Social harm is one of the most potentially potent and transformative concepts currently available to the social sciences. However, scholars have struggled to 'define' social harm, puzzled by enigmatic questions and tensions around the issue of how to establish clear conceptual parameters which take advantage of social harm's broader critical focus, whilst preventing the concept from becoming so nebulous that it loses all utility. This article suggests that the enigma of social harm is not simply a problem of having yet to find an adequate definition and set of conceptual parameters. Rather, the uncertainty that surrounds social harm and the proliferation of harms we are witnessing in late-capitalism are both positioned as symptomatic of far deeper social problems generated by a combination of liberalism's flawed conception of the autonomous individual subject and postmodernism's cynical individualism and dismantling of belief in any transcendent authority or ethics that can constitute what philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes as the 'Big Other'. However, such discoveries provide us with a roadmap out of zemiology's conceptual crisis. This article argues that by revisiting the moral philosophy of Alasdair Macintyre and Slavoj Žižek's ontology of the subject, we can shake off liberal-postmodernism's ethical 'culture of emotivism', abandon liberalism's a priori ethical maxims, and begin to reinstate the 'Big Other' by developing a transformative theory of the Good and human flourishing from which we can derive a clear understanding of social harm.


This Comment is an in-depth exploration of the neoclassical commitment to the idea that economic actors are appropriately modeled as optimizers—of profit, utility, or whatever. The robustness of this commitment is a major feature of the intellectual landscape surveyed by Mazzoleni and Nelson (2013, Industrial and Corporate Change, 22, 6), and the challengers' inability to overthrow it is clearly a key rubric for an answer to the basic Mazzoleni and Nelson question about explanations for the failures of the successive challenges to neoclassicism. The principal thesis here is that the neoclassical commitment to optimizing actors has exacted a high opportunity cost because of its distorting effect on the discipline's priorities. The commitment encourages theorists to engage primarily in the construction and analysis of models that are viewed as parables and valued primarily on esthetic grounds, and not for the insight into reality that they provide. Thus, the contemporary esthetics of neoclassical theorizing push the economics discipline away from serious engagement with the complexity of economic reality.


Single-mode optical waveguides in LiNbO(3) substrate with loss as low as 0.17dB/cm were fabricated by a multi-energy low-dose ion implantation technology and cumulative annealing treatment. A waveguide Y-Branch splitter was demonstrated. Index profile in waveguide is described based on the ion implantation-induced damage profile, and propagation property in waveguide is simulated. Simulation results show a good consistence with the measured ones.


As web-based and other electronic data collection methods become more widely used in research, the opportunities to use statistical software in conjunction with conventional database systems are increasing. Among such systems, MySQL is particularly well suited for research purposes. For example, MySQL's ENUM and SET column types are ideal for storing data collected via the multiple choice questions typically used in social surveys. At the same time, Stata is uniquely suited for working in conjunction with a database; for example, its implementation of characteristics makes it possible to preserve (in a usable form) important information about how the database and front-end application are constructed (e.g., column types and other attributes). In this presentation, we shall describe a Python script we have developed for translating data from MySQL to Stata, and will indicate briefly how we are using it in the development of tools for the collection and management of research data.


For a quarter of a century, corporate governance in many countries has been viewed as a process of institutionalising codes of good conduct by institutionalising their periodic and partial deinstitutionalisation. Episodic shocks, induced by spectacular corporate failures, have created opportunities for more radical change, but such codes have proved resilient. But has this been process firmed up a thickening core? With each revision, is the corporate governance community living in increasingly familiar places or opening itself to liminal spaces? This paper deals with a story that is even now unfolding. The UK Corporate Governance Code is undergoing a major revision, with submissions to a consultation closing on February 28. As we wait for a new code to emerge, let us explore the practical background and its philosophical underpinnings, drawing on concepts from the writings of de Certeau (1984) and Turner (1977), to reflect on places, spaces, rituals, and explorations, to understand what creates and constitutes resilience and allows for change.


With the advent of the  Children's Act  38 of 2005 greater emphasis was placed on the importance of both parents' involvement in their children's day-to-day lives. An unintended negative consequence of an otherwise laudable shift in social policy which supported a shared parental involvement was that the courts became the forum for co-parents to dispute a lot of day-to-day issues in respect of their children. To alleviate the negative effects of high-conflict co-parenting cases on our court system and the children of divorce, a new alternative dispute resolution process, namely parenting coordination, was introduced. The new process was not labelled as such, but became known as facilitation in the Western Cape, and as case management in Gauteng. Parenting coordination is a legal-psychological hybrid intervention that derives from the practice of the courts. It has the potential to provide substantial benefits for divorcing or separating parties, their children and the court system. Since its inception a few years ago, parenting coordination has steadily grown in popularity as an alternative dispute resolution tool in South Africa. Overhasty implementation of parenting coordination without considering certain concerns could, however, damage the "brand" and lead to confusion about the process. In the first place the difference in nomenclature is a real problem. Secondly, the training and qualifications of parenting coordinators are problematic and even non-existent in most provinces. Thirdly, it is argued by sceptics that parenting coordination is impermissible and constitutes an improper delegation of judicial authority in circumstances where the parenting coordinator is appointed in a court order and not in terms of an Act or court rule or by agreement between the parties. It is further observed that parenting coordination amounts to arbitration in contravention of section 2 of the  Arbitration Act  42 of 1965, which currently prohibits the use of arbitration in respect of matrimonial matters. Lastly, the cost of parenting coordination is indicated as an area of contention. To properly address these problems, various safeguards for and limitations on parenting coordination practice are considered. It is proposed that the internationally accepted term "parenting coordination" is also consistently used in South Africa. It is further proposed that adequate qualifications, proper training and sufficient experience for parenting coordinators are set. To counter the argument that parenting coordination is an unlawful delegation of judicial power, the necessary authority for courts to refer parties for parenting coordination is sought, firstly in the inherent power of the High Court as upper guardian to ensure the best interests of children, and secondly in the  Children's Act  and the  Constitution of the Republic of South Africa,  1996 as far as the children's court and divorce courts are concerned. In addition, various limitations regarding the conditions under which and the stage at which a parenting coordinator should be appointed, the scope of a parenting coordinator's decision-making powers and the finality of his or her directives are suggested. Lastly, the issue of the affordability of parenting coordination is addressed and suggestions are made on ways to provide fair access to this new intervention.


We compare three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their family support systems: Austria, Spain and the UK. The structure of these systems is different: Austria emphases universal benefits, Spain tax concessions and the UK means-tested benefits. First the paper compares the distributional implications of these three approaches. The recent reforms have reinforced existing structures while increasing the amount of spending for children. The second step is to ask: What would have happened if these countries had transformed the architecture of their systems in either of the other two directions? We use EUROMOD, the European tax-benefit microsimulation model that is designed for making cross-country comparisons and answering "what if" questions such as these. We find that the three factors that can be distinguished – the level of spending, its structure, and the way it impacts in a national context – are all important to varying degrees.


The Iraq-Kuwait border dispute caught the world's attention on 2 August 1990 when Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait. The border dispute would fester over the next five months and ultimately manifest itself in a major war which began on 16 January 1991. The war ended six weeks later leaving monumental costs: (1) the death of 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, 100,000 Iraqi civilians and 124 U.S. soldiers, (2) 100 billion dollars in damage to the Kuwaiti economy, (3) 52 billion dollars in Allied war expenditures and (4) the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure. Much time and attention has been given to the immediate aspects of the conflict while less analysis has been given to the economic and political history of the border dispute. The invasion in August 1990 was not the first time that Iraq positioned itself for the occupation of Kuwait. Iraqi forces invaded the kingdom in 1973 and occupied border outposts inside Kuwait. Nor is this the first time that Iraq has attempted unification with the oil-rich kingdom by absorption or annexation. Iraq attempted to forge a union of the two countries in 1939 and again in 1961. Some of these earlier border disputes and conflicts have been solved through Arab-Arab mediation. The most recent one was not. The purpose of this article is to explore the roots of the conflict starting from the inception of Iraq and leading to the present time. The first section explores the historical roots of the current border dispute by examining the border relations of both countries before Kuwait was granted independence from Britain. The second section examines border relations between Iraq and Kuwait after independence. The major elements of the current conflict are investigated in the third section of the paper.


A Transition-to-Practice Residency That Supports the Nurse Practitioner in a Critical Access Hospital by Nancy J. Stock MS, University of Minnesota, 1996 BSN, Moorhead State University, 1986 Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Nursing Practice Walden University March 2015 Abstract Access to health care in rural communities is challenged by workforce shortages. Nurse practitioners (NPs) have been filling the gap created by physician migration into specialty areas. Flex hospital legislation allows critical access hospitals (CAHs) to staff the emergency department with NPs or physician assistants without on-site physicians. NP education often lacks emergency and trauma curriculum, resulting in gaps in education and practice expectations and leading to significant role transition stress and turnover. The purpose of this project was to construct an evidence-based transition-to-practice residency program to support NPs providing emergency department care in the CAH. Theoretical frameworks used to guide the project include rural health theory, novice to expert, and from limbo to legitimacy frameworks. Global outcomes include increased quality of care, patient safety, NP job satisfaction, and decreased turnover. The quality improvement initiative engaged an interprofessional team of institutional and community stakeholders (n = 10) to develop primary products including the residency program, curriculum modules, and the secondary products necessary to implement and evaluate the project. Implementation will consist of a pilot followed by expansion throughout the rural health network. Evaluation will involve the CAH dashboard to monitor patient outcomes, Misener NP job satisfaction scale, and employee turnover rates. The project expands understanding of the on-boarding needs of rural NPs. The results of this project will serve as a guide to publish outcome data and collaborate with higher education to develop programs to award academic credit for paid clinical experiences leading to academic degrees.Access to health care in rural communities is challenged by workforce shortages. Nurse practitioners (NPs) have been filling the gap created by physician migration into specialty areas. Flex hospital legislation allows critical access hospitals (CAHs) to staff the emergency department with NPs or physician assistants without on-site physicians. NP education often lacks emergency and trauma curriculum, resulting in gaps in education and practice expectations and leading to significant role transition stress and turnover. The purpose of this project was to construct an evidence-based transition-to-practice residency program to support NPs providing emergency department care in the CAH. Theoretical frameworks used to guide the project include rural health theory, novice to expert, and from limbo to legitimacy frameworks. Global outcomes include increased quality of care, patient safety, NP job satisfaction, and decreased turnover. The quality improvement initiative engaged an interprofessional team of institutional and community stakeholders (n = 10) to develop primary products including the residency program, curriculum modules, and the secondary products necessary to implement and evaluate the project. Implementation will consist of a pilot followed by expansion throughout the rural health network. Evaluation will involve the CAH dashboard to monitor patient outcomes, Misener NP job satisfaction scale, and employee turnover rates. The project expands understanding of the on-boarding needs of rural NPs. The results of this project will serve as a guide to publish outcome data and collaborate with higher education to develop programs to award academic credit for paid clinical experiences leading to academic degrees. A Transition-To-Practice Residency That Supports the Nurse Practitioner in a Critical Access Hospital


The People's Republic of China has experienced significant transformations since Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms in 1978. Subsequent leaders continued and often broadened Deng's policies, shifting the nation from agrarianism to industrialism, from isolation to internationalism, and from centralized planning to market-based economics. As the world strives to understand the nation's rapid development, few observers have comprehensively examined the social and cultural price of the economic boom for the majority of the Chinese people. Zhaohui Hong assesses the sociocultural consequences of these reforms in this provocative study. He contends that modern China functions as an oligarchy or plutocracy ruled by an alliance of political power and private capital where the boundaries between the private and public sectors are constantly shifting. This ""power-capital institution"" based on three millennia of Confucian ideology and decades of Maoist communism exercises monopolistic control of public resources at the expense of civil society and social justice for the majority of citizens. The Price of China's Economic Development urges policymakers to alter their analytic lens. While industrial and commercial development is quantitatively measured, Hong argues that social progress should be assessed qualitatively, with justice its ultimate goal and fair allocation of resources and opportunity as the main index of success. This sophisticated analysis introduces English speakers to the varied and significant work of contemporary Chinese scholars and substantially enriches the international dialogue.


Gorter a Jonkman (1995) is a presentation of the results of a large-scale survey of the position of the Frisian language in Fryslân. Their general conclusion is that the position of the Frisian language is one of stability in as far as profinciency, use and attitudes are concerned. In this paper we strongly criticize this conclusion for being partly based on unclear questions, on an implausible interpretation of the quantitative data, and for being in conflict with other research results, and neglecting developments in the linguistic properties of Frisian. Our counterconclusion is that there is ample evidence showing that Gorter and Jonkman's view on the position of Frisian is too optimistic. Furthermore we argue that their survey indicates that Frisian functions mainly as an informal, spoken language for the (great) majority of speakers. The language situation in Fryslân can not be described as diglossic however, since Frisian and Dutch are not in complementary use, and the social status of Frisian cannot considered to be low. Finally we claim that the scientific relevance of Gorter a Jonkman (1995) is rather marginal, due to the fact that the results of the survey are not discussed within a context of scientific debate.


Purpose: Human Anatomy & Physiology [HAP] courses are considered "difficult" by both faculty and students, and many students fail to pass the courses. An attempt was made to understand how students' academic motivations may contribute to their success or failure in these courses. Method: The project used a non-experimental design with a convenience sample. Students in five sections of HAP I and HAP II were invited to complete an anonymous 42-item questionnaire that included an adapted version of the Academic Motivation Scale [AMS], six demographic questions, and eight questions about their academic behaviors in and perceptions of their HAP course. A total of 461 students (69% response rate) completed the questionnaire. Analyses included 1) reliability for the seven AMS subscales, 2) correlations among the subscales, among the eight questions about their behaviors and perceptions, and between the subscales and the behavior and perception questions, and 3) a multivariate multiple regression with the AMS subscales as independent variables and the behavior and perception questions as dependent variables. Results: The AMS was successfully adapted to apply to HAP courses with reliabilities comparable to previously published data. Students' levels of intrinsic motivation and amotivation, but not extrinsic motivation, were significantly related to their academic behaviors and perceptions of the courses. Conclusions and Recommendations: Despite high levels of extrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation did not appear related to students' academic behaviors. HAP instructors may need to consider alternate routes to influencing students' academic success behaviors, as it appears that attempts to influence their extrinsic motivations may not essentially translate to changes in academic behavior.


A founder transgenic mouse harbored two different integration patterns of a transgene at the same locus, each of which gave rise to a similar autosomal recessive mutation. Mice of the mutant phenotype were of small stature but had normal levels of growth hormone. The disrupted locus was cloned, and a genetic and molecular analysis showed that the insertional mutants were allelic to a spontaneous mutant, pygmy. The mice should be a useful model for the growth hormone-resistant human dwarf syndromes and could lead to a greater understanding of the pathways involved in growth and development.


Cloud computing has become an integral piece of many services and has had a major impact on how software is developed, both in the research and commercial fields. However, the traditional types of cloud computing are best used for applications that fit well into a client-server model. While this is an invaluable service, it is important to question this paradigm and to research uses for cloud computing that reach beyond traditional models. In this paper, we define Function as a Service, a paradigm for cloud computing that more closely resembles a distributed systems model rather than the traditional client-server model. Under this paradigm, the cloud has a more intimate relationship with interpreted programming languages, allowing software systems to utilize computation from the cloud directly through an API. We define a model for cloud authentication that allows developers to either maintain control over how their software interacts with the cloud, or empower users to choose their cloud provider and themselves define cloud interactions without risk to the developer.


Background Previous studies have reported older adults' perceptions of using health monitors; however, no studies have examined the actual use of multiple health monitors for lifestyle changes over time among older adults with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Objective The primary aim of this study was to examine the actual use of multiple health monitors for lifestyle changes over 3 months among older adults with T2D. The secondary aim was to explore changes in caloric intake and physical activity (PA) over 3 months. Methods This was a single-group study lasting 3 months. The study sample included participants who were aged ≥65 years with a diagnosis of T2D. Participants were recruited through fliers posted at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Participants attended five 60-min, biweekly group sessions, which focused on self-monitoring, goal setting, self-regulation to achieve healthy eating and PA habits, and the development of problem-solving skills. Participants were provided with the Lose It! app to record daily food intake and devices such as a Fitbit Alta for monitoring PA, a Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose meter, and a Bluetooth-enabled digital scale. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis. Results Of the enrolled participants (N=9), the sample was white (8/9, 89%) and female (4/9, 44%), with a mean age of 76.4 years (SD 6.0; range 69-89 years), 15.7 years (SD 2.0) of education, 33.3 kg/m2 (SD 3.1) BMI, and 7.4% (SD 0.8) hemoglobin A1c. Over the 84 days of self-monitoring, the mean percentage of days using the Lose It!, Fitbit Alta, blood glucose meter, and scale were 82.7 (SD 17.6), 85.2 (SD 19.7), 65.3 (SD 30.1), and 53.0 (SD 34.5), respectively. From baseline to completion of the study, the mean daily calorie intake was 1459 (SD 661) at week 1, 1245 (SD 554) at week 11, and 1333 (SD 546) at week 12, whereas the mean daily step counts were 5618 (SD 3654) at week 1, 5792 (SD 3814) at week 11, and 4552 (SD 3616) at week 12. The mean percentage of weight loss from baseline was 4.92% (SD 0.25). The dose of oral hypoglycemic agents or insulin was reduced in 55.6% (5/9) of the participants. Conclusions The results from the pilot study are encouraging and suggest the need for a larger study to confirm the outcomes. In addition, a study design that includes a control group with educational sessions but without the integration of technology would offer additional insight to understand the value of mobile health in behavior changes and the health outcomes observed during this pilot study.


The aim of this work is to reflect on the relationship existing between ethics-based entrepreneurial values, the values associated with local territories and the best practices of small and medium-sized enterprises in promoting pathways to sustainable development. The attention herein is focused on a territory's intangible assets (social capital) and on human relations (relational capital), which may be considered facilitators that inspire a way of doing business capable of meeting human needs, creating and strengthening shared values, and generating a virtuous cycle of company and community prosperity. After a brief description of the theoretical framework of reference, the qualitative analysis of two Italian companies is carried out. These firms, strongly embedded in their local socio-economic environment, reveal the capacity to cooperate in constructing the common good and offer precious testimony to a different, more successful way of doing business or being businesspeople, and building the socio-economic environment.


This paper compares the voltage sag severity problems of two typical utilities operating in humid and dry hot environments. Based on power quality data
and its analysis, it has been attempted to compare the quality of services to the
customers of humid and dry weather terrains. To accomplish this study Tenaga asional Berhad (TNB) Malaysia and Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) Pakistan were chosen. Electrical distribution system fault histories of two utilities, leading to malfunctioning or indiscriminate operation of industrial process controlling computers, protective relays and AC type electromagnetic
contactors thereby imposing costly shutdowns to quality conscious end users, were analyzed to establish the severity of voltage sag aggressiveness in both
areas. Power quality reliability indices were calculated to measure the operational system performance. The study has been focused to formulate algorithm for
estimating probability of nuisance trip outs in industrial organizations operating in humid and hot dry environments. Influence of poor power quality on industrial as well as utility protection and control equipment has been estimated
from the field data spread over a few years. This power quality reliability study concludes that there are higher insulation levels for humid environments than
the plain hot weathers. During this comparative power quality study project on the causes of voltage sags and steady state outages reliability indices, it was
found that some 77% voltage sags were caused by short circuit faults on utility network, 11% due to inter facility faults but no cause could be assigned to
remaining 14% voltage sags resulting in tripping of drives, draft fans, compressors PLCs, ammonia pumps, incinerators and process controllers. The reliability
indices of humid utilities were found relatively poorer than its counterpart. The probability of severe voltage sags in humid environments was found to be much
more than the dry hot weather terrain utilities.


We address the problem of 3D gaze estimation within a 3D environment from remote sensors, which is highly valuable for applications in human-human and human-robot interactions. To the contrary of most previous works, which are limited to screen gazing applications , we propose to leverage the depth data of RGB-D cameras to perform an accurate head pose tracking , acquire head pose invariance through a 3D recti-fication process that renders head pose dependent eye images into a canonical viewpoint, and computes the line-of-sight in the 3D space. To address the low resolution issue of the eye image resulting from the use of remote sensors, we rely on the appearance based gaze estimation paradigm, which has demonstrated robustness against this factor. In this context, we do a comparative study of recent appearance based strategies within our framework, study the generalization of these methods to unseen individual, and propose a cross-user eye image alignment technique relying on the direct registration of gaze-synchronized eye images. We demonstrate the validity of our approach through extensive gaze estimation experiments on a public dataset as well as a gaze coding task applied to natural job interviews. Fig. 1 Example of applications requiring 3D gaze estimation. Left: studying Human-Human Interactions in group interviews (Oertel et al, 2014). Right: Human-Robot Interactions involving groups of people.


Latin American Trade Trend Estimates is an annual study published by the Integration and Trade Sector of the Inter-American Development Bank that analyses the region's trade performance based on available national and international data for selected countries. For 2013, the study reports that Latin American exports stagnated, posting a second straight year of sluggish growth. Export increases were barely over 0%, for a total value of slightly more than $1 trillion. It is also noted that the region's exports actually declined in the first months of the year, continuing a negative trend that began in late 2012. However, in the third quarter, exports began to grow again, and current estimates point to a small positive overall growth rate for the year. Results varied considerably among countries. Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela all posted declines in exports, while Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay posted increases. Results in Central America were mixed, with exports barely growing in Costa Rica and Guatemala, declining in Honduras and Nicaragua, but expanding in El Salvador, and Panama.


Why do some states restrict access to citizens from neighboring states? We explain entry restrictions into states by using a theoretical framework that combines the effects of asymmetrical development, democracy, and interstate conflict with a geographic variable that considers interactions based on neighboring urban settlements. We employ passport and visa requirements as a dependent variable. We apply an ordered probit analysis to test our hypotheses about why states open or close their borders to citizens from neighboring states. We also incorporate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an analytical tool. The results show that the greater the differential in development between two neighboring states, the less likely the richer state will be open to citizens from its poorer neighbor. The presence of urban settlements, enduring peace, and democracy increase the likelihood of border openness between neighboring states, although international trade has no effect on the degree of openness.


This essay seeks to extend the discussion of 20th-century Modernism in a Latin American context by juxtaposing the work of Uruguay's Joaquin Torres-Garcia with the radical leftist politics of the Mexican Muralist movement. As part of this argument, the difference between textual and visual language is discussed as well as the role of monuments in the creation of history and cultural identity. Finally, it concludes with a brief talk on the visual culture of Fascist Italy and the issue of mapping as it pertains to nationalistic sentiment.


The finite and high temperature equilibrium properties of Yang-Mills theory in Landau gauge are studied. Special attention is paid to the fate of confinement and the infrared properties at high temperatures. The method implemented are the equations of motion, the Dyson-Schwinger equations. A specific approximation scheme is introduced, which was previously applied successfully to the vacuum. In a first step, the infinite temperature limit is taken. The theory reduces to a 3-dimensional Yang-Mills theory coupled to a massive adjoint Higgs field. The equations for the propagators of the Higgs, the gluon, and the Faddeev-Popov ghost are obtained. They are solved in the infrared analytically and at least in the Yang-Mills sector confinement is found. Therefore the high-temperature phase of a 4-dimensional Yang-Mills theory is non-trivial and strongly interacting. Solutions for all propagators are obtained numerically at all momenta. Thereby also the propagators of a pure 3-dimensional Yang-Mills theory are determined. Systematic studies find only quantitative effects of the errors, which are induced by the approximations. Good agreement to lattice calculations is found. Finite temperatures down to the regime of the phase transition are investigated. It is found that the infrared properties are only quantitatively affected, and confinement of gluons transverse to the heat bath is established. The hard modes are nearly inert even at temperatures of the order of the phase transition temperature. Therefore the infinite temperature limit is a good approximation already at temperatures a few times the critical temperature, in agreement with lattice calculations. Finally quantities derived from the propagators are studied. The Schwinger functions are calculated. It is found that also the gluons longitudinal with respect to the heat bath are strongly influenced by higher order or even genuine non-perturbative effects, even in the infinite temperature limit. The analytic structure of the gluon propagator is investigated, and it is found that at least gluons transverse to the heat bath comply with the Kugo-Ojima and Zwanziger-Gribov confinement scenarios. Investigating the thermodynamic potential, an approximate Stefan-Boltzmann-like behavior is found. The thermodynamic potential, but not necessarily the pressure, is dominated by the hard modes. By comparison with calculations below the phase transition and lattice calculations it is conjectured that Yang-Mills theory likely undergoes a first order phase transition, which changes a strongly interacting system into another. The phases differ mainly by the properties of the chromoelectric sector.


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Robot-assisted laparoscopic augmentation ileocystoplasty with Mitrofanoff appendicovesicostomy (RALIMA) may protect the upper urinary tract and reestablish continence in patients with refractory neurogenic bladder. Robotic assistance could provide the benefits of minimally invasive surgery without the challenges of pure laparoscopy. Here we present a patient who underwent RALIMA and discuss salient tips for decreasing operative time. METHODS: A 17 year old male with history of microcephaly, chromosomal abnormality, autism, developmental delay, asthma and atrial septal defect who presented to our clinic with recurrent UTIs and urinary retention. Renal US revealed mild bilateral hydronephrosis. UDS confirmed a poorly compliant, high pressure bladder with detrusor leak point pressure of 100 cm of water and failure to empty, consistent with a neurogenic bladder. In order to prevent upper tract damage, decision was made to undergo RALIMA. We do not use a bowel preparation pre-operatively. RESULTS: Total operative time was 332 minutes which is significantly reduced from our previously reported median operative time of 623 minutes when describing our initial experience from 2008-2014. This patient had a short appendix, approximately 3 cm in length. To ensure adequate length in order to mature the stoma to the skin overlying the right iliac fossa, a cuff of cecum was resected with the appendix. A stay suture is utilized to avoid excess handling of the appendix. Percutaneous stay sutures placed in the ileum allow for easier isolation and anastomosis. The harmonic scalpel can accelerate multiple aspects of this operation, as well as provide excellent hemostasis. We use the harmonic scalpel to detubularize ileum, perform a coronal cystotomy and divide the bowel mesentery. CONCLUSIONS: RALIMA has been shown to offer functional outcomes similar to open ileocystoplasty and appendicovesicostomy. Although it is a significantly longer procedure, we offer our experience and surgical techniques to decrease operative times. Source of Funding: none


Arriving in the remote Arnhem Land Aboriginal settlement of Oenpelli (Gunbalanya) in 1925, Alf and Mary Dyer aimed to bring Christ to a former buffalo shooting camp and an Aboriginal population many whites considered difficult to control. The Bible in Buffalo Country: Oenpelli Mission 1925–1931 represents a snapshot of the tumultuous first six years of the Church Missionary Society's mission at Oenpelli and the superintendency of Alfred Dyer between 1925 and 1931. Drawing together documentary and photographic sources with local community memory, a story emerges of miscommunication, sickness, constant logistical issues, and an Aboriginal community choosing when and how to engage with the newcomers to their land.
This book provides a fascinating and detailed record of the primary sources of the mission, placed alongside the interpretation and insight of local Traditional Owners. Its contents include the historical and archaeological context of the primary source material, the vivid mission reports and correspondence, along with stunning photographs of the mission and relevant maps, and finally the oral history of Esther Manakgu, presenting Aboriginal memory of this complex era.
The Bible in Buffalo Country emerged from community desire for access to the source documents of their own history and for their story to be known by the broader Australian public. It is intended for the benefit of communities in western Arnhem Land and is also a rich resource for historians of Aboriginal history (and other scholars in relevant disciplines).


Performance measures provide municipalities the opportunity to improve public accountability, build public trust, and make more informed decisions. While literature on the topic of performance measurement abounds, little work has been done to formulate the elements of a model municipal performance measurement system. The purpose of this research is threefold. First, using available literature, elements of an ideal municipal performance measurement system are identified. Second, the model is used to gauge mid-size Texas cities use of performance measures. Finally, recommendations for improving mid-size Texas cities" performance measurement systems are presented. Empirical research is conducted using content analysis of Fiscal Year 2008 Budget documents to determine, to what extent, these twenty-three Texas cities follow the municipal performance measurement system model when developing annual budgets. A survey is distributed to city managers of the studied cities to gauge how close each city, as a whole, meets the ideal model. Overall, the research indicates mid-size Texas cities meet the model municipal performance measurement system under the performance culture, the developing performance measurement systems, and the application of performance measures categories. Less support, however, exists for the benchmarking and reporting elements of the model.


We present a striping noise compensation architecture for hyperspectral push-broom cameras, implemented on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The circuit is fast, compact, low power, and is capable of eliminating the striping noise in-line during the image acquisition process. The architecture implements a multi dimensional neural network (MDNN) algorithm for striping noise compensation previously reported by our group. The algorithm relies on the assumption that the amount of light impinging at the neighboring photo-detectors is approximately the same in the spatial and spectral dimensions. Under this assumption, two striping noise parameters are estimated using spatial and spectral information from the raw data. We implemented the circuit on a Xilinx ZYNQ XC7Z2010 FPGA and tested it with images obtained from a NIR N17E push-broom camera, with a frame rate of 25fps and a band-pixel rate of 1.888 MHz. The setup consists of a loop of 320 samples of 320 spatial lines and 236 spectral bands between 900 and 1700 nanometers, in laboratory condition, captured with a rigid push-broom controller. The noise compensation core can run at more than 100 MHZ and consumes less than 30mW of dynamic power, using less than 10% of the logic resources available on the chip. It also uses one of two ARM processors available on the FPGA for data acquisition and communication purposes.


The epidemiological, clinical and pathological aspects of natural poisoning caused by Erythroxylum deciduum fruits in sheep are reported. The outbreak occurred from January to March of 2004, in Lagoa Vermelha county, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The poisoning was experimentally reproduced by oral administration of E. deciduum fruits to 5 sheep.Three of them developed neurological signs and died. Poisoning was caused with a single dose of 60g/kg or when the dosage was fractioned into at least 4 doses of 17 g/kg given every 12 hours. The main clinical signs in natural and experimentally poisoned sheep were ataxia, hyperexcitability and muscular tremors which where more pronounced when the animals were moved. At the final stage, dyspnea with abdominal breathing and cyanosis was observed. The most significant alterations found at necropsy were pronounced edema, lung congestion and presence of the fruits or seeds of E. deciduum in the ruminal content of all animals. Histologically, except edema and pulmonary congestion, there were no other significant changes observed.


This paper develops a novel mesh network protection scheme that guarantees a quantifiable minimum grade of service upon a failure within the network using multipath routing. Typically, networks fully guarantee service after a single-link failure, which is often an over-provisioning of resources to maintain essential traffic for the infrequent event of a failure. Our scheme guarantees that a fraction q of each demand remains after any single-link failure, at a fraction of the price of full protection. A linear program is developed to find the minimum-cost capacity allocation to meet both demand and protection requirements. For q ≤(1/2) , an exact algorithmic solution for the minimum-cost routing and capacity allocation is developed using multiple shortest paths. For q>(1/2) , an algorithm is developed based on disjoint path routing that performs, on average, within 1.4% of optimal, and runs four orders of magnitude faster than the minimum-cost solution achieved via the linear program. Moreover, the partial protection strategies developed achieve reductions of up to 83% over traditional full protection schemes.


This paper presents an analysis of the cone penetration test in multi-layered clays using the commercial finite-element code Abaqus/Explicit. The von Mises yield criterion and its associated flow rule are assumed to model the plastic behaviour of elastoplastic undrained clays. An arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian scheme and an enhanced hourglass algorithm are adopted to preserve the quality of mesh throughout the numerical simulation. Initially, the behaviour of the penetration resistance is examined in a soil with only two layers. The bottom layer is the weaker of the two and the behaviour of the penetration resistance when the cone approaches the lower layer is studied. The investigation is then extended to study the cone penetration test in a multi-layered clay by sandwich-ing a weaker clay layer between two stronger clay layers. The thickness of the weaker clay layer is varied and the behaviour of the penetration resistance is studied in relation to the thickness and relative strength of the soil layers. The results are discussed with respect to the soil mechanisms that are present when the cone moves past the relevant layer boundaries so that the position of these boundaries can be determined more accurately.


Carbonic anhydrase is a key enzyme for initiating the crystal nucleation, seen as "the central dark line" in the crystal structure in calcified hard tissues such as tooth enamel, dentin and bone. Both estrogen deficiency and fluoride exposure adversely affected the synthesis of this enzyme in the calcifying hard tissues. This led to the notion that fluoride exposure might increase the risk of developing osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Using ovariectomized rats, which represent an estrogen (Es)-deficient state, as an animal model of postmenopausal women, we examined the causal relationship between fluoride (F) exposure and risk of developing osteoporosis. Two groups of rats, an Es-deficient group and a non-Es-deficient group, were administered free drinking water containing F ions (1.0 mg/L). Two other groups, an Es-deficient group and a control-group, were administered tap water. Soft X-ray radiography demonstrated a significant increase of radiolucent areas in the calvaria of the combined Esdeficient plus F group compared to that in the other experimental groups. Electron microscopy revealed an increase of amorphous minerals in the radiolucent areas. Light microscopy demonstrated that combined effects evidently of Es-deficiency and administration of F caused deterioration of the rat tibia with a coarse pattern of trabecular architecture, suggesting that a decline in bone formation might be the primary cause of osteoporosis. Consequently, F exposure might accelerate osteoporotic changes in postmenopausal women even at a low dose.


In the fall of 2004, the High Speed Autonomous Vehicle Team, a group of 16 students took on the goal of converting a vehicle to drive-by-wire status. The main goal of this project was to convert a Cadillac SRX donated by General Motors, to fully bywire control. This thesis presents the HSAVT brake-by-wire and the steer-by-wire solution. In addition, the results of a literary search on drive-by-wire systems are presented. The results of the project proved that the team came up with a solid, effective drive-by-wire vehicle and that the project met all of the primary goals of the project.


The Biogeochemical-Argo (BGC-Argo) program is building a network of globally distributed, sensor-equipped robotic profiling floats, improving our understanding of the climate system and how it is changing. These floats, however, are limited in the number of variables measured. In this study, we train neural networks to predict silicate and phosphate values in the Southern Ocean from temperature, pressure, salinity, oxygen, nitrate, and location and apply these models to earth system model (ESM) and BGC-Argo data to expand the utility of this ocean observation network. We trained our neural networks on observations from the Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) and use dropout regularization to provide uncertainty bounds around our predicted values. Our neural network significantly improves upon linear regression but shows variable levels of uncertainty across the ranges of predicted variables. We explore the generalization of our estimators to test data outside our training distribution from both ESM and BGC-Argo data. Our use of out-of-distribution test data to examine shifts in biogeochemical parameters and calculate uncertainty bounds around estimates advance the state-of-the-art in oceanographic data and climate monitoring. We make our data and code publicly available.


We take stock of engagements occurring between music and environment and what this heralds for current and future music making and musicology. We consider five contemporary and emerging fields of interest that variously connect the two keywords: 1) music as commemoration or evocation of place; 2) soundscape studies and sound art; 3) acoustic ecology, ecomusicology, and environmental activism; 4) environmental ethnomusicology, archaeomusicology, zoomusicology, and biomusicology; and 5) music and its technological environment. Intersections of the two concepts are on the increase, particularly as composers, performers, and musicologists attempt to respond to matters of climate change, sustainability, and environmental collapse in novel and meaningful ways.


Today is the age of globalization and business is considering as the leading global factor for social and   economic development. It is said that, Accounting is the language of business but it is another gigantic thought that Auditing is the side language of business. Audit is the vital factor to ensure the accountability of an organization, this paper events to explore audit on the perspective of Islam which further enables a practitioners and intended users to be self-confident and inspirational in using his or her acquired knowledge both in traditional system of auditing as well as Islamic perspective. The plot of the paper is as follows: In the first part we shall examine the development and approach of established auditing and point out some of its inadequacies from the Islamic point of view. In the last part, we shall state the role of auditing in the Islamic framework. Keywords: Islamic Auditing, Conventional Auditing, Islamic Shari'ah.


Recent years have witnessed the growing popularity of hashing in large-scale vision problems. It has been shown that the hashing quality could be boosted by leveraging supervised information into hash function learning. However, the existing supervised methods either lack adequate performance or often incur cumbersome model training. In this paper, we propose a novel kernel-based supervised hashing model which requires a limited amount of supervised information, i.e., similar and dissimilar data pairs, and a feasible training cost in achieving high quality hashing. The idea is to map the data to compact binary codes whose Hamming distances are minimized on similar pairs and simultaneously maximized on dissimilar pairs. Our approach is distinct from prior works by utilizing the equivalence between optimizing the code inner products and the Hamming distances. This enables us to sequentially and efficiently train the hash functions one bit at a time, yielding very short yet discriminative codes. We carry out extensive experiments on two image benchmarks with up to one million samples, demonstrating that our approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-arts in searching both metric distance neighbors and semantically similar neighbors, with accuracy gains ranging from 13% to 46%.


The main purpose of the present study was to contrast the two hypotheses of female body attractiveness. The first is the "preference-for-the average" hypothesis: the most attractive female body is the one that represents the average body proportions for a given population. The second is the "preference-for-the supernormal" hypothesis: according to the so-called "peak shift effect", the most attractive female body is more feminine than the average. We investigated the preference for three female body characteristics: waist to hip ratio (WHR), buttocks and breasts. There were 456 participants of both genders. Using a program for computer animation (DAZ 3D) three sets of stimuli were generated (WHR, buttocks and breasts). Each set included six stimuli ranked from the lowest to the highest femininity level. Participants were asked to choose the stimulus within each set which they found most attractive (task 1) and average (task 2). One group of participants judged the body parts that were presented in the global context (whole body), while the other group judged the stimuli in the local context (isolated body parts only). Analyses have shown that the most attractive WHR, buttocks and breasts are more feminine (meaning smaller for WHR and larger for breasts and buttocks) than average ones, for both genders and in both presentation contexts. The effect of gender was obtained only for the most attractive breasts: males prefer larger breasts than females. Finally, most attractive and average WHR and breasts were less feminine in the local than in the global context. These results support the preference-for the supernormal hypothesis: all analyses have shown that both male and female participants preferred female body parts which are more feminine than those judged average. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 179033]


In this paper, an efficient, inexpensive, scalable, and ZigBee-based smart authentication and access control system is proposed. The system consists of a central node and remote nodes. The central node holds a database of authorized users and it is mesh-networked to a set of remote nodes which are spread throughout the premises of an enterprise. For each remote node, a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader is mounted which is used to communicate with the RFID tags. User identification is performed by reading the RFID tag number and authentication is done by means of a password entered by the user through a keypad that resides on the remote node. This data is then transmitted through the wireless 802.15.4 interface to the central node for verification. An event log file with date/time stamp is created for each user that is granted access to the system. It maintains footprints of all users' movement activities within the premises and it is stored on an SD card mounted to the central node. Moreover, the central node can be connected to a computer via the serial port, where the real-time event logs will be visualized on the screen along with the ability of automated parsing and storing the received information directly to Excel without the need of any additional programming requirements. This paper is based on a prototype development of the proposed system. It presents both hardware and firmware design aspects.


This paper presents three scalable and efficient schemes for authenticating MPEG-4 streams: the Flat Authentication Scheme, the Progressive Authentication Scheme, and the Hierarchical Authentication Scheme. All the schemes allow authentication of MPEG-4 streams over lossy networks by integrating seamlessly digital signatures and erasure correction coding with MPEG-4's fine granular scalability. A prominent feature of our schemes is their "sign once, verify many ways" property, i.e., they generate only one digital signature per compressed MPEG-4 object group, but allow clients to verify the authenticity of any down-scaled version of the original signed object group.


Sleep problems affect 20%–30% of toddlers and preschoolers. Few longitudinal studies focused on the impact of infant feeding practices on sleep. We aimed to study the associations between feeding practices up to 8 months and trajectories of sleep quantity or quality from 2 to 5–6 years. Analyses included 1,028 children from the EDEN mother–child cohort. Data were collected by self‐administered questionnaires. Associations between feeding practices (breastfeeding, complementary feeding, use of thickened infant formula, night feeding) and sleep trajectories (sleep‐onset difficulties, night waking, nighttime in bed) were analysed by multiple logistic regressions. Predominant breastfeeding for more than 4 months was associated with lower risk for belonging to the persistent sleep‐onset difficulties trajectory. Night feeding at 4 months or at 2 years old was associated with higher risk for belonging to the persistent sleep‐onset difficulties trajectory, and night feeding at 8 months was associated with higher risk for night waking and higher risk for short nighttime in bed. Early introduction (< 4 months) to complementary foods (excluding baby cereals) was related to lower risk for short nighttime in bed. Use of baby cereals or thickened infant formula was related neither to sleep quality nor to sleep quantity. In conclusion, infant feeding practices are associated with sleep trajectories in preschoolers, with notably a potential protective role of breastfeeding. Further researches are needed to clarify the mechanisms of these relationships.


Persistence is a transient and non-inheritable tolerance to antibiotics by a small fraction of a bacterial population. One of the proposed determinants of bacterial persistence is Toxin-Antitoxin systems (TAS) which are also implicated in a wide range of stress-related phenomena. In a report (Maisonneuve E, Castro-Camargo M, Gerdes K. 2013. Cell 154:1140-1150) an interesting link between ppGpp mediated stringent response, TAS and persistence was proposed. It is proposed that accumulation of ppGpp enhances the accumulation of inorganic polyphosphate which modulates Lon protease to degrade antitoxins. The decrease in the concentration of antitoxins supposedly activated the toxin to increase in the number of persisters during antibiotic treatment. In this study, we show that inorganic polyphosphate is not required for Lon-dependent degradation of YefM, the antitoxin of YefM/YoeB TAS. The Δ10 strain, an Escherichia coli MG1655 derivative in which the ten TAS are deleted, is more sensitive to Ciprofloxacin and Ampicillin compared to wild-type MG1655. Furthermore, we show that the Δ10 strain has relatively lower fitness compared to the wild type and hence, we argue that the implications based on this strain are void. We conclude that there is no direct and specific link between stringent response and the regulation of TAS. The link between TAS and persistence is inconclusive due to altered fitness of Δ10 strain and hence requires thorough inspection and debate. Importance A model connecting stringent response, endoribonuclease encoding Type II Toxin-Antitoxin systems (TAS) and persistence is widely propagated. It states that "accumulation of ppGpp results in accumulation of inorganic polyphosphate which modulates Lon protease to degrade antitoxin rendering toxins free to induce persistence". This work presents a contradiction to and challenges the model. Experimental evidence, literature survey as well as rationale are provided to show that inorganic polyphosphate is not required for the degradation of YefM, the antitoxin in YefM/YoeB TAS. The Δ10 strain is relatively more sensitive to Ciprofloxacin and Ampicillin as well as has lowered fitness. This is likely because of the polar effects on the adjacent genes caused by the genetic manipulation of multiple TAS loci.


The way that wages are determined in a market economy produces results that strike most people as morally counterintuitive, if not positively unjust. I argue that there is an important and easily defensible principle underlying the system—it is designed to channel labour to its best employment, the way that it does any other resource. But many consider this defence too minimal, and so strive to find a thicker, more robust moral principle that can be used to defend the market, using concepts like 'contribution', 'effort', 'laziness', 'skill' or 'talent'—all of which combine to provide a concept of 'desert', or 'fairness' in compensation. The objective of this paper is to caution against such overreach. I begin by articulating what I take to be the central principle underlying the determination of wages. I go on to discuss three different ways that both critics and defenders of the market have sought to go further than this, by introducing thicker moral concepts to the discussion, and why each of these initiatives fails. My central contention will be that markets are structurally unable to deliver 'just' wages, according to any everyday-moral understanding of what justice requires in cooperative interactions.


Perinatal hypoxic-ischemic cerebral injury is a major determinant of neurologic morbidity and mortality in the neonatal period and later in childhood. There is evidence that the dopaminergic system is sensitive to asphyxia. However, the respective enzyme activities have not yet been measured in the living neonatal brain. In this study, we have used 18F-labeled 6-fluoro-L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (FDOPA) together with positron-emission tomography (PET) to estimate the activity of the aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AADC), the ultimate enzyme in the synthesis of dopamine (DA), in the brain of newborn piglets. Simultaneously, the cerebral blood flow (CBF) was measured with colored microspheres. Asphyxia elicited an up to threefold increase of the CBF. Despite this, the blood-brain transfer of FDOPA as well as the clearance rate constants from brain were unchanged. However, the synthesis rate of FDA from FDOPA was significantly increased in frontal cortex, striatum, and midbrain. This increase of the AADC activity and the decrease of monoamine oxidase activity may contribute to the increase of extracellular DA during asphyxia which is expected to be involved in severe disturbances of neuronal metabolism, e.g., by generating free radicals.


The focus of this study was to assess the level of knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and to examine the sexual attitudes and behaviour of adolescents with learning difficulties/disabilities. The sample was obtained from a secondary school in Chatsworth that caters for learners with learning difficulties/disabilities. The study used quantitative methods of data collection . Sixty adolescents with learning disabilities completed questionnaires. The findings indicate that adolescents with learning difficulties/disabilities have good knowledge of HIV/AIDS and subsequently the majority is not engaging in sexual activity. The findings can be used to inform future research on adolescents with learning difficulties/disabilities, as well as to inform future intervention strategies.


Standard English Learners (SELs) are ethnic minority native speakers of English whose mastery of the "standard English language" used in the curriculum of schools is limited due to their use of ethnic-specific nonstandard dialect. Research in language development highlights language as a tool that allows the individual access to basic civil rights and opportunities in the area of politics, economics, and education. A correlation exists between proficiency in the use of Standard English and academic achievement, thereby highlighting the importance of validating the intangible language heritage that these students bring to the school environment while they are schooled in the use of Standard English.


Red mite (Dermanyssus gallinae; De Geer, 1778) is currently one of the most detrimental ectoparasites in laying birds across several countries. Symptoms of D. gallinae infestation include reduction in production, poor egg quality, increased mortality and also a compromise to welfare. Feeding on its host for only short periods of time, the red mite spends the vast proportion of its short life-cycle hidden deep within the house substructure. For this reason, it is the preference of red mite to occupy free range or barn systems as opposed to caged, since a greater number of potential hiding places can be sought. A problem which will therefore be amplified within the EU with the impending ban on production in laying cages. This, in conjunction with concern over resistance to acaricides, toxicity risks and acaricide withdrawal, make control particularly problematic and financially draining for producers. Therefore alternative methods must be sought, such as vaccine development. However, in order for this to be achieved, an understanding of mite antigenicity must first be established. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess immunological response of humeral antibodies to naturally occurring mite antigens, using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and SDS-PAGE. Antibodies were derived from egg yolk and blood sera which were collected from commercial laying farms across the UK with varying levels of red mite infestation and using different production systems (caged, barn and free range). In addition, mites were trapped and counted periodically so as to follow population dynamics over a flock lifespan in conjunction with a series of production measures (Laying percentage, eggs per bird per week, mortality and temperature). The results describe the effect of red mite infestation on production parameters, immunological response and the relationship between them.


Networked thermostats, fitness monitors, and door locks show that the Internet of Things can (and will) enable new ways for people to interact with the world around them. But designing connected products for consumers brings new challenges beyond conventional software UI and interaction design. This book provides experienced UX designers and technologists with a clear and practical roadmap for approaching consumer product strategy and design in this novel market. By drawing on the best of current design practice and academic research, Designing Connected Products delivers sound advice for working with cross-device interactions and the complex ecosystems inherent in IoT technology.


A prominent class of explanations for the gender gaps in student outcomes focuses on the interactions between students and teachers. In this study, I examine whether assignment to a same-gender teacher influences student achievement, teacher perceptions of student performance, and student engagement. This study's identification strategy exploits a unique matchedpairs feature of a major longitudinal study, which provides contemporaneous data on student outcomes in two different subjects. Within-student comparisons indicate that assignment to a same-gender teacher significantly improves the achievement of both girls and boys as well as teacher perceptions of student performance and student engagement with the teacher's subject.


Beyond the Middle Kingdom: Comparative Perspectives on Chinas Capitalist Transformation, edited by Scott Kennedy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. xviii + 256 pp. US$65.00 (hardcover), US$22.95 (paperback and eBook).Although Chinas phenomenal development over the past three decades has attracted extensive scholarly attention, truly comparative, cross-national studies of Chinas transformation are largely conspicuous by their absence. China specialists have made the transition from a descriptive to an analytical mode and have applied a broad range of political theories to the study of China. However, more often than not, analyses of Chinese politics in general and China's political economy in particular have been informed by a scholarly tradition predicated, implicitly or explicitly, on a belief in China's distinctiveness that foregoes an expressly comparative perspective.It is against this background that Scott Kennedy's edited book Beyond the Middle Kingdom: Comparative Perspectives on Chinas Capitalist Transformation is a highly welcome addition to the literature. It places the study of Chinese politics and political economy in an expressly comparative context and seeks "to demonstrate the utility of comparison for better understanding Chinese politics by presenting a nuanced picture that is obscured when the country is viewed in isolation" (p. 14).Given the comparative agenda of this book, the editors and contributors are to be congratulated for engaging in empirically rich, small ?-comparisons involving China and a number of other countries and for transcending a mode of analysis that would limit comparative perspectives to the "usual suspect" group of East Asian developmental states. Instead, this book uses a geographically and typologically rich assortment of comparative cases which, in addition to East Asian developmental states like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, include post-Communist states such as Russia, emerging market economies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, and a mature industrial democracy such as France.The book includes a thought-provoking introduction by editor Scott Kennedy, seven topical chapters contributed by prominent scholars Margaret M. Pearson, Andrew Wedeman, Mark M. Frazier, Scott Kennedy, Kellee S. Tsai and Victor Shih, and by China analyst and businessman Arthur R. Kroeber, with a thoughtful conclusion by Gregory J. Kasza, a leading Japan specialist. Chapters are grouped into two sections: the first addresses Chinas economic reform in the context of debate on "varieties of capitalism", while the second discusses interest groups in an authoritarian context.Pearson kicks off the first section by discussing Chinas economic regulatory framework and by developing a "three tier" model- a top SOE-dominated tier, an intermediate tier featuring assertive industrial policy in parallel with strong competition involving Chinese and foreign firms, and a highly competitive and entrepreneurial bottom tier. Kroeber contrasts China's development approach with the East Asian developmental state paradigm and finds significant deviations due to China's size, its Communist legacy and a different international climate, as well as to pronounced weaknesses of China's political economy such as inequality and limited innovative capacity. …


OLAP applications are widely used in business applications. They are often (implicitly) defined on top of OLTP systems and extensively use aggregation and transformation functions. The main OLAP data structure is a multidimensional table with three kinds of attributes: so-called dimension attributes, implicit attributes given by aggregation functions and fact attributes. Domains of dimension attributes are structured and thus support a variety of aggregations. These aggregations are used to generate new values for the fact attributes. In this paper we systematically develop a theory for OLAP applications. We first define aggregation functions and use these to introduce an OLAP algebra. Based on these foundations we derive properties that guarantee or contradict correctness of OLAP computations. Finally, for pragmatical treatment of OLAP applications the OLTP-OLAP specification frame is introduced.


The purpose of this study was to improve the usability of the Approved Supply List, an alphabetical directory of chemical substances containing a series of entries each having a number of standard elements. The original directory consisted of two printed volumes in different formats and involved a two-stage look-up procedure using both volumes. Three new single-volume alternatives were devised, each of which allowed any substance to be looked up alphabetically by name in one operation. These were compared with the original using a timed look-up task and in-depth interviews with a panel of 24 regular users of the directory. Results showed that all three new versions were used almost twice as fast as the original, and were preferred. An A4 layout with two sequences of entries per page was selected for further development, and alternative treatments of typographic detail were assessed by a further 12 users. The improved usability of the final result was accompanied by a reduction of around 45 per cent in the number of pages in the directory, representing considerable savings in paper and distribution costs. The development and testing of alternative prototypes with a panel of users led to a design solution that could not have been arrived at simply by analysis of problems with the original version.


Ever since the pioneering work of Rottenberg (1956) and Neale (1964), the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH) has played a major role in the economic analysis of professional sport leagues. However, decades of empirical research have not been successful in establishing clear evidence for the importance of competitive balance (CB) for attendance or TV viewers in European professional football. In order to find possible reasons for the gap between the UOH and (the lack of) its empirical validation, our paper adopts a stated preference approach focused on the fans' perception of CB and its relevance in three European professional football leagues. The results indicate that a tipping point/threshold value of CB exists and that crossing this threshold can lead to massive demand reactions. However, since the threshold has not been reached in the leagues included in the sample, the paper provides a possible explanation for the above mentioned gap.


A ∼41 Kyr periodic component has been reported in some sedimentary paleointensity records, allowing speculation that there may be some component of orbital control of geomagnetic field generation such as by obliquity modulation. However, no discernable tendency is found for astronomically‐dated geomagnetic reversals in the Plio‐Pleistocene (0 to 5.3 Ma) or excursions in the Brunhes (0 to 0.78 Ma) to occur at a consistent amplitude or phase of obliquity cyclicity, nor of orbital eccentricity. An implication is that paleointensity lows which are characteristically associated with these features are not distributed in a systematic way relative to obliquity and eccentricity, supporting the idea that orbital forcing does not power the geodynamo.


Many of us feel called to respond to the ecological destruction of our planet, yet we feel overwhelmed, immobilized, and unable to deal realistically with the threats to life on Earth. Noted spiritual and environmental thinkers Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown contend that this crippling response to world crisis is a psychological defense mechanism that has been endemic since the years of the Cold War arms race, when we had to adapt within a single generation to the horrific possibility of nuclear holocaust. Since its publication in 1983, Joanna Macy's book, Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age has sold nearly 30,000 copies and has been the primary resource for groups of men and women confronting the challenging realities of our time without succumbing to paralysis or panic. Coming Back to Life provides a much needed update and expansion of this pioneering work. At the interface between spiritual breakthrough and social action, Coming Back to Life is eloquent and compelling as well as being an inspiring and practical guide. The first third of the book discusses with extraordinary insight the angst of our era, and the pain, fear, guilt and inaction it has engendered; it then points forward to the way out of apathy, tio "the work that reconnects". The rest of the book offers both personal counsel and easy-to-use methods for working with groups in a number of ways to profoundly affect peoples' outlook and ability to act in the world. Table of Contents Foreword by Mathew Fox 1. To Choose Life 2. The Greatest Danger: Apatheia, The Deadening of Mind & Heart 3. The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature & Power 4. The Work that Reconnects 5. Guiding Group Work 6. Affirmation: Coming from Gratitude 7. Despair Work: Owning & Honoring Our Pain for the World 8. The Shift: Seeing with New Eyes 9. Deep Time: Drawing on Past & Future Generations 10. The Council of All Beings: Rejoining the Natural World 11. Going Forth 12. Meditations for Coming Back to Life Joanna Macy has developed an international following over the course of 40 years as a speaker and workshop leader on Buddhist philosophy and the deep ecology movement


Industrial recognition of the importance of optimising engineering component performance has recently led to a significant increase in the use of surface coating technologies. An important process for the production of such coatings is Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) which has proved to be a consistent, reliable and improving technique for industry. In the area of advanced wear resistant coatings however, fundamental research to improve deposition efficiency and enhance coating performance has been required. This thesis describes research investigating the following three areas:A series of experiments was carried out to study the design, metallurgy and performance of TiZr, ZrMo and TiMo segmented targets for use in steered cathodic arc evaporation and unbalanced magnetron sputter PVD techniques. A hot isostatic pressing technique was used to manufacture a range of prototype targets by diffusion bonding of appropriate metallic segments to controllable depths. In steered arc evaporation trials, a deleterious evaporation phenomenon occurred at segment interfaces when the cathode spot traversed from high vapour pressure to low vapour pressure materials. Analysis of the spot motion has led to the proposal of a simple model. Reactive unbalanced magnetron sputtering trials successfully produced a range of TiZrN, TiMoN and ZrMoN coatings of compositions in good agreement with Monte-Carlo simulation predictions. However, preferential poisoning of the high reactivity metal segments on TiMo and ZrMo targets was found to occur during high N2 partial pressure processes. A comparative study of unbalanced magnetron sputtering, steered arc evaporation and the hybrid arc-bond sputter technique has been made during deposition trials on the ternary TiZrN hard coating system. Examination of the influence of two process parameters, substrate bias voltage and nitrogen partial pressure, on the mechanical and physical properties of TiZrN coatings is also reported. Stoichiometric TiZrN films were generally found to exhibit a <1 1 1> single phase, face centred cubic structure with lattice parameters which followed Vegard's law. Alteration of the elemental composition of the alloy could be achieved by altering the power to individual magnetron cathodes or varying the current of the arc discharge during co-deposition. Solid solution strengthening mechanisms produced high hardness values (25OO-36OOH0 which maximised as the alloy composition approached TiQ ^Zrq^. Further studies have been undertaken where A1 was partially substituted for Zr within the lattice to enhance oxidation resistance properties and a range of fully adherent TiAlZrN quaternary films on high speed steel substrates were produced. The development of an original technique for industrial scale fabrication of a range of hard, low period (<150A) multi-layer PVD thin films is outlined and the effects of substrate rotation velocity, type of rotation (1-fold or 3-fold) and deposition rate have been investigated. The high level of lattice mis-match and substantial differences in dislocation line energy and shear modulus has given rise to TiAlN-ZrN films exhibiting Knoop micro-hardness in excess of 4000Hk. Bulk and micro-analysis techniques have indicated a reproducible lamella coating structure can be formed, with accurate control of the layer period. Excellent levels of coating adhesion were implemented by a metal ion etch substrate pre-treatment and the deposition of a sputtered base layer and films exhibited relatively low surface roughness and high density. A coating strategy, based upon the reactivity of the individual target materials and the characteristics of arc evaporated and magnetron sputtered vapour fluxes, has been determined which provides high flexibility in the coating elemental composition. The investigations clearly indicate that the multi-layer coating methods utilised allow the deposition of 3rd generation films without a productivity loss in comparison to 1st generation and 2 nd generation hard coatings.


The populations of many nations and, indeed, the entire world are growing older. As people age, they are more likely to experience medical conditions and take medications that can make operating a personal automobile more difficult. Once driving abilities begin to decline, older adults are often faced with decreased ability to travel to the places that they both want and need to go, due largely to the lack of non-driving options needed for personal mobility. Thus, due to the preference for and pervasiveness of the personal automobile for satisfying mobility needs, there is a global need to keep older adults driving for as long as they can safely do so. In this synthesis of the literature we explored the question: Has the time come for an older driver vehicle? Great gains in safe mobility for older adults could be made by designing automobiles that take into account, and help overcome, some of the deficits in abilities common in older people. This review provides a background and rationale for an older driver vehicle, including discussions of relevant trends, age-related declines in functional abilities, and the adverse consequences of decreased mobility; discusses research and issues related to vehicle design and advanced technology; explores crashworthiness issues and the unique requirements for older adults; and discusses issues related to marketing a vehicle that has been designed for older drivers. Has the time come for an older driver vehicle? We answer this question with a qualified "yes." There is global opportunity to improve the safety, mobility, and quality of life of older adults by designing vehicles and technologies that help overcome common age-related deficits. The marketing of these vehicles to older consumers, however, will be challenging and will likely require further market research.


Gatherings is festive inspiration. Part cookbook, part party planner, part crafty idea book, this is the complete guide to making Christmas special for all ages. Beautifully illustrated with color photography, this handsome volume helps busy families recapture the simple pleasures of the season. Donata Maggipinto, an expert in the art of entertaining, reinvents familiar traditions and adds her own fabulous touches to everything from sweet and savory holiday dishes to festive table decorations, ingenious gifts, and so much more. Her easy party plans each include complete menus, ideas for decorations, and heartfelt tips for making the most of time spent with family and friends. A White Christmas Eve Dinner features a holiday meal with all the fixings on a table set with a miniature village in faux snow. The Old-Fashioned Christmas Breakfast brings the family together over Gingerbread Shakes. And the Gift Wrapping Get-Together is a delicious way to sneak in time with girlfriends while crossing a holiday chore off the list. Packed with satisfying crafts that are fun to make and give, this handbook to the holiday season also includes family-friendly activities perfect for winter afternoons. The modern-day guide to timeless good cheer, "Christmas Family Gatherings" helps make the holidays the way they were meant to be: magical.


Abstract.
 Numerous well-preserved remains of a new limulid species from the Anisian-lower Ladinian (Middle Triassic) of the Tejra section of southern Tunisia are described. Comparisons are made with limulids from the Triassic deposits of Europe and Australia. The new specimens are congeneric with the type species of Limulitella, but show some morphological differences. Here we describe Limulitella tejraensis new species, a small limulid with semicircular prosoma, small and triangular opisthosoma, well-defined axial ridge, and pleurae along both ridges of the opisthosoma. The Tunisian Limulitella fossils are associated with conchostracans, bivalves, gastropods, and microconchids. Sedimentological and paleontological data from the Tejra section suggest freshwater to brackishwater conditions during the formation of the fossil-bearing interval and the influence of marine transgression into a playa-like environment. Supposed adaptation to the stressful environment sheds new light on the origin and survival of the extant limulines. This is the first report of limulid body fossils from the Triassic of North Africa and the first documentation of Limulitella in the Middle Triassic of northern Gondwanaland.


We present the DualSMC network that solves continuous POMDPs by learning belief representations and then leveraging them for planning. It is based on the fact that filtering, i.e. state estimation, and planning can be viewed as two related sequential Monte Carlo processes, with one in the belief space and the other in the future planning trajectory space. In particular, we first introduce a novel particle filter network that makes better use of the adversarial relationship between the proposer model and the observation model. We then introduce a new planning algorithm over the belief representations, which learns uncertainty-dependent policies. We allow these two parts to be trained jointly with each other. We testify the effectiveness of our approach on three continuous control and planning tasks: the floor positioning, the 3D light-dark navigation, and a modified Reacher task.


In this paper, a new variable resolution technique, foveate wavelet transform (FWT), is proposed to represent digital images in an effort to efficiently represent visual data. Compared to existing variable resolution techniques, the strength of the proposed scheme encompasses its linearity preservation, orientation selectivity, and flexibility while supporting interesting behaviors resembling the animate vision system. The linearity preservation of the FWT is due to the fact that only low and/or high-pass filterings are carried out in different regions of an image in the transform. The orientation selectivity indicates the fact that details along the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal directions are readily available in the FWT representation. The flexibility of this new representation technique is witnessed by the readiness of its extensions to represent foveae of different number, shape, and locations. To demonstrate the efficacy of the FWT, two applications are presented. First, an FWT-based active camera control scheme is developed, where the computer can move a camera to track the moving object in the scene. Second, an FWT-based method purporting to recover pan/tilt/zoom camera movements from video clips is developed. Experiments of these two applications have shown encouraging performances.


This thesis is dedicated to the study of Barkley's equation, a stiff diffusion-reaction equation describing waves in excitable media. Several numerical solution methods will be derived and studied, range from the simple explicit Euler method to more complex integrating factor schemes. A C++ application with guided user interface created for performing several of the numerical experiments in this thesis will also be described.


The study ascertained the availability and use of telecommunication/computer information and communication technologies among farmers in Orumba South L.G.A of Anambra State, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to describe the demographic characteristics of the farmers in the study area, identify Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in telecommunication/computer available to the farmers and ascertain the use of ICTs to contact and non-contact farmers in the study area. Data for the study were generated from structured questionnaire. A sample size of 114 farmers made up of 36 contact and 78 non-contact farmers were selected using stratified random sampling technique. Data analysis were by the use of descriptive (frequencies, percentages and mean) and inferential (t-test) statistical tools. The result showed that majority (54.39%) of the farmers are within the active and innovative age category. Majority (87.72%) are married and have one form of education or another. Their farm holdings are small-scaled and majority (99%) of the farmers are experienced while 68.42% are non-contact farmer. Availability of telephone /GSM rating is 57% while computer is 52.6%. Both contact and non-contact farmers make more use of telephone/GSM than other items. The test of the hypothesis showed that calculated t-value of 2.64 is greater than the tabulated t-value of 1.96 at 0.05 level of significance and 112 degree of freedom. Thus the null hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the mean responses of the contact and non-contact farmers in the use of ICT facilities in the study area is rejected. Therefore, the contact farmers differed significantly from the non-contact farmers in their mean responses with respect to the use of ICT facilities for extension purposes. It was recommended that both contact and non-contact farmers should be exposed to the use of other telecommunication/computer other than telephone/GSM and computer.


Abstract Cotton is the "natural" choice and the dominating material in bed linen and sleepwear in Norway as in many other European countries. Regulation of temperature and humidity are important for good sleep, but they are not cotton's strong points. There must have been other than the functional reasons which made cotton the winner in the bedding market. This article builds on literature about bedding in Norway from the 1800s and survey questions from 1951. We ask the question: what materials have been used and why? Wool was used in all bed textiles, both closest to the body and the layers over and under, from the cheapest chopped rags to the most costly textiles. The decline was seen throughout the 1800 and 1900s, but only in the 1960s does wool become totally absent as a next to skin bed textile. The cheap imports of cotton made cottage industry and home production unprofitable and the new emphasis on cleanliness gave cotton a clear leverage.


We discuss the appearance of supersolid phases for interacting hardcore bosons on the square lattice when, in addition to the standard nearest neighbor hopping and repulsion, correlated or next-nearest neighbor hopping is present. Having in mind dimer-based quantum magnets in a field described by effective bosonic models of this kind, we put special emphasis on a comparison between the different cases of relative signs of the kinetic processes, which correspond to unfrustrated or frustrated magnetic models. In the unfrustrated case, we compare Quantum Monte Carlo simulations with a mean-field (classical) approach, which is shown to give qualitatively correct results. Using this classical approach for the frustrated case, we find that, the phase diagram is generically richer than in the unfrustrated case. We also investigate in detail the differences between standard next-nearest neighbour and correlated hopping over the diagonal, with the conclusion that both cases are similar if checkerboard order is present at half-filling, while a supersolid phase can be stabilized without any adjacent solid phase only in the case of correlated hopping.


This paper looks at the vehicle of the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between academia and business and how successful it is in reaching its range of objectives and developing theoretical and practical educational materials for BIM curriculums. The KTP operates by helping businesses improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the UK knowledge base. At the same time, it also helps to increase the business relevance of knowledge base research and teaching for the academic institutions.
For this paper, the KTP project between the University of Salford and John McCall Architects (JMA) in Liverpool is reviewed. This two year KTP focused on the implementation of BIM and Lean principles to JMA's architectural practice in social housing sector. The KTP project is 70% Government funded and 30% funded by JMA and undertaken under the Technology Strategy Board programme, enabling innovation in business. The initial aims and objectives of the KTP are assessed and evaluated against the actual knowledge transfer and implementation and the final outcomes of the KTP for the University, JMA and the KTP associate are highlighted.


This Article presents an empirical study of race and the application of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to criminal street and prison gangs. A strong majority (approximately 86%) of the prosecutions in the study involved gangs that were affiliated with one or more racial minority groups. All but one of the prosecuted White-affiliated gangs fell into three categories: international organized crime groups, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and White supremacist prison gangs. Some scholars and practitioners would explain these findings by contending that most criminal street gangs are comprised of racial minorities. This Article challenges and problematizes this factual assumption by critically examining the processes by which the government may come to label certain criminal groups as gangs for RICO purposes. Based on the study findings, the Article argues that this labeling may be driven by systemic racial biases that marginalize entire racial minority groups and privilege mainstream nonimmigrant White communities. These systemic biases are characterized by converging constructions of race and crime, which fuse perceptions of gang-related crime with images of racial minorities. Conflating racial minorities with criminal activity enables the government to rely upon denigrating racial stereotypes in order to engage in invidious practices of racial profiling and to conduct sweeping arrests of racial minorities under RICO. This conflation also shields groups of nonimmigrant White criminal offenders from being conceptualized as gangs and shields nonimmigrant White neighborhoods from the stigma of having gang problems. In practice, this may harm communities that have White gang problems by preventing the government from executing gang-specific interventions within those communities.


Recent scandals in the corporate world have drawn attention to the extent and diversity of corporate malpractice and the need to curb them. Effective corporate governance practices encourage vigilance, transparency, accountability and proper levels of disclosure which, in turn, inspire investor confidence. This paper examines the regulatory mechanisms dealing with some forms of directors' self-serving conduct in the light of recent reform initiatives in Botswana and South Africa. It looks at directors' benefits and emoluments, loans to directors, compensation for loss of office, directors' interests in their companies' securities, insider dealing and directors' indemnity and insurance. Similar statutory provisions regulate most of these matters, but more needs to be done to effectively control those practices most likely to lead to abuse. It seems that successful supervision of directors' conduct is best achieved by a combined effort of legislative and market regulation, active shareholder participation, comprehensive reporting to shareholders and proof from the market that adhering to sound principles of corporate governance leads to long-term corporate health. Such regulation should, however, not stifle the company's ability to attract and retain directors, nor should it discourage robust yet responsible entrepreneurship and risk-taking.


Abstract This study investigated the synthesis of goethite under conditions resembling those of the prebiotic Earth. The artificial seawater used contains all the major elements as well as amino acids (α-Ala, β-Ala, Gly, Cys, AIB) that could be found on the prebiotic Earth. The spectroscopic methods (FT-IR, EPR, Raman), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction showed that in any condition Gly and Cys favoured the formation of goethite, artificial seawater plus β-Ala and distilled water plus AIB favoured the formation of hematite and for the other synthesis a mixture of goethite and hematite were obtained. Thus in general no protein amino acids (β-Ala, AIB) favoured the formation of hematite. As shown by surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) spectra the interaction between Cys and Fe3+ of goethite is very complex, involving decomposition of Cys producing sulphur, as well as interaction of carboxylic group with Fe3+. SERS spectra also showed that amino/CN and C-CH3 groups of α-Ala are interacting with Fe3+ of goethite. For the other samples the shifting of several bands was observed. However, it was not possible to say which amino acid groups are interacting with Fe3+. The pH at point of zero charge of goethites increased with artificial seawater and decreased with amino acids. SEM images showed when only goethite was synthesized the images of the samples were acicular and when only hematite was synthesized the images of the samples were spherical. SEM images for the synthesis of goethite with Cys were spherical crystal aggregates with radiating acicular crystals. The highest resonance line intensities were obtained for the samples where only hematite was obtained. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and Mössbauer spectra showed for the synthesis of goethite with artificial seawater an isomorphic substitution of iron by seawater cations. Mössbauer spectra also showed that for the synthesis goethite in distilled water plus Gly only goethite was synthesized and in artificial seawater plus Cys a doublet due to interaction of iron with artificial seawater/Cys was observed. It should be pointed out that EPR spectroscopy did not show the interaction of iron with artificial seawater/Cys.


The purpose of this qualitative study was to assess the effectiveness of a disability sport unit in shaping perceptions of disability. Data from interviews, observations, and documents were collected on 87 elementary-aged students, one physical education teacher, and one teaching intern. Comparisons were drawn between fifth graders engaged in a five-week disability sport unit to fourth graders participating in their standard physical education curriculum. Findings revealed differences in the way fourth and fifth graders came to view individuals with disabilities. The results support an analysis of curriculum development that underscores the significance of the social model in positively impacting constructions of disability. Recommendations include the use of disability sports in physical education as an effective strategy for educating students in game play, knowledge of the Paralympics, and the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in a variety of sporting venues.


Purpose – Families represent a large and growing market for the tourism industry. Family tourism is driven by the increasing importance placed on promoting family togetherness, keeping family bonds alive and creating family memories. Predictions for the future of family travel are shaped by changes in demography and social structures. With global mobility families are increasingly geographically dispersed and new family markets are emerging. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the trends that shape the understanding of families and family tourism. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines ten trends that the authors as experts in the field identify of importance and significance for the future of family tourism. Findings – What emerges is that the future of family tourism lies in capturing the increasing heterogeneity, fluidity and mobility of the family market. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding about the changes taking place in family tourism and what it means to the tourism industry in the future.