A new class of circuits called "partially self-checking circuits" is described. These circuits have one mode of operation called secure mode in which every fault is tested in normal operation and no fault can cause an undetected error. They also have an insecure mode of operation in which undetected errors can occur; however, every fault that can cause an error in insecure mode is tested by some input in secure mode. One application of these circuits is in the arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) of a computer with data encoded in an error-detecting code. While there is no code simpler than duplication which detects single errors in logical operations such as AND and OR, it is shown that there exist partially self-checking networks to perform these operations. A commercially available medium-scale integration (MSI) chip, the 74181 4-bit ALU, can be used in a partially self-checking network to perform arithmetic and logical operations.


We have fabricated the Ti/n-type GaAs Schottky diodes (SDs) by the DC magnetron deposition and thermal evaporation, cut from the same GaAs substrates, and we have made a comparative study of the current–voltage (I–V) measurements of both SDs in the measurement temperature range of 160–300K with steps of 10K. The barrier height (BH) values of about 0.82 and 0.76eV at 300K have been obtained for the sputtered and evaporated SDs, respectively. It has been seen that the apparent BH value for the diodes has decreased with decreasing temperature obeying the single-Gaussian distribution (GD) for the evaporated diode and the double-GD for the sputtered diode over the whole measurement temperature range. The increment in BH and observed discrepancies in the sputtered diode have been attributed to the reduction in the native oxide layer present on the substrate surface by the high energy of the sputtered atoms and to sputtering-induced defects present in the near-surface region. We conclude that the thermal evaporation technique yields better quality Schottky contacts for use in electronic devices compared to the DC magnetron deposition technique.


ABSTRACT Background: Recent studies have analyzed the efficacy of various agents in experimental chemoprevention trials. In our study, the effects of melatonin (Mel) and its antagonist Luzindole (Luz) on Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in a NMU (N-methyl-N-nitrosourea)-induced rat mammary carcinoma model are investigated. We aim to demonstrate the relationship between Mel and HO-1. Methods: Spraque-Dawley rats were treated with NMU at age 55 days to induce mammary carcinoma. Forty-eight rats were divided into four groups consisting of: (a) physiological saline group (PSG); (b) control group, NMU is given; (c) Mel group (500 μg daily); (d) Mel antagonist Luz group (0.25 mg/kg/day i.p.). The animals were sacrificed; their serum and tissues were sampled for histopathologic evaluation, markers of endocrine derangement (serum prolactin, estradiol, and progesterone levels), apoptotic changes, DNA fragmentation, markers of oxidative stress and HO-1 immune expression were measured. Results: Most tumors developed in the Luz group (42%), followed by the control group (33%), and the Mel group (17%). The tumor latency was longer in Mel-treated group (control and Luz at week 17, Mel at week 21). The maximum tumor volume was also smaller in Mel group when compared to control and Luz groups (p < .05). In Mel group estradiol, progesterone, and prolactin levels were decreased compared to control group (p < .001; p < .01; and p < .01) and levels of apoptotic activity and DNA fragmentation ratio increased. Conclusions: The increment of HO-1 expression with Mel is described; possible underlying mechanisms of these effects await further investigations.


This paper uses data on actual returns on taxable bonds, tax-exempt bonds, and a small sample of equity mutual funds over the 1962-1998 period to compare two asset location strategies for retirement savers. The first strategy gives priority to holding equities, through equity mutual funds, in a saver's tax-deferred account, while the second strategy gives priority to holding fixed-income investments in the tax-deferred account. We consider high-income taxable individual investors who saved in each year and invested in one of actively-managed funds in our sample. Over the thirty-seven year span that we consider, such savers would have accumulated a larger stock of wealth if they had held their equity mutual fund in their tax-deferred account than if they had held the fund in a conventional taxable form. The explanation for this apparent contradiction of the often-stated bonds in the tax-deferred account' prescription has two parts. First, many equity mutual funds impose substantial tax burdens on their investors. This raises the effective tax rate on investing in equities through mutual funds rather than in a buy-and-hold personal portfolio. Second, taxable investors who wish to hold fixed income assets can do so by holding tax-exempt bonds as well as by holding taxable bonds. The interest rate differential between taxable and tax-exempt bonds suggests that the effective tax rate on fixed income investments may be lower than the statutory tax rate for high-income investors.


The business of helping firms to become 'investment ready' has long been seen as vital to the long-term development of any economy, but the process of identifying and attracting the right kind of investor can be a difficult process for many small- and medium-sized businesses. Venture Capital Funding gives you a detailed, step-by-step guide to obtaining venture capital - from building a management team, through to the maze of due diligence procedures and necessary legal procedures.

The practicalities of competing for, and winning, additional capital are broken down into key areas, such as: the significance of the business plan; types of investor; targeting and attracting a funder; negotiation and initial valuations; the due diligence process; and the available investment vehicles.

It also explores the many reasons why companies seek out additional funding, and discusses the points in the business life cycle when such injections are appropriate.


It is often laborious and costly to manually annotate videos for training high-quality video recognition models, so there has been some work and interest in exploring alternative, cheap, and yet often noisy and indirect training signals for learning the video representations. However, these signals are still coarse, supplying supervision at the whole video frame level, and subtle, sometimes enforcing the learning agent to solve problems that are even hard for humans. In this paper, we instead explore geometry, a grand new type of auxiliary supervision for the self-supervised learning of video representations. In particular, we extract pixel-wise geometry information as flow fields and disparity maps from synthetic imagery and real 3D movies, respectively. Although the geometry and high-level semantics are seemingly distant topics, surprisingly, we find that the convolutional neural networks pre-trained by the geometry cues can be effectively adapted to semantic video understanding tasks. In addition, we also find that a progressive training strategy can foster a better neural network for the video recognition task than blindly pooling the distinct sources of geometry cues together. Extensive results on video dynamic scene recognition and action recognition tasks show that our geometry guided networks significantly outperform the competing methods that are trained with other types of labeling-free supervision signals.


One of the central concerns of Evolutionary Developmental biology is to understand how the specification of cell types can change during evolution. In the last decade, developmental biology has progressed toward a systems level understanding of cell specification processes. In particular, the focus has been on determining the regulatory interactions of the repertoire of genes that make up gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Echinoderms provide an extraordinary model system for determining how GRNs evolve. This review highlights the comparative GRN analyses arising from the echinoderm system. This work shows that certain types of GRN subcircuits or motifs, i.e., those involving positive feedback, tend to be conserved and may provide a constraint on development. This conservation may be due to a required arrangement of transcription factor binding sites in cis regulatory modules. The review will also discuss ways in which novelty may arise, in particular through the co‐option of regulatory genes and subcircuits. The development of the sea urchin larval skeleton, a novel feature that arose in echinoderms, has provided a model for study of co‐option mechanisms. Finally, the types of GRNs that can permit the great diversity in the patterns of ciliary bands and their associated neurons found among these taxa are discussed. The availability of genomic resources is rapidly expanding for echinoderms, including genome sequences not only for multiple species of sea urchins but also a species of sea star, sea cucumber, and brittle star. This will enable echinoderms to become a particularly powerful system for understanding how developmental GRNs evolve. genesis 52:193–207. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


CONTEXT
Increased testosterone (T) levels are a cardinal feature of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Female relatives of affected women, including premenarchal daughters, have elevated T levels supporting a genetic susceptibility to this phenotype. Girls with obesity (OB-g) also have increased T levels throughout puberty, which may indicate risk for PCOS.

OBJECTIVE
We tested the hypothesis that premenarchal daughters of women affected with PCOS (PCOS-d) have distinctive phenotypic features compared with OB-g.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
Forty-eight PCOS-d, 30 OB-g, and 22 normal weight (NW-g) premenarchal girls were studied. Mothers of OB-g and NW-g had no evidence for PCOS.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Reproductive hormones were measured.

RESULTS
Body mass index differed by design, was highest in OB-g, followed by PCOS-d (P > 0.001). PCOS-d and OB-g had similar increases in free T levels compared with NW-g (PCOS-d vs NW-g, P = 0.01; OB-g vs NW-g, P = 0.0001). Sex hormone binding globulin levels were lowest in OB-g and lower in PCOS-d than in NW-g (PCOS-d vs NW-g, P = 0.005; OB-g vs NW-g, P < 0.0001; PCOS-d vs OB-g, P < 0.0001). Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels in PCOS-d were significantly increased compared with OB-g, who tended to have lower AMH levels than NW-g (PCOS-d vs OB-g, P < 0.0001; PCOS-d vs NW-g, P = 0.10).

CONCLUSIONS
Despite similarly elevated free T levels, PCOS-d had increased AMH levels compared with OB-g. This finding suggests that OB-g lack alterations in ovarian folliculogenesis, a key reproductive feature of PCOS. Causal mechanisms may differ in PCOS-d or OB-g, or elevated T in OB-g may not be an early marker for PCOS.


Replicated systems provide the foundation for most of today's large-scale services. Engineering such replicated system is an onerous task. The first—and often foremost—step in this task is to establish an appropriate set of design goals, such as availability or performance, which should synthesize all the underlying system properties. Mixing design goals, however, is fraught with dangers, given that many properties are antagonistic and fundamental trade-offs exist among them. Navigating the harsh landscape of trade-offs is difficult because these formulations use different notations and system models, so it is hard to get an all-encompassing understanding of the state of the art in this area. In this paper, we address this difficulty by providing a systematic overview of the most relevant trade- offs involved in building replicated systems. Starting from the well-known FLP result, we follow a long line of research and investigate different trade-offs, assembling a coherent perspective of these results. Among others, we consider trade-offs which examine the complex interactions between properties such as consistency, availability, low latency, partition-tolerance, churn, scalability, and visibility latency.


In this paper, we study the graphical structure of elementary trapping sets (ETS) of variable-regular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. ETSs are known to be the main cause of error floor in LDPC coding schemes. For the set of LDPC codes with a given variable node degree dl and girth g, we identify all the non-isomorphic structures of an arbitrary class of (a, b) ETSs, where a is the number of variable nodes and b is the number of odd-degree check nodes in the induced subgraph of the ETS. Our study leads to a simple characterization of dominant classes of ETSs (those with relatively small values of a and b) based on short cycles in the Tanner graph of the code. For such classes of ETSs, we prove that any set S in the class is a layered superset (LSS) of a short cycle, where the term "layered" is used to indicate that there is a nested sequence of ETSs that starts from the cycle and grows, one variable node at a time, to generate S. This characterization corresponds to a simple search algorithm that starts from the short cycles of the graph and finds all the ETSs with LSS property in a guaranteed fashion. Specific results on the structure of ETSs are presented for dl = 3, 4, 5, 6, g = 6, 8 and a, b ≤ 10. The results of this work can be used for the error floor analysis and for the design of LDPC codes with low error floors.


Using this edition, the reader may see at once how Shakespeare's manuscript of the play, upon which the second quarto (Q2) is based, was adapted for the Elizabethan stage by the author and/or his colleagues. Q1 is considerably shorter than Q2. While many long speeches are cut, abbreviated, or revised, the structure of the play remains essentially as Shakespeare originally conceived it. Q1 is thus quite different, for instance, from Q1 "Hamlet", whose provenance is still open to debate. While both of these early quartos were once believed to be memorial reconstructions, and thus 'Bad' quartos, the theory of memorial reconstructions has now been seriously disputed.One of the essays appended to Halio's edition, 'Handy-Dandy: Q1/Q2 Romeo and Juliet', discusses this issue and brings fresh evidence to bear to show that Q1 Romeo is not truly a 'Bad' quarto, as A. W. Pollard long maintained. In another essay, Halio offers a brief stage history of "Romeo and Juliet". Many non-authorial changes in the texts of Shakespeare's play were common in the eighteenth century. For example, Garrick introduced Juliet's spectacular funeral procession at the end of act 4, along with many new songs. Later, the American actress Charlotte Cushman removed many of these interpolations and restored much of Shakespeare's original text. Modern-dress productions of the play have often been staged, which introduced a good deal of modern technology into the action. Jay L. Halio is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Delaware.


Objectives:  Newborns, particulary preterm infants, have limited antioxidant protective capacity. The organism's defence system against reactive oxygen species including vitamins A, E and C, trace element selenium (Se) and enzymes, such as catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH‐Px) are essential components of the antioxidant system against the oxidative injury to the cellular membranes of erythrocytes. In this study, our aim was to compare the oxidant nitric oxide (total plasma nitrite level as an indicator of nitric oxide (NO)), antioxidant vitamins and selenium and erythrocyte antioxidant enzymes in premature babies with hyperbilirubinaemia with healthy preterms.


While existing literature on cause frequently cites the negative meaning associated with that lexeme, i.e. the fact that cause tends to appear with a negative outcome, e.g. cause an accident, really no scholar has studied in any detail the historical development of the phenomenon. In order to address this missing line of scholarship concerning the diachronic development of, what we refer to here as, a semantic prosody, this paper presents a fine-grained historical study of the development of the negative semantic associations of cause by comparing tokens from the Early Modern English period to those from Present-day English. We are able to conclude that the semantic prosody involved with cause is an emergent diachronic phenomenon. In addition, we are also able to argue that it is at the level of construction that such a prosodic pattern operates. Following from the notion that the semantic prosody is a construction-level phenomenon, we offer an exemplar-based model to motivate certain of the diachronic and synchronic facts.


Abstract. Aerosol-layer height is essential for understanding the
impact of aerosols on the climate system. As part of the European Space
Agency Aerosol_cci project, aerosol-layer height as derived from passive
thermal and solar satellite sensors measurements have been compared with
aerosol-layer heights estimated from CALIOP measurements. The Aerosol_cci
project targeted dust-type aerosol for this study. This ensures relatively
unambiguous aerosol identification by the CALIOP processing chain. Dust-layer
height was estimated from thermal IASI measurements using four different
algorithms (from BIRA-IASB, DLR, LMD, LISA) and from solar GOME-2 (KNMI) and
SCIAMACHY (IUP) measurements. Due to differences in overpass time of the
various satellites, a trajectory model was used to move the CALIOP-derived
dust heights in space and time to the IASI, GOME-2 and SCIAMACHY dust height
pixels. It is not possible to construct a unique dust-layer height from the
CALIOP data. Thus two CALIOP-derived layer heights were used: the cumulative
extinction height defined as the height where the CALIOP extinction column is
half of the total extinction column, and the geometric mean height, which is
defined as the geometrical mean of the top and bottom heights of the dust
layer. In statistical average over all IASI data there is a general tendency
to a positive bias of 0.5–0.8  km against CALIOP extinction-weighted
height for three of the four algorithms assessed, while the fourth algorithm
has almost no bias. When comparing geometric mean height there is a shift of
 − 0.5  km for all algorithms (getting close to zero for the three
algorithms and turning negative for the fourth). The standard deviation of
all algorithms is quite similar and ranges between 1.0 and 1.3  km .
When looking at different conditions (day, night, land, ocean), there is more
detail in variabilities (e.g. all algorithms overestimate more at night than
during the day). For the solar sensors it is found that on average SCIAMACHY
data are lower by − 1.097  km ( − 0.961  km ) compared to the
CALIOP geometric mean (cumulative extinction) height, and GOME-2 data are
lower by − 1.393  km ( − 0.818  km ).


Reclaimed wastewater reuse for irrigation to crop plants is evaluated in a laboratory-scale experiment to assess growth and water saving potential from natural resources. A prototype laboratory-scale treatment plant was established for this purpose with suspended and attached growth configurations. Chakwal wheat variety was selected to examine growth parameters. The removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) were evaluated to check the quality of treated water. It was found that a suspended growth sequencing batch bioreactor (SGSBBR) achieved 97% ± 2 removal efficiency over a 4 h hydraulic retention time (HRT). For an attached growth sequencing batch bioreactor (AGSBBR) results showed 98% ± 2 removal efficiencies with polyurethane. TN and TP removal efficiency was 58.7 ± 3% and 64 ± 4.8% in SGSBBR, 53 ± 0.17% and 67 ± 2.7% in polyurethane. AGSBBR enhanced performance with AGSBBR may be due to enforced anoxic/aerobic conditions in the inner layers of biofilm formed on biocarriers which facilitate the required metabolic conditions for treating high strength wastewater. Plant growth was visibly greater in SGSBBR treated wastewater than AGSBBR because of less nutrient removal.


Sight distance is one of the major elements that must be considered in the geometric design to achieve safe and comfortable highways. Daytime sight distance has been extensively studied, and analytical models for two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) alignments have been developed. However, nighttime (headlight) sight distance has received less attention. Despite the higher accident rate during nighttime than during daytime, existing analytical models evaluating headlight sight distance are very primitive. Moreover, the interaction between the horizontal and vertical alignments has not been modeled. A four-phase analytical model for headlight sight distance on 3-D combined alignments is presented. The model is an application of the finite-element technique in highway geometric design. The model can determine the maximum distance that can be covered by the vehicle's headlights and that is not obstructed by any sight obstructions including the road surface. On the basis of this analytical model, computer software was developed and used in a preliminary application for 3-D headlight sight distances on a sag or crest vertical curve combined with a horizontal curve. The application showed that the 3-D sight distance on sag vertical curves was generally lower than the corresponding 2-D value when the sag curve was overlapping with a horizontal curve. On the other hand, the overlapping of horizontal curves with crest vertical curves enhanced the 3-D sight distance. The difference between 2-D and 3-D sight distance values in both cases increased with a decrease in the horizontal curve radius and an increase in the pavement cross slope. The model was proved to be extremely valuable in establishing 3-D highway geometric design standards.


The rate of urbanization has been increasing rapidly since the second half of the 20th century. The impact urbanization has on the environment has attracted considerable attention. The viewpoints on the impact and the experience in Nigeria, particularly in the two new cities of Abuja and Yenagoa, are analyzed. The data collection involves an extensive review of literature, consultation of government documents and interview of government officials. Three schools of thought on the relationship between urbanization and the environment are identified and discussed. These are the environment deterioration facilitator school, the development-stage dependent facilitator school and the environmental-deterioration dampener school. The position of the environment deterioration facilitator school is that the emergence and functioning of a city always results in environmental decay while the development stage dependent perspective argues that the degree of impact varies with the developmental stage of the city or more appropriately the level of development of the country where the city is located. The third school posits that urbanization, rather than resulting in environmental deterioration, dampens environmental decay. A general impact analysis of Nigerian cities, based on solid waste pollution, sewage pollution, water pollution, air pollution and noise pollution, indicates that, although the impact has declined over the years, it continues to be considerable. A more detailed examination of the situation in the two new towns of Abuja and Yenagoa shows clearly the role effective environmental management plays in an amelioration of the impact. The Nigerian experience indicates that the development-stage-dependent facilitator school of thought is the most relevant.

 Key words: Urbanization, environmental deterioration, new towns, Nigeria.


As the world's elderly population continues to grow, so does the number of individuals diagnosed with cognitive impairments. It is estimated that 115 million people will have age-related memory loss by 2050 [1]. The number of older adults who have difficulties performing self-care and independent-living activities increases significantly with the prevalence of cognitive impairment. This is especially true for the population over 70 years of age [2]. Cognitive impairment, as a result of dementia, severely affects a person's ability to independently initiate and perform daily activities, as cognitive abilities can be diminished [3]. If a person is incapable of performing these activities, continuous assistance from others is necessary. In 2010, the total worldwide cost of dementia (including medical, social, and informal care costs) was estimated to be US$604 billion [1].


A Stochastic Approach to Motorcycle Dynamics by Luis Alejandro Robledo Ricardo A study on the applicability of the Monte Carlo method in the analysis of the dynamical behavior of motorcycles subject to road excitation is presented. To this end, a time-domain numerical simulation of the response of a motorcycle modeled as a linear four-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) system, and traveling at constant speed is carried out. To validate the accuracy of the solutions obtained, the linear 4-DOF model is also analyzed using the frequency domain approach. Although the Monte Carlo simulation can be computationally costly, it provides an excellent scheme of analyzing, as well, non-linear systems, in which case the frequency domain approach cannot be applied. In this context the applicability of auto-regressive (AR) and autoregressive-moving-average (ARMA) filters for efficient implementation of the Monte Carlo simulation is pointed out. Furthermore, a practical engineering approach is presented for improved road roughness power spectral density (PSD) representation, and statistical parameters of the excitation signals synthesized.


Background: Primary care at home is not a new idea, but rather a reinvention of an old and almost forgotten practice. Today, only 1% of primary care visits are provided in a home setting; despite the increasing aging homebound population in the United States. Current primary care at home research relates improved patient outcomes with primary care at home visits. Primary care at home is reemerging in the United States, but currently is not generating many positive reviews. There is a gap in the current primary care at home literature regarding nurse practitioner home visit practices and perceptions. Methods: A quantitative quasi-experimental study design was utilized for this study. The underlying researcher hypothesis was that primary care home visits are underutilized. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions, barriers, knowledge and practices of nurse practitioners (NPs) regarding home visits in primary care and to evaluate changes in perceptions and practices following an educational intervention. The sample chosen for this study was volunteer nurse practitioners attending two pharmacology update conferences. Ninety eight nurse practitioners were included in this convenience sample study. The data collection of this study occurred in three phases. The first and second phases of the study used a face to face approach. The third phase occurred approximately six weeks later via email. The analysis methods were cross tabulations and descriptive statistics. Results: The nurse practitioner participants in this study indicated that 27% had made a primary care home visit, thus supporting the hypothesis for this study. Fifty four percent indicated that they had not considered making a primary care at home visit. Forty three percent stated that they would be more likely to make or increase a home visit based on the educational intervention. Eighty five percent of initial study participants were aware that Medicare could be billed for PRIMARY CARE AT HOME 7 primary care home visit. Six percent of the Home Visit Implementation Post Survey participants indicated making primary care home visits since September 2013. Conclusions: The primary conclusion of this study was that primary care home visits are underutilized by nurse practitioner study participants. The findings from this study will add to the body of knowledge regarding nurses' perceptions and practices of primary care at home. The researcher believes that by increasing awareness of benefits of primary care home visits; nurse practitioners will increase the amount of home visits being made. Ultimately, increasing access of primary care to homebound patients will improve their overall patient outcomes.


Adhesively bonded joints are attracting increasing interest in a wide range of industries, especially in transportation sectors (marine, automotive, aerospace), due to manifold advantages compared to conventional joining techniques such as riveting and welding. Therefore, both the design of adhesive joints as well as the assessment of possible failures in bonded structures during service life is of great concern. This paper presents a novel approach for an efficient SHM technique. The approach is presented and discussed on the basis of two different adhesively bonded applications, namely the single lap joint configuration and a one sided repair patch, which can be considered as a special case of single lap joints. The SmartSHM technique is based on the use of structural damage indicators. For single lap joints, the approach is related to the shift of the back face strain curve and its zero crossing due to crack initiation. Considering the repair patch, bending effects in longitudinal and transverse direction are investigated in 2D and 3D numerical analyses. Especially transverse bending effects show high potential for a SHM system based on two circumferential optical fiber sensors. doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/27


The concept of software defined wireless networks (SDWN) has been rapidly evolving as the solution to meet the demand for dynamic wireless services in ubiquitous computing. In SDWN, the control plane and data plane are decoupled, network intelligence is logically centralized, and the underlying network infrastructure is abstracted from the applications. Thus it highly simplifies network administration and management, which facilitates the dynamic nature of future network functions and intelligent applications while lowering operating costs through simplified hardware, software, and management. This is the second part of the "Software Defined Wireless Networks (SDWN)" Feature Topic. In Part 1, which was published in November 2015, we provided an overview of the latest major developments and progress in SDWN architecture. In this Part II, we present articles that provide fruitful insights into selected topics such as Cloud-RAN management, flexible spectrum management, SDWN security, and SDN-based self organizing strategies. We believe that it complements Part I, and together they provide a holistic overview of features and trends in future SDWN development.


RACNet is a monitoring sensor network to provide highfidelity visibility, in terms of spatial and temporal resolution, of data center environmental conditions for energy efficiency improvement. RACNet overcomes the high node density and harsh RF environment challenges in data centers to achieve over 99% reliable data yield and short data collection latency. It does so through a novel network architecture that decouples data collection from the construction of the routing tree. This design, coupled with the use of different frequencies along neighboring data collection trees, enables RACNet to support large-scale, dense networks while maintaining perfect data reliability. Results from simulations, testbed, and real world deployments indicate that RACNet outperforms previous data collection systems, especially as node density increases.


The field of distributed estimation, computation, testing and learning on graphs has witnessed large advances in theory and wide adoption in practice. However, there do not currently exist any methods for multiple hypothesis testing on graphs that are equipped with provable guarantees on error metrics like the false discovery rate (FDR). In this paper, we consider a novel but natural setting where distinct agents reside on the nodes of an undirected graph, and each agent possesses p-values corresponding to one or more hypotheses local to its node. Each agent must individually decide whether to reject one or more local hypotheses by only communicating with its neighbors, with the joint aim that the global FDR over the entire graph must be controlled at a predefined level. We propose a simple decentralized family of Query- Test-Exchange (QuTE) algorithms and prove that they can control FDR under independence or positive dependence of the p-values. Our algorithm reduces to the Benjamini-Hochberg algorithm when the graph is a star or a clique, and to the Bonferroni procedure when the graph has no edges. We study the power of our procedure using a simulation suite of different levels of connectivity and communication on a variety of graph structures, and also provide an illustrative real-world example.


Bacteria use B12 as a light-sensitive switch to control DNA binding of a transcriptional repressor. Whereas a role for vitamin A in light-mediated signaling is well known (indeed this is responsible for human vision), less is known about a role for vitamin B12 in light-mediated signaling. Following on previous work showing that cobalamin (B12) is required for repression of a light-inducible promoter in Myxococcus xanthus, Ortiz-Guerrero et al. identified a molecular mechanism for light-induced alleviation of the repressive activity of CarH, which was mediated by B12. CarH and CarA are structurally similar repressors of the carotenogenic genes that protect bacteria from photooxidative damage, but only CarH requires B12 for its function. These carotenogenic genes are repressed in the dark and stimulated in the light. Replacing the C-terminal domain of CarA with that of CarH conferred B12-dependent repressor activity to CarA. To produce sufficient protein for biochemical analysis, the authors constructed chimeric proteins of the N-terminal (DNA-binding) domain of CarA or CarR fused to the C-terminal domain of Thermus thermophilus homolog of CarH (CTt1 or CTt2, respectively). Whereas the binding of CarA to the CarA/CarH operator was not affected by the presence of any form of B12, CTt1 and CTt2 both exhibited increased DNA binding in the presence of AdoB12 but not in the presence of MeB12 or CNB12. Knocking out the only gene in M. xanthus that can convert inactive CNB12 to active AdoB12 resulted in loss of repression of carotenogenic genes in a strain engineered to depend solely on CarH for repression. Two-hybrid analysis (performed in the dark) showed that the C-terminal domains of CarH or T. thermophilus CarH (TtCarHCt) interacted only in the presence of B12, and size exclusion chromatography (performed in the dark) showed that in the presence of AdoB12 the TtCarHCt formed tetramers, whereas in its absence this fragment was monomeric. Light at wavelengths that trigger the cleavage of a bond in AdoB12 (ultraviolet, blue, or green light, but not red light, which AdoB12 does not absorb) impaired the interaction of the C-terminal domains in the two-hybrid system, caused these protein domains to migrate as monomers in size exclusion chromatography experiments, and reduced the DNA-binding affinity of CTt1 and CTt2. In an M. xanthus strain solely dependent on CarH for carotenogenic gene repression, white light, but not red light, stimulated the conversion of the bacteria from yellow to red, consistent with induction of the carotenogenic genes, and induction of a CarA- or CarH-responsive reporter required light and the presence of B12. Thus, this work suggests that B12 functions as a light sensor in bacteria to control the oligomerization and DNA-binding affinity of a transcriptional regulator. J. M. Ortiz-Guerrero, M. C. Polanco, F. J. Murillo, S. Padmanabhan, M. Elías-Arnanz, Light-dependent gene regulation by a coenzyme B12-based photoreceptor. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 7565–7570 (2011). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Purpose American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) women are disproportionately affected by gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). GDM is a risk factor for subsequent diagnosis of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in both mother and offspring, yet there is minimal research being conducted in this population. The purpose of this portion of a larger 5-year study is to examine AIAN women's experiences of having GDM or T2D during pregnancy, inform the development of a GDM risk reduction and preconception counseling (PC) program tailored to AIAN girls, and enhance mother-daughter communication and support within the program. Methods AIAN women with TD2 or a history of GDM (N = 5) were interviewed to understand their unique perspectives on diabetes and pregnancy, behaviors to reduce risk, and content for a PC education program for AIAN girls. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using the constant comparison method to construct themes across the interviews. Results Four primary themes were constructed: lack of knowledge on GDM and GDM risk factors, importance of AIAN culture for health and wellness, suggestions for communication with AIAN girls to reduce risk of GDM, and the emotional impact of GDM diagnosis. Conclusions Participants wished they had known about risk factors for GDM and how to reduce their own risk of developing GDM. Findings from this study have been used to adapt an existing PC program, originally developed for non-AIAN girls with diabetes, for AIAN girls who do not have diabetes but have risk factors for developing GDM in future pregnancies.


The open-source NetBeans Platform is an extraordinarily powerful framework for building "write once, run anywhere" rich client applications. Now, for the first time since the release of NetBeans IDE 5.0, there's a comprehensive guide to rich client development on the NetBeans Platform.Written for Java developers and architects who have discovered that basic Swing components are not enough for them, this book will help you get started with NetBeans module development, master NetBeans' key APIs, and learn proven techniques for building reliable desktop software. Each chapter is filled with practical, step-by-step instructions for creating complete rich client applications on top of the NetBeans Platform and plugins for NetBeans IDE.Rich Client Programming's wide-ranging content covers Why modular development makes sense for small, medium, and large applications Using NetBeans to accelerate development and improve efficiency Leveraging NetBeans productivity features, from the Component Palette to Code Completion Leveraging NetBeans' modular architecture in your own applications Implementing loosely coupled communication to improve code maintainability and robustness Managing user- and system-configuration data Building reloadable components with solid threading models Constructing sophisticated multiwindow applications and presenting rich data structures to users Adding user-configurable options Integrating Web services with NetBeans desktop applications Automating module updates and providing user helpForeword by Jonathan Schwartzi? i? i? i? i? Foreword by Jan Chalupai? i? i? i? i? i? i? Prefacei? i? i? i? i? i? i? About the Authors and Contributorsi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Acknowledgmentsi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 1: Getting Started with the NetBeans Platformi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 2: The Benefits of Modular Programming i? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 3: Modular Architecturei? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 4: Loosely Coupled Communication i? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 5: Lookupi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 6: Filesystemsi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 7: Threading, Listener Patterns, and MIME Lookupi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 8: The Window Systemi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 9: Nodes, Explorer Views, Actions, and Presentersi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 10: DataObjects and DataLoadersi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 11: Graphical User Interfacesi? i? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 12: Multiview Editorsi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 13: Syntax Highlightingi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 14: Code Completioni? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 15: Component Palettesi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 16: Hyperlinksi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 17: Annotationsi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 18: Options Windowsi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 19: Web Frameworksi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 20: Web Servicesi? i? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 21: JavaHelp Documentationi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 22i? i? Update Centersi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 23: Use Case 1: NetBeans Module Developmenti? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter 24: Use Case 2: Rich Unger on Application Developmenti? i? i? i? Chapter A: Advanced Module System Techniquesi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter B: Common Idioms and Code Patterns in NetBeansi? i? i? i? i? i? i? Chapter C: Performancei? i? i? i? i? i? i? Indexi? i? i? i? i? i? i?


The Department of Finance ("the department") has introduced two separate sets of legislation that together attempt to limit demand in the income trust market (though with very different revenue consequences). However, neither the proposed legislation nor the existing Income Tax Act contains an equity recharacterization rule. Consequently, the tax results associated with the standard income trust and royalty trust structures can still be realized with direct holding structures, in which the use of a trust as a pooling mechanism is eliminated and investors hold directly a combination of high-yield junk debt and a specified number of shares of the issuer. Until now, these junk bond structures have been used primarily for cross-border investment into the United States, to avoid the US corporate income tax without any significant loss of non-tax attributes. But the elimination of the foreign property holding restrictions for tax-exempt deferred income plans, such as registered pension plans and registered retirement savings plans, means that there is very little in the way of any tax-law constraint on the acquisition of direct junk bond substitutes by this class of investors in a domestic context. This article highlights the use of stapled securities as a particular direct holding structure that could be used to avoid the application of the department's latest legislative proposal, which applies dividend tax treatment to targeted income trust structures. The authors suggest that the department will most likely have to modify this draft legislation to specifically address stapled security structures. They illustrate how the US experience with stapled shares, and particularly the congressional legislative response, provides a workable template for the necessary modifications. However, this legislative template would only address the use of stapled securities in intermediated structures. Some form of equity recharacterization rule to address the use of stapled securities in disintermediated structures is also needed to ensure the target effectiveness of the draft legislation.


Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are applied during the production of various consumer and industrial goods. As a consequence of their use in building materials and fabrics, unreacted nonpolymeric PFASs might enter the environment by evaporation or urban run-off. Since the PFAS content of building materials and industrial fabrics is hardly investigated, studies have to be performed in order to assess their total PFAS load. Building material samples (n = 23) and fabric samples (n = 28) were collected and their PFAS content was investigated. A total of 29 PFASs were analyzed (chain length in the range of C4-C14). PFASs of diverse chain lengths were detected in 53% of the analyzed samples. The sum of PFASs for awning materials and coating samples were amongst the highest. Furthermore, PFASs were detected in the majority of fabrics for maritime applications, public transport seat covers and fluoropolymer facade materials. To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first to investigate the PFAS concentrations in fabrics for maritime applications, fluoropolymer facade materials and coatings for architectural purposes. Thus, new sources of PFASs were identified that might lead to release of PFASs into the environment.


The deep. The deadly. The damned... For a thousand years, an unimaginable treasure has rested on the bottom of the Indian Ocean, hidden by swift blue currents, guarded by deadly coral reefs, and even deadlier school of man-eating great white sharks. Harry Fletcher, a former soldier turned fisherman, is now being pulled into a murderous mystery by men willing to kill and a beautiful woman willing to lie for what rests far beneath the sea. Now, Harry has no choice but to enter full bore into an international battle to raise an extraordinary object from the deep. Because possessing this treasure isn't just about getting rich--it's about staying alive...


Typical hospital setups comprise units such as clinics, inpatient wards, outpatient services, casualty services, operating theatres, laboratories, medical schools (for university hospitals) and out-reach medical camps. Healthcare professionals are required to support these different units hence the need to be constantly mobile in undertaking their duties. These duties require that they frequently consult colleagues, receive handover from previous duty staff or share information on previous work undertaken. Successful use and adoption of handheld devices such as PC tablets, PDAs and smartphones integrated to health information systems can minimize the physical mobility.Information sharing using M-health solutions in complex and diverse healthcare settings draw focus beyond the spatiality gains to the coordination of the teams, processes and shared artefacts in healthcare. CSCW research abounds with various concepts that can be useful in characterizing mobility and communication amongst collaborating health workers. Design for mobile health solutions, therefore, provides an opportunity to further ground theoretical frameworks from exemplary studies on health information systems.The overall objective of the study is to propose design suggestions that target successful information sharing in the deployment and use of M-health solutions. To achieve this objective, the thesis investigates and analyses factors influencing the use and adoption of M-health solutions.A qualitative literature review is used in the study to explore significant factors in the acceptance and use of health information systems. A questionnaire developed from these key factors is used to determine the perceptions of healthcare professionals on M-health solutions based on related literature and on a field study. Finally, the findings are discussed using concepts from CSCW literature namely, mobility, common information spaces, temporality and cognitive and coordinative artefacts.As a result, a conceptual model integrating constructs from the Technology acceptance model (TAM) and IS Success model was developed that can be useful in investigating perceptions in the use of M-health solutions. Design suggestions were proposed for the development of future M-health solutions that aim to achieve successful information sharing amongst healthcare professionals.


This paper analyses the experience of banks in Ekiti state Nigeria toward fraud. The methodology employed for the study is both primary and secondary data respectively. The primary source of data collection involved the use of 150 questionnaires to all the banks in Ado-Ekiti which has 100% response rate; the secondary data were gotten from Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) annual reports from 2005-2014 for data relating to total amount involved in frauds and forgeries, and categories of bank staff involved in frauds and forgeries. The paper concludes that effective internal control mechanism/checks and monetary reward should be given an utmost attention to curb or reduce fraud in the banking sector.


This paper presents a data traffic model capable of describing the long-range dependence and self-similar burstiness structure found in measurement studies of packet data traffic. The model introduced is based on doubly stochastic Poisson processes. The intensity of arrivals is modeled as a continuous stochastic process. This process satisfies most of the properties found in the measurement studies, namely long-range dependence and self-similarity. The generality and simplicity of this model makes it attractive in data traffic modeling.


The dynamic behavior of an axisymmetric post- buckled circular plate with initial in-plane compression loading is investigated. The static von K´ arm´ an plate equations are solved numerically for clamped boundary conditions. The static solution is presented for a range of transverse and in-plane loads. Lumped element modeling is used to calculate the mass and compliance of the plate from results of the static solution. The resonant frequency, sensitivity, and maximum linear transverse pressure are calculated for a variety of in-plane loads. These solutions can be used to predict the post-buckled behavior of micromachined plates.


The study aims to boost the success of the segmentation results by evaluating spatial relations in the segmentation of histopathalogical images. In the first step Fourier features are extracted from RGB color space of digital histopathalogical images. Training data sets are formed by selecting equal number of different cellular and extra-cellular structures in spatial domain from the images. Classification models of each training data set is obtained by utilizing Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) methods. Visual and numerical outputs which are obtained from supervised training methods are presented for comparison purpose in the experimental results section.


Background: Individuals who sustain a spinal cord injury (SCI) often experience chronic neuralgia that is poorly remedied by modern medicine. When pharmaceutics are used to treat the pain, the patient usually suffers from a high percentage of side effects. Individuals who already are dealing with a life changing event such as an SCI can become highly frustrated with a new onset of poorly understood pain. The purpose of this review is to search available literature in order to understand what part acupuncture can play to alleviate some of this pain. Methods: An exhaustive literature search using CINAHL, Medline-OVID, EMR Multifile and Web of Science was conducted that used the specific search terms: spinal cord injury, neuralgia and acupuncture therapy. Eligibility criteria included English language only articles, studies conducted within the last 15 years and studies only conducted on humans. Of the pertinent articles found in the above search engines, bibliographies were examined and any studies that directly looked at the use of acupuncture as treatment for chronic nerve pain in SCIs were included. Results: Two studies met inclusion criteria and were included in this systematic review. A within-subjects study with 22 individuals showed a 46% improvement in pain after treatment, however 27% of the study's participants experienced pain increase at follow up. A sequential controlled design study involving 30 participants showed 40% of the acupuncture patients and 7% of the massage patients reporting a positive outcome at follow up. Conclusion: Acupuncture is not a dependable treatment for chronic neuralgia in individuals who have sustained an SCI. Some evidence supports its use for up to moderate pain relief in a fair portion of individuals. However, due to the lack of adverse side effects and high compliance rates associated with acupuncture, it is a reasonable option for pain management either on its own or partnered with a pharmaceutical treatment without worrying about drug interactions. More research needs to be conducted on what causes chronic neuralgia as well what can be effective treatments.


The purpose of this research was to ascertain if there were any significant differences in the ability to read logos and to make the transition to reading logos in manuscript forms of kindergarten children who received direct instruction with environmental print, those who received indirect instruction, and those who received no instruction with environmental print. The Environmental Print Checklist (EPC) was employed to measure the children's ability to read logos and to make the transition from reading actual logos to reading logos in manuscript forms. A quasi-experimental pre-/post-test design was used with a convenience sample of six intact kindergarten classes from a large inner-city school system. The population consisted of 106 children at post-test. Those in the two treatment groups received 8 months of instruction using environmental print. After statistical analysis of the data it was found that the control and direct instruction groups were not significantly different from each other. However, the indirect instruction group scored significantly higher (p = .01) than both the direct instruction and the control groups at levels three, four, five, and six. The results of this study demonstrated that indirect instruction with environmental print improved kindergarten children's ability to read logos and aided them in making the transition from reading logos to reading logos in manuscript form. ********** Environmental print is the print found in the natural immediate environment of children, which includes logos, labels, road signs, billboards, clothing labels, coupons, newspaper advertisements, and fast food paraphernalia (Hall, 1987; Kuby, 1994; Kirkland, Aldridge & Kuby, 1991; Teberosky, 1986). Reading of environmental print is an activity children often engage in before reading print in books (Aldridge & Rust, 1987; Clay, 1991; Goodman & Altwerger, 1981; Goodman & Goodman, 1979; Hall, 1985; Wepner, 1985). Clay (1993) found that many researchers have discovered that preschool children explore the details of print in their environment, on signs, cereal packages, and television advertisements. Children develop concepts about books, newspapers, and other print in their environment. Consequently, more advanced concepts about print emerge out of children's earlier understandings. Goodman (1984) noted that even those children who had taken standardized tests predicting failure in reading demonstrated that they had knowledge about written language. They knew that the print in books and on other objects in the environment communicated written language messages. They understood the meaning of the sign that says "stop," even though sometimes they referred to the word as "don't go" or "brake car" before they had learned the word "stop." Mason (1980) investigated 4-year-old children's knowledge of letters and printed words to determine if preschool children had begun reading. Some of the words used to test the children's knowledge were environmental print words. She concluded that when children are guided by parents to attend to letters, signs, and labels, and are given opportunities to read, spell, and print words, they learn some of the essential elements of reading before school. Other research on environmental print has sought to determine if young children perceive printed words as concrete ideas. Ylisto (1967) believed that children proceed through the process of learning to read in six identifiable steps: (1) seeing a photograph of a symbol in its natural setting, (2) seeing a drawing of the symbol in its natural setting, (3) seeing a drawing of the symbol in its immediate setting, (4) seeing the symbol printed in isolation, (5) seeing the symbol printed in a sentence, and (6) seeing the symbol printed in story context. She found that many young readers are able to proceed through the first three levels, but are unable to read words in levels four, five, and six, in which there are no contextual cues. …


Light emitting diode (LED) nonlinearities have a significant impact on the performance of optical wireless (OW) communication systems based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation. In this paper, different techniques to compensate for the induced nonlinearity distortions are presented and analyzed. First, single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) is proposed instead of OFDM for OW systems. In SC-FDMA, some of the major OFDM problems such as high peak-to-average power ratio are inherently resolved. It is shown that the performance of OW OFDM systems and their counterpart SC-FDMA systems are traded off for certain input signal powers and modulation orders. Second, OW OFDM systems with hard, soft, and turbo channel coding techniques are considered. It is reported that significant performance gains can be achieved through channel coding. Finally, a novel method to reduce signal clipping distortion through the use of iterative signal clipping (ISC) and multiple transmit LEDs is proposed. The ISC technique is based on iterative clipping of the time domain OFDM signal and transmission from a multiple LED transmitter. Transmit LEDs are synchronized, located close to each other, and placed to emit light in the same direction. Hence, the channel path gains from each LED to the receiver photodiode are similar. The received signals from the different LEDs add coherently at the receiver. Reported results demonstrate that the effect of distortion is eliminated or significantly reduced based on the considered number of transmit LEDs.


In this paper, we are concerned with how change agents go about and experience change implementation in higher education. We identified change agents and interviewed them about how they implement change. Empirical data was analysed using a theoretical framework of change. The findings suggest that change in the university is enacted through a process of negotiation. The findings of this study may offer academic developers, pedagogical leaders, and change agents insight into the complex nature of the change process and inform change agents as to the complex nature and importance of their role.


To cope with the occlusion and intersection between targets and the environment, location prediction is employed in the visual tracking system. Target trace is fitted by sliding subsection polynomials based on least absolute deviation (LAD) estimation, and the future location of target is predicted with the fitted trace. Experiment results show that the proposed location prediction algorithm based on LAD estimation has significant robustness advantages over least square (LS) estimation, and it is more effective than LS-based methods in visual tracking.


It is shown that intrinsic and extrinsic structural defects have an enormous influence on the field and current distributions of superconductors which depend normally only on the geometry of the sample. The flux penetration and the current flow along various defects found in high- superconductors are analysed in detail. The defects can be classified by means of the flux pattern and of the corresponding shape of the current lines around the defect. In the case of a high defect density the penetration of vortices into the sample will lead to a change of the length scale of the shielding currents flowing in the Meissner area and of the critical currents flowing within the flux front, and current loops of a smaller length scale are formed. This formation of current loops is directly observed. This so-called magnetically induced granularity will lead to an underestimation of magnetization in integral measurements such as magnetometry. Magneto-optical flux visualization can be used to obtain the necessary corrections. It is shown that flux visualization is a powerful tool to test the quality of superconducting samples.


Many AI researchers are today striving to build agent teams for complex, dynamic multi-agent domains, with intended applications in arenas such as education, training, entertainment, information integration, and collective robotics. Unfortunately, uncertainties in these complex, dynamic domains obstruct coherent teamwork. In particular, team members often encounter differing, incomplete, and possibly inconsistent views of their environment. Furthermore, team members can unexpectedly fail in fulfilling responsibilities or discover unexpected opportunities. Highly flexible coordination and communication is key in addressing such uncertainties. Simply fitting individual agents with precomputed coordination plans will not do, for their inflexibility can cause severe failures in teamwork, and their domain-specificity hinders reusability.

Our central hypothesis is that the key to such flexibility and reusability is providing agents with general models of teamwork. Agents exploit such models to autonomously reason about coordination and communication, providing requisite flexibility. Furthermore, the models enable reuse across domains, both saving implementation effort and enforcing consistency. This article presents one general, implemented model of teamwork, called STEAM. The basic building block of teamwork in STEAM is joint intentions (Cohen & Levesque, 1991b); teamwork in STEAM is based on agents' building up a (partial) hierarchy of joint intentions (this hierarchy is seen to parallel Grosz & Kraus's partial Shared-Plans, 1996). Furthermore, in STEAM, team members monitor the team's and individual members' performance, reorganizing the team as necessary. Finally, decision-theoretic communication selectivity in STEAM ensures reduction in communication overheads of teamwork, with appropriate sensitivity to the environmental conditions. This article describes STEAM's application in three different complex domains, and presents detailed empirical results.


Path fingerprinting is an essential component of applications that distinguish among different network paths, including path selection in overlay networks, multi-path routing, monitoring and diagnosis of network problems, and developing a deeper understanding of network behavior. This paper proposes a new approach to Internet path fingerprinting based on the distribution of end-to-end packet-pair measurements. This approach allows detection of busy link sharing between two paths, even when those segments have low utilization and are not the paths' bottlenecks. While our fingerprints do not assure physically disjoint paths (since that requires information external to the network), they reflect the traffic and link characteristics of intermediate links. This methodology is therefore tolerant of opaque clouds such as VPNs, VLANs, or MPLS (unlike traceroute). Using analysis and simulation we explore the network factors that affect the fingerprints, and we introduce a simple method to compare them. Through measurements of up to a year over 15 Internet paths, we show that our fingerprints are both distinct and persistent over periods of several months, making their collection and use for path selection feasible.


The early 21st century experienced a transition in global ocean observing systems from the expendable bathythermograph (XBT) to the Argo. There has been a decrease in XBT observations, and a significant increase in Argo profiling floats in the global ocean. However, numerical XBT observation evaluations during this transition period have been under presented. This study investigates the XBT use effects on the global ocean observing systems using a coupled data assimilation model developed by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). Results show that the inclusion of XBT data significantly increases the accuracy of heat content and sea level change estimations during the pre-Argo period. During the Argo period, the amount of heat content correction by XBT assimilation is significantly weakened, especially in the upper ocean. However, it remains in the deeper oceans below 700 m depths, which is the residual effects of assimilating XBT data with the pre-Argo period. This study also confirms that although XBT only provides temperature observations mostly in the upper 700 m of the northern hemisphere, it can affect both the temperature and salinity fields of data assimilation systems, especially in the deep and southern oceans, which is also supported by the significant change in steric height.


Available evidence suggests that second-generation atypical antipsychotics are broadly similar to first-generation agents in terms of their efficacy, but may have a more favourable tolerability profile, primarily by being less likely to cause extrapyramidal symptoms. However, atypical antipsychotics are variably associated with disturbances in the cardiometabolic arena, including increased body weight and the development of metabolic syndrome, which may reflect differences in their receptor binding profiles. Effective management of schizophrenia must ensure that the physical health of patients is addressed together with their mental health. This should therefore involve consideration of the specific tolerability profiles of available agents and individualization of treatment to minimize the likelihood of adverse metabolic sequelae, thereby improving long-term adherence and optimizing overall treatment outcomes. Alongside this, modifiable risk factors (such as exercise, diet, obesity/body weight and smoking status) must be addressed, in order to optimize patients' overall health and quality of life (QoL). In addition to antipsychotic-induced side effects, the clinical management of early nonresponders and psychopharmacological approaches for patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia remain important unmet needs. Evidence suggests that antipsychotic response starts early in the course of treatment and that early nonresponse accurately predicts nonresponse over the longer term. Early nonresponse therefore represents an important modifiable risk factor for poor efficacy and effectiveness outcomes, since switching or augmenting antipsychotic treatment in patients showing early nonresponse has been shown to improve the likelihood of subsequent treatment outcomes. Recent evidence has also demonstrated that patients showing early nonresponse to treatment with lurasidone at 2 weeks may benefit from an increase in dose at this timepoint without compromising tolerability/safety. However, further research is required to determine whether these findings are generalizable to other antipsychotic agents.


Background There is little information on ski/snowboard helmet prevalence at ski areas in southern Alberta, with no published reports on correct helmet fit or helmet standards. Objective To determine the prevalence of helmet use and correct helmet fit among skiers/snowboarders at an Alberta ski area. Design Cross-sectional survey. Setting An urban ski area in Alberta, Canada. Participants Skiers/snowboarders of all ages. Risk factor assessment Skiers/snowboarders were interviewed (n=914) and systematically observed (n=2014) at the ski area. Main outcome measurements Helmet use and correct helmet fit. Prevalence ratios (PR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated for each outcome separately for interviews and systematic observations. Results Preliminary results for helmet use indicate that the likelihood of wearing a helmet is higher for those <13 years old (PR 1.09; 95% CI 1.01–1.17) and for 13–17 year olds (PR 1.13; 95% CI 1.07–1.20) compared with older participants; skiing/snowboarding with adults (PR 1.24; 95% CI 1.11–1.40) vs. alone, and if adult companions were wearing a helmet (PR 3.01; 95% CI 1.71–5.30). Preliminary results for helmet fit indicate that the likelihood of wearing a helmet correctly increases if skiing/snowboarding with adults and children (PR 2.86; 95% CI 1.28–6.36) vs. no companions, and if the child was wearing a helmet (PR 4.45; 95%CI 1.22− 16.28). The likelihood of wearing a helmet correctly was lower for ages 13–17 (PR 0.80; 95% CI 0.69–0.93) compared with 18–54 and for snowboarders (PR 0.87; 95% CI 0.77–0.97) compared with skiers. Conclusions This information has the potential to influence policy regarding mandatory helmet use and may be used to educate those with an interest in helmet safety and the public on the use and correct use of a helmet.


The application of master's degree competence in nursing practice has been a hot topic of debate in various forums in recent years. International findings suggest that nurses with master's degrees can make a positive contribution to the quality of services and patient safety, and an association has been suggested between higher education in nursing and a reduced mortality rate in hospitals. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate registered nurses' (RNs') experiences with how a master's level education affected their work in the specialist health service. An inductive qualitative study design was used. Data were collected through focus group interviews with 18 participants in five groups and analysed using content analysis. This study is reported in accordance with COREQ. The results showed an 'expectation gap' between the RNs with master's degrees and their managers. Our findings also reflected the RNs' ambivalent experiences of being both a threat and a resource. The application of the competence describes the desire to utilise and recognise the master's qualification. Furthermore, expectations for the future in the specialist health service were focussed on more evidence-based practice. The results of this study highlight that enhanced competence is a priority area aimed at meeting current and future needs for evidence-based practice and effective services. Clinical master's degrees place emphasis on both the RNs' clinical skills and their ability to obtain and apply new knowledge.


The adoption of cloud based technologies ensures a fundamental shift in the stipulation of resources within organisations. This research studies the socio-technical impact of migrating to cloud technologies and its effects on the organisational culture, people and their relationships and work performance. The following two questions form the basis of this research: (a) what are the key factors which affect cloud adoption in NZ organisations? and (b) what impact on work practices have been noted when cloud technologies are adopted by organisations? Objective: The main objective was to discover the theoretic attributes from grounded interview data that confirm, refute, or extend the principles and their applications suitable for cloud migration factors and impact. Methodology: The research design included qualitative research using grounded theory (GT) processes. Twelve interviews were conducted with employees working in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in New Zealand (NZ). Participants were selected based on purposive sampling as the primary technique and a secondary sampling technique known as snowball. Data Gathering and Analysis: The transcribed interviews were analysed in three stages: using open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. NVivo software was used to carry out the three coding processes. Reflective memos and constant comparative analysis were used to ensure reliability. Conditional Relationship Guideline (CRG) and Reflective Coding Matrix (RCM) were used as analytical tools to interlink factors through cloud adoption practices. Findings: Analysis of participants' interview data established and extended the current practices of the factors which drive cloud migration and its impact and offered additional suggestions for more effective practical applications. Using the grounded theory approach, the interview data were categorised into sixteen main categories. Then, the sixteen categories were divided into two abstract themes: cloud adoption factors and impact of cloud adoption on work practices, where the prior affects the latter. The findings revealed eight categories belonging to the first theme of factors. They were: business continuity, convenience, cost effectiveness, data centres, free from xi maintaining IT Infrastructure, Cloud Service Provider (CSP) reputation, speed, and suitability. The following eight categories belonged to the second theme of impact: best practices create awareness of policies and service-level agreements (SLAs), improved collaboration, job losses, more time for IT managers to strategise, loss of productivity and disturbances due to outages by provider, high degree of satisfaction with CSP, security concerns for business-critical data and skill upgrade. Contribution: The research findings have important implications for academia and great value to the decision makers such as managers and senior executives, CSPs and IT staff in an organisation, in terms of formulating better strategies for cloud computing adoption. For CSPs, using the research model in this study can assist in increasing their understanding of why some organisations choose to adopt cloud computing services and what implications are felt in the workplace. Also, CSPs may need to improve their interaction with organisations in terms of understanding and meeting SLAs. Conclusions: The emergence of sixteen categories from the two core themes, cloud adoption factors and impact of cloud migration on work practices is the principal finding. The findings of the research illustrate the challenges that decision-makers and employees face when assessing the practicability of adopting of cloud computing within their organisations; they also describe a 'conceptual socio-technical cloud strategy framework' to support cloud adoption in organisations.


With the goal of discovering a selective agonist of estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERRgamma) with enhanced potency, we designed a series of small-molecule ligands derived from a known ERRgamma agonist, GSK4716, that can substantially potentiate the transcriptional activity of ERRgamma. Individual compounds among a 30-member library of acyl hydrazones were pre-evaluated through in silico docking studies on the receptor cavities of ERRgamma LBDs using X-ray crystal structures cocrystallized with GSK4716 and 4-OHT. This rational approach to achieve the enhanced potency in ERRgamma transcriptional activity with selectivity over ERRalpha/beta enables us to complete the construction of a focused library by carrying out microwave-assisted parallel synthesis with excellent yields and purities. Finally, we identified a more potent ERRgamma agonist, E6, with excellent selectivity over ERRalpha/beta.


Many organisations in both public and private sectors are striving to discover new tools and strategies to streamline their project implementation. Among these was the project management office (PMO), which has been developed from the womb of the advanced project management methodology. This work is both exploratory and causal study, which concentrates on investigating the effectiveness of seven proposed PMO roles (as independent variables) in carrying out the strategic plan (as the dependent variable) of the public sector organisations in the UAE. The study aims also to derive some insights into coordinating pattern established between PMO entity and other departments involved in the project implementation within the context of the organization's strategic plan. A Likert-based questionnaire has been structured to cover all aspects of the research questions and hypotheses. The survey hyperlink emailed to 19 project-based public organizations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai Emirates (as business centres) prior to broadcasting among their 450 staff members who involved actively in the various project business. 366 participants viewed the survey link, whereas 268 of them responded with perfect and usable questionnaires. The received data analysed quantitatively by using multiple regression. The analysis outputs, as expected, have indicated that 95% of the targeted organizations established own PMO. The high visibility of PMO allowed robust investigation on the connections between various PMO roles in executing the strategic plan of the hosted organizations to reveal a number of statistically significant linkages between various variables. The top-five PMO roles involved in strategic plan execution were found to be i) Strategic Management, ii) development of project management competencies and methodology, iii) monitoring and controlling project performance, iv) organizational learning, and v) organization structure and communication improvement. Whereas 12 top metric criteria were identified to measure the effectiveness of the PMO unit. These findings utilized in developing a conceptual PMO model to be flexible and applicable with similar project management methodology in various business domains, and paving the way for more investigations. This study gives some implications for those involved in the PMO applications, and recommendations to further research studies.


The aim of this project was to enhance the current state of knowledge of the void structure of paper, and pigments used to coat paper. The porosities and pore size distributions of consolidated pigments were measured using mercury porosimetry. Prior to this work, mercury porosimetry was rarely used in this field due to problems associated with the conventional interpretation of mercury porosimetry data. These problems were examined and two limitations of mercury porosimetry were addressed. Firstly, the shrinkage of compressible samples causes an apparent increase in void volume and secondly, large void spaces shielded by smaller ones are not intruded until anomalously high applied pressures of mercury are reached. The first limitation was overcome by means of a new correction procedure which, uniquely, also allows the measurement of the bulk modulus of the continuous solid phase of a porous sample. Shielding effects have been taken into account by means of a software package known as Pore-Cor, which generates a three dimensional structure which has both a mercury intrusion curve and porosity in close agreement with experiment. It has also been possible to calculate the permeabilities and tortuosity of the simulated structure and this provides realistic and useful values, which may not be measured experimentally. Mercury porosimetry and a range of specialised absorption techniques, including liquid porosimetry, were used to characterise the porous structures of a highly filled paper which had been calendered using a range of different conditions. A unique feature of this work is that for the first time it has been shown that two porosimetric techniques which measure overlapping pore size distributions may be combined to give a better indication of the total pore size distribution.


Responses to Spenser's approach to legal reform in A View of the State of Ireland generally note his evasive but present critiques of the use of English Common Law in Ireland. As many critics, some to be noted here, point out, that critique had to be evasive because Common Law was understood to be a crucial part of the rights of the English in a nation growing in its place on the world stage. Any critique of Common Law could have been viewed by Spenser's contemporaries as a critique of England itself. An interesting point in the criticism on legal reform in Spenser's View is that, while it notes his negative representation of Common Law and the legal loopholes it contained, no critic takes the extra step and asks the question: was Spenser then advocating the use of Civil Law? Certainly Spenser is advocating in this work a type of military control that stems from and increases the power of the monarch over even the minute details of rule. Common Law was a precedent-based, locally controlled form of law, and the English understood it to be an integral part of their heritage, a codified system upholding their customs. Because it operated without the possibility of any intervention from the monarch, there was no opportunity for the monarch to interfere with the judgments made by the jury in Common Law trials. This absence of opportunity for Crown interference in legal judgments was a large part of what made Common Law so satisfying to the English--they saw it as preventing the potential tyranny of a monarch too closely involved in creating the policy of custom and court judgments. Civil Law, based on the Roman Justinian code, provided far more power to a monarch than the Common Law did. And while Elizabeth's successors, James I and Charles I, wholeheartedly embraced the Justinian code because it allowed them greater minute control over legal judgments, she did not. Perhaps she was more sensitive to the potential uproar over intervention in a legal system the people considered theirs by right of history and free from the possibility of monarchial tyranny. Or, however personally she may have been involved in the suppression of potentially dangerous material, she certainly had councilors who were sensitive, perhaps personally sensitive, to criticism of the status quo. David J. Baker points out the extent of Spenser's service to his queen when he writes that Spenser "rendered some eighteen years of loyal service in Ireland to Elizabeth I and her administration." In Between Nations, Baker writes that Spenser "coveted and accepted the queen's rewards of land and position in the kingdom and was concerned to defend them. For much of his career, Spenser thought of himself as a royal servant, not just by employment, but as a self-appointed apologist and theorist" (74). But Baker also points out that Spenser took his service as an opportunity to "tutor his queen" and to "impress in her princely mind the confused misery which, because of her benevolence, corrupts her Irish colony (115). But that "tutoring" may have been more cunning that it appears. Recent scholarship has worked to reveal Spenser's own agendas lying within his seemingly state-serving poetry. Scholars generally accept his self-laid Virgilian trajectory as Britain's great poet. But far from being what Marx called the "arse-kissing poet," Spenser is instead being revealed as a writer with a strong sense of his own authorial persona and an author's responsibility as critic. In "Spenser's Domestic Domain," Louis A. Montrose describes Spenser's creation of a "distinctive and culturally authoritative authorial persona" (83). Spenser, finding himself with limited potential to enter into the gentry but hungry for advancement, fashioned for himself an identity that allowed him to participate more fully in the world to which he aspired. Montrose reports that "Spenser criticism has sometimes taken his indictment of courtly corruption and his praise of the monarch as non-contradictory," but he points out that, as sovereign, Elizabeth was symbolically inseparable from the court, and indictments of the court would then extend to the queen as well (100). …


In this study we assumed that the relation between readers' and characters' group identity would influence narrative empathy and thereby the impact of a short story. We used three social psychological models (infrahumanization, mentalization and linguistic inter-group bias) to test our assumptions. Methodologically, we used a narrative recall paradigm based on the assumption that narrative recall carries also the experiential aspects of the text processing and thereby enables a fine grained analysis of meaning construction. We also measured liking of the story as an impact variable and the strength of national identification as a moderator variable. Results only partly supported our assumptions. Whereas empathy and liking are strongly correlated, Hungarian subjects overall did not feel more empathy with the characters of the Hungarian story version, did not like more this story, did not assign more secondary emotions to the Hungarian characters, and did not describe positive behavior of the Hungarian characters more abstractly then happened in the case of the "Slovak story" version.


The power of machine learning systems not only promises great technical progress, but risks societal harm. As a recent example, researchers have shown that popular word embedding algorithms exhibit stereotypical biases, such as gender bias. The widespread use of these algorithms in machine learning systems, from automated translation services to curriculum vitae scanners, can amplify stereotypes in important contexts. Although methods have been developed to measure these biases and alter word embeddings to mitigate their biased representations, there is a lack of understanding in how word embedding bias depends on the training data. In this work, we develop a technique for understanding the origins of bias in word embeddings. Given a word embedding trained on a corpus, our method identifies how perturbing the corpus will affect the bias of the resulting embedding. This can be used to trace the origins of word embedding bias back to the original training documents. Using our method, one can investigate trends in the bias of the underlying corpus and identify subsets of documents whose removal would most reduce bias. We demonstrate our techniques on both a New York Times and Wikipedia corpus and find that our influence function-based approximations are very accurate.


At least 21 million people globally are victims of human trafficking, typically involving either sexual exploitation or forced labor. This form of modern-day slavery tends to increase after natural disasters or conflicts where large numbers of people are displaced from their homes and become highly vulnerable. In the decades to come, climate change will very likely lead to a large increase in the number of people who are displaced and thus vulnerable to trafficking. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 established objectives to limit global temperature increases, but the voluntary pledges made by nearly every country fall far short of what is needed to meet these objectives. Several international agreements and domestic laws are aimed at combating human trafficking, but it is highly uncertain whether they will be adequate to cope with the scale of the problem that is likely to occur as a result of climate change.


Dent severity in the pipeline industry has historically been characterized through parameters including depth, length and width. Other approaches utilize techniques that estimate the strain in a dent based on the longitudinal and circumferential curvature. However these methods have shortcomings as they degenerate the geometry to a series of curve fits in two planes. Dents interacting with other anomalies and those that have atypical characteristics present particular challenges to both operators and in-line inspection vendors, as they do not fit the traditional analysis molds described above. Advances in highresolution caliper tools offer an improved means of dent assessment through the use of finite element analysis, which can be performed on anomalies of any shape and size including those with interactions. This paper presents a case study where a plain dent was generated in the lab and characterized with an optical scanner and ROSEN's high-resolution geometry tool. Both sets of data were analyzed using the general purpose finite element code ABAQUS to predict stress concentration factors and expected strains under internal pressure. The analysis results were benchmarked to lab tests where strain gages were used to measure the peak strains. The paper concludes by presenting how the process of conducting finite element analysis has been streamlined to the point where it can be automated and stress concentration factors rapidly provided to operators in conjunction with standard ILI reports. This streamlined process now allows finite element analysis to be used as a primary means of assessment to rank, prioritize and mitigate dents.


Every day millions of children world-wide take antibiotics against acute otitis media despite the fact that this treatment has not been shown to benefit the otherwise healthy, average AOM patient. Treatment differs greatly between similar, developed countries. These differences do not seem to be based on rational causes but on differences in mentality and culture. An adoptions of Dutch guidelines for AOM in the USA should result in 400.000 fewer US children on antibiotics during one average day! The incidence of severe complications (mastoiditis, meningitis) must be carefully monitored but there is no evidence that these complications are more common in the Netherlands than in the USA. The number of patients who die due to bacteria made antibiotic-resistant by overuse of antibiotics when treating AOM in children is unknown, but is most probably significant (this is never included in "good versus harm" calculations). We know little about what treatment is best for children suffering from AOM in poor countries, but it is probably wise to be more aggressive there and to adapt a freer usage of antibiotics than is advisable in rich countries.


Some of the most critical issues of the influence of the thermal expansion of composite materials on embedded polarimetric sensors for measurements of strain and temperature are studied in this paper. A composite material sample with polarimetric fiber sensors embedded in two distinct layers of a multi-layer composite structure is fabricated and characterized. The polarimetric fiber sensors used in this study are based on Panda type fiber and polarization maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF). The temperature sensitivities of polarimetric fiber sensors with acrylate buffer coated and buffer stripped polarization maintaining optical fibers are measured in free space and compared with those for sensors embedded in the composite material. It is found that a polarimetric fiber sensor with an acrylate coating embedded in the composite material shows the same response as the one in free space while the coating stripped fiber polarimetric sensor shows significant temperature sensitivity when embedded in the composite material. This is due to the stress induced change in birefringence created by the thermal expansion of the composite material, while in the case of a buffer coated fiber, the effect is considerably reduced as the thermal stress is largely eliminated by the buffer coating. The results obtained in this study demonstrated that thermal expansion of the composite material is the main source of error in strain and temperature measurement using embedded polarimetric fiber sensors and that more accurate strain and temperature measurements can be obtained with buffer coated polarimetric fiber sensors.


The finale to the New York Times bestselling Secret Series!I always feared this day would come. A secret is meant to stay secret, after all. And now we've come to this: the fifth and final (I swear!) book in my saga of secrets.A class trip to the local natural history museum turns dangerous, or perhaps deadly--and I don't mean in the bored-to-death way--when Cass accidentally breaks a finger off a priceless mummy. Forced to atone for this "crime" of vandalism, Cass and her friends Max-Ernest and Yo-Yoji go to work for the mummy exhibit's curator, only to be blamed when tragedy strikes. To clear their names--and, they hope, to discover the Secret--the trio must travel deep into a land of majestic pyramids, dusty tombs, mysterious hieroglyphs, and the walking dead. Egypt? Or somewhere much stranger . . .In the midst of it all, the Secret still lurks. You're out there, reading and talking about it, and now my life--and chocolate supply--is in the greatest danger yet. So please, with a cherry on top, I'm begging you: you have to stop this!


Secret handshaking protocols allow two members of the same group to identify each other secretly, i.e., any two parties who are members of the same group will recognize each other as members, yet, a party which is not a member of this group cannot tell, by engaging some party in the handshaking protocol, whether that party is a member of this group. Unlinkability is one of the main merits of secret handshaking protocols, that is, a party engaged in at least two handshakes must not be able to link any two different handshakes to a particular party. To achieve unlinkability, almost all protocols proposed so far rely on the one-time credentials technique, where each party can use her credential only once. Hence, each party must hold enough credentials allowing her to engage in the handshakes for enough period of time (e.g. a month) without referring to the group authority for renewal. There is a severe security problem when one-time credentials are employed, that is, an active adversary may initialize with an honest party as many handshaking sessions as she can and hence, depletes all the credentials held by this party, once a party runs out of credentials she will not be able to engage in handshaking no more (Denial of Service attack, DoS). At the same time, the group authority must be able to manage enormous number of issued credentials in data structures and certificate revocation lists (CRL). Thus, on the large scale implementation (large group population), one-time credentials become impractical. In this paper, we propose a provably secure two-party secret handshaking protocol which realizes the unlinkability property using only one permanent credential for each member and avoiding the inefficient one-time credentials. At the same time, our protocol provides immediate revocation of members by the group authority without relying heavily on CRL structures. Keywords: Secret handshakes, authentication, one-time credentials, unlinkability, revocation, denial of service, anonymous RSA, mediated PKI.


Abstract. 40Ar/39Ar and K-Ar geochronology assume that 40K/K values are invariant among the sample of interest, the co-irradiated neutron fluence monitor ( standard ), and the material used to measure decay constants. Until recently, this assumption was reasonable due to the small K isotope (41K, 40K, 39K) variability found in many terrestrial samples and the negligible effect of any variation relative to the precision of the determined age. The recent discovery of measurable δ41K variability in terrestrial samples now questions this assumption. Although δ41K values for some neutron fluence monitors have now been reported, potassium isotopes are not routinely measured on samples dated by the 40Ar/39Ar method even though a wide range of silicate materials were found to vary by > 2.5 ‰. Further, the 40K decay constants used in 40Ar/39Ar geochronology are based on activity counting of radioactive decay in K-rich salts. These salts have not been measured for δ41K, yet evaporites have been shown to vary by > 1 ‰ from the mean value of silicates. The potential effects of δ41K variability on 40Ar/39Ar ages are illustrated using the case of the ca. 28.2 Ma Fish Canyon sanidine (FCs) and the ca. 99 Ma Mt. Dromedary Biotite (GA-1550). If the two standards have δ41K values as measured and the material used to determine decay constants is appropriately represented by δ41K of evaporites, the age of FCs is underestimated by ca. 7 ka (0.25 ‰). Although this is a small effect, such bias is becoming important as the analytical precision and accuracy of isotopic measurements and calculation of 40Ar/39Ar ages continue to improve.


The authors find support for a negative relation between conditional expected monthly return and conditional variance of monthly return using a GARCH-M model modified by allowing (1) seasonal patterns in volatility, (2) positive and negative innovations to returns having different impacts on conditional volatility, and (3) nominal interest rates to predict conditional variance. Using the modified GARCH-M model, they also show that monthly conditional volatility may not be as persistent as was thought. Positive unanticipated returns appear to result in a downward revision of the conditional volatility, whereas negative unanticipated returns result in an upward revision of conditional volatility. Copyright 1993 by American Finance Association.


Numerous directed acyclic graph (DAG) schedulers have been developed to improve the energy efficiency of various multicore platforms. However, these schedulers make a priori assumptions about the relationship between the task dependencies, and they are unable to adapt online to the characteristics of each application without offline profiling data. Therefore, we propose a novel energy-efficient online scheduling solution for the general DAG model to address the two aforementioned problems. Our proposed scheduler is able to adapt at run-time to the characteristics of each application by making smart foresighted decisions, which take into account the impact of current scheduling decisions on the present and future deadline miss rates and energy efficiency. Moreover, our scheduler is able to efficiently handle execution with very limited resources by avoiding scheduling tasks that are expected to miss their deadlines and do not have an impact on future deadlines. We validate our approach against state-of-the-art solutions. In our first set of experiments, our results with the H.264 video decoder demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity solution for the general DAG model reduces the energy consumption by up to 15% compared to an existing sophisticated and complex scheduler that was specifically built for the H.264 video decoder application. In our second set of experiments, our results with different configurations of synthetic DAGs demonstrate that our proposed solution is able to reduce the energy consumption by up to 55% and the deadline miss rates by up to 99% compared to a second existing scheduling solution. Finally, we show that our DAG flow manager and scheduler have low complexities on a real mobile platform and we show that our solution is resilient to workload prediction errors by using different estimator accuracies.