given due consideration alongside those objects deemed by the historical canon to represent photographic "success."


Candida inconspicua is an emerging pathogen in immunocompromised patients possessing inherently decreased susceptibility to fluconazole. We determined the MICs and killing activity of fluconazole and amphotericin B against C. inconspicua clinical isolates as well as reference strain C. inconspicua ATCC 16783 for comparison. MICs were determined using the standard broth microdilution method. Killing rates were determined using time-kill methodology at 0.5-16 x MIC fluconazole and amphotericin B concentrations. Fluconazole and amphotericin B MIC values varied between 16-128 mg/l and 0.5-1 mg/l, respectively. In time kill-assays fluconazole showed fungistatic effect at 1-16 x MIC concentrations against all tested strains after 24 h-incubation, but became fungicidal after 48 h at 4-16 x MIC concentrations. The time necessary to achieve fungicidal endpoint at 1 mg/l amphotericin B concentration ranged from 2 to 24 h. Our in vitro results confirm the data that fluconazole is ineffective against C. inconspicua at the fluconazole serum concentration attainable in humans. Amphotericin B due to its rapid killing activity seems to be a good alternative for the treatment of infections caused by C. inconspicua.


This study examines the relationship between economic conditions and health. Fixed-effect models are estimated using state level data for the 1972-1991 time period. Health is proxied by total and age- specific mortality rates, as well as by 10 particular causes of death. Total mortality and nine of the ten sources of fatalities exhibit a procyclical variation, with suicides representing the important exception. The fluctuations in mortality are larger for 20-44 year olds than for older individuals. The predicted relationship between personal incomes and health is quite weak and is sensitive to the choice of model specifications, time periods and dependent variables. These findings suggest the possible importance of cyclical variations in the time costs of medical care or healthy lifestyles and of negative health effects of job-holding.


ABSTRACT We explore how to address the challenges of adaptation of water resources systems under changing conditions by supporting flexible, resilient and low-regret solutions, coupled with on-going monitoring and evaluation. This will require improved understanding of the linkages between biophysical and social aspects in order to better anticipate the possible future co-evolution of water systems and society. We also present a call to enhance the dialogue and foster the actions of governments, the international scientific community, research funding agencies and additional stakeholders in order to develop effective solutions to support water resources systems adaptation. Finally, we call the scientific community to a renewed and unified effort to deliver an innovative message to stakeholders. Water science is essential to resolve the water crisis, but the effectiveness of solutions depends, inter alia, on the capability of scientists to deliver a new, coherent and technical vision for the future development of water systems. EDITOR D. Koutsoyiannis; ASSOCIATE EDITOR not assigned


Transforming a paper document to its electronic version in a form suitable for efficient storage, retrieval, and interpretation continues to be a challenging problem. An efficient representation scheme for document images is necessary to solve this problem. Document representation involves techniques of thresholding, skew detection, geometric layout analysis, and logical layout analysis. The derived representation can then be used in document storage and retrieval. Page segmentation is an important stage in representing document images obtained by scanning journal pages. The performance of a document understanding system greatly depends on the correctness of page segmentation and labeling of different regions such as text, tables, images, drawings, and rulers. We use the traditional bottom-up approach based on the connected component extraction to efficiently implement page segmentation and region identification. A new document model which preserves top-down generation information is proposed based on which a document is logically represented for interactive editing, storage, retrieval, transfer, and logical analysis. Our algorithm has a high accuracy and takes approximately 1.4 seconds on a SGI Indy workstation for model creation, including orientation estimation, segmentation, and labeling (text, table, image, drawing, and ruler) for a 2550/spl times/3300 image of a typical journal page scanned at 300 dpi. This method is applicable to documents from various technical journals and can accommodate moderate amounts of skew and noise.


In this paper, we study systems in the plane having a critical point with pure imaginary eigenvalues, and we search for effective conditions to discern whether this critical point is a focus or a center; in the case of it being a center, we look for additional conditions in order to be isochronous. We stress that the essential differences between the techniques used in this work and the more usual ones are basically two: the elimination of the integration constants when we consider primitives of functions (see also Remark 3.2) and the fact that we maintain the complex notation in the whole study. Thanks to these aspects, we reach with relative ease an expression of the first three Liapunov constants,v3,v5, andv7, and of the first two period ones,p2andp4, for a general system. As far as we know, this is the first time that a general and compact expression ofv7has been given. Moreover, the use of a computer algebra system is only needed in the computation ofv7andp4. These results are applied to give a classification of centers and isochronous centers for certain families of differential equations.


This paper presents and discusses the clinical and pathological findings of an outbreak of neonatal diarrhea that caused a high mortality in a dairy farm in Lima, Peru. The diarrheas did not respond to antibiotics and occurred in calves less than one month old. The animals showed signs of dehydration, fluid feces, fever and marked depression of sensory. They were negative for coronavirus and rotavirus but were positive for Criptosporidium sp. In the post mortem study, a severe diffuse acute mucohemorrhagic enterocolitis was found and the histopathological diagnosis corroborated that it was a severe acute diffuse catarrhal enteritis associated with Cryptosporidium sp and bacterial nests. In the barn was found deficiencies in the management of colostrum and hygiene of the containers in which the milk was offered to the calves. The problem was solved introducing a series of good practices in calf handling.


The goal of this paper is to identify points of convergence between the great religious traditions in addressing human–nature relations, as well as presenting a critical evaluation of whether these approaches have in fact affected environmental conservation in representative countries. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism have been considered. The main traditions considered are: (1) dominion: humans at the top of Creation and using natural resources as needed; (2) stewardship: humans having a delegate dominion over Creation and being responsible and accountable for their use of natural resources; (3) empathy: nature is affected by human misbehaviour; (4) analogy: nature is an image of God; (5) God worshipper: nature gives glory to God; (6) cosmic humility: nature is beyond human comprehension; (7) natural mysticism: union with God is accomplished through contemplation of the created world; (8) worship: nature is sacred. These approaches are not necessarily conflicting but rather they can be considered in some cases as being complementary. Their actual impact on water and environmental conservation should be further researched.


This account of a major initiative to establish a set of online communities in UK gives particular attention to the requirements and reactions of the users. The communities are being designed for specialised professional practitioners and the developers are themselves practitioners operating in the same context as the users. The project team had therefore expected to be able to anticipate quite accurately what features would be required and how they would be used. Even so, the development strategy emphasises the need to ascertain and respond to the requirements of participants. Quite elaborate means have been employed for monitoring user preferences, perceptions and patterns of use. These generally reveal the users' requirements as being close to those expected, although this has not always been the case and the developers have had to make some significant changes in order to retain engagement with the communities. Some of the differences that emerged may be context specific, but there may also be a basic difference in the underlying perspectives of those who develop online communities and those who use them. Experience here confirms more speculative reflection on the need for developers to adopt techniques to ensure that users are central to the process.


Introduction: The concept of bacteria as a solely planktonic life form is rapidly becoming outdated. In actuality, the planktonic phenotype, seems to merely represent a phase in the life cycle of bacterial colonies, with permanent adherent microcolonies called Biofilms, representing the ''natural'' state of many species. Biofilm presence has long been recognised in water treatment facilities and in dental plaque. More recently biofilms have been identified on many medical devices including, contact lenses, breast implants, hip prostheses and venous cannulas. Colonisation of endotracheal tubes (ETTs) with bacterial flora is thought to be a source of recurrent ventilator associated pneumonia and as a medical device in contact with known biofilm-forming dental flora; ETTs represent an ideal environment to investigate biofilm micro-diversity. Objectives: The aim of this work was to identify the presence of biofilms with endotracheal lumens, and to characterise the microflora therein. Methods: 26 ETTs were obtained from 21 patients in a General ICU. Sampling involved the physical removal of biofilms within the airway lumens and from the dressings. Bacterial cell culture techniques were used to quantify and identify microorganism populations present. Colonies were further characterised using molecular methods such as Denaturing Gel Gradient Electrophoresis (DGGE) and PCR. Confocal Light Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) was used to elucidate the three dimensional nature of the biofilms. Results: Molecular analysis shows multiple bacterial genotypes within each endotracheal tube, and consisting of a range of microorganisms including dental flora, such as Streptococcus mutans and Pseudomonas gingivalis, as well as recognised pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Bacterial culture methods similarly identify many cohabiting phenotypes, and using cultural assays, counts of up to 210 million colony forming units within each centimetre length of the ETTs. Cultural and structural analysis revealed the presence of fungal hyphae adding to the biofilm, identified as Candida albicans. Conclusion: Endo tracheal tubes have been shown to harbour polymicrobial biofilms, consisting of dental flora and pneumonia-causing pathogens. This has important consequences for intubated patients, and the role of a non-adherent or bactericidal coating in ETTs needs to be evaluated. These techniques will now be applied to tracheostomies and burn wounds


We present a technique for combining prior knowledge about transformations that should be ignored with a covariance matrix estimated from training data to make an improved Mahalanobis distance classifier. Modern classification problems often involve objects represented by high-dimensional vectors or images (for example, sampled speech or human faces). The complex statistical structure of these representations is often difficult to infer from the relatively limited training data sets that are available in practice. Thus, we wish to efficiently utilize any available a priori information, such as transformations or the representations with respect to which the associated objects are known to retain the same classification (for example, spatial shifts of an image of a handwritten digit do not alter the identity of the digit). These transformations, which are often relatively simple in the space of the underlying objects, are usually nonlinear in the space of the object representation, making their inclusion within the framework of a standard statistical classifier difficult. Motivated by prior work of Simard et al. (1998; 2000), we have constructed a new classifier which combines statistical information from training data and linear approximations to known invariance transformations. When tested on a face recognition task, performance was found to exceed by a significant margin that of the best algorithm in a reference software distribution.


We seek to understand how Laffer curves differ across countries in the US and the EU-14, thereby providing insights into fiscal limits for government spending and the service of sovereign debt. As an application, we analyze the consequences for the permanent sustainability of current debt levels, when interest rates are permanently increased e.g. due to default fears. We build on the analysis in Trabandt-Uhlig (2011) and extend it in several ways. To obtain a better fit to the data, we allow for monopolistic competition as well as partial taxation of pure profit income. We update the sample to 2010, thereby including recent increases in government spending and their fiscal consequences. We provide new tax rate data. We conduct an analysis for the pessimistic case that the recent fiscal shifts are permanent. We include a cross-country analysis on consumption taxes as well as a more detailed investigation of the inclusion of human capital considerations for labor taxation.


A plethora of problems in AI, engineering and the sciences are naturally formalized as inference in discrete probabilistic models. Exact inference is often prohibitively expensive, as it may require evaluating the (unnormalized) target density on its entire domain. Here we consider the setting where only a limited budget of calls to the unnormalized density oracle is available, raising the challenge of where in the domain to allocate these function calls in order to construct a good approximate solution. We formulate this problem as an instance of sequential decision-making under uncertainty and leverage methods from reinforcement learning for probabilistic inference with budget constraints. In particular, we propose the TreeSample algorithm, an adaptation of Monte Carlo Tree Search to approximate inference. This algorithm caches all previous queries to the density oracle in an explicit search tree, and dynamically allocates new queries based on a "best-first" heuristic for exploration, using existing upper confidence bound methods. Our non-parametric inference method can be effectively combined with neural networks that compile approximate conditionals of the target, which are then used to guide the inference search and enable generalization across multiple target distributions. We show empirically that TreeSample outperforms standard approximate inference methods on synthetic factor graphs.


An analysis of the relevant texts (Genesis 31; 38; 1 Samuel 25; 2 Samuel 13) reveals that sheepshearing in ancient Israel was a significant celebration characterized by feasting, heavy dirinking, and the settling of old scores. As a result of these associations, sheepshearing became an ideal backdrop for events in Israel's past involving the repayment of debts or the righting of wrongs. Because both David and Absalom took advantage of sheepshearing for this purpose - and in the process aided their own ascents to the throne - sheepshearing became intimately associated with the emergence of the royal clan (Genesis 38) and the establishment of the Davidic dynasty.


Objective: Setting research priorities in the research management cycle is a key. It is important to set the research priorities to make optimal use of scarce resources. The aim of this research was to determine the research needs of Health Insurance Organization based on its health care centers research needs. Methods: This is a qualitative, descriptive and cross-sectional study that was conducted in 2011. A purposeful sample of 60 participants from 14 hospitals, seven dispensaries, five dental clinics, two rehabilitation centers, four radiology centers, six medical diagnostic laboratories, 12 pharmacies, and 20 medical offices that were contracted with the Health Insurance Organization in Iran was interviewed. The framework analysis method (a qualitative research method) was used for analysis of interviews. Atlas-Ti software was used to analyze quantitative data, respectively. The topics were prioritized using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method through Expert Choice software. Results: Based on the problems extracted in our qualitative study, 12 research topics were proposed by the experts. Among these "Design of standard treatment protocols," "Designing model of ranking the health care centers under contract," and "Pathology of payment system" took the priority ranks of 1 to 3, earning the scores of 0.44, 0.42, and 0.37, respectively. Conclusion: Considering limited resources and unlimited needs and to prevent research resource wasting, conducting research related to health care providers in the Health Insurance Organization can help it achieve its goals.


Insurance restrictions sometimes make for strange bedfellows. My story begins with a phone call from a man about to lose his job. He said that he had been placed on probation and was about to be fired. He asked if he could see me. We met the following day.


Endothelial cells (ECs) form three-dimensional (3D) aggregates without any scaffold when they are exposed to microgravity simulated by a random positioning machine (RPM) but not under static conditions at gravity. Here we describe a delayed type of formation of 3D structures of ECs that was initiated when ECs cultured on a desktop RPM remained adherent for the first 5 days but spread over neighboring adherent cells, forming little colonies. After 2 weeks, tube-like structures (TSs) became visible in these cultures. They included a lumen, and they elongated during another 2 weeks of culturing. The walls of these TSs consisted mainly of single-layered ECs, which had produced significantly more beta(1)-integrin, laminin, fibronectin, and alpha-tubulin than ECs simultaneously grown adhering to the culture dishes under microgravity or normal gravity. The amount of actin protein was similar in ECs incorporated in TSs and in ECs growing at gravity. The ratio of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-1 to matrix metalloproteinase-2 found in the supernatants was lower at the seventh than at the 28th day of culturing. These results suggest that culturing ECs under conditions of modeled gravitational unloading represents a new technique for studying the formation of tubes that resemble vascular intimas.


Mrs Barbara Ottaway has proposed that the interquartile range of the radiocarbon dates available for a given industry will provide an estimate of the floruit of that industry. The present paper examines some four hundred radiocarbon dates which have so far been processed from Iron Age sites in Bantu Africa, and concludes that the intersextile range provides a more accurate approximation for the floruit of individual industries than does the interquartile range. This approach permits the presentation of a more precise inter-regional synthesis of Iron Age chronology than has previously been attempted. It is demonstrated that the earliest manifestations of the Early Iron Age Industrial Complex are in East Africa. Further to the south, two distinct streams of the Early Iron Age are recognized: that in the eastern part of the sub-continent had penetrated as far to the south as the Transvaal some centuries before the western stream spread into what is now Zambia. The inception of the later Iron Age, around the eleventh century A.D., is shown to have been at least as rapid as was that of the Early Iron Age. In view of the greater precision which the above methodology imparts to the radiocarbon-based chronology, a brief discussion is presented of the calibrations which dendrochronological studies provide between radiocarbon ages and calendar ages. It is concluded that, for the period of the sub-Saharan African Iron Age, the corrections which are called for are minor in comparison with the standard errors of individual radiocarbon dates; and the application of such calibrations to Iron Age dates is not recommended.


Were Marcus Aurelius and Fronto in love? Does the correspondence between master Fronto and prince Marcus Aurelius prove that their relationship was a fully sexual one? Were both lovers playing dangerous games? This article explores the various possibilities in a relationship which may at first sight seem like a relationship of sexual passion. Contrary to the Amy Richlin thesis, I will contend that it is not justified to interpret the letters as a correspondence between a gay master and his beloved pupil. Taking a closer look at both the literary and the socio-cultural context, one comes to understand what we can and what we cannot know about language games and bodily games of sex in antiquity.


This paper describes an unsupervised region merging technique based on a novel robust statistical test. The merging decision is derived from the mutual inlier ratio (MIR) of adjacent regions. This ratio is computed using robust regression techniques and a novel method to estimate the robust scale of the Gaussian distribution. A discrimination value to recognize identical Gaussian distributions with the MIR is derived theoretically as a function of the sizes of the compared sets. The presented method to test distributions is compared with the established Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and implemented into a segmentation algorithm for planar range images. The iterative region growing technique is evaluated using an established framework for range image segmentation comparison involving 60 real range images. The evaluation incorporates a comparison with four state-of-the-art algorithms and gives an experimental demonstration of the need for robust methods capable of handling noisy data in real applications.


David Poole's innovative book prepares students to make the transition from the computational aspects of the course to the theoretical by emphasizing vectors and geometric intuition from the start. Designed for a one- or two-semester introductory course and written in simple, "mathematical English" the book presents interesting examples before abstraction. This immediately follows up theoretical discussion with further examples and a variety of applications drawn from a number of disciplines, which reinforces the practical utility of the math, and helps students from a variety of backgrounds and learning styles stay connected to the concepts they are learning. Poole's approach helps students succeed in this course by learning vectors and vector geometry first in order to visualize and understand the meaning of the calculations that they will encounter and develop mathematical maturity for thinking abstractly.


While a number of central banks publish their own business conditions indicators that rely on non-random sampling, knowledge about their statistical accuracy has been limited. Recently, de Munnik, Dupuis, and Illing (2009) made some progress in this area for the Bank of Canada's Business Outlook Survey (BOS) by estimating the impact of the Bank's non-random sampling on the accuracy of the survey results. They found no evidence that the Bank's firm-selection process results in significantly biased estimates and/or wider confidence intervals than in the random-selection case. The author deepens and extends this work by (i) outlining the statistical properties of population-proportion and balance-of-opinion questions, and demonstrating how their design affects the calculation of the confidence intervals; (ii) examining the variation in statistical confidence associated with changes in the underlying response distribution using actual quarterly BOS results; (iii) considering the possibility that statistical accuracy varies across questions; and (iv) investigating whether the statistical accuracy of the survey results changes with variations in the business cycle. The main findings are that confidence intervals around the population-proportion questions are about half of those for the balance-of-opinion questions, and that the confidence bands around both types of question can change from survey to survey when the underlying response distribution becomes more or less concentrated in particular response categories (such as "higher," "the same," or "lower"). The author finds that confidence intervals around the BOS population-proportion questions become somewhat narrower during periods of recession, while those for the balance-of-opinion questions vary within a similar range across the cycle.


With the advance of phase modulated optical systems all-optical regeneration of Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) signals has become a key functionality for future high-speed optical networks. This paper presents a phase-sensitive optical phase regenerator for Binary Phase-Shift Keying (BPSK) signals based on direct second-order nonlinear effects in Periodically Poled Lithium Niobate (PPLN) waveguides. Analytically and through simulations, the proposed set-up is found to require lower input power for efficient operation than more complex current solutions exploiting cascaded second-order nonlinear effects, while showing lower residual noise and the prospect of efficient intensity regeneration through saturation.


This chapter attempts to illustrate the occurrence of siderophores within different bacterial genera and explains the relationship between environmental factors and the biological function of siderophores, which may be summarized under the term "ecology of siderophores". The ecology of siderophores may be considered in the context of an ecological niche defined by low iron availability and by the expression of high-affinity siderophore-mediated iron transport systems by the organisms that occupy this niche. The chapter focuses on selected aerobic, chemoorganotrophic bacterial groups, which represent only a part of the currently known bacteria. Streptomycetes are known to utilize polymeric carbohydrates such as starch, chitin, and cellulose, which are abundant in the upper layers of soils. Although plants are generally not able to use fungal and bacterial siderophores as iron sources, there are reports showing optimal utilization by mono- and dicotyledonous plants of some fungal mono- and dihydroxamates, which originate from partial degradation of fungal trihydroxamate siderophores. Many bacteria that inhabit the intestinal tracts of vertebrate hosts produce siderophores, although the question whether ferric siderophore transport is required in the gut still remains. The currently known bacterial siderophores and their producing organisms are listed in the chapter. An example of an absolute requirement for hydroxamate siderophores is the soil bacterium Microbacterium flavescens JG9 (previously classified as Arthrobacter or Aureobacterium), which is often used as a bioassay organism. It is an interesting fact that enzymes for siderophore biosynthesis are found among bacteria as well fungi.


The aim of strategic group analysis is to determine whether clusters of firms that have a similar strategic position exist within an industry or not. Findings of strategic group analysis may further be used to investigate the performance implications of strategic group membership. The objective of this paper is to identify the possible strategic groups that could exist within the Turkish construction industry by using a theoretical framework applicable for the construction industry and alternative statistical cluster analysis techniques. The achieved results pinpoint the existence of three clusters and significant differences between the performances of firms in each cluster. All of the firms in the strategic group that have the highest average performance utilize a quality differentiation strategy and have the necessary resources and capabilities that give them the opportunity to differentiate their services from others. Also, they use a systematic approach and have a collaborative environment for strategic decision making. Findings of strategic group analysis can be used by professionals to understand the current strategic position of a firm within the competitive environment and formulate strategies to shift to a better performing cluster.


Individual variation in structural brain network topology has been associated with heritable behavioral phenotypes such as intelligence and schizophrenia, making it a candidate endophenotype. However, little is known about the genetic influences on individual variation in structural brain network topology. Moreover, the extent to which structural brain network topology overlaps with heritability for integrity and volume of white matter remains unknown. In this study, structural network topology was examined using diffusion tensor imaging at 3T. Binary connections between 82 structurally defined brain regions per subject were traced, allowing for estimation of individual topological network properties. Heritability of normalized characteristic path length (λ), normalized clustering coefficient (γ), microstructural integrity (FA), and volume of the white matter were estimated using a twin design, including 156 adult twins from the newly acquired U‐TWIN cohort. Both γ and λ were estimated to be under substantial genetic influence. The heritability of γ was estimated to be 68%, the heritability estimate for λ was estimated to be 57%. Genetic influences on network measures were found to be partly overlapping with volumetric and microstructural properties of white matter, but the largest component of genetic variance was unique to both network traits. Normalized clustering coefficient and normalized characteristic path length are substantially heritable, and influenced by independent genetic factors that are largely unique to network measures, but partly also implicated in white matter directionality and volume. Thus, network measures provide information about genetic influence on brain structure, independent of global white matter characteristics such as volume and microstructural directionality. Hum Brain Mapp 35:5295–5305, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


The Legal Services Corporation ("LSC"), formed as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty, was one of many initiatives aimed at providing low-income individuals with equal access to justice. Today, the increasing number of people living in poverty, coupled with decreased funding for legal services, has resulted in a significant justice gap in the provision of civil legal services. Poor people do not have the kind of access to legal services that was envisioned when the LSC was created. This justice gap is no more apparent than in the post-disaster context. For example, following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, legal services programs in Louisiana could not handle as much as ninety percent of the legal needs of low-income individuals. To more meaningfully provide legal services post-disaster, we must re-examine the entire system in which post-disaster legal services are provided.


The present paper describes an improved 4 DOF (x/y/z/yaw) vision based positioning solution for fully 6 DOF autonomous UAVs, optimised in terms of computation and development costs as well as robustness and performance. The positioning system combines Fourier transform-based image registration (Fourier Tracking) and differential optical flow computation to overcome the drawbacks of a single approach. The first method is capable of recognizing movement in four degree of freedom under variable lighting conditions, but suffers from low sample rate and high computational costs. Differential optical flow computation, on the other hand, enables a very high sample rate to gain control robustness. This method, however, is limited to translational movement only and performs poor in bad lighting conditions. A reliable positioning system for autonomous flights with free heading is obtained by fusing both techniques. Although the vision system can measure the variable altitude during flight, infrared and ultrasonic sensors are used for robustness. This work is part of the AQopterI8 project, which aims to develop an autonomous flying quadrocopter for indoor application and makes autonomous directed flight possible.


ABSTRACT Income inequality and radical right parties have both been on the rise in Western democracies, yet few studies explore the linkages between the two – despite prominent arguments about voters feeling 'left behind'. We argue that rising inequality not only intensifies relative deprivation, but also signals a potential threat of social decline, as gaps in the social hierarchy widen. Hence, voters higher up in the social hierarchy may turn to the radical right to defend existing social boundaries. Using International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data from 14 OECD countries over three decades, we find that rising income inequality increases the likelihood of radical right support – most pronouncedly among individuals with high subjective social status and lower-middle incomes. Adding to evidence that the threat of decline, rather than actual deprivation, pushes voters towards the radical right, we highlight income inequality as the crucial factor conditioning perceived threats from a widening social hierarchy.


Decreased cognitive processing speed is a well-known deleterious effect of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Decreased cognitive processing speed which is closely related to psychomotor retardation is seen as one of the classical cognitive impairment among MDD patients. This, although true in most cases, does not apply to all cognitive processes of MDD patients who are exhibiting symptoms of psychomotor retardation. This review focuses on the cognitive processing speed of MDD patients without comorbidity as compared to their healthy counterparts with respect to emotion perception and intend to argue based on evidence that cognitive processing speed is not always slow in MDD patients. Results indicated that in general, there is longer reaction time (RT) or N170 latency to tasks among MDD patients as compared to healthy controls but MDD patients have shorter RT or N170 latency for sad facial stimuli (relative to happy) as compared to healthy controls. Recurrent episodes of MDD have worse cognitive processing speed which is reflected in the tasks having the shortest RT or N170 latency to sad facial stimuli (relative to neutral and happy) as compared to healthy controls. To conclude, the evidence supports the view that MDD patients may have developed a trait which makes them predisposed towards negative information, especially for sad facial stimuli. This may also be a reason to explain why their cognitive processing speed is observed to be faster in perceiving negative stimuli. Further studies are needed to ascertain the complexities of the information processing pathways in order to shed light on the development of more effective therapeutic strategies to mitigate the effects that are associated with it.


In 2000, Professor William Turnier proposed a package of three reforms to make the estate tax more "equitable" and "taxpayer-friendly." All of his proposals — allowing a surviving spouse to inherit a deceased spouse's unused exemption, replacing the state death tax credit with a deduction, and indexing the exemption for inflation — were eventually enacted. Today, the estate tax remains on the books, but changes in rates and exemptions have severely curtailed its role in the larger federal tax system. Income tax rate reductions for capital gains and dividends have further lightened the tax burden on capital income, and international pressure to reduce the corporate tax burden threatens to accelerate the increasingly unequal distribution of income and wealth. This Article argues that the trend of shifting tax burdens from capital to labor is neither desirable nor sustainable and suggests a deathtime capital gains tax and an accrual-based tax on unrealized appreciation in publicly traded stock as possible measures to make the federal tax system more equitable (though perhaps less taxpayer-friendly).


Fundamental research into the quantitative properties of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) has yielded interesting observations, especially in terms of factors affecting the accuracy of relative ion abundances. However, most of the previous discussions have focused on theoretical systems, or systems of limited scope. In this paper, we document ion motion attributes of a 30 spectra (six samples, five replicates each) system previously established as linear over two orders of magnitude. Observed behaviors include the perturbation of one charged species (cyclosporin A, CsA) of low ion density to a cyclotron orbit of greater radius than that of an almost identical, but slightly mass-separated species (CsG) with a higher ion density. This radial perturbation is attributed to the coulombic repulsion between the two ion clouds as they interact during the excitation process, as previously proposed by Uechi and Dunbar. Magnitudes of the perturbation were confirmed by making cyclotron radii determinations utilizing the ratio of the third-to-first harmonics for the charged species of interest. It was found that these radial differences can account for as much as a 55% signal bias in favor of CsA for a single sample and a >20% positive bias in the slope of the regressed data set. A second behavior noted that also contributes to the potential inaccuracy of relative ion abundance measurements is the difference in signal decay rates for CsA and CsG. Damping constants and initial time domain signal amplitudes were evaluated using segmented Fourier transforms. Discrepancies in decay rates were not expected from two species that have essentially identical collisional cross-sections. However, it has been observed that the faster decay rates are observed by the species of lower ion cloud density. We have attributed this differential signal decay phenomenon to the rates of loss of phase coherence for the two ion clouds. Previously, others have reported that less dense ion clouds are more susceptible to shearing and other disruptive forces during the course of their excited cyclotron motion. Our experimental evidence supports that it is the loss of cloud coherence that accounts for the signal loss over time, with the less dense cloud de-phasing more quickly. As the ion populations of the two investigated species near equivalence, so do their time constants.


ABSTRACT In this article, we address the often ignored issue of quality standards for doctrine. In doing so, we contribute to the existing literature on military doctrine, since much of previous research has focused on outlining the effects of doctrine or the causes of particular doctrinal content, rather than how we should measure its quality. The predominant way of understanding quality of doctrine is based on the rationalist understanding of doctrine as a force multiplier. However, rationalist aims do not necessarily tell us anything about the contents of doctrine. Hence, a doctrine can be seemingly of high quality, but ultimately impede or lead armed forces astray. Rather than focusing on the utilitarian side of doctrine, we suggest that doctrine should mainly be understood as articles of faith or a belief system. And thus the quality of doctrine becomes inextricably linked to military norms and military identity. Writing doctrine thus becomes part of ritual, rather than reason.


For traditional optical network dimensioning, a plethora of algorithms exists to design the amount of network resources required to accommodate a given amount of traffic, expressed as a (source, destination)-based traffic matrix. In optical Grid dimensioning, however, the anycast principle applies: Grid users do not really care where exactly their tasks (Grid jobs) end up being executed. Thus, the destination of traffic is not known beforehand and traditional dimensioning algorithms are not applicable. In this paper we propose a mean field calculation method to analytically derive the traffic matrix for given job arrival intensities at the originating Grid sites (the sources). We also indicate how it can be integrated in a stepwise dimensioning approach to compute not only the amount of network resources, but also Grid resources (computational and/or storage). Hence it forms part of a solution for Grid dimensioning: determining how many servers to provide, where to place them, and which network to install for interconnecting server sites and users generating Grid jobs.


This essay discusses the paradox of the emergence of corporate codes of conduct in the 1990s, following pressures from consumer and labor activism, in a period of more general liberalization of international investment leading to deregulation. It suggests that the advantages of flexibility and adaptability to specific circumstances offered by such codes are counterbalanced by their self-selected content and inadequate enforcement. Rejecting the assumption that there is a sharp distinction between voluntary standards and binding law, the essay analyzes various ways of grounding codes in legal obligations. It proposes that a safer and more dependable environment for international investment could be provided by a framework agreement, which would link binding standards for corporate social responsibility in key areas, such as combating bribery and cooperation in tax enforcement, with traditional investor rights based on investor protection and liberalization rules.


Illite crystallinity data from the Silurian slate belts of England and Wales indicate anchizone to low epizone metamorphism during the Acadian deformation in late Early Devonian time. This metamorphic grade implies a substantial overburden, now eroded, of Lower Devonian non-marine sediments of the Old Red Sandstone (ORS) magnafacies. A minimum 3.5 km pre-tectonic thickness of 'lost' ORS is estimated in the southern Lake District and comparable thicknesses in North Wales and East Anglia. Tectonically driven subsidence of the underlying Avalonian crust is required to accommodate such thicknesses of non-marine sediment. One proposed mechanism is flexure of the Avalonian footwall during convergence that continued from Iapetus closure in the Silurian until Acadian cleavage formation in the Emsian. The evidence for this model in the critical area of northwest England is reviewed and found to be unconvincing. An alternative model is developed following a recent suggestion that the Early Devonian was a period not of continued convergence but of orogen-wide sinistral transtension. Transtensional accommodation of the lost ORS is evidenced by Early Devonian extensional faults, by synchronous lamprophyric magmatism, and by compatibility with previously diagnosed sediment provenance patterns. A summary of Siluro-Devonian tectonostratigraphy for Britain south of the Highland Border emphasizes that, unlike the Scottish Highlands, this area was not affected by the Scandian Orogeny, but was by the Acadian. An important period of sinistral transtension in the Early Devonian (c.420–400 Ma) was common to both regions. This was a time of high heat flow, lamprophyric and more evolved magmatism, and major southward sediment transport, involving mainly recycled metamorphic detritus from the Highlands and from contemporaneous volcanicity. Old Red Sandstone, deposited in coalescing transtensional basins over much of Britain from the Midland Valley to the Welsh Borders, was largely removed and recycled southward during Acadian inversion.


In an era of increased concern over presidential power, congressional oversight of the executive branch constitutes a substantial – but underappreciated – means of influencing agency decision-making. Scholars too often have overlooked it, and Congress is sub-optimally designed for its provision, but oversight hearings are remarkably effective in altering agency behavior.
This Article provides a corrective. It presents the legal mechanisms that give oversight hearings their force and situates these hearings in their historical and legal context. In light of this framework and historical practice, this Article posits that ex post oversight hearings constitute a substantial means of political control over the administrative state. Because oversight gets its bite from an implicit threat of legislative sanctions should an agency not change its behavior following hearings, however, committees' decisions whether to pursue oversight hinge on the credibility of this threat.
To test this theory, this Article introduces an original dataset of over 14,000 agency "infractions," i.e., agency actions that are potential subjects of hearings. Leveraging these data, this Article finds, first, finds that oversight is most likely to occur when the particular preference alignment of Congress, the relevant committee, and the agency make the threat of new legislation credible. A second empirical analysis finds that, when oversight hearings do occur, they are consequential; infractions that are subject to hearings are almost 20% less likely to recur compared to otherwise similar infractions that are not subject to hearings.
These findings call into question the received wisdom regarding Congress's role in governance. Whereas scholars focused on the political branches' formal powers see Congress as a branch in decline, a more nuanced picture emerges when one also considers "soft powers," like oversight. Thus, these findings offer a blueprint for greater congressional involvement in administration: to increase Congress's role in governance, committee membership rosters should be representative of the larger legislature and committees with overlapping jurisdictions should be established. By redesigning its internal structure, Congress can promote more frequent oversight and, because oversight is effective, thereby provide a stronger check on presidential administration.


Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were conducted in participants of the CO-MED (Combining Medications to Enhance Depression Outcomes) trial, a randomized, 3-treatment arm clinical trial of major depressive disorder (MDD) designed to identify markers of differential treatment outcome (response and remission). The QIDS-SR (Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology, Self-Reported version) was used to measure response at week 6 (QIDS-SR ≤5) and remission at week 12 (QIDS-SR ≤6 and ≤8 at the last two study visits). Three treatment groups (escitalopram monotherapy, escitalopram + bupropion, and venlafaxine + mirtazapine) were evaluated. GWAS identified a potentially regulatory SNP rs10769025 in the ALX4 gene on chromosome 11 with a strong association (p value = 9.85925E–08) with response to escitalopram monotherapy in Caucasians. Further, haplotype analysis on 7 ALX4 variants showed that a regulatory haplotype CAAACTG was significantly associated (odds ratio = 3.4, p = 2.00E–04) with response to escitalopram monotherapy at week 6. Ingenuity pathway analyses in the present study suggest that ALX4 has an indirect connection with antidepressant gene pathways in MDD, which may account for the genetic association with treatment outcome. Functional genomics studies to investigate the role of ALX4 in antidepressant treatment outcome will be an interesting future direction.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To describe the experience of loneliness for women more than a year following breast cancer treatment.

RESEARCH APPROACH
Qualitative, phenomenologic.

SETTING
Interviews conducted in women's setting of choice (e.g., home, library).

PARTICIPANTS
Purposive sample of 13 women, 1-18 years following breast cancer treatment.

METHODOLOGIC APPROACH
Streubert's descriptive phenomenologic method based on Husserl's phenomenology.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Phenomenon of loneliness.

FINDINGS
Women conveyed a unique description of loneliness that was termed survivor loneliness. They described how they felt alone in the awareness of mortality and were invalidated in the experience of ongoing symptom burden, a changed sense of identity and connection, and an altered threshold for distress that pervaded their long-term experiences. As they sought ways to lead more authentic lives, the women sometimes withheld truth or projected images they perceived as inauthentic, contributing to their loneliness. Paradoxically, as survivors perceived connections with others as more fragile, they also felt a strengthened vitality of connection, particularly with their children, and a deepened sense of empathy and connectedness to the suffering of others.

CONCLUSIONS
Findings shed light on the ongoing symptom experience of women and the isolation they experienced as they sought to work through an altered sense of self, connection, and identity as breast cancer survivors. Although survivor loneliness was experienced by all participants, findings suggest that some women may be more vulnerable to heightened psychological distress. Follow-up care should include giving recognition to survivors' experiences and normalizing the situation to allow for survivors' expressions of experience.

INTERPRETATION
Through attentive and empathic assessment, clinicians need to be alert to the unmet needs of longer-term survivors, including the experience of survivor loneliness and the importance of identifying and assisting survivors who describe heightened distress. Prospective studies are needed to examine survivor loneliness and the factors that make some women more vulnerable to psychological distress. Grounded theory studies are needed to delineate the phases and challenges of breast cancer survivorship, including survivor loneliness.


In the study of DNA methylation, genetic variation between species, strains, or individuals can result in CpG sites that are exclusive to a subset of samples, and insertions and deletions can rearrange the spatial distribution of CpGs. How to account for this variation in an analysis of the interplay between sequence variation and DNA methylation is not well understood, especially when the number of CpG differences between samples is large. Here we use whole-genome bisulfite sequencing data on two highly divergent inbred mouse strains to study this problem. We find that while the large number of strain-specific CpGs necessitates considerations regarding the reference genomes used during alignment, properties such as CpG density are surprisingly conserved across the genome. We introduce a method for including strain-specific CpGs in differential analysis, and show that accounting for strain-specific CpGs increases the power to find differentially methylated regions between the strains. Our method uses smoothing to impute methylation levels at strain-specific sites, thereby allowing strain-specific CpGs to contribute to the analysis, and also allowing us to account for differences in the spatial occurrences of CpGs. Our results have implications for analysis of genetic variation and DNA methylation using bisulfite-converted DNA.


Background: Improving health outcome indicators worldwide needs well-trained family physicians, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is of no exception from that need. Objectives: To address the level of satisfaction and assess the educational environment among residents of family medicine (FM) in Riyadh city. Methodology: A cross-sectional study; the Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) was used to assess the educational environment for all FM residents in fully structured training centers that include all levels of residents in Riyadh during 2016. Results: About 187 surveys were distributed and 140 were collected, with a response rate of 74.87%. Cronbach's alpha scored at 0.917 for overall items. Out of 160 maximum score, the overall score of the PHEEM was 86.73 (standard deviation [SD]: 19.46). The perception of teaching score was 33.11 (SD: 8.80) out of 60, the perception of role autonomy score was 28.60 (SD: 7.35) out of 56, and the perception of social support was 25.02 (SD: 5.43) out of 44. Conclusion: The educational environment is an important determinant of medical trainees' achievements and success. The results are better than what had been found in the previous studies, but more attention and effort should be done, especially for the poorly rated points in this study. We recommend a continuous evaluation and reconstruction of the Saudi Board of FM program, and such results could be a tool that might help in fostering better and stronger educational program.


This article tries to make sense of the concept of repetition in Søren Kierkegaard's works. According to Kierkegaard repetition is a temporal movement of existence. What is repetition and what is its meaning for human existence? In answering this question the Danish philosopher depicts repetition by comparing three different approaches to life. Throughout the article I try to develop a coherent argument on 'the new philosophical category' by analysing the three types of repetition and their corresponding human prototypes. I consider repetition a key concept in summarizing Kierkegaard's theory of existence, where existence pictures the becoming of the human-self that follows several stages. Constantin Constantius's repetition is an unsuccessful attempt, an aesthetic expression of human-life. The young lover's repetition is spiritual, albeit not yet authentic, religious, but more poetic, even if he regains his self. Only Job's repetition is an authentic movement of existence, an expression of a spiritual trial and of genuine faith.


An image processing approach to turbulence studies has been developed. The approach employs a structure tracking technique to quantify the movement of coherent, large-scale turbulent structures. The 'structure tracking' technique has been applied to the shear layer of a low speed jet issuing into a low speed crossflow. A study of the characteristics of the turbulent flow within this region involved comparative measurements with hot-wire anemometry measurements within the same flow regime and fractal analysis of the flow visualisation images used by the tracking routine. Fractal analysis was applied to flow visualisation images to educe a range of length scales made apparent by the flow visualisation equipment The results obtained with the structure tracking technique included the instantaneous velocity of the structures and a measure of their length scales. The instantaneous velocity measurements were used to calculate a turbulence characteristic associated with the structures. Further analysis revealed subsets of this turbulence characteristic involving the variation in average velocity of individual structures as well as variations in the instantaneous velocity of individual structures. Where possible, the results of the structure tracking technique were compared to those achieved by hot wire anemometry and good correspondence was found between the mean flow characteristics measured by both techniques. The results of the two techniques began to diverge in the regions of the flow where conventional hot-wire anemometry was unable to discriminate between the flow associated with the jet and that associated with the crossflow. In such regions, time-averaged hot-wire anemometry produced results which combined the measurements in both flow regimes and therefore attenuated any characteristics of the jet which were significantly different from those of the crossflow. In the same flow regions the structure tracking technique was able to measure those characteristics specifically associated with the jet, producing results, which reflected the behaviour of the jet more accurately.


Submission Track Abstract A new method developed for in-vitro susceptibility test in medical laboratories consist of micro tubes or gloves containing dehydrated tryptic soya broth, 5% glucose, 0.1% bromothymol blue and one type of antibiotics (ampicillin, tetracycline and chloramphenicol) with critical concentration MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) for susceptibility. Standard quality control strains of bacterial (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) suspension were adjusted to 0.5 McFarland turbidity standard (1 × 10 6 cell/mL) were used in inoculation the media and incubated two hours at 37 °C. The MIC of ampicillin against E. coli, S. aureus, and P. aeruginosa were 4, 32, and 256 μg/mL of the media for the bacteria respectively, while the MIC of tetracycline against bacteria were 512, 512 and 32 μg/mL respectively, the MIC of chloramphenicol were 512, 32 and 512 μg/mL, respectively. Where, the resistant bacteria to the antibiotics could grow and ferment glucose sugar producing a color change of the media from blue to yellow, while the sensitive bacteria do not grow or show no change in color. Our study result compared with common used antibiotic disk method obtaining similar results. This developed method characterized by fast (only two hours) and less cost in comparison to conventional technique. The new micro tube strip is highly stable (more than one year) with more sensitive in detection of variable pathogenic bacteria including standard bacteria strains compared with conventional technique. Received : 2/4/2017 Final Revision : 3/5/2017


The traditional architecture for a DBMS engine has the recovery, concurrency control and access method code tightly bound together in a storage engine for records. We propose a different approach, where the storage engine is factored into two layers (each of which might have multiple heterogeneous instances). A Transactional Component (TC) works at a logical level only: it knows about transactions and their ―logical‖ concurrency control and undo/redo recovery, but it does not know about page layout, B-trees etc. A Data Component (DC) knows about the physical storage structure. It supports a record oriented interface that provides atomic operations, but it does not know about transactions. Providing atomic record operations may itself involve DC-local concurrency control and recovery, which can be implemented using system transactions. The interaction of the mechanisms in TC and DC leads to multi-level redo (unlike the repeat history paradigm for redo in integrated engines). This refactoring of the system architecture could allow easier deployment of application-specific physical structures and may also be helpful to exploit multi-core hardware. Particularly promising is its potential to enable flexible transactions in cloud database deployments. We describe the necessary principles for unbundled recovery, and discuss implementation issues.


AN M.Sc. RESEARCH DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA-NIGERIA IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF MASTER OF SCIENCE DEGREE IN GEOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, FACULTY OF PHYSICAL SCIENCES, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA


This special issue on political geographies of citizenship originates from the Norwegian Research Network in Political Geography (based at the University of Oslo), which includes geographers working within a broad array of research topics, approaches and contexts. Thematically, it reflects the increased interests in spatiality in citizenship studies and the parallel attention paid to citizenship within political geography (e.g. Kofman 1995; Painter 2002; Rasmussen & Brown 2002; Barnett & Low 2004; Desforges et al. 2005; Staeheli 2010). The present special issue explores the notion of citizenship as a potential convergence point for geographical research in migration, development, democratization, social movement and labour studies concerned with questions about power, agency and spatiality in state–society relations. Our proposition is that citizenship may provide an integral framework for common concerns among human geographers regarding cultural, juridical, social and political inclusion – in other words, cultural identity and recognition, legal status and protection, social rights and redistribution, and political participation and representation. This general agenda is discussed in more detail in Stokke's (2017) article in this special issue. We thus limit this guest editorial to a brief review of the core arguments and how they are addressed in the thematic articles in this issue.


Background: Cinta Senese is an autochthonous Tuscan breed, which risked extinction since the '60s. Results: Monitoring the genetic variability of the actual population by use of DNA molecular markers is essential to address a correct breeding policy, finalized to obtain the race preservation and its fitness in the future. 17 SSRs autosomal markers and 1 associated to the X chromosome were used to genotype 86 individuals belonging to the CS and 12 belonging to two main white races L, LW and crosses between LW and L and L and CS widespread in Tuscany and used in the recent past to obtain hybrids with the CS. Conclusions: A dendrogram of similarity measures the relative genetic distance between individuals in the population. Data show that CS pigs have a distinct genotype from L, LW, LW x L and L x CS.


Paternalistic employment relations have been a tradition supported by the government in Taiwan whilst trade unions were brought in to support political development and economic growth. The government promulgated a 'harmony culture' in order to control employment relations, and in the 1980s set up the campaign of the 'factory as one family, factory as one school' to encourage employers to inculcate paternalistic beliefs in their employees' everyday working lives. Authority, benevolence and morality, the characteristics of paternalistic management, make workers docile and loyal to management and stunt the sense of collective identity.
This qualitative research selects one primary case, a privatised enterprise SteelCo and its union Steel-U, to conduct participant observation, in-depth interviews with union officers, labour representatives and management, surveys of union members, and documentary analysis of official documents and meeting minutes. One supplementary case is a state-owned enterprise SugarCo with its
union Sugar-U; this mainly involved in-depth interviews with union representatives and limited access to some documents.
Corporate trade unions take advantage of the paternalistic tradition to gradually develop their organisations as recognised by employers. Implementing nonunion representation is a practice of paternalistic ideology, offering trade unions another platform on which to work with management. Workers identify both themselves and the trade union as parts of the enterprise family rather than
seeing the union as an agent of collectivity. The union has to be a service provider offering welfare and benefits to attract members before triggering any mobilisation.
To conclude, paternalism has helped corporate trade unions to establish themselves in state-owned and privatised workplaces, and empowered trade unions to engage legitimately, effectively and autonomously in workplace affairs. To revitalise themselves from the paternalistic ideology, trade unions are expected to take the route of partnering unionism with the manipulation of nonunion
representation in a top-down process of shaping labour's collective identity.


Tremendous interest in visualizing massive datasets has promoted tiled-display wall systems that offer an immersive and collaborative environment with an extremely high-resolution. To achieve an efficient visualization, the rendering process should be parallelized and distributed among multiple nodes. The Data Observatory at Imperial College London has a unique setup consisting of 64 screens powered by 32 machines providing a resolution of over 130 megapixels. Various applications have been developed to achieve a high-performance visualization by implementing parallel rendering techniques and incorporating distributed rendering frameworks. ParaView is one such application that targets the visualization of scientific datasets by taking computing efficiency into consideration. The main objective of this project is to leverage the potential of the Data Observatory and ParaView regarding visualization by fostering data exploration, analysis, and collaboration through a scalable and high-performance approach. The primary concept is to configure ParaView on a distributed clustered network and associate the appropriate view for each screen by controlling ParaView's virtual camera. The interaction events with the application should be broadcasted to all connected nodes in the cluster to update their views accordingly. The major challenges of such implementations are synchronizing the rendering across all screens, maintaining data coherency, and managing data partitioning. Moreover, the project is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of large display systems compared to typical desktop screens. This has been achieved by conducting two quantitative studies assessing the individual and collaborative task performance. The first task was designed to investigate the mental rotation of individuals by displaying a pair of a 3D model, as proposed by Shepard-Metzler, on the screen with different orientations. Then, the participant was asked if both models were the same or mirrored. This would lead to evaluate the individual task performance by studying the ability to recognize the orientation change in 3D objects. It consisted of two levels: easy and hard. For the easy level, the second model was rotated for a maximum angle of 30 on two axes. In contrast, the hard level had no limitation on the angle of rotation. The second task was developed specifically for ParaView to assess the collaboration aspect. The participants had to use the basic navigational operations to find hidden needles injected in a 3D brain model in 90 seconds. In both tasks, the time taken to complete the task and the correctness were measured in two environments: 1) the Data Observatory, and 2) a simple desktop screen. The average correct responses of the mental rotation task have been calculated for all participants. It has been shown that the number of correct answers in the Data Observatory is significantly higher than on the desktop screen despite the amount of rotation. The participants could better distinguish mirrored objects from similar ones in the Data Observatory with a percentage of 86.7% and 73.3% in easy and hard levels, respectively. However, on the typical desktop screen, participants correctly answered less than half of the hard level questions. This indicates immersive large display environments provides a better representation and depth perception of 3D objects. Thus, improving the task performance of visualizing 3D scenes in fields that require the ability to detect variations in the position or orientation. Overall, the average completion time of both displays in the easy task is relatively the same. In contrast, the participants required a longer time to complete the hard task in the Data Observatory. This could be because of the large display space, which occupies a wide visual field, thus providing an opportunity to the viewers to ponder and think about the right answer. In the collaborative search task, the participants found all the hidden needles within the time limitation in the Data Observatory. The fastest group completed the task in 36 seconds while the longest recorded time was around one minute and 12 seconds. However, on the desktop screen, all participants consumed the full 90 seconds. In the small screen environment, the mean of the correct responses is estimated as 55%. The maximum number of needles found was 3 out of 4, which was achieved by only one group. To evaluate the overall efficiency of the Data Observatory, the one-way ANOVA test was used to find significant effects regarding the correctness of both tasks. The completion time was discarded from this analysis because of the differences in the tasks' nature. The ANOVA revealed a significant impact of the display type in the number of correct responses, F1,48 = 10.517, p < 0.002. This indicates participants performed better in the Data Observatory in contrast to the simple desktop screen. Therefore, these results support the hypothesis of the effectiveness of large displays in improving the task performance and collaborative activities in terms of accuracy. The integration of both system solutions provides a novel approach to visualize the enormous amount of data generated from complex scientific computing. This adds great value to researchers and scientists to analyze, discuss, and discover the underlying behavior of certain phenomena.


In this paper we investigate why shop owners install Digital Signage. From casual interviews we had the impression that most shops installed Digital Signage just because their neighbors have it, too. We interviewed responsible persons in 53 shops that use digital signage in Münster, Germany. On the question "Why did you decide to use Digital Signage in your shop?" 21 different reasons were given, including the benefits of moving images, the ease of exchanging content, and the ability of showing more content than on a poster or on the shelf. However, in a follow-up question "How did you become aware of Digital Signage?", it subsequently turned out that for most of the shops, the installation of Digital Signage was decided by central headquarters, and the local branch had no choice about it.


This chapter presents an overview of the development of postcolonial studies in English, from their genesis in the 1960s through Bernard Hickey's courses on Australian literature to the establishment of a separate departmental division in the 2000s. The main scholarly contribution and events are summarised with reference to the broader trajectory of postcolonial studies in the English-speaking world, the contribution made by the Venetian school to the Italian debate, and to the conferences, publications, summer schools, performances, and festivals organised or inspired by Ca' Foscari University of Venice.