The effect of electron irradiation on the optical properties of GaN epilayers is studied in detail by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The most common types of GaN material are used, i.e. strained heteroepitaxial layers grown on 6H SiC or Al2O3 substrates, and thick bulk-like layers with the conductivity varying from n-type to semi-insulating and p-type. The main effects of electron irradiation on all investigated samples are found to be as follows: (i) a radiation-induced quenching of excitonic emissions in the near band gap region; (ii) an appearance of broad overlapping PL emissions within the spectral range 0.7–1.1 eV and (iii) the appearance of a PL band with a sharp no-phonon (NP) line at around 0.88 eV followed by a rich phonon assisted sideband. The 0.88 eV band is shown to originate from an internal transition of a deep defect. With increasing temperature a hot PL line can be observed at about 2–4 meV above the NP line, originating from higher lying excited states of the defect. The electronic structure of the 0.88 eV defect is shown to be very sensitive to the internal strain field in the GaN epilayers.


The European Union (EU) has modest but promising capacities to assist member states overwhelmed by disaster through its Civil Protection Mechanism. The EU also routinely sends civil and military missions to hotspots outside EU territory. But these capacities do not suffice in the face of transboundary crises: threats that cross geographical and policy borders within the Union. Examples include epidemics, financial crises, floods, and cyber terrorism. Nation states cannot cope with these threats without international collaboration. In this article, we explore the EU's efforts to develop transboundary crisis management capacities. We describe these budding capacities, explain their policy origins, and explore their future potential.


A pair of crystal structures reveals how viruses mimic both chemokine receptors and chemokines. Chemokines are proteins that direct how cells move within the body. For instance, chemokines help immune cells locate invading pathogens and ensure that cells position themselves correctly within a developing organ. Cells detect chemokines through G protein–coupled receptors on their surface; however, the molecular details of how these proteins interact remain unclear (see the Perspective by Standfuss). Qin et al. solved the crystal structure of the chemokine receptor CXCR4 bound to the viral chemokine vMIP-II. Burg et al. solved the crystal structure of a viral chemokine receptor bound to the chemokine domain of CX3CL1. Given the role of chemokines in a number of diseases, these results may help in future drug design. L. Qin, I. Kufareva, L. G. Holden, C. Wang, Y. Zheng, C. Zhao, G. Fenalti, H. Wu, G. W. Han, V. Cherezov, R. Abagyan, R. C. Stevens, T. M. Handel, Crystal structure of the chemokine receptor CXCR4 in complex with a viral chemokine. Science 347, 1117–1122 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text] J. S. Burg, J. R. Ingram, A. J. Venkatakrishnan, K. M. Jude, A. Dukkipati, E. N. Feinberg, A. Angelini, D. Waghray, R. O. Dror, H. L. Ploegh, K. C. Garcia, Structural basis for chemokine recognition and activation of a viral G protein–coupled receptor. Science 347, 1113–1117 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text] J. Standfuss, Viral chemokine mimicry. Science 347, 1071–1072 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text]


1 The population density, diversity and productivity of the microbial plankton in an oligotrophic maritime Antarctic lake were studied for a 15-month period between December 1994 and February 1996.
2 In the lake, concentrations of nutrients and dissolved organic carbon were uniformly low, temperature varied over a small annual range of 0.1–3 °C, and the surface was ice-covered except during a period of approximately 6 weeks in summer.
3 The total of 57 morphotypes of protozoa observed during the study is a higher taxonomic diversity than previously reported from continental Antarctic lakes, but lower than that found in more eutrophic maritime Antarctic lakes. Likewise, planktonic abundance and productivity were lower than has been reported in other lakes on Signy Island, but generally higher than those of lakes on the Antarctic continent.
4 There were marked seasonal and interannual variations in planktonic population density.
5 Chlorophyll a concentrations ranged from undetectable to 4.2 µg L-1 and the greatest rate of primary productivity measured was 4.5 mg C m-3 h-1. The phytoplankton was dominated by small chlorophytes and chrysophytes, with phototrophic nanoflagellate abundance ranging from 1.1 × 103 to 1.2 × 107 L-1.
6 Bacterial densities of 3.6 × 108 to 1.9 × 1010 L-1 were recorded and bacterial productivity reached a peak of 0.36 µg C L-1 h-1. Numbers of heterotrophic nanoflagellates between 5.0 × 104 and 1.8 × 107 L-1, and of ciliates from undetectable to 1.1 × 104 L-1 were observed. Naked amoebae were usually rare, but occasionally reached peaks of up to 1.5 × 103 L-1.


The following PhD thesis is an empirical study of Iranian children's understanding of expression of emotions in pictures their foreknowledge of the themes "happiness" and "sadness" in relation to their living environment as well as their expression of the emotions "happiness" and "sadness" in their drawings. The focus is on two groups of 6 and 7-years-old Iranian children, one group consists of children born and raised in Iran and the other group consists of Iranian children born and raised in Germany (the children of immigrant families). Various scientific research methods including: interviews with each child, collection of drawings and qualitative data analysis were used to collect data and analysis data.
The study is based on data collected during three personal sessions with each child which included personal interviews about the themes sadness and happiness, drawings by children under these two themes as well as two interviews about two paintings by a German and Iranian contemporary artist.
The aim was to observe how children of the same nationality but born and raised in two different regions and cultural and social settings develop their understanding of certain themes, (Happiness and Sadness). What social or cultural factors influence this meaning making. How children express emotions in their work and how they understand and analyse the same emotions in paintings by other artists. During the process of the study as well as the end phase of the work it also became clear how crucial it is to pay attention to the disadvantages and limitations on the learning ability of children with immigration back ground. It was important to be able later to apply the attained data for further development of multicultural and intercultural education.
This research has been designed and conducted by my self, in two countries of Iran and Germany. I have personally worked with every single child, in various sessions, conducted personal dialogues with each child and sat though their drawing process. This research is the result of many years of study, personal dedication and hard work.
The idea for this study was first inspired because of my personal experience having lived in England myself as the child of an immigrant family and also being a witness to the situation of immigrant's children in close family circle.


Models of chemical composition and thermodynamic potential emphasize the microenvironmental context for proteomic transformations. Here, data from 71 comparative proteomics studies were analyzed using elemental ratios and chemical components as measures of oxidation and hydration state. Experimental lowering of oxygen availability (hypoxia) and water activity (hyperosmotic stress) are reflected in decreased oxidation and hydration states of proteomes, but up-expressed proteins in colorectal and pancreatic cancer most often have higher average oxidation or hydration state. Calculations of chemical affinity were used to quantify the thermodynamic potentials for transformation of proteomes as a function of fugacity of O2 and activity of H2O, which serve as scales of oxidation and hydration potential. Potential diagrams for the overall reactions between down- and up-expressed proteins in various datasets have predicted equipotential lines that cluster near unit activity of H2O, suggesting that protein expression is sensitive to local variations in water activity. A redox balance calculation indicates that an increase in the lipid to protein ratio in cancer cells by 20% over hypoxic cells would generate an electron sink of sufficient size for oxidation of the cancer proteomes. These findings demonstrate consistent, condition-dependent chemical differences between proteomes, identify primary microenvironmental constraints on proteomic transformations, and help to quantify the redox balance among cellular macromolecules. The datasets and computer code used here are supplied in a new R package, canprot.


In the 1980s and 1990s, the public began to protest the large compensation packages executives were receiving. Average workers were struggling while executives got raises, even as the corporations they worked for failed. This disconnect between executive compensation and executive performance led Congress to attempt to curtail executive compensation. This article will examine the Congress's attempt to temper the amount of compensation through the tax code. These tax code provisions enacted by Congress to restrain excessive executive compensation in fact had the effect of increasing compensation for certain executives at a great cost to stockholders. In 1980, the average CEO made 42 times the average hourly worker's pay. By 1990, the average CEO made 107 times the average hourly worker's pay. In 1993, Congress enacted tax legislation intended to rein in excessive executive compensation. However, in 2000, the average CEO made 525 times the average hourly worker's pay. Compensation amounts that executives receive since the enactment of the tax provisions are increasing dramatically, not decreasing.Congress believed that linking performance and compensation would adequately address excessive compensation amounts. Stock prices are one indicator of how a corporation is performing, and Congress accordingly enacted tax provisions linking executive compensation to stock performance. The tax provisions sought to convert cash compensation to stock options because it was thought that doing so would align the interests of executives and shareholders by making executives vested owners in the corporation as well. The unintended result was to encourage corporate fraud and accounting misrepresentations intended to inflate earnings and bring executives higher salaries. The three most important tax code provisions designed to contain or regulate excessive compensation are §§ 162, 162(m) and 280G. None of these sections work as they were intended. On the contrary, they have resulted in even larger amounts of compensation amounts paid to executives at greater cost to shareholders. This article will seek to demonstrate that the effects of these tax code provisions are in direct conflict with their intended purpose.


The Schwartz (1992) theory of basic human values has promoted a revival of empirical research on values. The semi-annual European Social Survey (ESS) includes a new 21-item instrument to measure the importance of the 10 basic values of the theory. Representative national samples in 20 countries responded to the instrument in 2002-3. We briefly describe the theory and the ESS instrument and assess its adequacy for measuring values across countries. Using multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses, augmented with mean-structure information, we assess the configural and measurement (metric) invariance of the values-necessary conditions for equivalence of the meaning of constructs and scalar invariance-a precondition for comparing value means across countries. Only if such equivalence is established can researchers make meaningful and clearly interpretable cross-national comparisons of value priorities and their correlates. The ESS values scale demonstrates configural and metric invariance, allowing researchers to use it to study relationships among values, attitudes, behavior and socio-demographic characteristics across countries. Comparing the mean importance of values across countries is possible only for subsets of countries where scalar invariance holds.


Power consumption is a key element in outdoor mobile robot autonomy. This issue is very relevant in skid-steer tracked vehicles on account of their large ground contact area. In this paper, the power losses due to dynamic friction have been modeled from two different perspectives: 1) the power drawn by the rigid terrain and 2) the power supplied by the motors. Comparison of both approaches has provided new insight on skid steering on hard flat terrains at walking speeds. Experimental power models, which also include traction resistance and other power losses, have been obtained for two different track widths over marble flooring and asphalt with Auriga- beta, which is a full-size mobile robot. To this end, various internal probes have been set at different points of the power stream. Furthermore, new energy implications for navigation of these kinds of vehicles have been deduced and tested.


Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the symbolism of this slaughter. Not merely the reality of death, but a sacrificial death that challenges the whole system. Where the past revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle of real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge, which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated, vulnerable West. This new edition is updated with the recent essays 'Hypothesis on Terrorism' and 'Violence of the Global'.


Stable isotopes from ancient water have been used extensively to reconstruct paleoclimates and paleoenvironments (e.g. Bershaw et al., 2010, Cyr et al., 2005, Fan et al., 2017, Quade et al., 2011, Rowley and Garzione, 2007). Volcanic glass found in ash tuffs have been shown to preserve hydrogen (H) isotopes from meteoric water at the time of deposition (Cassel and Breecker, 2017) making it a useful paleowater proxy (e.g. Canavan et al., 2014, Cassel et al., B2009, Friedman et al., 2013, Saylor and Horton, 2014). Carlson (2018) showed differences in δD between two different preparation methods in volcanic glass analysis and suggests that strict grain size filtering and hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment produce the most reliable results, similar to Cassel and Breecker (2017) findings. Samples were deemed reliable if they contained >99% glass without bubbles. Glass shards with bubbles are less dense and described as pumiceous. Though preparation methods recommend removing pumiceous shards, it is not clear how they affect isotopic results, if at all. I investigate this by comparing pumiceous textures, water concentration, and δD values of different glass samples. Based on the results of this pilot I conclude that; 1) δD and wt. % water are not affected by apparent porosity, 2) The Cassel and Breecker (2017) method effectively removes hydrogen contamination, even in previously discarded pumiceous samples where corrosion is extensive, suggesting pumiceous glass shards can also be used for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. Future work should confirm these results with a more extensive dataset.


The Rupelian clay in the Netherlands is currently the subject of a feasibility study with respect to the storage of radioactive waste in the Netherlands (OPERA-project). Many features need to be considered in the assessment of the long-Term evolution of the natural environment surrounding a geological waste disposal facility. One of these is permafrost development as it may have an impact on various components of the disposal system, including the natural environment (hydrogeology), the natural barrier (clay) and the engineered barrier. Determining how deep permafrost might develop in the future is desirable in order to properly address the possible impact on the various components. It is expected that periglacial conditions will reappear at some point during the next several hundred thousands of years, a typical time frame considered in geological waste disposal feasibility studies. In this study, the Weichselian glaciation is used as an analogue for future permafrost development. Permafrost depth modelling using a best estimate temperature curve of the Weichselian indicates that permafrost would reach depths between 155 and 195ĝ€m. Without imposing a climatic gradient over the country, deepest permafrost is expected in the south due to the lower geothermal heat flux and higher average sand content of the post-Rupelian overburden. Accounting for various sources of uncertainty, such as type and impact of vegetation, snow cover, surface temperature gradients across the country, possible errors in palaeoclimate reconstructions, porosity, lithology and geothermal heat flux, stochastic calculations point out that permafrost depth during the coldest stages of a glacial cycle such as the Weichselian, for any location in the Netherlands, would be 130-210ĝ€m at the 2σ level. In any case, permafrost would not reach depths greater than 270ĝ€m. The most sensitive parameters in permafrost development are the mean annual air temperatures and porosity, while the geothermal heat flux is the crucial parameter in permafrost degradation once temperatures start rising again.


I will address a challenge to mentalistic theories of norms, such as that developed by Cristiano Castelfranchi and Rosaria Conte, namely, the existence of large normative systems, which successfully direct people's thoughts and actions without being, in their entirety, mental contents of individual agents. I will argue that the cognitive attitudes and operations involved in compliance with normative systems are usually different from those involved in complying with isolated social norms. While isolated norms must be stored in the memory of the agents endorsing them, this does not happen with regard to large normative systems. In the latter case, the agent adopts a general policy-based intention to comply with the normative system as a whole, an intention that provides an abstract motivation for specific acts of compliance, once the agent has established that these acts are obligatory according the system. I will show how the endorsement of such a policy can be based on different individual attitudes, ranging from self-interest to altruistic, social or moral motivations. Finally, I will analyze how a normative system may both constrain powers and extend them, relying on this abstract motivation of its addressees.


This study explored the perspectives of social workers regarding collaboration among social workers within their workplace. The perspectives were examined through the conceptual frameworks of Ecological Systems Theory specifically how interactions within the work environment affect collaborative efforts among social workers. The online survey instrument Qualtrics.com was utilized to conduct the survey which contained 44 items that were designed to operationalize the concepts of interdependence, newly created professional activities, collective ownership of goals, flexibility and reflection on the process, Index of Interdisciplinary Collaboration developed by Laura Bronstein. Data generated from this survey were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistics from the 23 respondents who completed the survey. The results of this study show that social workers appear to be engaged in collaborative efforts with other social workers in their workplace and appear to have a positive perception of working among their colleagues in a collaborative way even when it may be outside of the person's job description or result in a loss of some autonomy. The results of this study that the field of social work practices implement and expand further formal procedures within social service agencies to promote collaborative work among colleagues to better serve client needs. SOCIAL WORK COLLABORATION ii


Abstract. Spatial and temporal variability of the Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL) height for the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) study period are examined using the data collected through Cross-chained LORAN (Long-Range Aid to Navigation) Atmospheric Sounding System (CLASS) launchings during the Northern Hemispheric winter monsoon period. This paper reports the results of the analyses of the data collected during the pre-INDOEX (1997) and the INDOEX-First Field Phase (FFP; 1998) in the latitude range 14°N to 20°S over the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Mixed layer heights are derived from thermodynamic profiles and they indicated the variability of heights ranging from 400m to 1100m during daytime depending upon the location. Mixed layer heights over the Indian Ocean are slightly higher during the INDOEX-FFP than the pre-INDOEX due to anomalous conditions prevailing during the INDOEX-FFP. The trade wind inversion height varied from 2.3km to 4.5km during the pre-INDOEX and from 0.4km to 2.5km during the INDOEX-FFP. Elevated plumes of polluted air (lofted aerosol plumes) above the marine boundary layer are observed from thermodynamic profiles of the lower troposphere during the INDOEX-FFP. These elevated plumes are examined using 5-day back trajectory analysis and show that one group of air mass travelled a long way from Saudi Arabia and Iran/Iraq through India before reaching the location of measurement, while the other air mass originates from India and the Bay of Bengal.


Water and pollutant release from a disturbed urban snowpack was studied in an experimental plot encompassing a road section and the adjacent grassed boulevard in the city of Lulea, in northern Sweden. Winter road maintenance in this area includes snow ploughing and applications of grit without any road salts. During the study period, 18 snowmelt events were observed. Compared to rural areas and urban areas with extensive use of chloride in winter road maintenance, in the former case, the observed snowmelt quality differed by relatively high and uniform pH (7.7–8.1) and, in the latter case, by low chloride event-mean-concentrations (EMCs) (5.7–123.4 mg/L) and conductivity (11.6–60.7 mS/m). Total suspended solids (TSS) EMCs greatly exceeded those reported for rural snowmelt and urban rainfall runoff and contributed to the high pH buffering capacity of deposited snow. Observed concentrations of total and dissolved heavy metals were compared to water quality guidelines that suggested a high likelihood of biological effects. Chloride was the only pollutant that indicated an early release and all other constituents showed a uniform release with snowmelt from the snowpack. The partitioning of heavy metals between total and dissolved phases indicated the highest dissolved fractions for Cu, followed by Cd, Ni and Zn, and the lowest values were observed for Pb. The urban snowmelt characteristics substantially differed from those reported for undisturbed sites with respect to higher pollutant loads, high pH buffering capacity and a general absence of early or delayed pollutant release from the snowpack.


Neural underpinnings of walking under cognitive and sensory load: a Mobile Brain/Body Imaging approach By: Brenda R. Malcolm Advisor: Pierfilippo De Sanctis, Ph.D. Dual-task walking studies, in which individuals engage in an attentionally-demanding task while walking, have provided indirect evidence via behavioral and biomechanical measures, of the recruitment of higher-level cortical resources during gait. Additionally, recent EEG and imaging (PET, fNIRS) studies have revealed direct neurophysiological evidence of cortical contributions to steady-state walking. However, there remains a lack of knowledge regarding the underlying neural mechanisms involved in the allocation of cortical resources while walking under increased load. This dissertation presents three experiments designed to provide a greater understanding of the cortical dynamics implicated in processing load (topdown or bottom-up) during locomotion. Furthermore, we seek to investigate age-related differences in these neural pathways. These studies were conducted using an innovative EEGbased Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) approach, combining high-density EEG, foot force sensors and 3D body motion capture as participants walked on a treadmill. The first study employed a Go/No-Go response inhibition task to evaluate the long-term test retest reliability of two cognitively-evoked event-related potentials (ERPs), the earlier N2 and the later P3. Acceptable levels of reliability were found, according to the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and these were similar across sitting and walking conditions. Results indicate that electro-cortical signals obtained during walking are stable indices of neurophysiological function. The aim of the second study was to characterize age-related changes in gait and in the allocation of cognitive control under single vs. dual-task load. For young adults, we observed significant modulations as a result of increased task load for both gait (longer stride time) and for ERPs (decreased N2 amplitude and P3 latency). In contrast, older adults exhibited costs in the cognitive domain (reduced accuracy performance), engaged in a more stereotyped pattern of walking, and showed a general lack of ERP modulation while walking under increased load, all of which may indicate reduced flexibility in resource allocation across tasks. Finally, the third study assessed the effects of sensory (optic flow and visual perturbations) and cognitive load (Go/No-Go task) manipulations on gait and cortical neurooscillatory activity in young adults. While walking under increased load, participants adopted a more conservative pattern of gait by taking shorter and wider strides, with cognitive load in particular associated with reduced motor variability. Using an Independent Components Analysis (ICA) and dipole-fitting approach, neuro-oscillatory activity was then calculated from eight source-localized clusters of Independent Components (ICs). Significant modulations in average spectral power in the theta (3-7Hz), alpha (8-12Hz), beta (13-30Hz), and gamma (3145Hz) frequency bands were observed over occipital, parietal and frontal clusters of ICs, as a function of optic flow and task load. Overall, our findings demonstrate the reliability and feasibility of the MoBI approach to assess electro-cortical activity in dual-task walking situations, and may be especially relevant to older adults who are less able to flexibly adjust to ongoing cognitive and sensory demands while walking.


First-principles calculations demonstrate that widely tunable direct and indirect band gaps can both be obtained in hBN/MoS2 vertical heterostructures, under a finite vertical electric field (E-field). In hBN/MoS2 bi- and multi-heterostructures, the interactions between the two individuals produce a very special γ-band. Then, an enhancing forward E-field shifts this γ-band down and makes its lowest point become the conduction band minimum (CBM) of the hBN/MoS2 bilayer at 0.47 V A−1, leading to a continuously tunable direct band gap. In contrast, an enhancing backward E-field shifts the valence band maximum (VBM) of the hBN up and makes it become the VBM of the hBN/MoS2 bilayer at −0.07 V A−1, resulting in a highly tunable indirect band gap. Moreover, the magnitude of the two critical E-fields is obviously reduced when increasing the layer number of hBN flakes, offering multiple choices to devise band-gap tunable MoS2-based devices under only a weak E-field, which may be a significant breakthrough in MoS2-based field-effect transistors and photodetectors.


: The elevated estradiol/testosterone (E2/T) ratio had been proved to be a risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD) in elderly men. We conducted a randomized placebo controlled crossover study on the effects of a new androgenic preparation "Andriol" in 62 elderly men with CHD over a period of 2.5 months. The results showed significant differences between Andriol- and placebo-treated groups at the end of this period: in the former, serum T level was elevated significantly (P 0.05), E2/T ratio was reduced (P < 0.05), angina pectoris (AP) was relieved (total effective rate, 77.4%), and myocardial ischemia in ECG and Holter recordings were improved (total effective rate, respectively 68.8% and 75%). Doppler echocardiography showed that 12 parameters of cardiac function were unchanged in both groups. No obvious side effect was found in those who took Andriol.


Krieger, JW. Single vs. multiple sets of resistance exercise for muscle hypertrophy: a meta-analysis. J Strength Cond Res 24(4): 1150-1159, 2010-Previous meta-analyses have compared the effects of single to multiple sets on strength, but analyses on muscle hypertrophy are lacking. The purpose of this study was to use multilevel meta-regression to compare the effects of single and multiple sets per exercise on muscle hypertrophy. The analysis comprised 55 effect sizes (ESs), nested within 19 treatment groups and 8 studies. Multiple sets were associated with a larger ES than a single set (difference = 0.10 ± 0.04; confidence interval [CI]: 0.02, 0.19; p = 0.016). In a dose-response model, there was a trend for 2-3 sets per exercise to be associated with a greater ES than 1 set (difference = 0.09 ± 0.05; CI: −0.02, 0.20; p = 0.09), and a trend for 4-6 sets per exercise to be associated with a greater ES than 1 set (difference = 0.20 ± 0.11; CI: −0.04, 0.43; p = 0.096). Both of these trends were significant when considering permutation test p values (p < 0.01). There was no significant difference between 2-3 sets per exercise and 4-6 sets per exercise (difference = 0.10 ± 0.10; CI: −0.09, 0.30; p = 0.29). There was a tendency for increasing ESs for an increasing number of sets (0.24 for 1 set, 0.34 for 2-3 sets, and 0.44 for 4-6 sets). Sensitivity analysis revealed no highly influential studies that affected the magnitude of the observed differences, but one study did slightly influence the level of significance and CI width. No evidence of publication bias was observed. In conclusion, multiple sets are associated with 40% greater hypertrophy-related ESs than 1 set, in both trained and untrained subjects.


Two mishaps early this year forcefully reminded the authors how important computer systems' reliability has become to human well-being in this last decade of the 20th century. In January, large parts of AT&T's long-distance telephone switching networks failed because of a software problem. Then, in February, a 'fly by wire' Airbus A320 aircraft crashed in Bangalore, India. While a definitive cause for the accident has yet to be established (preliminary investigations suggest that the control computers might well have performed to specifications), the fact that the A320 employs a fully electronic cockpit with no mechanical backup for control has raised much speculation about the computers' role in the crash. The authors stress that the basic idea behind building in a fault tolerant capability is to provide the system with extra (redundant) resources. >


The human brain's ability to adapt to environmental changes is obvious in specific sensory domains of experts, and olfaction is one of the least investigated senses. As we have previously demonstrated that olfactory expertise is related to functional brain modifications, we investigated here whether ol-factory expertise is also coupled with structural changes. We used voxel-based morphometry to compare the gray-matter volume in student and professional perfumers, as well as untrained control subjects, and accounted for all methodological improvements that have been recently developed to limit possible errors associated with image processing. In all perfumers, we detected an increase in gray-matter volume in the bilateral gyrus rectus/medial orbital gyrus (GR/MOG), an orbitofrontal area that surrounds the olfactory sulcus. In addition, gray-matter volume in the anterior PC and left GR/MOG was positively correlated with experience in professional perfumers. We concluded that the acute olfactory knowledge acquired through extensive olfactory training leads to the structural reorganization of olfactory brain areas.


Ecological data suggest a long-term diet high in plant material rich in biologically active compounds, such as the lignans, can significantly influence the development of prostate cancer over the lifetime of an individual. The capacity of a pure mammalian lignan, enterolactone (ENL), to influence the proliferation of the LNCaP human prostate cancer cell line was investigated as a function of cell density, metabolic activity, expression and secretion of prostate specific antigen (PSA), cell cycle profile, and the expression of genes involved in development and progression of prostate cancer. Treatment with a subcytotoxic concentration of ENL (60 muM for 72 h) was found to reduce: cell density (57.5%, SD 7.23, p < 0.001), metabolic activity (55%, SD 0.03, p < 0.001), secretion of PSA (48.50% SD 4.74, p = 0.05) and induce apoptosis (8.33-fold SD 0.04, p = 0.001) compared to untreated cells. Cotreatment with 10 muM etoposide was found to increase apoptosis by 50.17% (SD 0.02, p < 0.001). Additionally, several key genes (e. g. MCMs, survivin and CDKs) were beneficially regulated by ENL treatment (p < 0.05). The data suggest that the antiproliferative activity of ENL is a consequence of altered expression of cell cycle associated genes and provides novel molecular evidence for the antiproliferative properties of a pure lignan in prostate cancer.


The purpose of the study was to develop a comprehensive framework that could guide the management of financial services relationships within a business-to-business (B2B) context. Trust, commitment and intention to stay are proposed as key dimensions. A survey was used to empirically assess the 13 hypothesised relationships in the model. Two samples were drawn: a relationship manager sample and a client sample, both from a leading South African B2B financial services provider. Data from the relationship manager sample were analysed using a regression analysis, while data from the client sample were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).
Although relationship management is a complex process, relationship managers and clients agreed on the impact of the majority of the dimensions on their intentions to stay in the relationship. It is especially interesting to note that relationship managers believe that it is possible to build commitment without the presence of trust. Relationship managers appear to over-estimate their ratings of clients' perceptions, and marketers should be cautious to base marketing strategies on the perceptions of relationship managers only. The originality of the contribution lies in the concurrent consideration of the perceptions of both financial services providers and their clients.


A community audit is a qualitative and quantitative research technique in which researchers drive through a community to observe its physical and social attributes, primarily through windshield tours and "ground truthing." Ground truthing is a verification process that uses data gathered by direct observation to corroborate data gathered from secondary sources. Community audits have been used for epidemiologic studies and in program planning for health-promotion interventions. Few studies have detailed the methodology for conducting community audits in rural areas or the extent to which community audits can contribute to an accurate assessment of community characteristics (eg, presence of sidewalks) and nutrition and physical activity resources (eg, produce stands, parks) that may promote healthful lifestyle behaviors. The objective of this article is to describe our approach to conducting a community audit (consisting of windshield tours and ground truthing) to enumerate resources, to assess community characteristics, and to inform revisions to a community guide on nutrition and physical activity resources. We conducted an audit in 10 communities in a rural eastern North Carolina county in 2010. We also collected data from secondary sources to make comparisons with community audit data. The initial resource guide included 42 resources; the community audits identified 38 additional resources. There was moderate to high agreement between windshield tour observations and secondary data sources for several community characteristics, such as number of fast-food restaurants (67% agreement) and existence of sidewalks (100% agreement). Community audits improved the description of health-promoting community resources and the context in which people make lifestyle choices.


Research issues have emerged from the rapid introduction of new technologies in government services in order to deliver efficient and cost effective services, information and knowledge through information and communication technologies. However, the complexity of government services and the diversity of actors involved in the processes make the access to the right information difficult and pose several problems. Some problems are linked to the way of presenting and accessing information. Other problems are linked to interoperability among applications and processes of eGovernment services. The objective of the European TerreGov project is to find a solution to such problems. The project focuses on the semantic requirements of governments at local, intermediate and regional levels, needed to build flexible and interoperable tools to support the change towards eGovernment services. We propose, within this project, an ontology to present knowledge and to achieve the required level of semantic interoperability. We use the ontology to describe the domain knowledge of the organization and to index the resources from which civil servants may receive information. The key point of the system is a unique and multimodal ontology used simultaneously for describing domain knowledge, for adding semantics to agency services, for indexing various documents in knowledge bases used by civil servants and finally for supporting the interaction between the users and the system. We present in this paper the challenges of using ontology in eGovernment environments, such as the lack of expressivity of the formalism chosen for interoperability in the project and the risk of inconsistency when the ontology changes. We propose our solution to such challenges and we demonstrate the use of the ontology by the module in charge of managing complex tasks in the system.


This report will test how well the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm performs on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), using solely fixed point arithmetic. The implementation is designed to receive a data set of N 16 bits data points, and return the different intrinsic mode function (IMF) components and the residue. The implementation is based on the naive EMD, using cubic spline interpolation to generate the envelopes when finding the different IMF components. With fixed point precision, there will be a certain error when storing a decimal number. By applying precision bits, effectively multiplying the number by a factor of 2 for every bit applied, this error decreases. The implementation is designed to be able to specify the amount of precision bits wanted for the cubic spline calculations, with a maximum amount of 22. The implementation is simulated and tested for different amount of bits, and the resulting IMF components are compared to software implementation results using floating point precision. For a data set containing 2048 samples of uniform distributed noise, the number of precision bits would need to be greater than 13. Fewer precision bits did not produce any meaningful result due to the error for the later IMF component being too large. The error is defined as the difference between the floating point, and the fixed point precision results. This error is compared to the floating point precision to gain a signal to noise ratio (SNR). For every new IMF extracted, the SNR decreases. The main reason for this, is because the cubic splines are made out of third order polynomials, which also applies to the error. This means that the error would escalate quickly when the distance between the extrema becomes large. This results in more precision bits needed for later IMF components, in order to keep the SNR constant. For real-time purposes, the input signal sampling frequency for this design can not be higher than 159 kHz for N = 2048. This sampling frequency becomes less for bigger window size, N , which was expected due to the complexity of the EMD algorithm.


[1] The physical and optical properties of persistent contrails were studied with the measurements made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) lidar. MODIS data were used to determine the contrail locations on the basis of their artificial shapes easily distinguished from natural cirrus, and the so-identified contrails were analyzed with collocated CALIPSO lidar data. Statistics of the geography, geometry, meteorology, and optical properties are reported for approximately 3400 persistent contrails observed over North America, the North Atlantic Ocean, and Europe. The majority of the detected contrails appear in ice-supersaturated air with temperatures lower than � 40 � C. On average, contrails have significantly larger backscattering coefficients and slightly higher linear depolarization ratios (LDRs) than neighboring cirrus clouds. Depolarization tends to be strong when ice crystals are small, and LDR is approximately 0.4–0.45 for young contrails and contrail cores. The mean LDR for the detected contrails increases with decreasing temperature and is not strongly dependent on the lidar pointing angle. The backscattering properties suggest that contrails are primarily composed of small, randomly oriented ice crystals but may also contain a few horizontally oriented plates. Most contrails are optically thin with a mean (median) optical thickness of approximately 0.19 (0.14); however, optically thicker contrails do exist and tend to occur in warmer and more humid ambient air. The mean value and range of the observed LDR data are consistent with theoretical predictions based on a mixture of nonspherical ice crystals randomly oriented in the atmosphere. Citation: Iwabuchi, H., P. Yang, K. N. Liou, and P. Minnis (2012), Physical and optical properties of persistent contrails: Climatology and interpretation, J. Geophys. Res., 117, D06215, doi:10.1029/2011JD017020.


Mid-long term projections of the Stability Programs (SP) are elaborated to simulate the burden each active citizen or each worker will have to bear for financing, via pay-as-you-go, public health care provisions and public pensions. It is worth mentioning that projections in the (SP) are those developed by the Ageing Working Group (Awg), a task force Ecofin created in purpose to investigate the effects of population ageing on the sustainability of public finances across Europe. This paper is self standing but, at the same time, is part of the broader project "Present and Future of PayGo in Italy, Europe and Us". All chapters will be collected in a book by Nicola C. Salerno.


Late visions and trends for the future 6G of wireless communications advocate, among other technologies, the deployment of network nodes with extreme numbers of antennas and up to terahertz frequencies as a means to enable various immersive applications. However, these technologies impose several challenges in the design of radio-frequency (RF) front ends and beamforming architectures as well as ultrawideband waveforms and computationally efficient transceiver signal processing. In this article, we revisit the time-reversal (TR) technique, which was initially experimented in acoustics, in the context of large-bandwidth 6G wireless communications, capitalizing on its high-resolution spatiotemporal focusing realized with low-complexity transceivers. We first overview the representative state of the art in TR-based wireless communications, identifying the key competencies and requirements of TR for efficient operation. Recent and novel experimental setups and results for the spatiotemporal-focusing capability of TR at the carrier frequencies 2.5, 36, and 273 GHz are then presented, demonstrating in quantitative ways the technique's effectiveness in these very different frequency bands as well as the roles of the available bandwidth and the number of transmit antennas. We also showcase the TR potential for realizing low-complexity multiuser communications. The opportunities arising from TR-based wireless communications as well as the challenges for finding their place in 6G networks, also in conjunction with other complementary candidate technologies, are highlighted.


The Late Ordovician glaciation differs from other major Phanerozoic glaciations because of its short duration (∼1 m.y.). A satisfactory explanation for this glaciation must be able to account for its sudden initiation, short duration, and rapid termination; mechanisms operating on tectonic time scales appear to be precluded. Given recent studies of a major perturbation in the carbon cycle during the glaciation, a climate model investigation of the sensitivity of the Late Ordovician climate to changes in atmospheric p CO2 was undertaken. Under the condition of a 4.5% reduction in solar luminosity, permanent snow cover (taken as a key indicator of potential for glaciation) is dramatically different between five experiments. The range of 18X present atmospheric level CO2 (ice free) to 8X ("runaway" icehouse) lies within the uncertainty of previous geochemical estimates of Late Ordovician atmospheric p CO2. The strong sensitivity to the modest direct forcing from p CO2 changes is due to the ice-albedo feedback. A plausible increase in organic carbon burial could have drawn down enough atmospheric CO2 to have briefly lowered the climate system below a critical glacial inception threshold at the end of the Ordovician. Conversely, a high p CO2 is required for the rest of the early Paleozoic, which was essentially ice free.


Sex-biased demography, in which parameters governing migration and population size differ between females and males, has been studied through comparisons of X chromosomes, which are inherited sex-specifically, and autosomes, which are not. A common form of sex bias in humans is sex-biased admixture, in which at least one of the source populations differs in its proportions of females and males contributing to an admixed population. Studies of sex-biased admixture often examine the mean ancestry for markers on the X chromosome in relation to the autosomes. A simple framework noting that in a population with equally many females and males, two-thirds of X chromosomes appear in females, suggests that the mean X-chromosomal admixture fraction is a linear combination of female and male admixture parameters, with coefficients 2/3 and 1/3, respectively. Extending a mechanistic admixture model to accommodate the X chromosome, we demonstrate that this prediction is not generally true in admixture models, although it holds in the limit for an admixture process occurring as a single event. For a model with constant ongoing admixture, we determine the mean X-chromosomal admixture, comparing admixture on female and male X chromosomes to corresponding autosomal values. Surprisingly, in reanalyzing African-American genetic data to estimate sex-specific contributions from African and European sources, we find that the range of contributions compatible with the excess African ancestry on the X chromosome compared to autosomes has a wide spread, permitting scenarios either without male-biased contributions from Europe or without female-biased contributions from Africa.


As one of the few expanding and politically powerful unions in the county, many have argued that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) represents the future of the American labor movement. However, few scholars have devoted much attention to the early days of the organization. My dissertation partially fills this gap in the literature by examining the foundation and evolution of the organization in Chicago between 1912 and 1969. During this period, the SEIU in Chicago developed a particular approach to labor activity—what I call civic unionism—that emphasized political power over labor militancy and prefigured modern trends in the labor movement such as community and social movement unionism. Through this approach, the union helped unskilled workers, most prominently janitors, to achieve higher wages, power in the workplace, and a sense of professional dignity. Although these successes represent significant victories, civic unionism proved far from perfect. By committing the union to the defense of the status quo it required the organization to defend the corrupt machine politics of Chicago and blunted any larger social agenda that they might have pursued. Ultimately these compromises resulted in both internal corruption and internecine conflicts that caused significant damage to the organization. Despite its faults, the civic unionism of the Chicago SEIU deserves study not only as a prelude to the modern organization, and modern organizational concepts, but also as a distinctive form of unionism that challenges many of the basic categories in which unions are normally classified. Seeing Chicago from the perspective of the union also provides unique insights into the city's political, social, and economic development.


We present Spitzer Space Telescope IRAC and MIPS observations of the Galactic globular cluster M15 (NGC 7078), one of the most metal-poor clusters, with a [Fe/H] = -2.4. Our Spitzer images reveal a population of dusty red giants near the cluster center, a previously detected planetary nebula designated K648, and a possible detection of the intracluster medium arising from mass-loss episodes from the evolved stellar population. Our analysis suggests that (9 ± 2) × 10-4 M⊙ of dust is present in the core of M15, and that this material has accumulated over a period of ≈106 yr, a timescale 10 times shorter than the last Galactic plane crossing event. We also present Spitzer IRS follow-up observations of K648, including the detection of the [Ne II] 12.81 μm line, and discuss abundances derived from infrared fine-structure lines.


Electrical methods of geophysical survey are known to produce results that are hard to predict at different times of the year, and under differing weather conditions. This is a problem which can lead to misinterpretation of archaeological features under investigation. The dynamic relationship between a 'natural' soil matrix and an archaeological feature is a complex one, which greatly affects the success of the feature's detection when using active electrical methods of geophysical survey. This study has monitored the gradual variation of measured resistivity over a selection of study areas. By targeting difficult to find, and often 'missing' electrical anomalies of known archaeological features, this study has increased the understanding of both the detection and interpretation capabilities of such geophysical surveys.

A 16 month time-lapse study over 4 archaeological features has taken place to investigate the aforementioned detection problem across different soils and environments. In addition to the commonly used Twin-Probe earth resistance survey, electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) and quadrature electro-magnetic induction (EMI) were also utilised to explore the problem. Statistical analyses have provided a novel interpretation, which has yielded new insights into how the detection of archaeological features is influenced by the relationship between the target feature and the surrounding 'natural' soils.

The study has highlighted both the complexity and previous misconceptions around the predictability of the electrical methods. The analysis has confirmed that each site provides an individual and nuanced situation, the variation clearly relating to the composition of the soils (particularly pore size) and the local weather history. The wide range of reasons behind survey success at each specific study site has been revealed. The outcomes have shown that a simplistic model of seasonality is not universally applicable to the electrical detection of archaeological features. This has led to the development of a method for quantifying survey success, enabling a deeper understanding of the unique way in which each site is affected by the interaction of local environmental and geological conditions.


As COVID-19 continues to spread, accurately forecasting the number of newly infected, removed and death cases has become a crucial task in public health. While mechanics compartment models are widely-used in epidemic modeling, data-driven models are emerging for disease forecasting. In this work, we investigate these two types of methods for COVID-19 forecasting. Through a comprehensive study, we find that data-driven models outperform physics-based models on the number of death cases prediction. Meanwhile, physics-based models have superior performances in predicting the number of infected and removed cases. In addition, we present an hybrid approach, AutoODE, that obtains a 57.4% reduction in mean absolute errors of the 7-day ahead COVID-19 trajectories prediction compared with the best deep learning competitor.


This paper presents a case study of how livestock policies are made and implemented in a national context, and how they can be improved to better serve the interests of the poor. It seems that good opportunities for improving rural livelihoods in Bolivia through livestock policy are to be found in the camelid sector. Markets for camelid meat, fiber, and leather are currently small but hold significant potential to benefit poor herders in the Andean highlands. The study used the key informant method supplemented with official documents, newspaper sources and recently published research on the livestock sector. Interviews helped reveal policymaker's concerns, whereas field trips allowed the researcher to talk to a few peasants and learn their perspectives from the bottom. Newspapers contained many lively stories of how well-intentioned policies went awry at the implementation stage, while published research analyzed various political, institutional and technical aspects of policymaking in the sector. The author concludes that given the weak state capacity the range of feasible public policies that could be implemented to foster pro-poor development is limited. The clearest role for the state lies in the realm of animal health and sanitation, in particular, the establishment and maintenance of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD)-free zones, prevention programs to control the incidence of sarcocistiosis, a camelid parasite, and support for municipal governments in improving sanitary conditions in slaughterhouses. The National Service for Agricultural and Livestock Sanitation (SENASAG) is a relatively new government agency, created in 2000 to handle such animal disease issues. To date, however, it has focused most of its resources on establishing an FMD-free zone for cattle production in the eastern lowlands. Three strategic entry points are recommended that can both improve the performance of the sector and the participation of the poor in productive activities.


We characterize the Walrasian allocations correspondence by means of four axioms: consistency, replica invariance, individual rationality and Pareto optimality. It is shown that for any given class of exchange economies any solution that satisfies the axioms is a selection from the Walrasian allocations with slack. Preferences are assumed to be smooth, but may be satiated and non--convex. A class of economies is defined as all economies whose agents' preferences belong to an arbitrary family (finite or infinite) of types. The result can be modified to characterize equal budget Walrasian allocations with slack by replacing individual rationality with individual rationality from equal division. The results are valid also for classes of economies in which core--Walras equivalence does not hold.


According to the participant role approach (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Kaukiainen, 1996), bullying is a group phenomenon that is largely enabled and maintained by the classmates taking on different participant roles (e.g., reinforcers or assistants of the bully). There is, however, very little evidence on whether the bystander behaviors actually have an effect on the risk for victimization. Furthermore, the participant role approach implies that the bystanders should be used in putting an end to bullying. This view has been put into practice in the KiVa antibullying program, but it has not yet been investigated whether the program is effective. Four studies were conducted to investigate, (a) whether the behaviors of bystanders have an effect on the risk for victimization (Study I) and (b) whether the KiVa program reduces bullying and victimization and has other beneficial effects as well (Studies II–IV). The participants included large samples of elementary and lower secondary school students (Grades 1–9) from Finland. The assessments were done with web-based questionnaires including questions about bullying and victimization (both selfand peer reports), and about several bullying-related constructs. The results of this thesis suggest that bystander behaviors in bullying situations may influence the risk for victimization of vulnerable students. Moreover, the results indicate that the KiVa antibullying program is effective in reducing victimization and bullying. The program effects are larger in elementary schools than in lower secondary schools, whereas in Grades 8 and 9, they are larger for boys than girls for some peer-reported outcomes. The magnitude of the overall effects can be considered practically significant when obtained in a large-scale dissemination of the program.


A variety of geologic observations point to fast upper mantle flow that may exceed plate tectonic velocities by an order of magnitude. At the same time there is mounting evidence from seismology for flow‐like structures in the upper 100–200 km of the mantle. Here we present a set of geodynamic simulations to link these observations. In a synthetic setting, we include asthenospheric channels of varying thickness, with an extreme case of 100 km, and a significant viscosity contrast of up to 4 orders of magnitude relative to the deeper mantle. Using our new global high‐resolution code TERRA‐NEO, we obtain an increase in velocity by a factor of 10 between a 1000 km thick and the very thin channel, translating into velocities of ∼ 20 cm/a within the narrow asthenosphere. We further present and verify a simple Poiseuille flow model, predicting that the upper mantle velocity scales with the inverse of the asthenosphere thickness.


Einstein is widely understood as regarding "principle theories" (such as the theory of relativity) as explanatorily powerless. This brief paper shows that Einstein's remarks admit of another interpretation, according to which principle theories possess explanatory power. This interpretation is motivated primarily by showing that James Jeans made remarks very similar to Einstein's at nearly the same time, but Jeans reconciled those remarks with holding principle theories to be explanatory. Einstein's remarks could well be getting at the same point as Jeans's. This view of principle and constructive theories is independently valuable. It undermines Salmon's "friendly physicist" example as an argument for the view that there are facts that can be explained by both principle and constructive theories.


In an offshore environment, the efficiency (η), the power density (ρ) and the powerto-mass ratio (γ) are of paramount importance in the design of wind energy conversion systems (WECS). Indeed, the optimisation of these performance indices can reduce investment costs, especially if most of the electrical conversion components are located in the nacelle or tower of the wind turbine. This thesis describes a simple procedure to calculate the η, the ρ and the γ of power converters via the calculation of power losses, volume and mass of the main components of the WECS: the power electronics valves, the magnetic components and the capacitors. In the proposed method, the system is first characterised, then a set of figures of merits are evaluated for a set of design parameters. Finally, a multi-objective optimisation is performed and the Pareto concept is used to present the set of solutions (for different sets of parameters) and the best trade-off for the performance indicators is identified. The approach does not identify a unique solution; instead, several solutions are obtained and other criteria can be used to choose the final solution, thus giving freedom in the design process and flexibility in the final decisions of conceptual design. The proposed method is applied to different offshore WECS topologies to illustrate the evaluation procedure. First, a well known topology used in AC-Grid connected wind turbines, the two level voltage source converter, is considered. Then, the meta-parametrised approach and the fundamental component models described in this thesis are used to compare six different WECS based on a medium frequency transformer for a 10 MW WECS interfacing a permanent magnet synchronous generator suitable for offshore DC-grids. A modular approach in the power converter is considered and the impact of the number of modules and variation in nominal transformer frequency on performance indicators is studied.


Purpose
A comparison of electric and viscosity percolation threshold is crucial from the scientific and technical points of view to understand the features and capabilities of heterogeneous graphene composite materials and properly select the functional phase volume. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present the analysis of the electrical and rheological percolation thresholds in the polymer–graphene screen printing pastes and the analysis of the relation between these two parameters.

Design/methodology/approach
In the paper, the properties of polymer-based pastes with graphene nanoplatelets were tested: paste viscosity and printed layers conductivity. The tests of pastes with different filler content allowed to determine both the electrical and rheological percolation thresholds using power law, according to Kirkpatrick's percolation model.

Findings
The electrical percolation threshold for graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) in the composite was 0.74 Vol.% when the rheological percolation threshold is observed to be at 1.00 Vol.% of nanoplatelets. The percolation threshold values calculated using the Kirkpatrick's percolation model were 0.87 and 0.5 Vol.% of GNPs in the paste for electrical and rheological percolation thresholds, respectively.

Originality/value
Recently, GNPs are becoming more popular as the material of the functional phase in screen printing heterophase materials, because of their unique mechanical and electrical properties. However, till date no research presented in the literature is related to the direct comparison of both the electrical and rheological percolation thresholds. Such analysis is important for the optimization of the printing process toward the highest quality of printed conductive paths, and finally the best electrical properties.


Analysis of the fuelwood situation has been hampered by lack of reliable information, and has been the subject of considerable debate. The present paper assesses the implications of recent information on the subject. New data and recent more accurate projections show that increasing urbanisation and rising incomes lead to fuelwood users shifting to charcoal and other fuels. The rate of increase in fuelwood use is slowing down and in some areas consumption is now in decline. In contrast, charcoal use is growing strongly and is becoming a much larger part of the woodfuels total in some regions. In general, the new information supports arguments that fuelwood use seldom requires major interventions to maintain or augment supplies, though in some areas charcoal may. However, though woodfuels may be less of a concern to the security of the forest estate than was previously feared, huge numbers of people continue to rely on woodfuels as a source of energy or income, and will continue to do so. The review argues that these linkages constitute a larger component of the contribution that forestry can make to poverty alleviation than appears to be currently reflected in most forestry and agroforestry policies and programmes. Areas that could need attention in order to address such neglect are discussed.


Symbolic regression is the process of identifying mathematical expressions that fit observed output from a black-box process. It is a discrete optimization problem generally believed to be NP-hard. Prior approaches to solving the problem include neural-guided search (e.g. using reinforcement learning) and genetic programming. In this work, we introduce a hybrid neural-guided/genetic programming approach to symbolic regression and other combinatorial optimization problems. We propose a neural-guided component used to seed the starting population of a random restart genetic programming component, gradually learning better starting populations. On a number of common benchmark tasks to recover underlying expressions from a dataset, our method recovers 65% more expressions than a recently published top-performing model using the same experimental setup. We demonstrate that running many genetic programming generations without interdependence on the neural-guided component performs better for symbolic regression than alternative formulations where the two are more strongly coupled. Finally, we introduce a new set of 22 symbolic regression benchmark problems with increased difficulty over existing benchmarks. Source code is provided at www.github.com/brendenpetersen/deep-symbolic-optimization.


This study is to investigate the effect of chemotherapy on living quality, anxiety and immunity of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. 78 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer treated with chemotherapy in hospital were selected randomly. The clinical effect of chemotherapy on patients was evaluated every two cycles. The living quality, anxiety and immunity of patients with lung cancer were graded. Before chemotherapy, the scores of living quality functional fields, fatigue and dyspnoea were high. There were 53.8% patients with anxiety. The score of SAS was 52.36 ± 6.42. After two cycles of chemotherapy, dyspnoea was obviously improved, while insomnia and loss of appetite were obviously increased. There were 73.1% patients with anxiety and the score of SAS was 52.36 ± 6.18, which were significantly increased compared with before chemotherapy. After four cycles of chemotherapy, the scores of body, role, emotion and social function were obviously reduced, while nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, constipation and financial difficulty were worse. There were 80.8% patients with anxiety. The score of SAS was 55.27 ± 6.42. Compared with two cycles of chemotherapy, the difference was not statistically significant. Compared with before chemotherapy, the number of CD8+ was decreased, and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ was increased. The physical status of part patients was relieved after chemotherapy, but their anxiety was quite obvious and their immunity and living quality were decreased. Medical worker should be timely evaluated patients' living quality and emotional changes, provide a good job of health and prevention, and actively carry out psychological counselling for patients.


Background: Knowledge of the variant anatomy of the brachial artery is important in radial arterial grafts for coronary bypass, percutaneous trans-radial approach to coronary angiography, angioplasty and flap surgery. These variations show ethnic differences but data from black populations are scarce. This study therefore describes the course in relation with median nerve, level and pattern of termination of brachial artery in a black Kenyan population. Methods: This was a cadaveric dissection study of 162 upper limbs at the Department of Human Anatomy University of Nairobi, Kenya. The brachial artery was exposed entirely from the lower border of teres major to its point of termination. The course in relation to the median nerve and the level of termination were recorded. The results were analyzed using SPSS version 17.0 for Windows. Results: 72.2% of the brachial arteries followed the classical pattern described in Gray's Anatomy. Superfi cial brachioradial and superficial brachial arteries were present in 12.3% and 6.1% of the cases respectively. Brachial artery terminated at the radial neck in 79% of the cases, radial tuberosity (8.6%), and proximal arm (11.1%), mid arm (1.2%). Pattern of termination was either a bifurcation into the radial and ulnar arteries (90.1%) or trifurcation into radial, ulnar and common interosseous arteries (9.3%). We also report a case of trifurcation of the brachial artery into the profunda brachii, radial and ulnar arteries (0.6%). Conclusion: Variations of the brachial artery in its relationship with the median nerve, level and pattern of termination are common. These may complicate arm surgical exposures, fl ap and vascular surgery. Pre-operative angiographic evaluation is recommended.


A wavelength-selective coupler constructed with two parallel identical uniform long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs) is analyzed by the coupled-mode theory. The effects of introducing a longitudinal offset distance between the two gratings on the transmission characteristics of the coupler are discussed and the conditions for achieving a 100% coupling efficiency are highlighted. It is found that 100% coupling can be achieved with a practical grating length by using a proper grating design and a suitable index-matching surrounding medium. The theoretical results agree well with the experimental data.


This report describes a clinical trial, with domiciled male veterans, designed to determine whether a diet which lowers serum cholesterol concentration can prevent overt complications of coronary heart disease and other manifestations of atherosclerosis. Volunteers were allocated randomly to control and experimental groups. Participants numbered 422 in the control group and 424 in the experimental group. The two groups were indistinguishable at the outset of the study in almost all observations. These included age, racial characteristics, and religious affiliation; height, weight, and blood pressure; electrocardiographic findings; prevalence of pre-existing anginal syndrome, myocardial infarction, peripheral atherosclerosis, cerebral ischemia, or cerebral infarction; cardiac decompensation; utilization of relevant medications; serum cholesterol and serum total lipid levels; and prevalence of corneal arcus and xanthelasma. One significant difference between the groups in regard to a possibly influential characteristic was that they differed slightly in patterns of cigarette smoking habits. The control diet was similar to the regular institutional diet, which is a standard American diet. It provided, by analysis, 40.1% of calories as fat, having a mean iodine value of 53.5; cholesterol intake was 262 mg/1,000 calories (653 mg/day). The experimental diet provided 38.9% of calories as fat, with an iodine value of 102.4, and had a cholesterol content of 146 mg/1,000 calories (365 mg/day). Linoleic acid content of the two diets was 10% and 38% of total fatty acid, respectively. The experimental diet was prepared to simulate conventional food. Over-all adherence expressed as percentage of total possible meals taken, from introduction into the study to termination of the study, averaged 56% for the control subjects and 49% for the experimental group. The experimental diet induced a prompt drop in serum cholesterol level and sustained a difference between the experimental and control groups amounting to 12.7% of the starting level. It is estimated from published data that the change in saturation of dietary fat accounted for five-sixths of the diet-induced lowering of serum cholesterol in the experimental group, the remaining one-sixth having been due to decreased cholesterol intake. Mean linoleic acid concentration of adipose tissue was initially 10.9%. During the latter part of the trial, which lasted eight years for some subjects, linoleic acid concentration in adipose tissue approached an asymptotic level of 33.7% among good adherers. This variable was a good measure of adherence to the diet after five or more years (r=+0.71), but not earlier. Clinical follow-up was carried out on a double-blind basis. The number of men sustaining events in major categories, in the control and experimental groups, respectively, was: definite silent myocardial infarction, 4 and 9; definite overt myocardial infarction, 40 and 27; sudden death due to coronary heart disease, 27 and 18; definite cerebral infarction, 22 and 13. The difference in the primary end point of the study-sudden death or myocardial infarction -was not statistically significant. However, when these data were pooled with those for cerebral infarction and other secondary end points, the totals were 96 in the control group and 66 in the experimental group; P=0.01. Fatal atherosclerotic events numbered 70 in the control group and 48 in the experimental group; P<0.05. Life-table analysis in general confirmed these conclusions. For all primary and secondary end points combined, eight-year incidence rates were 47.7% and 31.3% for the control and experimental groups, respectively; P value for the difference between the two incidence curves was 0.02. Stratification of the data by age demonstrated that most of the prophylactic effect occurred in the younger half of the study population, less than 65.5 years old at the start of the study. Stratification by baseline serum cholesterol concentration revealed that most of the effect was encountered in men with starting levels above the median (233 mg/dl). Stratification on the basis of pre-existing atherosclerotic complications failed to yield consistent evidence that subjects without pre-existing complications responded differently to diet than did those with prior overt disease. Deaths due to nonatherosclerotic causes numbered 71 in the control group and 85 in the experimental group. Most of the difference occurred in the latter part of the study. Consideration of causes of death in this category suggested that this difference probably did not reflect a toxic effect of the experimental diet. Gross grading of the extent of atheromata in individuals who died and were autopsied failed to reveal significant differences between the two groups of subjects. The same was true of arterial total lipid and calcium concentrations. Relative abundance of major lipid fractions in coronary atheromata and circle of Willis appeared to be independent of diet. In general, most of the varieties of lesions just cited revealed increased concentrations of linoleic acid in triglyceride, cholesterol ester, and phosphatide among the experimental subjects. In individuals on the experimental diet who died after prolonged experience in the study and high adherence to the diet, arachidonic acid concentration in atheroma phosphatide was significantly depressed. A similar but less consistent decrease was observed in arachidonic acid in cholesterol ester and free fatty acid of atheromata. Observations of other investigators suggest that these changes were due to the effects of high &agr;-tocopherol intake on the experimental diet.


Inferring phylogeny is a difficult computational problem. Heuristics are necessary to minimize the time spent evaluating non optimal trees. In paper I, we developed an approach for heuristic searching, using a genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms mimic the natural selections ability to solve complex problems. The algorithm can reduce the time required for weighted maximum parsimony phylogenetic inference using protein sequences, especially for data sets involving large number of taxa. Evaluating and comparing the ability of phylogenetic methods to infer the correct topology is complex. In paper II, we developed software that determines the minimum subtree prune and regraft (SPR) distance between binary trees to ease the process. The minimum SPR distance can be used to measure the incongruence between trees inferred using different methods. Given a known topology the methods could be evaluated on their ability to infer the correct phylogeny given specific data. The minimum SPR software the intermediate trees that separate two binary trees. In paper III we developed software that given a set of incongruent trees determines the median SPR consensus tree i.e. the tree that explains the trees with a minimum of SPR operations. We investigated the median SPR consensus tree and its possible interpretation as a species tree given a set of gene trees. We used a set of α-proteobacteria gene trees to test the ability of the algorithm to infer a species tree and compared it to previous studies. The results show that the algorithm can successfully reconstruct a species tree.Expressed sequence tag (EST) data is important in determining intron-exon boundaries, single nucleotide polymorphism and the coding sequence of genes. In paper IV we aligned ESTs to the genome to evaluate the quality of EST data. The results show that many ESTs are contaminated by vector sequences and low quality regions. The reliability of EST data is largely determined by the clustering of the ESTs and the association of the clusters to the correct portion of genome. We investigate the performance of EST clustering using the genome as template compared to previously existing methods using pair-wise alignments. The results show that using the genome as guidance improves the resulting EST clusters in respect to the extent ESTs originating from the same transcriptional unit are separated into disjunct clusters.


This paper contributes to the topic of educational integrity by presenting an empirical contribution that develops grounded substantive theory in the field of workplace bullying. Intrinsically there is a strong link between educational integrity and bullying because bullying is a violation of integrity. Educational integrity is underpinned by broad principles of honesty trust, equity, respect, responsibility and inclusion. The study investigated the process of becoming bullied, being bullied and the consequences for individuals and organisational cultures. Grounded theory (GT) analysis of informants' constructions was based on action. Pathways of dissent and difference characterised by 'standing up' or 'standing out' emerged as reasons for becoming and being bullied. Holding different values and being different from the cultural norms underpinned pathways. Unlike causes, pathways continued and strengthened throughout the bullying or mobbing process. A concept I have called sham dealing emerged empirically from the GT analyses as a core type of bullying encounter. Instead of fair dealing, sham dealing was experienced. Sham dealing types of managerial actions have the appearance of genuine dealing but are characterised by a deceptive misuse of legitimate process. Sham dealing occurred in workplaces and also within the arena of the formal claims process. Sham dealing is experienced as an additional form of bullying. Empirical evidence of sham dealing explicitly contradicts any premise that managers or leadership within organisations are acting with integrity in dealing with bullying. Targets need to be warned to expect an escalation of bullying, in the form of sham dealing, if they make a complaint about bullying. Currently work-related stress due to bullying is increasing but not being counted. The bullies and their allies are being rewarded. The study findings indicate recognising more bullying claims and reducing the adversarial nature of the formal claims process is the way forward. These are findings from this sample. They may be transferable concepts.


The research focuses upon the production of apparel in the UK, in order to explore a potential dichotomy between clothing and fashion. Both the terms suggest ways in which the body can be dressed and are used liberally within industries that produce apparel. I consider the currency of sociologist, Georg Simmel's theory, which identified no fundamental links between the clothing and fashion. In fashion. Clothing is usually constructed with textile materials worn on the physique and is worn by human beings, in the majority of societies. The quantity and style of clothing depends on bodily, societal and environmental considerations, including gender. In contrast fashion is a common term for a popular style in clothing, footwear or accessories and is usually, the newest collection or creation produced by a designer or retailer. The UK designer, Jean Muir regarded herself as a dressmaker and implied there was conflict between the production of clothes and the role of the fashion designer in this process. The investigation seeks to offer new insight into existing research related to clothing and fashion, by centering upon the production of apparel in the UK and the specific needs of the highly developed, UK fashion and clothing educational system. In so doing it identifies how the terms are perceived today, in both the UK and global apparel industries.


The aims of this project are to manage the risk of a community engagement project, improve managerial of SME owners in the Tshwane community and promote CE scholarship engagement. CE opportunities as well as the high failure rate of SMEs motivated the lecturers of the Department Marketing and Retail to initiate training workshops in their community. This CE project SME skills transfer workshops aims to expand the involvement with the community and develop community engagement projects in addition also transfer managerial skills to SME owners in the community. Quantitative, exploratory research was used in the form of questionnaires with owners of SMEs participating in the workshops. The conducted research established that the most successful advertising medium is wall painting. With this community engagement project it had been reached 200 SMEs. It has been promoted CE scholarship engagement and manage the risk of this project. One of the secondary objectives was to manage the risk of this project. The results in table 1 indicate that the risk is managed adequately. This project is not considered as a high risk project for the university. The aims were achieved as evidence of transferring of managerial skills; managing risk of the project, promotion of CE scholarship and publishing articles through our CE project were achieved.


For many graduating college students entering the workforce, "pursue your passion" is not only a frequently repeated graduation mantra but also a commonly embraced ideal. In line with this view, prior academic research finds that passion connotes work-related benefits, including higher job satisfaction and performance. Here, we bring together social psychological, sociological, and organizational perspectives to suggest that the inclination to work in jobs that enable graduating students to pursue their passion differs based on their socioeconomic status (SES): those from lower SES backgrounds view the pursuit of passion as a privilege that excludes them. Across two correlational and experimental studies (N = 510; k = 1,562), we find that students from lower SES backgrounds feel that they are a worse fit for and lack the skills to thrive in jobs that call for passion, i.e., that they perceive the pursuit of passion as a privilege. We next examine whether this belief is accurate from the perspective of recruiters, and—across two additional experimental studies designed to test both overt and covert discrimination (N = 1,005; k = 9,713)—do not find supporting empirical evidence for discrimination against students from lower SES backgrounds in jobs that emphasize the pursuit of passion. These results suggest that the pursuit of passion may serve as an—unintentionally—exclusionary signal to graduating students from lower SES backgrounds, making them less likely to apply, and ultimately less likely to be hired. The pursuit of passion thus reflects a privilege that perpetuates inequalities along socioeconomic lines.


Justification In Sub-Saharan Africa, excreta and wastewater disposal is characterised primarily by on-site sanitation systems. This sanitation option is more likely to increase as governments, municipalities, communities, private operators and donor agencies strive to reach the Millennium Development Goals aimed at reducing by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation facilities. Due to increased urban population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, the faecal sludge volumes will increase to alarming quantities in the coming decades. An evaluation of faecal sludge management practices reveals that the main shortcomings relate to the widespread lack of involvement and foresight by the municipalities, the paucity of effective legal provisions and organization, and the absence of stakeholder coordination. Stakeholder involvement for planning and implementing faecal sludge management is virtually inexistent or excluded from urban sanitation planning processes. In the majority of situations, faecal sludge management is financially not viable. This is a major cause of the indiscriminate dumping of faecal sludge in urban areas or its untreated use in urban agriculture. These practices not only pose permanent and serious health risks but also contaminate both scarce ground and surface water. Objective and general approach On the basis of these facts, which present a real challenge to sector specialists, the overall objective of our research is to develop an innovative strategic planning approach for sustainable faecal sludge management in urban areas which allows minimising public health and environmental risks. Focus is placed on developing a reproducible methodology for stakeholder involvement, on enhancing population awareness for improved faecal sludge disposal and attributing a leading role to the dynamic private faecal sludge emptying and transport operators. These aspects form the three pillars of our search for a comprehensive methodological approach. The municipality of Ouahigouya in Burkina Faso with a population of about 65'000 inhabitants was used as pilot site to launch, implement and scientifically validate the approach. Analysis and stakeholder involvement The stakeholder-based planning approach developed in Ouahigouya relies on a combination of stakeholder identification and analysis, and participatory planning techniques (focus groups, workshops, informal meetings, all-stakeholder workshops). A quantitative survey among households allowed collecting stakeholders' proposals and evaluating suggestions for improvement of faecal sludge management and neighbourhood hygiene proposed by the population. The main steps in the stakeholder involvement approach include: Jointly clarifying the objectives of the planning process together with the stakeholders; Identifying stakeholders and their interests; Classifying stakeholders according to their importance and influence based on defined criteria and confirmed by the stakeholders themselves; Identifying the interactions between the stakeholders; Verifying the results of the stakeholder analysis by the stakeholders themselves; Choosing stakeholder involvement techniques; Implementing the chosen method of stakeholder involvement: development of faecal sludge management scenarios, acceptance of the scenarios by the stakeholders in focus groups, choice and acceptance of a basic scenario for development of the future strategy in an all-stakeholder workshop; Evaluating the chosen involvement process by the stakeholders. The experience gained with the planning methods developed and implemented in Ouahigouya reveals that the "Stakeholder analysis" method is efficient and provides answers to questions such as: Who are the important and influential stakeholders? Who should participate in the planning process and in which manner? This experience also revealed the need for capacity building of certain stakeholder categories (emptying operators, women's associations, etc.) to increase their degree of involvement in the planning process. Improvement in stakeholder involvement was achieved thanks to a combination of workshops, focus groups and other informal meetings allowing less influential stakeholders (associations of local women, horticulturists, emptiers) to share information and to freely express their opinions and concern and to defend their interests. Thus, providing an excellent example of local democracy appreciated by all stakeholders of Ouahigouya. The approach developed provides tools for policy-makers and planners to ensure an effective stakeholder involvement in the process of developing a common vision and implementation of improved urban sanitation measures. The conditions for replicating the approach developed and tested in Ouahigouya are due to participatory democracy, great commitment of the local authorities and the high motivation of the stakeholders involved. Levers for the willingness-to-improve faecal sludge management and neighbourhood hygiene The evaluation method of the willingness to improve faecal sludge management by the population was based on a combination of the planned behavior model of Ajzen and the contingent valuation method, financial analysis of the pit emptying and faecal sludge enterprise, and on focus groups of stakeholders. By focusing on local practices, perceptions and individual behavior, this method revealed that financial viability – often reduced to willingness-to-pay – is not the only factor to consider when planning improvement of sanitation practices. Willingness-to-improve is highly dependant on psycho-sociological factors such as attitude towards and beliefs in an improved neighbourhood environment, social pressure on the households by the neighbourhood as well as the subjective costs and benefits expected from improved faecal sludge management. These factors therefore present levers allowing planners and decision-makers to encourage, increase and develop the demand for improved latrine emptying services, e.g. though social marketing. Promoting private entrepreneurs According to market analysis of emptying services and stakeholders involved, small private and mainly informal enterprises play a leading role in faecal sludge management in most cities of Sub-Saharan Africa. These operators, dynamic but fragile, require an appropriate institutional, jurisdictional and economic environment based on a balanced partnership between the municipality (public) and the private sector. Our study reveals that for a company truck to be profitable, about 1'000 trips per year (at 6'000 FCFA per trip) are required or the equivalent of a city of 56'000 inhabitants. In the case of Ouahigouya, profitability is increased if the emptying operators apply the latest management and professional tools and techniques, and manage to provide emptying services in neighbouring towns. Decision support tools The research led to developing decision support tools for professionals and policy-makers. These tools facilitate the development of a tariff-oriented policy to avoid uncontrolled faecal sludge discharge into the environment, to render investments by private operators profitable, and still make emptying services accessible to low-income households. This involves: Analysis of the cost structure of 3 pit emptying companies has revealed that fuel, maintenance/repair and personnel costs make up 45%, 20% and 30%, respectively, of an enterprise's operating expenses. An Excel programme was developed to allow municipalities and private operators to determine the operating costs of emptying services. This allowed to establish a sustainable money flux between the different stakeholders involved and to define the tariffs. To prevent faecal sludge discharges in the immediate residential environment or on unauthorised sites, it might under specific circumstances prove necessary and feasible to reimburse rather than charge entrepreneurs for delivering faecal sludge to the treatment sites, hence, create a strong incentive for good emptying and haulage practice. Evaluation methods of the sludge quantities to be disposed of have been developed to allow faecal sludge planning by the municipal authorities, assessment of the potential market and return on investment by the private operators. Advantages of the approach for the population of Ouahigouya Based on the results of our study, it was possible to formulate practical recommendations for the organisation of the urban sanitation sector for the municipality of Ouahigouya – now in possession of a sustainable faecal sludge management strategy. Our study has also contributed to promoting local consultation and raising the awareness of the role and contribution of each stakeholder group, in particular the previously neglected manual emptiers in their daily efforts to improve the living conditions of the urban inhabitants. The "Strategic Excreta and Wastewater Sanitation Plan", that was developed and supported by the "Office National de l'Eau et de l'Assainissement - National Water and Sanitation Agency", provides an excellent framework for the implementation of the elaborated faecal sludge management model (as part of the this strategic plan).


The Jews Are Coming Back: The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WWII, edited by David Bankier. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005. 320 pp. $29.95. In recent years, historical scholarship has paid due attention to the lives of Holocaust survivors and the rebuilding of Jewish communities in postwar Europe, and a great number of articles, edited volumes, and monographs has been published. While Jewish Displaced Persons - Jews who could not or did not want to return to their countries of birth, citizenship, or prewar residence but waited to leave Europe forever - have become a focal point, Jews who did return to their countries of origin have received comparatively little attention. The book TJk Jews Are Coming Bach The Return of the Jews to their Countries of Origin after WWJJ, edited by David Bankier, seeks to fill this void in the scholarship, taking a comparative approach to the issue of Jewish return in nine countries. In a brief introduction, David Bankier outlines the unwelcoming scenery to which Jews returned in the wake of the war. Pieter Lagrou opens the volume by establishing the common traits characterizing the reception of the Jews by European societies in the early postwar years. Devastated by war, economic ruin, and broken national identities, these societies rebuilt along ethnic homogeneity and nationalist myths. Jewish returnees were greeted with suspicion, rejection, and violence and excluded from conceptions of national martyrdom. Seven case studies discuss the return of the Jews to Western Europe. Renee Poznanski examines the different apprehensions and expectations connected to the notion of "return" for Jews and Gentiles in France. While many Frenchmen condemned mass murder, they nevertheless condoned Vichy's anti-Jewish legislation and demanded that Jews accept an inferior position in postwar French society and refrain from claiming any privileges due to persecution. Gradually, Jews accepted that reintegration into French society was possible only if they renounced the public recognition of their tragedy. Patrick Weil analyzes the debates over the legal status of French and foreign Jews in the resistance circles around de Gaulle and demonstrates that the return to legal equality was not a priority. Therefore, only in 1945 was Vichy's anti-Jewish legislation fully repealed and more liberal policies towards foreigners adopted in France and Northern Africa. Frank Caestecker discusses the reluctance of Belgian authorities to recognize the particular nature of Jewish suffering and provide special care for Holocaust survivors. Citizenship remained the only category entitling survivors to state support, even though 90 percent of the Jewish population of Belgium victimized by Nazi persecution were not Belgian nationals. Dienke Hondius addresses the latent antisemitism encountered by Dutch Jewish sur vivors, leading to theit gt owing alienation from the Netherlands. Dutch non-Jews showed indifference towards the cataclysm of Dutch Jewry and disqualified it from the public recognition enjoyed by the Dutch resistance. Conny Kristel investigates the tadical changes in postwar Dutch Jewish communal leadership. While prewar communal leaders were discredited through their "assimilationist" approach and involvement with the Jewish Council, Zionists took the lead over the postwar community, thereby effecting a growing distance from the Dutch surroundings and an increased bonding with Jewish otganizations abroad. Mario Toscano analyzes restitution, repeal of racial legislation, and the reconstruction of rhe Jewish community in Italy, arguing that Italian Jews succeeded in integrating into postwar Italian society by aligning themselves to the anti-Fascist and anti-German resistance. …


The article explores Gal 1.14 and Acts 22.3, two statements where Paul is said to be a ζηλωτη´ς. The term is a noun, meaning 'Zealot'. However, interpreters and commentators have always interpreted the term as an adjective, meaning 'zealous'. By understanding Paul's statement as an adjective, interpreters and commentators have dissociated Paul from the Zealot movement which was emerging during this period of time within Judaism. However, Paul appears in these passages to claim that the Zealot movement was a powerful influence upon his formative Jewish life and theology and was a motivating factor in his persecution of the Christians. This article proposes that we seriously consider Zealot influences in the formative years of Paul.