Mutual fund investment is one of the instruments that are being developed,with the advent of the Indonesian capital market. In progress, mutual the first apply the principle of sharia in running strategy business and be an option investors to invest. A fundamental difference between a mutual fund conventional with mutual funds sharia at investment policy .A mutual fund sharia use investment policy through selection process in the formation of portfolio and strategies management using the principle islamic. This study aims to see how performance between a mutual fund conventional and sharia. Sample used in this research is a stock mutual fund conventional and Islamic products. Data used in the form of secondary data Net Assets Value per Unit (NAV/unit), Composite Index (IHSG), Jakarta Islamic Index (JII) and a data rate of Sertifikat Bank Indonesia (SBI) and Sertifikat Bank Indonesia Syariah (SBIS) the period 2007-2014. The mutual fund performance seen of its rate of return and risk as well as the measurement method using the Sharpe index, Treynor index and Jensen's Alpha. The tools used statistical test is ver.21 with SPSS statistical methods test the hypothesis testing independent sample t-test. Research results with the alpha (α) 5% showed no difference in performance between conventional and sharia mutual funds seen from the level of risk and Sharpe index method. While the rate of return and the measurement method also Treynor Index Jensen 'Alpha, the research results with the alpha (α) of 5% in a given year shows there is a difference in performance between conventional and sharia mutual funds in the study period of 2007 - 2014. The results show the performance of mutual funds conventional better than sharia mutual funds seen from the level of return and the Sharpe Index. When viewed from the level of risk, Treynor index and Jensen's Alpha results show the performance of conventional mutual funds is lower than the sharia mutual fund.


This chapter examines global energy trends, whether a global renewable energy transition is already taking place, and what steps are needed to further accelerate the global deployment of renewables. It first considers the expansion of renewable energy in light of global energy trends, noting that a global energy transition is not yet a reality but is urgently needed. It then looks at drivers and barriers for an accelerated expansion of renewable energy and proceeds by discussing how renewables are moving from the sidelines to the center stage of global energy governance. In particular, it describes the politics behind the creation of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organization on renewable energy, as well as current challenges for global governance on renewable energy. The chapter shows that global renewable energy capacities have grown significantly but that global energy supply is still dominated by fossil fuels.


Often thought of as a "nascent" democracy, Colombia actually has longstanding democratic institutions, the effectiveness of which was highlighted by the Constitutional Court's 26 February 2010 decision to reject a proposed referendum meant to allow President Alvaro Uribe to run for a third consecutive term. Without institutions such as the Constitutional Court, the populist push for a referendum that would have threatened the separation of powers and evinced scant respect for law would have prevailed. Instead, Colombian democracy emerged strengthened, and showed further vigor during the presidential contest that followed soon thereafter. As democratization studies take a "historical turn," Colombia may have more lessons to offer.


We introduced the term plan steering to describe the process of predicting and avoiding plan failures, much as one steers a car around potholes. We win describe a plan steering system for managing transportation networks, and a suite of experiments which show that mixed-initiative plan steering works better than humans or programs working alone. More recently we bnilt a mixedinitiative plarmer for data analysis. In a large dataset, the space of relationships between variables is vast, and many look attractively informative. It proved challenging to keep the human/computer analyst team working toward the same goals and informing each other of their progress.


Award Date 4-27-2017 Faculty Sponsor Laura Redford Description/Abstract May Sarton (1912-1995) was a contemporary author whose published work comprised 51 poetry books, novels, and nonfiction journals written from 1937 until 1994. Although her writing career was prolific and Sarton gained a tremendous amount of positive attention from the general public, critical reception of her work either ignored or undervalued her writing. By contextualizing Sarton's work through lesbian pulp fiction, the primary source of fiction featuring same-sex relations in the mid-to-late-twentieth century, this paper aims to give a historical background to receptions of modern queer literature. By exploring parallels between censorship of lesbian pulp fiction and the condemnation of Sarton's novels, it was determined that lesbianism was the primary source of backlash against Sarton's work, despite Sarton's denial that queer characters were not the focus of her writing. Recommended Citation Freitas, Anna, ""I was broken in two/By sheer definition." May Sarton's Duality of Love, Life, and Lesbian Literature" (2017). 2017 Claremont Colleges Library Undergraduate Research Award. 2. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cclura_2017/2  Download


Software as a Service (SaaS) can be viewed as the fourth wave of outsourcing. SaaS is a relatively new type of service delivery model in which a service provider delivers its services over the web to many users on a pay per use or period basis. In the scarce literature available, the SaaS business model is almost always analyzed from the perspective of the service provider perspective, and rarely from the user organization. Using the unified business model conceptual framework, two case studies are investigated to understand the design choices underlying the SaaS business model from the user organization perspective. The analyses on the business model dimensions provided insight into the differences between the case studies and helped to identify eight discriminating design choices that are important when designing SaaS business models. These include the (1) SaaS service characteristics, (2) SaaS value source, (3) SaaS user target group, (4) data architecture configuration and tenancy model, (5) SaaS governance and demand/supply management core competencies, (6) cloud deployment model, (7) SaaS integration and provider strategy and the (8) SaaS pricing structure. An appeal is made for more research into the impact of cloud business models.


What drives the flow of signals controlling the outcome of post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression? This regulatory layer, presiding to processes ranging from splicing to mRNA stability and localization, is a key determinant of protein levels and thus cell phenotypes. RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) form a remarkable army of post-transcriptional regulators, strong of more than 1,500 genes implementing this expression fine-tuning plan and implicated in both cell physiology and pathology. RBPs can bind and control a wide array of RNA targets. This sheer amount of interactions form complex regulatory networks (PTRNs) where the action of individual RBPs cannot be easily untangled from each other. While past studies have mostly focused on the action of individual RBPs on their targets, we are now observing an increasing amount of evidence describing the occurrence of interactions between RBPs, defining how common target RNAs are regulated. This suggests that the flow of signals in PTRNs is driven by the intertwined contribution of multiple RBPs, concurrently acting on each of their targets. Understanding how RBPs cooperate and compete is thus of paramount importance to chart the wiring of PTRNs and their impact on cell phenotypes. Here we review the current knowledge about patterns of RBP interaction and attempt at describing their general principles. We also discuss future directions which should be taken to reach a comprehensive understanding of this fundamental aspect of gene expression regulation.


Global exponential stability of fuzzy control systems with delays is studied. These delays in the fuzzy control systems are assumed to be any uncertain bounded continuous functions. Stability of systems with uncertain delays is interesting since in practical applications it is not easy to know the delays exactly. Conditions for global exponential stability of free fuzzy systems with uncertain delays are derived. Criteria for design of nonlinear fuzzy controllers to feedback control the stability of global nonlinear fuzzy systems are given. Theorems are proved via the method of functional differential inequalities analysis.


textabstractPositive streamers in air are generally believed to propagate against the electron drift direction due to the nonlocal photo-ionization reaction. Photo-ionization is the ionization of O2 molecules by UV radiation from excited N2 molecules; therefore this reaction depends on the ratio between oxygen and nitrogen. Another possible source of free electrons in front of a positive streamer is background ionization that can remain from previous discharges, or it can be created by cosmic rays or by radioactive species like radon. We study the effects of both photo- and background- ionization on propagation and morphology of positive streamers by changing the ratio between nitrogen and oxygen and by changing the repetition frequency. We also study streamers in pure nitrogen with a small addition of radioactive 85Kr to increase background ionization. While streamer velocities are amazingly insensitive to these changes, their overall morphology largely depends on gas composition, repetition rate and radioactive admixtures. Essential observations can are explained theoretically.


Agencies with overlapping mandates can form partnerships to aid development of effective programming. In 2008, the Dedicated Substance Abuse Treatment Unit (DSATU) opened at Regina Correctional Centre through a tripartite collaboration between the Saskatchewan (SK) Ministry of Justice, Corrections and Policing; Addiction Services, Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region; and the SK Ministry of Health. Stakeholders researched existing best practices in the field and developed an evidence-based substance abuse treatment program for sentenced inmates at high risk to re-offend. An evaluation of the DSATU program completed in 2016 concluded that the DSATU was effective, sustainable, and likely transferable to other correctional facilities wishing to offer this type of programming. The stakeholder partnership was a key ingredient in the program's success. This paper describes the process by which the partners worked together to develop, implement, and sustain this innovative and evidence-based substance abuse treatment program. The partners' willingness to compromise, to take a collaborative approach to building the partnership and developing the program, and to put clients ahead of individual organizational mandates all contributed to the success of the partnership.


This study assesses the extent of correlation between ethical investment and Shari'ah-compliant
investments in different economic situations. By employing a battery of time series investigation
techniques, this study aims to determine if the nature of the relationship between the
funds changes in the non-crisis period and during the 2007 crisis period for three developed
markets and major financial centers i.e. US, UK and Japan.
By estimating the short- and long-term dynamics between the ethical and Islamic indexes,
and the extent of cointegration between the two funds, our analysis aims to help fund managers
as well as investors in the composition of their portfolio by answering the following
question: should investors chose one of the two funds or can they further diversify by investing
in a fund of funds containing both ethical and Islamic funds for better risk to return performance?
Our findings show that ethical and Islamic funds in the three major financial centers
have a significantly different behavior in the short run as well as in the long run. This
study shows that in the US as well as in the UK and Japan, there are potential diversification
benefits for active investors in the short run, as well as for passive investors in the long run
before the crisis in the US and in both sub periods in Japan and UK.


A grounded theory is developed to explore the processes of Chinese immigrant women"s self-transformations in cross-cultural contexts. A series of psychological processes, "integrating self," "fragmenting self," and "reintegrating self" are identified from interviews with ten Chines women who immigrated to the United States in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Women"s senses of self-transformations are interpreted from phenomenological, cultural, anthropological, and critical feminist perspectives. The implications of this research are theoretical and practical. It contributes to critical feminist theories of women"s self-transformation within the context of cultural mobility from their culture of origin to the host culture. It also contributes to feminist psychological practices by enhancing mental health professionals" understanding of these women"s diverse experiences and providing them with information on immigrant women"s self-transformations in the changing sociocultural contexts. The theoretical and practical implications of this research to feminist theorists and clinic practices are


Paradox of decreasing evaporation and evapotranspiration under increasing temperature conditions
in the semi-arid tropics assumes greater importance as agriculture in these areas is more vulnerable to
climate change. Trends in annual reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo) at Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh
indicated a reduction of about 200 mm from 1850 mm to 1650 mm during the past 35 years. Contribution of
energy balance term to the total ETo has shown an increasing trend while aerodynamic term has a
decreasing trend. Wind speed has shown a strong negative trend leading to the dramatic fall of the
aerodynamic term and consequently the ETo. Rate of reduction in evapotranspiration demand was about
10% for kharif (Jun-Oct) and about 14% for rabi (Nov-Feb). At Patancheru, measured temperature and solar
radiation showed opposite trends and at locations where no measured solar radiation data available and if
solar radiation is estimated from air temperature alone for use as an input in crop modelling, outputs under
such conditions need to be interpreted with caution. Present study highlights the need for climate change
impact studies at a local level in addition to those based on regional and global circulation models.


Most papers that study the recharging of electric vehicles focus on charging the batteries at home and at the work-place. The alternative is for owners to exchange the battery at a specially equipped battery switch station (BSS). This paper studies strategies for the BSS to buy and sell the electricity through the day-ahead market. We determine what the optimal strategies would have been for a large fleet of EVs in 2010 and 2011, for the V2G and the G2V cases. These give the amount that the BSS should offer to buy or sell each hour of the day. Given the size of the fleet, the quantities of electricity bought and sold will displace the market equilibrium. Using the aggregate offers to buy and the bids to sell on the day-ahead market, we compute what the new prices and volumes transacted would be. While buying electricity for the G2V case incurs a cost, it is possible to generate revenue in the V2G case, if the arrivals of the EVs are evenly spaced during the day. We compare the total cost of implementing the strategies proposed with the cost of buying the same quantity of electricity from EDF.


The experimental results for damage sensing using embedded magnetostrictive particles as sensors in carbon fiber–reinforced polymer laminates are presented. Laminates constructed of varying counts of pre-impregnated plies (Hexcel AS4/3501-6) are embedded with Terfenol-D particles and a delamination to observe changes in the sensing signal in and around the damage region. The testing apparatus consists of a primary circuit to generate a magnetic flux excitation and a secondary circuit to sense voltage induced into a pickup coil. In addition, three groups of test results were generated to observe the effect of fabrication on sensing. The experimental results from the three groups reveal that the particle distribution has a significant effect on the sensing signal. The sensing signal is dominated by changes in local particle distribution, and the effect of the delamination and ply variation did not have a discernible effect on the sensing signal for this setup.


Introduction: This study was planned to assess the correlate of job motivating and de-motivating factors with the actual situation among male health workers (MHWs) in rural Karnataka. Methodology: A cross sectional study design was adopted. From Karnataka state, six districts were selected for the study by adopting appropriate sampling methodology. Out of the total subcenters in those selected districts, 49 were selected based on confirmation of position of Male Health Workers at the sub centers. Those MHWs were interviewed by using a structured interview schedule. Data was analyzed using Microsoft excel 2007 and SPSS v.16 software. Results: Stable job and income was addressed as job motivational factor in 87.8% of MHWs. Convenient location with proper connectivity of SC was motivating factor for nearly 70% Of MHWs. Majority (95.9%) of MHWs were considering sense of achievement and recognition as job motivation factor irrespective of their working years. Conclusion: A moderate discrepancy was found between job motivating and de-motivating factors with the actual situation. Hence, there is huge scope and need to explore those factors with some multi centric studies.


Taxonomic distinctness is a univariate (bio)diversity index which, in its simplest form, calculates the average 'distance' between all pairs of species in a community sample, where this distance is defined as the path length through a standard Linnean or phylogenetic tree connecting these species. It has some appealing properties: it attempts to capture phylogenetic diversity rather than simple richness of species and is more closely linked to functional diversity; it is robust to variation in sampling effort and there exists a statistical framework for assessing its departure from 'expectation'; it appears to decline monotonically in response to environmental degradation whilst being relatively insensitive to major habitat differences; and, in its simplest form, it utilises only simple species lists (presence/ absence data). Many of its practical characteristics remain to be explored, however, and this paper concentrates on the assumptions made about the weighting of step lengths between successive taxonomic levels (species to genera, genera to families etc.), which when accumulated give the overall path lengths. Using data on free-living marine nematodes from 16 localities/habitat types in the UK, it is shown that the relative values of taxonomic distinctness for the 16 sets are robust to variation in the definition of step length. For example, there is a near perfect linear relationship between values calculated using a constant increment at each level and a natural alternative in which the step lengths are proportional to the number of species per genus, genera per family, family per suborder etc. These weightings are then manipulated in more extreme ways, to capture the structure of phylogenetic diversity in more detail, and a contrast is drawn between the biodiversity of island (the Isles of Scilly) and mainland (UK) locations and habitats. This paper concludes with a discussion of some of the strengths and weaknesses of taxonomic distinctness as a practical tool for assessing biodiversity.


Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of interest in ecosystem services from scientists, economists, government officials, entrepreneurs, and the media. This article traces the development of the ecosystem services concept in law and policy. We prepared it in connection with a symposium held at Florida State University in April 2006. The presentations at the symposium, which then developed into the articles in a special issue of the Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law (volume 22, issue 2), approached the topic of ecosystem services and the law from two perspectives. One set of presentations focused on the law of specific natural resources, and the other set focused on different legal institutions as agents of integration of ecosystem services into law and policy. The resource presentations covered water and watershed resources, agricultural and rangeland resources, and coastal resources, while the institutional presentations addressed land use regulation, common law remedies, public law enforcement regimes, and second generation approaches in energy policy. This article provided the historical and conceptual anchor for the symposium.


Great advances have been made in distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) vertical seismic profile (VSP) data acquisition hardware and software. Here, we capture a quantitative assessment of the quality of DAS data at a single point in time. We apply comprehensive testing methods to determine the reliability of the data and its suitability as a supplement to geophone data or to gain access to wells where it would be difficult to deploy geophones. The test measurements are made on DAS and geophone data, which were collected at the same time and in the same well. We analyze the first breaks for waveform consistency, signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, and slowness. Then, we examine the corridor stacks for waveform consistency and S/N ratio. Finally, we test the properties of the measurement, including linearity, repeatability, reliability, and response, as a function of the angle of incidence of a seismic wave to the fiber. The results show that the DAS VSP data provide accurate formation slowness logs and reliable ampl...


Introduction Five hundred thousand maternal deaths occur each year worldwide, many of which are in developing countries. The maternal mortality rate is a measure that demonstrates the degree of adequacy of prenatal care and of economic and social conditions. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and causes of pregnancy-related mortality rates in Yazd Province. Methods This cross-sectional study examined the maternal deaths related to pregnancy that were recorded in Yazd Province, Iran, from 2002 to 2011. All maternal deaths that occurred during pregnancy, during delivery, and 42 days after birth were analyzed in this study. The data were collected through a questionnaire, and both direct and indirect causes of maternal deaths were determined. Results Forty pregnancy-related deaths occurred in this period, and the maternal mortality rate was 20.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. The mean age of death in the mothers in this study was 29.17. Fifty-five percent of women of the women who died delivered their babies by cesarean section, and only 20% of them delivered their babies vaginally. Bleeding was the most common cause of maternal mortality (30%), and it was associated directly with maternal mortality. Furthermore 20% of the mothers died due to heart disease and cardiac complications, which were associated indirectly with maternal mortality. Conclusion Cesarean section and its complications were the main cause of death in many cases. Thus, providing a strategic plan to reduce the use of this procedure, educate mothers, and ensure adequate access to pre-maternal care and to care during pregnancy are the most important measures that can be taken to decrease the maternal mortality rate.


My thesis explores issues concerned with delegated asset management and their implications for asset prices. The first chapter of my thesis documents how the organizational form of a mutual fund affects its investment strategies. I show that decentralized funds allocate a greater portion of their capital to soft (opaque) information companies than centralized funds. Consistent with the inability of centralized organizations to handle soft information, I find that decentralized funds are better at investing in soft information companies than hierarchical funds. Furthermore, I find that high levels of ownership by decentralized funds predict high future returns for soft information companies. The second chapter shows that while fund families may use mutual fund incubation (the creation and management of a fund before it is offered to the public) in an opportunistic fashion, they also seem to use it to foster innovation. I document that fund families tend to launch their incubated funds when their past performance is high, consistent with a behaviour that aims to exploit the convex relationship between past performance and current flows. However, I also show that, after their Initial Public Offerings (IPO's), incubated funds tend to hold more illiquid stocks, hold more concentrated portfolios, invest in less-popular securities and are better at purchasing stocks than non-incubated funds. This difference in investment strategies is due to the incubation period as it allows managers to explore different corners of the market without having to take into account performanc-induced capital flows. I also present evidence that, despite their outstanding pre-IPO track records, incubated funds attract a smaller share of new-fund capital flows than non-incubated funds. The third chapter (joint work with Dr. Mungo Wilson) shows that mutual fund families cater to investors' demand by offering funds with investment styles that are in vogue. I also show that this catering exacerbates the ''dumb money" effect. In other words, fund IPOs have a positive effect on the persistence of investment style capital flows.


Solid tumor growth requires the formation of new blood vessels to supply nutrients and oxygen to the malignant cells; one approach to cancer therapy is to block this process by inhibiting VEGF signaling. In this issue of the JCI, Pasula et al. demonstrate a surprising role of epsins--proteins involved in endocytosis--in tumor angiogenesis via their modulation of VEGF signaling. Their findings suggest that these proteins might represent a new target for the development of cancer therapeutics.


This article reviews through a three-part format the role and efficacy of the Species at Risk Act (SARA) in trying to save SARA-listed inner Bay of Fundy (iBoF) Atlantic salmon and other Atlantic salmon populations at risk from the brink of extinction. The cascade of SARA promises is first discussed, including: the independent assessment of the status of the species based on best available scientific information; the protection of listed species, their residences and critical habitat; and the two-stage recovery planning process. The trickles of protection actually delivered by SARA in relation to Atlantic salmon are next described, including the recent adoption of a Recovery Strategy and identification of critical freshwater habitat. The sea of challenges in implementing SARA and in strengthening the protective net outside SARA is finally highlighted. Particular challenges include: overcoming the slow implementation of the Act; addressing scientific limitations of the Recovery Strategy; forging a clear agenda for recovery actions; confronting limitations in incidental harm permitting; protecting critical habitat; getting a grip on protection and recovery of other Atlantic salmon populations at risk; bolstering environmental assessment; enhancing provincial engagement in recovery efforts; ensuring full implementation of Canada's Oceans Act; and charting future directions for the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization.


For simple interferometric fiberoptic sensors, the effects of strain and temperature are indistinguishable. This paper addresses that problem by demonstrating a single wavelength, two-mode polarimetric fiberoptic sensor capable of simultaneously measuring temperature and strain. The sensor consists of two interferometers, a polarimetric and a two-mode, formed in a single elliptical core fiber. The interferometers respond with different sensitivities to strain and temperature like simultaneous functions of the two variables. A technique is developed by which the outputs of the interferometers are used simultaneously to measure strain and temperature with rms errors less than 30 (mu) (epsilon) and 1 degree(s)C. Finally, measurement results for a real-time system are presented.


Background: In New Zealand (NZ), 20% of adults report a disability, of which one-third is caused by injury. No prospective epidemiological studies of predictors of disability following all-cause injury among New Zealanders have been undertaken. Internationally, studies have focused on a limited range of predictors or specific injuries. Although these studies provide useful insights, applicability to NZ is limited given the importance of NZ's unique macro-social factors, such as NZ's no-fault accident compensation and rehabilitation scheme, the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). Objectives: (1) To quantitatively determine the injury, rehabilitation, personal, social and economic factors leading to disability outcomes following injury in NZ. (2) To qualitatively explore experiences and perceptions of injury-related outcomes in face-to-face interviews with 15 Māori and 15 other New Zealanders, 6 and 12 months after injury. Setting: Four geographical regions within NZ. Design: Prospective cohort study with telephone interviews 1, 4 and 12 months after injury. Participants: 2500 people (including 460 Māori), aged 18–64 years, randomly selected from ACC's entitlement claims register (people likely to be off work for at least 1 week or equivalent). Data: Telephone interviews, electronic hospital and ACC injury data. Exposures include demographic, social, economic, work-related, health status, participation and/or environmental factors. Outcome measures: Primary: disability (including WHODAS II) and health-related quality of life (including EQ-5D). Secondary: participation (paid and unpaid activities), life satisfaction and costs. Analysis: Separate regression models will be developed for each of the outcomes. Repeated measures outcomes will be modelled using general estimating equation models and generalised linear mixed models.


This thesis presents a Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) for an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) capable of controlling the vehicle over both smooth and rough terrain using measurements from GPS and a Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) unit equipped to the vehicle. Linear Model Predictive Control (MPC) and NMPC have become more widely used to control dynamic systems as computers have become more capable of handling the computational expense required by model predictive control. Though the use of NMPC rather than linear MPC creates an additional computational expense, NMPC allows for path planning in addition to control of the vehicle. This is particularly advantageous in scenarios in which the UGV is traversing terrain that contains obstacles of which the vehicle has no a priori knowledge. Rough, off-road terrain contains multiple hazards for an UGV. In this thesis, hazards are classified into three groups: obstacles, rough traversable terrain, and rough untraversable terrain. These three types of hazards create a rollover risk for a UGV. The NMPC presented in this thesis is designed to mitigate this risk of rollover. Simulations of the NMPC in several different scenarios are presented, as well as results from experimental implementation of the NMPC on a test vehicle. Results from simulation and experimental implementation are provided that show the NMPC is able to navigate a UGV around obstacles to a target location without requiring the use of a priori knowledge of terrain and obstacles.


For centuries, ritual spaces have played an important role in shaping the cities landscapes and cultural foundations of human societies. Some historians believe that one of the main causes of the city's formation is due to its ritual and spiritual performance. Thanks to the experience of spatial co-participation, ritual spaces are considered as the strongest collective space experiences in Iranian culture which have created positive environmental qualities for interactions and social relationships by having a close relationship with the natural factors such as the water and tree, and enjoying a collective and ritual nature; consequently, they have created the possibility of the formation of a single mindset in the inhabitants of different cities. Since the beginning of the Islamic era, ritual landscapes have continued in a particular way in the landscape and identity of Iranian cities. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of ritual landscapes on the identity of Iranian cities through integrating their common form (natural) and subjective (social) content. at first, the common pattern of their naturalistic and social meanings was investigated and then their impact on the identity of cities was studied as the social and semantic milestones. After that, considering the concept of the spatial organization of cities, the scope of the influence of these landscapes on the identity of cities was investigated at the three levels of the centrality of city in the ritual cities (macro), a network of ritual neighborhoods in the city center (middle), and the independent religious neighborhoods (micro). similar pattern of ritual landscapes has caused the development of cities and their neighborhoods, and these common characteristics and effects due to their ritual, social, and semantic nature play a prominent role in the field of perception of the cities' mental and conceptual aspect.


If we are to learn from failures of engineered facilities, failure information must be in a useful form, and it must reach those who can effect improved practice. This paper discusses, from the perspective of a design professional, the type and level of detail of failure information required, and to whom it must be disseminated. While much attention has been focused on disseminating failure information to the design professional, the designer is only one of many actors, within and outside of the design-construction process, who needs information on failures. The required forms of the information vary in level of detail, specificity, and technical content. Past and present efforts at information dissemination are reviewed; the notion of a communication network for failure information is proposed; and several difficulties to be overcome in disseminating such information are discussed. The paper concludes with the writer's recommendations for short- and long-term efforts at failure information dissemination.


The aim of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the entrepreneurial intention (EI) of university students. In order to do so, EI, individual entrepreneurial orientation, self-efficacy, perceived educational support, perceived relational support, perceived structural support, knowledge sharing, and gender were used within the proposed model, and the constructed hypotheses were evaluated using SEM. The findings of a survey of 268 students show that self-efficacy is the strongest influencer of students' EI. The findings also show the mediating influence of self-efficacy on the environmental components. Additionally, male students are more likely than female students to have EI.


Recent earthquakes involving complex multi-fault rupture have increased our appreciation of the variety of rupture geometries and fault interactions that occur within the short duration of coseismic slip. Geometrical complexities are intrinsically linked with spatially heterogeneous slip and stress drop distributions, and hence need incorporating into seismic hazard analysis. Studies of exhumed ancient fault zones facilitate investigation of rupture processes in the context of lithology and structure at seismogenic depths. In the Gairloch Shear Zone, NW Scotland, foliated amphibolites host pseudotachylytes that record rupture geometries of ancient low-magnitude (≤MW 3) seismicity. Pseudotachylyte faults are commonly foliation parallel, indicating exploitation of foliation planes as weak interfaces for seismic rupture. Discordance and complexity are introduced by fault segmentation, stepovers, branching and brecciated dilational volumes. Pseudotachylyte geometries indicate that slip nucleation initiated simultaneously across several parallel foliation planes with millimetre and centimetre separations, leading to progressive interaction and ultimately linkage of adjacent segments and branches within a single earthquake. Interacting with this structural control, a lithological influence of abundant low disequilibrium melting-point amphibole facilitated coseismic melting, with relatively high coseismic melt pressure encouraging transient dilational sites. These faults elucidate controls and processes that may upscale to large active fault zones hosting major earthquake activity. Supplementary material: Supplementary Figures 1 and 2, unannotated versions of field photographs displayed in Figures 4a and 5 respectively, are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4573256 Thematic collection: This article is part of the SJG Collection on Early-Career Research available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/SJG-early-career-research


There is widespread concern that the United States and the rest of the world are descending into a round of protectionism and a trade war reminiscent of what the world experienced in the Great Depression. Such concerns are both overblown and misplaced. In the short term, the main concern in the United States and rest of the world should be to promote an increase in demand through whatever means necessary. For the longer term, there has been an excessive fixation on protection for merchandise trade. Other areas, most notably alternative intellectual property regimes and freer trade in highly paid professional services, offer much larger potential gains than further reductions in barriers to trade in goods.


The genus Lepidopetalum Blume (Sapindaceae) contains 6 species, of which one, L. fructoglabrum, is newly described. Four species are found on New Guinea of which one also occurs in Australia, one on the Nicobar Islands and Sumatra and one on the Philippines. Specimens from Java, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, and the Lesser Sunda Islands could not be identified due to the lack of mature fruits. The genus is characterized by typical domatia (hair tufts), petals (small, triangular with much larger, usually united scales), and fruits (flat, usually 2-locular, sarcotesta present). Important specific characters are the pilosity of the upper part of the pedicel, the shape of the disc, the type of hairs inside the fruit, and the type of sarcotesta. A putative phytogeny of the genus is selected together with an areagram for the distributions of the species and their ancestral species.


Background Myosin binding protein C (MyBPC) is essential for the structure of the sarcomeres in striated muscle. There is one cardiac specific isoform and two skeletal muscle specific isoforms. Mutations in MYBPC3 encoding the cardiac isoform cause cardiomyopathy. Methods and results We have identified an infant with fatal cardiomyopathy due to a homozygous mutation, p.R943X, in MYBPC3. The patient also had an unexpected skeletal myopathy. The patient expressed the cardiac specific MyBPC isoform in skeletal muscle at transcript and protein levels. Numerous muscle fibres expressing the mutant cardiac isoform showed structural abnormalities with disorganisation of sarcomeres and depletion of myosin thick filaments. Conclusions The surprising identification of a skeletal myopathy in this patient was due to aberrant expression of mutant cardiac MyBPC in skeletal muscle.


Zebrafish adult pigment cells arise from several lineages and require thyroid hormone for pattern development. Zebrafish stripes arise from the interactions of pigment cells: black melanophores, iridescent iridophores, and yellow-orange xanthophores. Melanophores and iridophores develop from nerve-associated stem cells, but the origin of xanthophores is unclear. Two studies now reveal that adult xanthophores originate from xanthophores in embryonic and larval fish, when they proliferate to cover the skin before the arrival of black and silver cells in a striped arrangement. Mahalwar et al. show that xanthophores change their final shape and color depending on their location. In black cells, xanthophores appear faint and stellate, but in silver cells, they are bright and compact. Precise superposition creates the blue and golden colors. McMenamin et al. observe the loss of pigment in embryonic xanthophores and the later reappearance in the adult. They show that redifferentiation depends on the thyroid hormone that also limits melanophore population expansion. S. K. McMenamin, E. J. Bain, A. E. McCann, L. B. Patterson, D. S. Eom, Z. P. Waller, J. C. Hamill, J. A. Kuhlman, J. S. Eisen, D. M. Parichy, Thyroid hormone–dependent adult pigment cell lineage and pattern in zebrafish. Science 345, 1358–1361 (2014). [Abstract] [Full Text]


BACKGROUND
Combination of temozolomide (TMZ) with nonpegylated interferon alfa is associated with increased efficacy in terms of response rates compared with monotherapy. A multicenter phase II study was carried out to assess the activity and toxicity of TMZ plus pegylated interferon alfa-2b (peg-IFNalpha-2b), hypothesizing improved efficacy due to modified pharmacokinetic properties of the novel interferon (IFN) formulation.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
In all, 124 patients with stage IV melanoma without prior chemotherapy and no cerebral metastases were treated with 100 mug peg-IFNalpha-2b s.c. per week and oral TMZ 200 mg/m(2) (days 1-5, every 28 days). Primary study end point was objective response, and secondary end points were overall and progression-free survival (PFS) and safety.

RESULTS
In all, 116 patients were assessable for response: 2 (1.7%) had a complete response and 19 (16.4%) a partial response (overall response rate 18.1%). Of total, 25.0% achieved disease stabilization and 56.9% progressed. Overall survival was 9.4 months; PFS was 2.8 months. Grade 3/4 thrombocytopenia occurred in 20.7% and grade 3/4 leukopenia in 23.3%.

CONCLUSIONS
The efficacy of TMZ plus peg-IFNalpha-2b in this large phase II study is moderate and comparable to published results of the combination of TMZ with non-peg-IFN. Likewise, the safety profile of peg-IFNalpha-2b seems to be similar to non-peg-IFN when combined with TMZ.


Purpose To identify risk factors present at admission in adult patients hospitalised due to influenza virus infection during the 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons—including whether infection was from pandemic or seasonal influenza A infections—that were associated with the likelihood of developing severe pneumonia with multilobar involvement and shock. Methods Prospective cohort study. Patients hospitalised due to influenza virus infection were recruited. We collected information on sociodemographic characteristics, pre-existing medical conditions, vaccinations, toxic habits, previous medications, exposure to social environments, and EuroQoL-5D (EQ-5D). Severe pneumonia with multilobar involvement and/or shock (SPAS) was the primary outcome of interest. We constructed two multivariate logistic regression models to explain the likelihood of developing SPAS and to create a clinical prediction rule for developing SPAS that includes clinically relevant variables. Results Laboratory-confirmed A(H1N1)pdm09, EQ-5D utility score 7 days before admission, more than one comorbidity, altered mental status, dyspnoea on arrival, days from onset of symptoms, and influenza season were associated with SPAS. In addition, not being vaccinated against seasonal influenza in the previous year, anaemia, altered mental status, fever and dyspnoea on arrival at hospital, difficulties in performing activities of daily living in the previous 7 days, and days from onset of symptoms to arrival at hospital were related to the likelihood of SPAS (area under the curve value of 0.75; Hosmer–Lemeshow p value of 0.84). Conclusions These variables should be taken into account by physicians evaluating a patient affected by influenza as additional information to that provided by the usual risk scores.


Abstract This experiment examined muscle activation measured using electromyography (EMG) during a standardized push-up performed on stable and unstable surfaces. Fifteen highly trained participants performed four push-ups: standard (hands and feet on the floor), either the hands or feet on an unstable surface (single instability), and with both hands and feet on unstable surfaces (dual instability). Unstable surfaces were created using a stability ball and an extreme balance board. EMG activity was recorded from three core stabilizers (erector spinae, rectus abdominus and internal obliques), one prime mover (triceps), and one lower body stabilizer (soleus). The EMG time series were smoothed using a 10-point moving average and root mean squares (RMS) were calculated for the entire time series. The results showed that push-ups performed with dual instability had significantly greater EMG activation compared to single instability or the stable push-up. In addition, as instability increased, there was a greater amount of muscle activation for the core stabilizers, prime movers and lower body stabilizers. The findings are consistent with the position that unstable surfaces in conjunction with standard exercises can be used to increase activation of core trunk stabilizers. This may in turn provide increased trunk strength and greater resistance to injury.


While scholarship on the social, economic and political contributions of organisations existing between the market and the state has proliferated in recent years, no sustained attention has previously been paid to how such organisations are collectively treated by, and respond to, public policy. e expert contributors examine the policy environment for, and evolving policy treatment of, the third sector in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom from a comparative perspective. ey also look at how the third sector relates to multi-level European policy processes, including the Open Method of Co-ordination, the Community Method, nationally-led 'partnership' approaches within an overall EU framework and the United Nations International Year of Volunteering; an initiative implemented in the EU but originating externally.


The paper investigates the long-run relationship between government expenditures and a set of macroeconomic variables (GDP, consumer price index and unemployment) using annual data collected from CBN statistical bulletin for a period of 19891 to 2011. It particularly adopts Johansen multivariate co integration for its estimation procedure and discovers that there is long-run relationship between government expenditure and the specified macroeconomic variables. It also discovers that an increase in capital expenditure improves economic bliss, while recurrent expenditure is detrimental to growth. Finally, our findings show that most of the variables do not Granger cause each other, but however, recurrent expenditure Granger causes prices, in the same veil capital expenditure does granger cause unemployment.


Surveillance cameras. Airport security lines. Barred shop windows. We see manifestations of societal fears every day, and daily news reports on the latest household danger or raised terror threat level continually stoke our sense of impending doom. In "A Philosophy of Fear", Lars Svendsen explores the underlying ideas and issues behind this powerful emotion, as he investigates how and why fear has insinuated itself into every aspect of modern life. Svendsen delves into science, politics, sociology and literature to explore the nature of fear. He discusses the biology behind the emotion, from the neuroscience underlying our fight or flight' instinct to how fear induces us to take irrational actions in our attempts to minimize risk. The book then turns to the political and social realms, investigating the role of fear in the philosophies of Machiavelli and Hobbes, the rise of the modern risk society, and how fear has eroded social trust. The political use of fear in the ongoing War on Terror also comes under Svendsen's probing gaze, as he investigates whether we can ever disentangle ourselves from the continual state of alarm that defines our age. Svendsen ultimately argues for the possibility of a brighter, less fearful future that is marked by a triumph of humanist optimism. An incisive and thought-provoking meditation, "A Philosophy of Fear" pulls back the curtain that shrouds dangers both imagined and real, forcing us to confront our fears and why we hold to them.


Abstract. The Wei River is the largest tributary of the Yellow River in China and it is suffering from water scarcity and water pollution. In order to quantify the amount of water resources in the study area, a hydrological modelling approach was applied by using SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool), calibrated and validated with SUFI-2 (Sequential Uncertainty Fitting program) based on river discharge in the Wei River basin (WRB). Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses were also performed to improve the model performance. Water resources components of blue water flow, green water flow and green water storage were estimated at the HRU (Hydrological Response Unit) scales. Water resources in HRUs were also aggregated to sub-basins, river catchments, and then city/region scales for further analysis. The results showed that most parts of the WRB experienced a decrease in blue water resources between the 1960s and 2000s, with a minimum value in the 1990s. The decrease is particularly significant in the most southern part of the WRB (Guanzhong Plain), one of the most important grain production basements in China. Variations of green water flow and green water storage were relatively small on the spatial and temporal dimensions. This study provides strategic information for optimal utilization of water resources and planning of cultivating seasons in the Wei River basin.


Resistance of two sets of bell pepper [(Capsicum annuum L. var. annuum (Grossum Group)] cultivars near-isogenic for the N gene that conditions resistance to root-knot nematodes [Meloidogyne incognita (Chitwood) Kofoid and White, M. arenaria (Neal) Chitwood races 1 and 2, and M. javanica (Treub) Chitwood] was evaluated in field tests at Blackville, S.C. and Charleston, S.C. The isogenic bell pepper sets were 'Charleston Belle' (NN) and 'Keystone Resistant Giant' (nn), and 'Carolina Wonder' (NN) and 'Yolo Wonder B' (nn). The resistant cultivars Charleston Belle and Carolina Wonder were highly resistant; root galling was minimal for both cultivars at both test sites. The susceptible cultivars Keystone Resistant Giant and Yolo Wonder B were highly susceptible; root galling was severe at both test sites. 'Charleston Belle' had 96.9% fewer eggs per g fresh root than 'Keystone Resistant Giant', and 'Carolina Wonder'had 98.3% fewer eggs per g fresh root than 'Yolo Wonder B' (averaged over both test sites). 'Charleston Belle' and 'Carolina Wonder' exhibited a high level of resistance in field studies at both sites. These results demonstrate that resistance conferred by the N gene for root-knot nematode resistance is effective in field-planted bell pepper. Root-knot nematode resistant bell peppers should provide economical and environmentally compatible alternatives to methyl bromide and other nematicides for managing M. incognita.


Volume visualization is widely used as an effective approach for the visual exploration, computational analysis, and manipulation of volumetric datasets. Due to the dramatic advances in imaging instruments and computing technologies, such datasets are now appearing at a very fast rate with increasingly larger sizes in many engineering, science and medical applications. Isosurface and direct volume rendering(DVR) are two of the most widely used techniques to render such datasets. This dissertation introduces novel techniques for rendering isosurfaces and volumes, and extends these techniques to multiprocessor architectures. We first focus on cluster-based techniques for isosurface extraction and rendering using polygonal approximation. We present a new simple indexing scheme and data layout approach, which enable scalable and efficient isosurface generation. This algorithm is the first known parallel algorithm to achieve provable load balancing on multiprocessor systems. We also develop an algorithm to generate isosurfaces using ray-casting on multi-core processors. Our method is based on a hybrid strategy that begins with an object order traversal of the data followed by ray-casting on ordered sets of an adaptive number of subcubes, one set for each small group of pixels on the image. We develop a multithreaded implementation, which uses new dynamic load balancing techniques that start with an image partitioning for the initial stage and then perform dynamic allocation of groups of ray-casting tasks among the different threads. The strategy ensures almost equal loads among the cores while maintaining spatial data locality. This scheme is extended to perform direct volume rendering and is shown to achieve similar improvements in terms of overall performance, load balancing, and scalability. We conduct a large number of tests for all our algorithms on the University of Maryland Visualization Cluster and on the 8-core Clovertown platform using a wide variety of datasets such as Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability dataset (7.5GB for each time step) and Visible Human dataset (∼1GB). We obtain results that consistently validate the efficiency and the scalability of our algorithms. In particular, the overall performance of our hybrid ray-casting scheme achieves an interactive rendering rate on high resolution (1024 2) screens for all the datasets tested.


Cluster analysis by nonnegative low-rank approximations has experienced a remarkable progress in the past decade. However, the majority of such approximation approaches are still restricted to nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) and suffer from the following two drawbacks: 1) they are unable to produce balanced partitions for large-scale manifold data which are common in real-world clustering tasks; 2) most existing NMF-type clustering methods cannot automatically determine the number of clusters. We propose a new low-rank learning method to address these two problems, which is beyond matrix factorization. Our method approximately decomposes a sparse input similarity in a normalized way and its objective can be used to learn both cluster assignments and the number of clusters. For efficient optimization, we use a relaxed formulation based on Data-Cluster-Data random walk, which is also shown to be equivalent to low-rank factorization of the doubly-stochastically normalized cluster incidence matrix. The probabilistic cluster assignments can thus be learned with a multiplicative majorization-minimization algorithm. Experimental results show that the new method is more accurate both in terms of clustering large-scale manifold data sets and of selecting the number of clusters.


Abstract We present a study of the influence of dispersion induced phase noise for CO-OFDM systems using FFT multiplexing/IFFT demultiplexing techniques (software based). The software based system provides a method for a rigorous evaluation of the phase noise variance caused by Common Phase Error (CPE) and Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) including – for the first time to our knowledge – in explicit form the effect of equalization enhanced phase noise (EEPN). This, in turns, leads to an analytic BER specification. Numerical results focus on a CO-OFDM system with 10–25 GS/s QPSK channel modulation. A worst case constellation configuration is identified for the phase noise influence and the resulting BER is compared to the BER of a conventional single channel QPSK system with the same capacity as the CO-OFDM implementation. Results are evaluated as a function of transmission distance. For both types of systems, the phase noise variance increases significantly with increasing transmission distance. For a total capacity of 400 (1000) Gbit/s, the transmission distance to have the BER < 10−2 for the worst case CO-OFDM design is less than 800 and 460 km, respectively, whereas for a single channel QPSK system it is less than 1400 and 560 km.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate chromosomal instability at 9p21-22 with p16 protein expression in organ transplant recipients (OTRs) compared with immunocompetent patients with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC).

DESIGN
In a select population of intraepithelial and subsequent invasive SCC from the same anatomic region of the same patient at different times, we assessed loss of heterozygosity at 3 microsatellites—IFNA, D9S162, and D9S925—in the course of carcinogenesis in OTRs and immunocompetent patients.

SETTING
Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Zurich.

PATIENTS
Immunocompetent patients and OTRs with SCC on sun-damaged skin.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Chromosomal allelic balance in SCC of OTRs and immunocompetent patients.

RESULTS
Reduced allelic balance at IFNA, D9S162, and D9S925 in intraepithelial forms of SCC and similar allelic imbalance in invasive forms of SCC were found. Allelic balance at D9S162 was reduced for SCC in OTRs compared with SCC in immunocompetent patients. The study revealed broadly reduced allelic balance at 9p21-22 in all cutaneous SCCs, and OTRs presented a further reduced allelic balance for D9S162, suggesting a common trait for SCC in OTRs. Actinic keratosis and Bowen disease differed in allelic balance at D9S162, suggesting substantial differences in their carcinogenesis.

CONCLUSION
Reduced allelic balance around locus D9S162 is a genomic correlate for enhanced carcinogenesis in OTRs.


Ms. Holman describes the differing needs of Hispanic immigrant families and their children and suggests ways in which administrators and other school staff members can assist these newcomers in making a successful transition to school. The category of "Hispanic," as established by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, includes a broad range of people of Latin American or Spanish descent. Although policy makers sometimes behave as if the term refers to a homogeneous group, the Hispanic community, particularly in the U.S./Mexico border area, is composed of several distinct groups, ranging from recent immigrants to this country to individuals whose families settled in the area as early as the 1600s. In general, minority populations are distributed unequally throughout the U.S. They are concentrated primarily in urban areas and have high birth rates. Approximately 73.7% of the entire Hispanic population is concentrated in California, Texas, New York, and Florida, and the population of Hispanics who are under the age of 18 in these states is projected to increase from 11% to 28% by the year 2020.(1) Immigration from Central and South America affects population growth in California and Texas, and job opportunities in urban centers in New York and Florida attract immigrants from Cuba and the Caribbean. Many urban school districts have experienced almost a complete reversal of traditional proportions of white and minority students, and minority students are the majority school population in many districts today. The proportion of the Hispanic population that is composed of new immigrants, both legal and illegal, is not easily determined. But the growing number of students enrolled in bilingual education programs suggests that it is substantial. According to the 1990 Census, 73% of the total foreign-born population under 18 years of age lives in California, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and New York.(2) Many Hispanic children are likely to be from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, particularly those whose families have recently arrived and are depending on minimum-wage jobs or are part of the "shadow economy." According to 1993 U.S. Census Bureau data, approximately 40% of Hispanic children live in poverty, compared to 13% of non-Hispanic white children.(3) As many as 45.7% of Hispanic children living in counties on the U.S./Mexico border, which traditionally have a high proportion of new immigrant families, live in poverty.(4) Administrators in school districts experiencing growth in the number of new immigrant families will find that these families and their children have needs that differ from those of established Hispanic families in their neighborhoods. School personnel may not have much experience working with immigrant families. Administrators and other school staff members need to adjust their attitudes and take steps to assist the newly arrived families and their children in making a successful transition to school. * The staff needs to recognize that it is likely that the children of these newly arrived Hispanic families will be motivated, hard-working students. Their parents have sacrificed a familiar way of life to move to the U.S. in order to provide themselves and their children with opportunities not available to them in their home countries. Frequently, they see access to our system of public education as one of these opportunities. * The faculty and staff of the schools must also recognize that these families might come from a very different kind of world. Furthermore, the wives and children may not want to be here. And even families that desire the increased opportunities available to them in the U.S. can be "homesick" for their families, friends, language, and customs. * Parents newly arrived in this country might have substantial formal education in their native language. Lack of skill in English can make it difficult for them to help their children with homework. …


This study uses an integrative model of behavioral prediction as an account of adolescents' intention to use marijuana regularly. Adolescents' risk for using marijuana regularly is examined to test the theoretical assumption that distal variables affect intention indirectly. Risk affects intention indirectly if low-risk and high-risk adolescents differ on the strength with which beliefs about marijuana are held, or if they differ on the relative importance of predictors of intention. A model test confirmed that the effect of risk on intention is primarily indirect. Adolescents at low and high risk particularly differed in beliefs concerning social costs and costs to self-esteem. Not surprisingly, at-risk adolescents took a far more positive stand toward using marijuana regularly than did low-risk adolescents. On a practical level, the integrative model proved to be an effective tool for predicting intention to use marijuana, identifying key variables for interventions, and discriminating between target populations in terms of determinants of marijuana use.


This chapter outlines an approach to genre as the driving force behind language, cognition, and communication. Genre can and has been studied in the humanities as well as the cognitive and social sciences, but the present chapter presents a theoretical integration of these approaches and offers a model that can be empirically investigated by various methods across the board of these disciplines. The model itself is based in cognitive psychology, and a number of possibilities and implications for text analysis are illustrated. Both the role of language itself as well as the connection with literature are included in the discussion in order to suggest how a complete picture can be achieved of the bi-directional traffic between cognitive science and the humanities.


Current research examines the economic, social, cultural, policy, educational and promotional factors in using sustainable agriculture operations. Research is an applied type and its method is correlation. The statistical population consisted of 102 members of Iran Potato Cultivars. Data were collected using a census method and a questionnaire was used. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was obtained among 0.4723.0 ± 0.946 / 0, indicating the reliability of this tool. Statistical analysis of data was performed using SPSS20 software. The results of regression analysis indicated that three variables: economic factors, policy factors, educational and promotional factors were the most important independent variables affecting the dependent variable of sustainable agriculture, that was 42.1% of the variation of dependent variable (implementation of sustainable agricultural activity) that explain the research.Also the results indicated that the economic factor variable with the beta coefficient equal to 0.339 is the most important variable affecting the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices. The variable policy making factor with a regression coefficient of 0.146 is the least important factor affecting the implementation of sustainable agricultural operations


The prior of research have shown that the framing effect is one of determinant in explaining decisions to escalate commitment to failing projects. However , have not considered whether experience moderates the framing effect on escalation of commitment. This study reports the results of an experiment in which the effect of decision frame of investment performance with negative feedback informatian on judgment to continue project of experienced subjects is compared to inexperienced subjects. Forty six Aceh experienced managers and forty seven accounting students participated in this experiment. Two conditions based on prospect theory (negative framing and positive framing) manipulated, and two conditions of business experience, crossed between subjects. The experiment reaffirms that decision frame does not have effect on judgment of experienced subject but those frame indeed have effect on judgment to continue project of inexperienced subjects. The result of this research suggest that framing effect as drawn from prospect theory is one of explanatory power of escalation of commitment, but it can not generalized to real-world business settings.


We investigate computational aspects of popular solution concepts for different models of network games. In chapter 3 we study balanced solutions for network bargaining games with general capacities, where agents can participate in a fixed but arbitrary number of contracts. We fully characterize the existence of balanced solutions and provide the first polynomial time algorithm for their computation. Our methods use a new idea of reducing an instance with general capacities to an instance with unit capacities defined on an auxiliary graph. This chapter is an extended version of the conference paper [32]. In chapter 4 we propose a generalization of the classical stable marriage problem. In our model the preferences on one side of the partition are given in terms of arbitrary binary relations, that need not be transitive nor acyclic. This generalization is practically well-motivated, and as we show, encompasses the well studied hard variant of stable marriage where preferences are allowed to have ties and to be incomplete. Our main result shows that deciding the existence of a stable matching in our model is NP-complete. We then use our model to study a long standing open problem about cyclic 3D stable matchings. In particular, we prove that deciding whether a fixed 2D perfect matching can be extended to a 3D stable matching is NP-complete. This chapter is an extended version of the conference paper [33]. In chapter 5 we study a long standing open problem of whether the nucleolus of matching games can be computed efficiently. Our approach follows previous techniques that rely on obtaining a polynomial sized characterization of the least core as both the initial and crucial step in establishing an efficient algorithm. As a preliminary result, we introduce a generalisation of the least core and show that for node-weighted matching games existing polynomial sized characterizations of the least core can be extended to this generalised version. We then use this result to show that for a certain class games with general weights one can identify a node-weighted subgraph such that the least core of the original matching game is equal to the generalised least core of this subgraph. This allows us to obtain a polynomial time algorithm for computing the nucleolus for this class of matching games with general weights.


Two orthogonal hardware techniques, table-based address prediction and early address calculation, for reducing the latency of load instructions have been recently proposed. The key idea behind both of these techniques is to speculatively perform loads early in the processor pipeline using predicted values for the loads' addresses. These techniques have required either a large hardware table or complex register bypass logic to be implemented in order to accurately predict the important loads in the presence of a large number of less-important loads. This paper proposes a compiler directed approach that allows a streamlined version of both of these techniques to be effectively used together. The compiler provides directives to indicate which prediction mechanism to use or, when appropriate, that a prediction should not be made. The hardware therefore can be focused on their target cases so that a smaller prediction table and simpler bypass logic suffice. Our results show that through straightforward compiler heuristics, we obtain an average speedup of 34% with a 256-entry direct-mapped address table and only one cached register. And with the help of address profiling, an extra 4% of speedup can be obtained.


Map shows French Louisiana, the United States toe the Mississippi River, West Indies, British possessions, and Spanish possessions of New Mexico and New Spain; particular detail along the northwest Pacific coast of North America, large portion of western [future United States] is left blank and labeled as "Quivira"; major cities, major roads, and areas of Native American habitation. Includes color key to colonial possessions of England, Germany, Spain, France, Holland, Denmark and Sweden. Relief shown by hachures. Scale [ca. 1:6,336,000].


Abduction is a fundamental and important form of non-monotonic reasoning. Given a knowledge base explaining how the world behaves it aims at finding an explanation for some observed manifestation. In this paper we focus on propositional abduction, where the knowledge base and the manifestation are represented by propositional formulae. The problem of deciding whether there exists an explanation has been shown to be SigmaP2-complete in general. We consider variants obtained by restricting the allowed connectives in the formulae to certain sets of Boolean functions. We give a complete classification of the complexity for all considerable sets of Boolean functions. In this way, we identify easier cases, namely NP-complete and polynomial cases; and we highlight sources of intractability. Further, we address the problem of counting the explanations and draw a complete picture for the counting complexity.


Many universities with historic textile and costume collections do not have websites promoting their collections. The websites not only increase awareness about the collections, they also allow the institutions to become worldwide research facilities, while simultaneously promoting the historic textile and costume field. This study evaluated private and public university historic textile and costume collections in the United States to determine how the websites were constructed and what material was included. Upon completion of website analysis, I contacted specific universities for further study based on how well the websites matched a list of components for a valuable website developed from the review of literature. With this analysis and survey information from website mangers and developers, I developed recommendations and suggestions for creating a useful website for university textile and costume collections. The research was conducted in multiple steps and once all the data were acquired, responses and analyses were transcribed onto an Excel spreadsheet, further developed into tables and charts identifying essential and beneficial information pertaining to my research. The recommendations and suggestions were then derived from those results. Results demonstrated a variety of website design techniques utilized by university collections. Elements from the desired list of components were observed in all websites. Some websites were better developed matching more of the components while others were more basic.


We fabricated amorphous silicon n-i-p solar cells with two types of nanopatterned back reflectors using stencil lithography. One reflector type has a plasmonic grating that is embedded in the ZnO layer; the other one has a metallic grating patterned on top of the Ag layer. From comparing the short-circuit current densities of the two device types, we conclude that light trapping through grating coupling is more efficient than coupling of light through the excitation of localized surface plasmons. The back reflectors were patterned with dot arrays by evaporation of Ag through millimeter-size stencil membranes. The stencils themselves were patterned by wafer-scale nanosphere lithography. The dot arrays have a periodicity of 428 nm and efficiently scatter light in the near-infrared wavelength range. Both back reflectors types lead to the same morphology for the silicon films. This allows us a fair comparison of the two light coupling mechanisms. We found a 14% and 19% short-circuit current density enhancement for the plasmonic and for the metallic grating, respectively. The external quantum efficiency gains between 550 and 650 nm show similar guided modes resonances for both device types, but the excitation is stronger for the device with the metallic grating.


In this paper we argue that many topics in macroeconomics can be viewed as part of the broader theory of the economics of adjustment. We argue that existing approaches to the economics of adjustment take a very narrow view of the role of information. We outline an approach to this topic that stresses the role of learning and information externalities, and discussed through examples how these concerns alter the qualitative nature of the adjustment process. In particular, there appears to be a general bias towards the underprovision of information in a variety of settings which leads to inefficient adjustment. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)


We live in a world of increasingly universal connectivity. Yet our legal system presumes that people are isolated from one another. In a diverse array of doctrinal areas, law encodes the assumption that direct tracking of individual activities is the exception, rather than the rule. With the diffusion of new technologies, this expectation will be undermined. A profusion of networked sensors will pose novel challenges for many areas of the law. Hundreds of millions of camera-enabled mobile phones and networked webcams are already in the hands of individuals throughout the world. Billions of wireless radio-frequency identification tags will soon be deployed. Location-sensing capabilities will be built into a growing range of equipment. Intelligent handheld digital devices will turn every individual into a networked information gathering and dissemination point. Inadvertent private actions, rather than conscious government surveillance, will increasingly dominate the tracking and monitoring of the physical world and its inhabitants. A common initial response will be to ban or restrict the technologies that threaten settled expectations. Yet the sensors will not be stopped so easily. In the end, social norms will define the canvas upon which law operates to regulate information exchanges. Against that backdrop, law will gradually evolve to accommodate changed circumstances. The best way to avoid conflicts and uncertainties along the way will be to surface the hidden assumptions that technology is calling into question.


Human neuroimaging research aims to find mappings between brain activity and broad cognitive states. In particular, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) allows collecting information about activity in the brain in a non-invasive way. In this paper, we tackle the task of linking brain activity information from fMRI data with named entities expressed in functional neuroimaging literature. For the automatic extraction of those links, we focus on Named Entity Recognition (NER) and compare different methods to recognize relevant entities from fMRI literature. We selected 15 entity categories to describe cognitive states, anatomical areas, stimuli and responses. To cope with the lack of relevant training data, we proposed rule-based methods relying on noun-phrase detection and filtering. We also developed machine learning methods based on Conditional Random Fields (CRF) with morpho-syntactic and semantic features. We constructed a gold standard corpus to evaluate these different NER methods. A comparison of the obtained F1 scores showed that the proposed approaches significantly outperform three state-of-the-art methods in open and specific domains with a best result of 78.79% F1 score in exact span evaluation and 98.40% F1 in inexact span evaluation.


Fifteen serum samples and 29 synovial fluids of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were examined for the presence of tumour necrosis factor (TNF). The assay for TNF was based on the cytotoxic activity of this cytokine for human melanoma cells in tissue culture. High concentrations of TNF were found in serum samples of patients with severe RA, who had increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate and serum alpha 2 macroglobulin, but decreased haemoglobin and serum iron concentrations. Tumour necrosis factor was also found in the synovial fluid of 16 out of 29 patients. High TNF concentrations were found in fluids with greater than 10(10) leucocytes/l. Tumour necrosis factor was not detected in the serum of normal subjects or in synovial fluid of patients with osteoarthritis. A mediator of inflammation, such as TNF, may contribute to the severity of RA.


For the first time in nearly 30 years, Lebanon appears on the brink of becoming an independent democracy. Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, a wave of massive protests and international pressure demanding an end to de facto Syrian rule over Lebanon are poised to achieve success. With the April 26 withdrawal of Syria's 14,000 troops from Lebanon, the nation celebrated a turning-point in its history, but the road ahead remains challenging. Twenty-nine years of civil war and foreign occupation stand in the way of a stable democracy, and reversing the effects of this history will not be possible overnight. Syria has held de facto control over Lebanon since 1976, when the Syrians intervened in Lebanon's then one-year-old civil war. When the civil war ended in 1990, the Taif accords established a nominally-independent Lebanese national government, but Syria declined to withdraw its 35,000 troops or its extensive network of intelligence operatives and continued to pull the strings in the Lebanese government. The primary Syrian justification for continued troop presence was the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, yet even after Israel completely withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Syria kept 14,000 troops in the country and maintained its extensive intelligence network. Opposition to the Syrian presence in Lebanon has existed since Syrian troops first entered the country. However, until recently this opposition was limited to two of Lebanon's four dominant sects, the Christians and Druze, with the Sunni and Shiite Muslims accommodating and--in the case of the Shiites--actively supporting the Syrian presence. The turning point came in September 2004, when the Syrians pushed through the Lebanese Parliament an amendment to the Constitution upending planned Presidential elections and renewing the six-year term of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. Following this development, Sunni leader and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri turned against the Syrian occupation--tipping the balance in favor of the opposition--and the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution sponsored by the United States and France demanding a complete Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the dismantling of all Lebanese militant groups, including the pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah. Despite this sharp turn in domestic and international sentiment against their occupation, the Syrians refused to budge until the massive outcry following Hariri's assassination in February 2005. Accusing Syrian intelligence operatives and Hezbollah of being behind the assassination--an accusation Syria denies--tens of thousands of protestors spanning all of Lebanon's diverse ethnicities took to the streets to demand a Syrian withdrawal. …


On a dark street, what began as a private moment between a citizen and the police became a national outrage. Rodney Glen King grew up in the Altadena Pasadena section of Los Angeles with four siblings, a loving mother, and an alcoholic father. Soon young Rodney followed in Dad's stumbling steps, beginning a lifetime of alcohol abuse. King had been drinking the night of March 3, 1991, when he engaged in a high-speed chase with the LAPD, who finally pulled him over. What happened next shocked the nation. A group of officers brutally beat King with their metal batons, Tasered and kicked him into submission-all caught on videotape by a nearby resident. The infamous Rodney King Incident was born when this first instance of citizen surveillance revealed a shocking moment of police brutality, a horrific scene that stunned and riveted the nation via the evening news. Racial tensions long smoldering in L.A. ignited into a firestorm thirteen months later when four white officers were acquitted by a mostly white jury. Los Angeles was engulfed in flames as people rioted in the streets. More than fifty people were dead, hundreds were hospitalized, and countless homes and businesses were destroyed. King's plaintive question, "Can we all just get along?" became a sincere but haunting plea for reconciliation that reflected the heartbreak and despair caused by America's racial discord in the early 1990s. While Rodney King is now an icon, he is by no means an angel. King has had run-ins with the law and continues a lifelong struggle with alcohol addiction. But King refuses to be bitter about the crippling emotional and physical damage that was inflicted upon him that night in 1991. While this nation has made strides during those twenty years to heal, so has Rodney King, and his inspiring story can teach us all lessons about forgiveness, redemption, and renewal, both as individuals and as a nation.


Unbalanced optimal transport (UOT) extends optimal transport (OT) to take into account mass variations to compare distributions. This is crucial to make OT successful in ML applications, making it robust to data normalization and outliers. The baseline algorithm is Sinkhorn, but its convergence speed might be significantly slower for UOT than for OT. In this work, we identify the cause for this deficiency, namely the lack of a global normalization of the iterates, which equivalently corresponds to a translation of the dual OT potentials. Our first contribution leverages this idea to develop a provably accelerated Sinkhorn algorithm (coined 'translation invariant Sinkhorn') for UOT, bridging the computational gap with OT. Our second contribution focusses on 1-D UOT and proposes a Frank-Wolfe solver applied to this translation invariant formulation. The linear oracle of each steps amounts to solving a 1-D OT problems, resulting in a linear time complexity per iteration. Our last contribution extends this method to the computation of UOT barycenter of 1-D measures. Numerical simulations showcase the convergence speed improvement brought by these three approaches.


Continuous optimization is an important problem in many areas of AI, including vision, robotics, probabilistic inference, and machine learning. Unfortunately, most real-world optimization problems are nonconvex, causing standard convex techniques to find only local optima, even with extensions like random restarts and simulated annealing. We observe that, in many cases, the local modes of the objective function have combinatorial structure, and thus ideas from combinatorial optimization can be brought to bear. Based on this, we propose a problem-decomposition approach to nonconvex optimization. Similarly to DPLL-style SAT solvers and recursive conditioning in probabilistic inference, our algorithm, RDIS, recursively sets variables so as to simplify and decompose the objective function into approximately independent subfunctions, until the remaining functions are simple enough to be optimized by standard techniques like gradient descent. The variables to set are chosen by graph partitioning, ensuring decomposition whenever possible. We show analytically that RDIS can solve a broad class of nonconvex optimization problems exponentially faster than gradient descent with random restarts. Experimentally, RDIS outperforms standard techniques on problems like structure from motion and protein folding.


In monsoonal ecosystems, vegetation phenology is generally modulated by the timing and intensity of seasonal precipitation. Seasonal precipitation is often characterized by substantial interannual variability in both space and time. A rigorous quantitative understanding of the ecology of the landscape requires spatially explicit information regarding the strength of the relationship between seasonal precipitation and vegetation phenology, as well as the interannual variability of the system. For this information to be accurately estimated, it must be based on spatially and temporally consistent measurements. The optical satellite image archive can provide these measurements. Satellite imagery offers observations of both a) atmospheric parameters such as the timing and spatial extent of monsoon cloud cover; and, b) phenological parameters, such as the timing and spatial extent of vegetation green-up and senescence. This work presents a method to capture both atmospheric and phenological parameters from an optical image time series. The method uses Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of a single spectral index for unified characterization of the spatiotemporal dynamics of both monsoon cloud cover and vegetation phenology. This is made possible by leveraging well-understood differences in the visible and near infrared reflectance of green vegetation, soil, and clouds. Image time series are transformed into a temporal feature space (TFS) that is comprised of low-order Principal Components. The structure of the temporal feature space reveals spatiotemporally distinct annual cycles of both cloud cover and vegetation phenology. In order to illustrate this technique, we apply it to the retrospective analysis of a seasonal cloud forest in the Dhofar Mountains of the southern Arabian Peninsula. Our results quantify known (but previously unmapped) local gradients in monsoon duration and vegetation community response. Individual ecological subsystems are also clearly distinguishable from each other, and consistent elevation gradients emerge within each subsystem. Novel observations also emerge, such as regreening/early greening events and spatial patterns in cloud duration. The method is conceptually straightforward and could be applied to characterize other monsoon environments anywhere on Earth.


Background: Many diagnostic procedures are conducted in patients with syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis (SIAD). However, the contribution in identification of the cause of SIAD remains unknown. Methods: The study was conducted at Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital in southern Taiwan. From January 2000 to December 2009, medical records of 439 adult patients hospitalized for new-onset SIAD at a single center were retrospectively collected. All diagnostic procedures during hospitalization were divided into four groups: chest/lung, central nervous system, abdomen, and bone marrow to evaluate their positive rate leading to the cause of SIAD. Factors associated with "procedures leading to the cause" were also analyzed to improve efficacy of survey. Results: Cause of SIAD was identified in 267 (60.8%). Of them, 150 were pulmonary disorders, 44 were drugs, 37 were central nervous system disorders, 32 were malignancy and 4 were post-surgery. Survey for chest/lung, central nervous system, abdomen, and bone marrow were performed in 96.6%, 29.2%, 38.0% and 3.6% of patients, respectively; positive findings leading to the cause of SIAD were 39.6%, 12.5%, 5.3% and 6.3%, respectively. Among the diagnostic procedures, chest x-ray (424/439, 96.6%) was most frequently performed with the highest identification rate of 34.7% (147 cases). Major significant independent factors that associated with "procedure leading to a cause" were: absence of SIAD-associated drug history, presence of fever/chills, and presence of respiratory symptoms. Cause of SIAD became evident later during the follow-up period in 10 of 172 (5.8%) patients who were initially thought to be cause-unknown. Malignancy was the cause for 5 cases and pulmonary tuberculosis was for the other five. Eight of these causes became evident within one year after the diagnosis of SIAD. Conclusions: SIAD with unidentified causes were prevalent. Current diagnostic procedures remain not satisfying in determining the cause of SIAD, but chest radiograph did demonstrate higher diagnostic rate, especially in patients presented with fever, chills, respiratory symptoms, and without SIAD-associated drug history. Patients with unidentified cause should be followed for at least one year when most hidden causes (e.g. malignancy and tuberculosis) become obvious.


This archive IDS Bulletin reflects on 50 years of research on pastoralism at IDS. Thirteen articles are introduced around six themes that have characterised IDS-linked research over this period. These are: pastoral livelihoods; institutions and common property resource management; climate change and ecological dynamics; food security, early warning, and livelihood vulnerability; pastoral marketing; and conflict and governance.
Across these themes, IDS research has challenged mainstream development thinking and practice, highlighting the importance of mobility and living with uncertainty. This introductory article concludes with some reflections on research gaps and new challenges, including: the effects of climate change; new forms of pastoral mobility and livelihood; increasing pattern of commoditisation and social differentiation; and changing conflict dynamics. Although massively changed over 50 years, and despite repeated proclamations of crisis and collapse, pastoralism remains, we argue, an important, resilient source of livelihood in marginal rangeland areas across the world, from which others can learn.


MOSIX is a cluster management system that uses process migration to allow a Linux cluster to perform like a parallel computer. Recently it has been extended with new features that could make a grid of Linux clusters run as a cooperative system of federated clusters. On one hand, it supports automatic workload distribution among connected clusters that belong to different owners, while still preserving the autonomy of each owner to disconnect its cluster from the grid at any time, without sacrificing migrated processes from other clusters. Other new features of MOSIX include grid-wide automatic resource discovery; a precedence scheme for local processes and among guest processes (from other clusters); flood control; a secure run-time environment (sandbox) which prevents guest processes from accessing local resources in a hosting system, and support of cluster partitions. The resulting grid management system is suitable to create an intra-organizational high-performance computational grid, e.g., in an enterprise or in a campus. The paper presents enhanced and new features of MOSIX and their performance.


The structural design and synthesis of cathode materials with superior catalytic activity is still a major challenge for rechargeable lithium–oxygen batteries. Here we prepared hierarchical Ru- and RuO2-foams as binder- and carbon-free electrocatalysts via an electrodeposition process using a hydrogen bubble template. The as-prepared Ru- and RuO2-foams were grown vertically on stainless steel mesh, with a dendritic bracken-like structure and highly divided thin branches. These freestanding Ru- and RuO2-foams provide high catalytic activity, large space to accommodate the discharge products, short ion diffusion lengths and channels for rapid transport of oxygen and electrolytes. The hierarchically dendritic cathodes without carbon and binders present low charge/discharge overpotential, remarkable cyclability, good oxygen efficiency and reduced irreversible formation/decomposition. The excellent performance of these foams, as characterized by systematic analysis and the facile fabrication approach provide an alternative method to develop advanced cathodes for Li–O2 batteries.


The Lyapunov exponent characterizes an exponential growth rate of the difference of nearby orbits. A positive Lyapunov exponent (exponential dynamical instability) is a manifestation of chaos. Here, we propose the Lyapunov pair, which is based on the generalized Lyapunov exponent, as a unified characterization of nonexponential and exponential dynamical instabilities in one-dimensional maps. Chaos is classified into three different types, i.e., superexponential, exponential, and subexponential chaos. Using one-dimensional maps, we demonstrate superexponential and subexponential chaos and quantify the dynamical instabilities by the Lyapunov pair. In subexponential chaos, we show superweak chaos, which means that the growth of the difference of nearby orbits is slower than a stretched exponential growth. The scaling of the growth is analytically studied by a recently developed theory of a continuous accumulation process, which is related to infinite ergodic theory.


We previously demonstrated that formation of complexes between the DNA‐binding domains of hepatocyte nuclear factor 6 (HNF6) and forkhead box a2 (Foxa2) proteins stimulated Foxa2 transcriptional activity. Here, we used HepG2 cell cotransfection assays to demonstrate that HNF6 transcriptional activity was stimulated by CCAAT/enhancer‐binding protein α (C/EBPα), but not by the related C/EBPβ or C/EBPδ proteins. Formation of the C/EBPα–HNF6 protein complex required the HNF6 cut domain and the C/EBPα activation domain (AD) 1/AD2 sequences. This C/EBPα–HNF6 transcriptional synergy required both the N‐terminal HNF6 polyhistidine and serine/threonine/proline box sequences, as well as the C/EBPα AD1/AD2 sequences, the latter of which are known to recruit the CREB binding protein (CBP) transcriptional coactivator. Consistent with these findings, adenovirus E1A–mediated inhibition of p300/CBP histone acetyltransferase activity abrogated C/EBPα–HNF6 transcriptional synergy in cotransfection assays. Co‐immunoprecipitation assays with liver protein extracts demonstrate an association between the HNF6 and C/EBPα transcription factors and the CBP coactivator protein in vivo. Furthermore, chromatin immunoprecipitation assays with hepatoma cells demonstrated that increased levels of both C/EBPα and HNF6 proteins were required to stimulate association of these transcription factors and the CBP coactivator protein with the endogenous mouse Foxa2 promoter region. In conclusion, formation of the C/EBPα–HNF6 protein complex stimulates recruitment of the CBP coactivator protein for expression of Foxa2, a transcription factor critical for regulating expression of hepatic gluconeogenic genes during fasting. (HEPATOLOGY 2006;43:276–286.)