Veterinary institutions help improve animal health by providing training that will enhance livestock production and trade and protect public health. The increasing role of animals in emerging infectious diseases has emphasized the need to improve veterinary services and integrate them with public health services more effectively.

The World Organisation for Animal Health devoted its Scientific and Technical Review (Volume 23, No. 1, April, 2004) to addressing these weaknesses and the rapidly changing environment of veterinary services in developing countries. The issue consisted of an introduction and summary by the coordinator and contributions from 28 persons organized into six sections. The first section examines the relative roles of the public and private sectors and included two papers on economic frameworks and two papers on technical experiences in providing public services by the private sector. A second section emphasizes changing international sanitary and phytosanitary regulations and how veterinary services could help meet these new requirements. The third, fourth, and fifth sections detail experiences in providing services across the developing world. The most common experiences include using paraprofessional staff, providing public services by the private sector, conducting surveillance, and monitoring and controlling infectious diseases. A final section explores anticipated financial and institutional capacity, research, and professional training needs.

Examples provided in the book detail many innovations relevant to delivering health services, particularly for providing access for poor and marginalized persons. However, the examples do not provide an analysis of different experiences across countries and systems. Veterinary services have evolved and should respond to social, economic, and political realities. Guidance should be provided to the decision makers who want an analysis of what works under different circumstances.

From an infectious disease perspective, the focus is on promoting livestock production and trade, with less emphasis on public health and food safety issues. This emphasis is consistent with current veterinary policy and practice in most developing countries, where economic development is more relevant than public health concerns. The World Organisation for Animal Health, which is responsible for international animal and animal product trade standards under the World Trade Organisation, also focuses on this perspective.

The book reflects the constraints and broad mandates of veterinary services in developing countries and the potential short-term conflicts of interests between livestock commerce and public health. However, the book does not address links between veterinary and public health services, including common surveillance, information, and disease control systems. Because the book highlights the veterinary components of disease control systems, it provides an important resource to develop such systems in the future.


This paper develops a simple model of human capital accumulation and community formation by heterogeneous families, which provides an integrated framework for analyzing the local determinants of inequality and growth. Five main conclusions emerge. First, minor differences in education technologies, preferences, or wealth can lead to a high degree of stratification. Imperfect capital markets are not necessary, but will compound these other sources. Second, stratification makes inequality in education and income more persistent across generations. Whether or not the same is true of inequality in total wealth depends on the ability of the rich to appropriate the rents created by their secession. Third, the polarization of urban areas resulting from individual residential decisions can be quite inefficient, both from the point of view of aggregate growth and in the Pareto sense, especially in the long run. Fourth, when state-wide equalization of school expenditures is insufficient to reduce stratification, it may improve educational achievement in poor communities much less than it lowers it in richer communities; thus average academic performance and income growth both fall. Yet it may still be possible for education policy to improve both equity and efficiency. Fifth, because of the cumulative nature of the stratification process, it is likely to be much harder to reverse once it has run its course than to arrest it at an early stage.


Jackfruit bronzing, an unreported disease affecting jackfruit is characterized by yellowish-orange to reddish discoloration of the affected pulps and rags of the fruit. The etiology of this disease, its isolation, pathogenicity, characterization and identification is the scope of this study. The pathogen was isolated from infected jackfruit, pathogenicity was conducted to detached and attached fruits. The pathogen was identified based on its cultural and morphological characteristics, staining reactions, physiological and biochemical characteristics, other plant inoculations and DNA analysis using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The bacterium produces yellow pigment in culture, Gram negative, slightly pleomorphic non-motile, facultatively anaerobic short-rods, measuring 12 um in length, catalase positive, hydrolyzes gelatin and starch but not tween 80, produces acid from glucose, galactose, fructose and sucrose but not from lactose and maltose. It did not produce hypersensitivity to tobacco, caused pits on potato discs but not soft rot. It infected pineapple fruits causing localized lesions and infected corn producing the same symptom as bacterial wilt or Stewart's disease. PCR analysis confirmed the cause as or (Smith) Mergaert formerly (Smith) Dye. Bronzing, Jackfruit, Etiology, PCR Pantoea stewartii ( Pantoea stewartii subsp. Stewartii et al)., Erwinia stewartii


Nonviolent action, despite its widespread use and successes, has received relatively little scholarly attention and financial support compared to military research and studies of conventional politics. Understanding the direction and content of knowledge about nonviolence is a project in the tradition of the sociology of knowledge that can help explain why the study of nonviolence has been marginalized, why misconceptions about it persist, why so much research in the area has been oriented to challenging regimes, and how nonviolence researchers are connected to nonviolence practice. This investigation leads to some suggestions for social movement scholars, in particular the value of studying agency and strategy, and the possibility of gaining insight by being involved in the movements being studied.


Many young college students participate in Greek life to involve themselves with a group of people similar to themselves and to engage in life on campus. The intent of this research is to measure the relationship between Greek membership and/or involvement and personality. Data from Spit for Science: the VCU Student Survey will be examined to analyze this relationship. The participants included freshman fall and sophomore spring survey participants from the 2012 Spit for Science cohort. The measures for the study were the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and the UPPS impulsive behavior scales. The BFI includes the personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness. The UPPS scales include the domains of lack of perseverance, lack of premeditation, negative urgency, positive urgency, and sensation seeking. Results indicated that individuals who scored higher on traits of extraversion (r = 0.209), sensation seeking (r = 0.108), and conscientiousness (r = 0.098) spent more time involved in fraternity or sorority parties and events. Additionally, individuals who are members of Greek life scored higher on traits of extraversion (r = 0.098) and conscientiousness (r = 0.067), but lower on agreeableness (r = -0.062). We found that personality traits are associated with membership and involvement in Greek organizations. This study provides insight on personality characteristics correlated with the Greek system involvement and highlights areas of research potentially related to previous findings on alcohol consumption in Greek life.


There are several texts pertaining to Perisian painting which explain its aesthetics on the basis of mysticism and the notion of imaginal world. This point of view bears some methodological problems. Some of the prominent scholars (Corbin, Burckhardt, Nasr, Ringgenberg et al.) refering to Ibn 'Arabi's mystical notions, have tried to show that the specific aesthetics of Persian painting has been derived from the imaginal world. Our aim here is to show that establishing the aesthetics of Persian painting on the basis of imaginal world's metaphysics lacks seriously the theoretical and methodological rigour. Firstly, Ibn 'Arabi and his heirs' conception of imaginal world was first of all ontological (hierarchy of Being) and epistemological (knowledge of God). Secondly, there is no overwhelming proof which could demonstrate that Persian painters were initiated to this notion. Thirdly, achieving the imaginal world through mystical intuition is conditioned by asceticism and purifying rituals, which were not necessarily familiar to Persian painters almost working in the court of Sultans. We will try to show that considereing these paintings in themselves is the genuine way to establish their aesthetics principles.


We present a fast and efficient method for intersecting rays with Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces. It takes advantage of the approximation democratized by OpenSubdiv, in which regular patches are represented by tensor product B\'ezier surfaces and irregular ones are approximated using Gregory patches. Our algorithm operates solely on the original patch data and can process both patch types simultaneously with only a small amount of control flow divergence. Besides introducing an optimized method to determine axis aligned bounding boxes of Gregory patches restricted in the parametric domain, several techniques are introduced that accelerate the recursive subdivision process including stackless operation, efficient work distribution, and control flow optimizations. The algorithm is especially useful for quick turnarounds during patch editing and animation playback.


This paper describes the development and evaluation of techniques for using sound to aid in the interpretation of signals obtained from the nondestructive testing of concrete using the impact-echo method. The impact-echo method and the significance of using sound for the field engineer are introduced. The auditory representation scheme developed and the software used are described. Psychological experiments that evaluate the effectiveness of the representation scheme are discussed. Results indicate the success of using sound to enhance signal interpretation in real-time and also suggest ways of using sound to train field engineers in the proper use of the impact-echo method.


Ordinary yet unique, water is the substance on which life is based. Water seems, at first sight, to be a very simple molecule, consisting of two hydrogen atoms attached to one oxygen. Its small size belies the complexity of its action and its numerous anomalies, central to a broad class of important phenomena, ranging from global current circulation, terrestrial water and CO2 cycles to corrosion and wetting. The explanation of this complex behavior comes from water's unique ability to form extensive three-dimensional networks of hydrogen-bonds, whose nature and structures, in spite of a great deal of efforts involving a plethora of experimental and theoretical techniques, still lacks a complete scientific understanding.This thesis is devoted to the study of the local structure of hydrogen-bonded liquids, with a particular emphasis on water, taking advantage of a combination of core-level spectroscopies and density functional theory spectra calculations. X-ray absorption, in particular, is found to be sensitive to the local hydrogen-bond environment, thus offering a very promising tool for spectroscopic identification of specific structural configurations in water, alcohols and aqueous solutions. More specifically, the characteristic spectroscopic signature of the broken hydrogen-bond at the hydrogen side is used to analyze the structure of bulk water, leading to the finding that most molecules are arranged in two hydrogen-bond configurations, in contrast to the picture provided by molecular dynamics simulations. At the liquid-vapor interface, an interplay of surface sensitive measurements and theoretical calculations enables us to distinguish a new interfacial species in equilibrium with the gas. In a similar approach the cluster form of the excess proton in highly concentrated acid solutions and the different coordination of methanol at the vacuum interface and in the bulk can also be clearly identified.Finally the ability of core-level spectroscopies, aided by sophisticated density functional theory calculations, to directly probe the valence electronic structure of a system is used to observe the nature of the interaction between water molecules and solvated ions in solution. Water around transition metal ions is found to interact with the solute via orbital mixing with the metal d-orbitals. The hydrogen-bond between water molecules is explained in terms of electrostatic interactions enhanced by charge rehybridization in which charge transfer between connecting molecules is shown to be fundamental.


Despite the decision of the WTO members to launch a new round of negotiations at their Doha Ministerial in November 2001, developing countries continue to have very real concerns on a number of key issues. The successful completion of the Doha trade round and the realization of the goals of its Development Agenda represent a major challenge for both the developed and the developing world. The primary aim of this volume is to improve understanding of the issues, the objectives of policy and the options for trade policy reform particularly as they impact on the Asia-Pacific region. A team of authors from developing and developed countries in the Asia-Pacific identify ways in which progress might be made on the key negotiating topics, including market access and related issues in agriculture, non-agriculture merchandise and in trade in services.


The standard 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) remains one of the most important and most frequently used tools for diagnosing cardiac diseases, although several different examination modalities in cardio¬logy have been developed over the years. The standard ECG uses 10 electrodes placed on well-defined positions on the body, 6 on the torso and 4 distally on the limbs. Both industry and academia have invested many years in development of the criteria used to interpret the "diagnostic" standard ECG, and the waveform patterns are taught in medical school.
In several situations, however – such as during long-term ECG monitoring or stress testing – use of the electrode positions of the standard ECG is not optimal because of the abundance of noise. In these situations, the limb electrodes must be placed proximally, often even on the torso, and the Mason-Likar (M-L) positions are commonly used. Interference with other clinical procedures, such as echocardiography, can also constitute a problem. An ECG-recording system with fewer electrodes and without any electrodes on the limbs that provides a 12-lead ECG similar to the standard ECG would be valuable. The so-called EASI system uses only 4 recording electrodes in easily determined locations on the torso from which the full 12-lead ECG can be derived. The 12-lead ECG derived from the EASI system has been evaluated in adults in several clinical situations.
Physicians who use ECGs in their day-to-day work are often not aware of the differences between 12-lead ECGs recorded from standard versus alternative electrode positions, and they might use criteria developed for the standard ECG when interpreting an ECG obtained from an alternative lead system. This can lead to misinterpretation with the risk of potentially serious consequences for the patient.
Optimizing the proximal positions for better concordance with the standard ECG would be of great value for improved diagnostic performance. A version of the "Lund" (LU) lead system has been reported to agree better with the standard lead system than does the M-L lead system, with regard to both Q-wave width and QRS frontal plane axis. To develop a uniform convention for ECG recording, i.e. both for diagnostic ECG and for monitoring, a recording must produce waveforms that have morphologies approximating those obtained with standard ECG and that has noise immunity close to that of M-L.
The overall objectives of this thesis were 1) to further validate the EASI system to gain more knowledge about the agreement between EASI-derived and standard 12-lead ECGs, and 2) to investigate the possibility of optimizing the positions of proximally placed limb electrodes.

EASI studies
In Study I, age-specific transformation coefficients were determined for use in deriving 12-lead ECGs from the EASI signals. The agreement of the waveforms between simultaneously recorded standard and EASI-derived 12-lead ECGs in children (healthy and with various cardiac diagnoses) was studied. For children, it was better to use age-specific transformation coefficients than adult coefficients. The agreement between standard and EASI-derived ECGs was mostly good.
In Study II, the intrareader variation of interpretations of 2 standard 12-lead ECGs was compared with the variation of interpretations of standard versus EASI-derived 12-lead ECGs in children (Study I population). The variation of the interpretation of standard versus EASI-derived ECGs was only slightly larger than the intrareader variation of interpretations of standard ECGs.
In Study III, the amplitudes of myoelectric noise and baseline wander were compared between simultaneously recorded EASI-derived and M-L 12-lead ECGs in healthy adults. Overall, the 2 lead systems had similar susceptibilities to baseline wander, but EASI was less susceptible than
M-L to myoelectric noise.
In Study IV, differences in the estimated size of myocardial infarction (MI), as assessed by Selvester scores, were compared between standard and EASI-derived 12-lead ECGs among patients who had had an episode of chest pain suggestive of an acute coronary syndrome. These scores were also compared with MI size measured by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Estimated MI size did not differ significantly between the 2 lead systems, but neither the correlation nor the agreement between MRI and either of the 2 lead systems was very strong.

Study to optimize the proximal positions of the limb electrodes
In Study V, waveforms from the LU and M-L systems were compared with those from standard ECGs with regard to the QRS axis in the frontal plane and QRS changes of inferior MI. The noise immunities of the standard, LU, and M-L systems were also compared. LU produced ECG waveforms that more closely resembled those obtained with standard ECG than did M-L. The LU system was more noise-immune than was the standard system, and the noise immunities of the LU and the M-L systems were comparable.


This book offers an array of techniques to study people on the move, and is addressed to all social scientists interested in fieldwork as a way of grasping phenomena typical of the late modernity. Its starting point is that present times require different metaphors than static "cultures", "organizations" or even "societies". It is time to start constructing a mobile ethnology, that is knowledge about people, objects and ideas that circulate globally. The present text offers suggestions concerning the ways such construction may take.


Rationale: Heterotaxy with polysplenia is an extremely rare congenital condition resulting from abnormal arrangement of organs in the abdominal and thoracic cavities during embryologic development. When a malignancy such as pancreatic cancer develops under these conditions, surgical resection becomes particularly complex. This case report demonstrates successful pancreatic cancer resection despite the patient's complicated anatomy. Patient concerns: An 82-year-old female presented to our institution with complaints of mild right upper quadrant pain radiating to the mid-epigastric region. Diagnoses: Physical examination revealed jaundice with scleral icterus consistent with obstructive jaundice. Radiographic imaging revealed hepatic duct dilation with several anatomic anomalies including small bowel location in the right upper abdomen, cecum, and appendix in the left lower quadrant, reversed superior mesenteric artery and superior mesenteric vein positions, and right-sided duodenal-jejunal flexture as well as an entirely right-sided pancreas, and left lower pelvis with ≥6 separate splenules. These findings resulted in a diagnosis of heterotaxy syndrome with polysplenia. Interventions: Careful preoperative planning and total pancreatectomy was performed without complication. Outcomes: The patient recovered well. Pathologic examination of the pancreatic mass revealed moderately/poorly differentiated invasive pancreatic duct adenocarcinoma. The patient remains alive and well without signs of recurrent disease at the 2-year follow-up. Lessons: Given the wide range of anatomical variants observed in patients with heterotaxy syndrome, a thorough radiologic assessment is necessary before engaging in any surgical procedure. In our case, preoperative identification of the various anatomic anomalies, such as the short and vertically oriented pancreas, the porta hepatis position anterior to the duodenum, the nonrotation of the intestines and the anomalous origin of the right hepatic artery allowed us to perform a safe and uncomplicated total pancreatectomy.


The paper uses a unique survey of recruitment firms to look at how Russian firms perceive the supply of skills in the labour market and how well those skills match to their demand for labour. Firms invest significant amounts of time in search to fill vacancies and search time is unambiguously increasing in skills. These skill gaps are associated with significant wage premia and are perceived to have negative consequences for the output mix and productivity. A small job postings experiment also finds that search time increased yet further for activities considered relatively innovative. Further, using Russian Ministry of Labour data for all legal migrant applications in 2010 and matching the migrant to the sponsoring firm, we find that there is some – albeit limited - evidence of firms using migrants to address high skill shortages. However, the overwhelming majority of migrants are skilled or unskilled workers; a reflection of the low underlying rates of innovation and associated demand for high skill jobs.


Social Engineering (ES) is now considered the great security threat to people and organizations. Ever since the existence of human beings, fraudulent and deceptive people have used social engineering tricks and tactics to trick victims into obeying them. There are a number of social engineering techniques that are used in information technology to compromise security defences and attack people or organizations such as phishing, identity theft, spamming, impersonation, and spaying. Recently, researchers have suggested that social networking sites (SNSs) are the most common source and best breeding grounds for exploiting the vulnerabilities of people and launching a variety of social engineering based attacks. However, the literature shows a lack of information about what types of social engineering threats exist on SNSs. This study is part of a project that attempts to predict a persons' vulnerability to SE based on demographic factors. In this paper, we demonstrate the different types of social engineering based attacks that exist on SNSs, the purposes of these attacks, reasons why people fell (or did not fall) for these attacks, based on users' opinions. A qualitative questionnaire-based survey was conducted to collect and analyse people's experiences with social engineering tricks, deceptions, or attacks on SNSs.


In this paper we focus on algorithms and reconfigurable multi-core architectures for streaming digital signal processing (DSP) applications. The multi-core concept has a number of advantages: (1) depending on the requirements more or fewer cores can be switched on/off, (2) the multi-core structure fits well to future process technologies, more cores will be available in advanced process technologies, but the complexity per core does not increase, (3) the multi-core concept is fault tolerant, faulty cores can be discarded and (4) multiple cores can be configured fast in parallel. Because in our approach processing and memory are combined in the cores, tasks can be executed efficiently on cores (locality of reference). There are a number of application domains that can be considered as streaming DSP applications: for example wireless baseband processing (for HiperLAN/2, WiMax, DAB, DRM, and DVB), multimedia processing (e.g. MPEG, MP3 coding/decoding), medical image processing, colour image processing, sensor processing (e.g. remote surveillance cameras) and phased array radar systems. In this paper the key characteristics of streaming DSP applications are highlighted, and the characteristics of the processing architectures to efficiently support these types of applications are addressed. We present the initial results of the Annabelle chip that we designed with our approach.


The Waves of Professor Love Virginia Trimble, reply by Jim Holt In response to: A Mathematical Romance from the December 5, 2013 issue To the Editors: The footnote on p. 27 of Jim Holt's review of Edward Frenkel's Love and Math [NYR, December 5, 2013] makes it sound a bit as if Professor Love were a pseudonym or mild witticism. A.E.H. Love was an expert on various kinds of wave motion, and Love waves are named for him. They are surface waves, which, in the case of earthquakes, travel more slowly than p (primary or pressure) and s (secondary or shear) waves and so arrive later, but sometimes do the most damage. Virginia Trimble Professor of Physics and Astronomy University of California Irvine, California Jim Holt replies: Facetiousness is silenced by Love waves. New York review of Books February 6, 2014 • Volume 61, Number 2 http://www.nybooks.com/issues/2014/feb/06/


We study the application of multi-agent reinforcement learning for game-theoretical problems. In particular, we are interested in coalition formation problems and their variants such as hedonic coalition formation games (also called hedonic games), matching (a common type of hedonic game), and coalition formation for task allocation. We consider decentralized multi-agent systems where autonomous agents inhabit an environment without any prior knowledge of other agents or the system. We also consider spatial formulations of these problems. Most of the literature for coalition formation problems does not consider these formulations of the problems because it increases computational complexity significantly. We propose novel decentralized heuristic learning
and multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) approaches to train agents, and we use game-theoretic evaluation criteria such as optimality, stability, and indices like Shapley value.


Process operability represents the ability of a process plant to operate satisfactorily away from the nominal operating or design condition, where flexibility and dynamic operability are two important attributes of operability considered in this thesis. Today's companies are facing numerous challenges, many as a result of volatile market conditions. Key to sustainable profitable operation is a robust process supply chain. Within a wider business context, flexibility and responsiveness, i.e. dynamic operability, are regarded as key qualifications of a robust process supply chain. The first part of this thesis develops methodologies to rigorously evaluate the dynamic operability and flexibility of a process supply chain. A model is developed which describes the response dynamics of a multi-product, multi-echelon supply chain system. Its incorporation within a dynamic operability analysis framework is shown, where a bi-criterion, two-stage stochastic programming approach is applied for the treatment of demand uncertainty, and for estimating the Pareto frontier between an economic and responsiveness criterion. Two case studies are presented to demonstrate the effect of supply chain design features on responsiveness. This thesis has also extended current paradigms for process flexibility analysis to supply chains. The flexibility analysis framework, where a steady-state supply chain model is considered, evaluates the ability to sustain feasible steady-state operation for a range of demand uncertainty. The second part of this thesis develops a decision-support tool for supply chain management (SCM), by means of a robust model predictive control (MPC) strategy. An effective decisionsupport tool can fully leverage the qualifications from the operability analysis. The MPC formulation proposed in this thesis: (i) captures uncertainty in model parameters and demand by stochastic programming, (ii) accommodates hybrid process systems with decisions governed by logical conditions/rulesets, (iii) addresses multiple supply chain performance metrics including customer service and economics, and (iv) considers both open-loop and closed-loop prediction of uncertainty propagation. The developed robust framework is applied for the control of a multi-echelon, multi-product supply chain, and provides a substantial reduction in the occurrence of back orders when compared with a nominal MPC framework.


Introduction. Human neurodegenerative diseases increase progressively with age and present a high social and economic burden. Growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) are both growth factors exerting trophic effects on neuronal regeneration in the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS). GH and IGF-1 stimulate protein synthesis in neurons, glia, oligodendrocytes, and Schwann cells, and favor neuronal survival, inhibiting apoptosis. This study aims to evaluate the effect of GH and IGF-1 on neurons, and their possible therapeutic clinical applications on neuron regeneration in human subjects. Methods. In the literature, we searched the clinical trials and followed up studies in humans, which have evaluated the effect of GH/IGF-1 on CNS and PNS. The following keywords have been used: "GH/IGF-1" associated with "neuroregeneration", "amyotrophic lateral sclerosis", "Alzheimer disease", "Parkinson's disease", "brain", and "neuron". Results. Of the retrieved articles, we found nine articles about the effect of GH in healthy patients who suffered from traumatic brain injury (TBI), and six studies (four using IGF-1 and two GH therapy) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The administration of GH in patients after TBI showed a significantly positive recovery of brain and mental function. Treatment with GH and IGF-1 therapy in ALS produced contradictory results. Conclusions. Although strong findings have shown the positive effects of GH/IGF-1 administration on neuroregeneration in animal models, a very limited number of clinical studies have been conducted in humans. GH/IGF-1 therapy had different effects in patients with TBI, evidencing a high recovery of neurons and clinical outcome, while in ALS patients, the results are contradictory. More complex clinical protocols are necessary to evaluate the effect of GH/IGF-1 efficacy in neurodegenerative diseases. It seems evident that GH and IGF-1 therapy favors the optimal recovery of neurons when a consistent residual activity is still present. Furthermore, the effect of GH/IGF-1 could be mediated by, or be overlapped with that of other hormones, such as estradiol and testosterone.


Before skyscrapers and streetlights glowed at all hours, American cities fell into inky blackness with each setting of the sun. But over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new technologies began to light up streets, sidewalks, buildings, and public spaces. Peter C. Baldwin's evocative book depicts the changing experience of the urban night over this period, visiting a host of actors - scavengers, newsboys, and mashers alike - in the nocturnal city. Baldwin examines work, crime, transportation, and leisure as he moves through the gaslight era, exploring the spread of modern police forces and the emergence of late-night entertainment, to the era of electricity, when social campaigns sought to remove women and children from public areas at night. While many people celebrated the transition from darkness to light as the arrival of twenty-four hours of daytime, Baldwin shows that certain social patterns remained, including the danger of street crime and the skewed gender profile of night work. Sweeping us from concert halls and brothels to streetcars and industrial forges, "In the Watches of the Night" is an illuminating study of a vital era in American urban history.


Following the rapid growth of China's economy, energy consumption, especially electricity consumption of China, has made a huge increase in the past 30 years. Since China has been using coal as the major energy source to produce electricity during these years, environmental problems have become more and more serious. The research question for this paper is: "Can China use alternative energies instead of coal to produce more electricity in 2030?" Hydro power, nuclear power, natural gas, wind power and solar power are considered as the possible and most popular alternative energies for the current situation of China. To answer the research question above, there are two things to know: How much is the total electricity consumption in China by 2030? And how much electricity can the alternative energies provide in China by 2030? If the electricity provide by alternative energies can occupy more than fifty percent of the total electricity consumption, then the answer for the search question is yes otherwise it is no. For a more reliable forecast, an econometric model using the Ordinary Least Squares Method is established on this paper to predict the total electricity consumption by 2030. The predicted electricity coming from alternative energy sources by 2030 in China can be calculated from the existing literatures. The research results of this paper are analyzed under a reference scenario and a max tech scenario. In the reference scenario, the combination of the alternative energies can provide 47.71% of the total electricity consumption by 2030. In the max tech scenario, it provides 57.96% of the total electricity 8 consumption by 2030. These results are important not only because they indicate the government's long term goal is reachable, but also implies that the natural environment of China could have an inspiring future.


This study presents a review of the Folin–Ciocalteu (F–C) assay for total phenolic content (TPC) determinations and describes different approaches to improve its specificity. Phenolics are regarded as the molecules with the highest potential to neutralize free radicals. Therefore, their quantification is a common practice in different areas of food research. However, when determining TPC in plant food extracts, the presence of reducing interferants [ascorbic acid (AA)] produces inaccurate estimations of TPC values. Different methodologies have been proposed to improve the specificity of the F–C assay. These methodologies include: (i) the use of solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges to separate interferants from phenolics; (ii) the calculation of a corrected TPC value based on the AA reducing activity present in the extract; and (iii) the pre-treatment of extracts with oxidative agents prior to TPC quantification. These methods are described in detail in the present study. Likewise, their advantages and disadvantages are discussed based on new experimental data. A simple modification of the F–C assay procedure is proposed to quantify both the TPC value and the AA reducing activity in plant food extracts. Values obtained by the modified F–C assay can be used to estimate a corrected TPC value.


This study describes, discusses and assesses the impact of a marriage guidance counselling service in a general medical practice. It considers the role of the counsellor in the primary health care team, the appropriateness of providing a counselling service in this setting and the nature and effect of the counselling as experienced by individual clients. The material derives from records provided by the counsellors, from medical casenotes and from interviews with 83 clients counselled at the practice, with their counsellors and with their CPs. The counselling service did appear to be a valued and valuable addition to the range of practice services. It was viewed by clients, counsellors and CPs. as contributing to the quality of patient care, as increasing access to counselling for potential clients and as improving the status and job satisfaction of counsellors. Over half of the clients interviewed had found the counselling of substantial and lasting help and only one-fifth reported no help at all. However, there were significant discrepancies between the assessments of clients, those of their counsellors and those of their CPs., emphasising the dangers of equating client satisfaction with professional judgements. There was also no evidence from medical casenotes to substantiate the claims that counselling in this setting reduces demand for medical services. In addition, if this was to become a general policy development, there were argued to be some unresolved issues in areas such as the desirability of moving towards access to counselling through medical referral? the motivation of clients for whom counselling was 'prescribed'; and the pressures on unpaid, part-time counsellors and on their voluntary marriage guidance organisation, in terms of the most appropriate use of their limited resources and the difficulties of working along side a statutory, highly professionalised service, provided largely 'free' at the point of demand.


OBJECTIVE: To determine whether measurement of different markers of endothelial damage, activation of coagulation, and platelet activation might differentiate between patients with primary Raynaud's phenomenon (PRP), limited cutaneous and diffuse systemic sclerosis (lcSSc and dSSc), and healthy control subjects. METHODS: Under carefully controlled conditions, fasting blood was drawn from 19 healthy control subjects, 10 patients with PRP, 17 with lcSSc and nine with dSSc for measurement of the following: von Willebrand factor (VWF) and soluble thrombomodulin as markers of endothelial damage/activation, thromboxane (as thromboxane B2) and beta-thromboglobulin as markers of platelet activation, and tissue plasminogen activator antigen, tissue plasminogen activator activity and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) as markers of fibrinolysis. RESULTS: VWF was increased significantly in patients with SSc, and there was also a linear trend for thromboxane and tissue plasminogen activator antigen (in addition to VWF) to differentiate between different subgroups of patients with Raynaud's phenomenon. Patients with dSSc had the highest values. A combined index of VWF and thromboxane showed a highly significant trend across the four groups studied. CONCLUSION: VWF, and to a lesser extent thromboxane and tissue plasminogen activator antigen, are associated with disease severity in patients with Raynaud's phenomenon. Prospective studies are now required to establish if these parameters can be used as markers of disease progression.


This thesis deals with the transition that was taking place in Protestant society in the immediate pre-famine period in County Tyrone. It explores how this community, at all social levels, reacted to the changes that were occurring and which were considered detrimental to its position of dominance in society. These changes had the potential to dramatically affect the traditional paternalistic relationship that bound the lower classes to their social betters and this study examines how this relationship survived through economic recession, changes in law and order, increasing concessions being granted to Catholics, lessening government support for the Protestant Church, and the suppression of the dominant Protestant association of the time- the Orange Order.
The Order played an integral part in the lives of many Protestants and was an organization that transcended the class divide. Because of this, it becomes the pivot around which this work revolves as the Order, with its wide-stretching network, helped maintain the patriarchal relationship that bound the classes together. It is also a useful tool through which to examine attitudes towards law and order within the Protestant community as changes within this area, especially within the magistracy, affected the upper classes, the very people that the lower classes looked to for guidance. How this guidance manifested itself is reflected on the political stage as part of the elite used the mob as a political tool to serve its own needs. Despite eventual dissolution, the Order remained strong in many areas which further highlights its popularity amongst Protestants in County Tyrone.
The study concludes that despite the dramatic changes being experienced within the Protestant community, the traditional hierarchal structure remained and that
while the relationship between the classes was slowly unravelling, it remained, largely because of the Orange Order, unaltered in Tyrone in the immediate pre-famine era.


Training deep neural networks requires an exorbitant amount of computation resources, including a heterogeneous mix of GPU and CPU devices. It is critical to place operations in a neural network on these devices in an optimal way, so that the training process can complete within the shortest amount of time. The state-of-the-art uses reinforcement learning to learn placement skills by repeatedly performing Monte-Carlo experiments. However, due to its equal treatment of placement samples, we argue that there remains ample room for significant improvements. In this paper, we propose a new joint learning algorithm, called Post, that integrates cross-entropy minimization and proximal policy optimization to achieve theoretically guaranteed optimal efficiency. In order to incorporate the cross-entropy method as a sampling technique, we propose to represent placements using discrete probability distributions, which allows us to estimate an optimal probability mass by maximal likelihood estimation, a powerful tool with the best possible efficiency. We have implemented Post in the Google Cloud platform, and our extensive experiments with several popular neural network training benchmarks have demonstrated clear evidence of superior performance: with the same amount of learning time, it leads to placements that have training times up to 63.7% shorter over the state-of-the-art.


This site provides access to the raw data and documentation from the Wisconsin Basic Needs Study. Originally called the Wisconsin Income and Spending Survey, this study is a longitudinal survey of 2,000 Wisconsin families, conducted in the early 1980's for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Social Services. The objectives of the study were to describe the basic needs of families, to observe the variation in needs as a function of household size and composition, region, and season, and to determine the behavioral and psychological resonses to changes in the ability of families to satisfy their consumption requirements. The survey measured consumer expenditures, and collected extensive retrospective life history, and behavioral and attitudinal measures. The sample consists of a cross-section of households throughout the state, supplemented by special oversampling of households in which the Department of Health and Social Services had a particular policy interest including low-income families, AFDC households, female headed households with children, and households with an elderly head.


Bearing pressure is the load per unit area along the foundation bottom. The value of bearing pressure can be obtained from soil exploration. In this research, three sites in Iraq were tested (Mosul at north, Baghdad at middle and Basrah at south) for the best type of foundation to be chosen. Seventy nine samples were taken from twenty three boreholes drilled to a depth ranging from 1to 24m, from various sites for the three sites. Samples were tested for their size; Atterberg limits; direct shear; unconfined compression; consolidation and SPT tests. The results showed that the nature of soil in Mosul was generally were silty clay to clay (in some areas silt or sand) with high to very high plasticity. In Baghdad, it was loam clay, silty clay, and in some areas silt. Its plasticity range was medium to high and non-plastic in few sites. For Basrah, the soil type was clay loam and in many places was sand or silt. The value of plasticity was medium. The average and the worst values of bearing capacity were: 177KN/m 2 and 77KN/m 2 for Mosul; 125 KN/m 2 and 68 KN/m 2 for Baghdad; and 84KN/m 2 and 24 KN/m 2 for Basrah. These values were used in a computer model (SAP2000 and SAFE softwares) to find the best suitable foundation in each site. The model suggests that spread or continuous and raft (if basement is used for building with many floors) are suitable for Mosul. For Baghdad, spread and raft type of foundations are suitable. While, for Basrah, raft foundation type are to be used in some areas where building should be less than three floors and for other areas, deep foundation (piles or pier) can only to be used.


Infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus, type 1 (HIV-1) is associated with a gradual progressive decline in the number of CD4+ T lymphocytes. Effective treatment suppresses viral replication and is accompanied by a concomitant increase in the number of CD4+ T cells. Immune reconstitution of CD4+ T cells in children following treatment is characterised by a sustained increase of naive cells, a pattern that differs from that seen in adults. The aim of this thesis was to explore how these changes occur. CD4+ T cells in blood samples from HIV-1 infected children were identified, divided into sub-populations and analysed for apoptosis, proliferation, activation and differentiation by flow cytometry. Four CD4+ T cell sub-populations, with varying contributions to the total CD4+ T cell pool were thus identified: (i) recent thymic emigrants (RTEs) made up the largest population yet maintained very low levels of proliferation despite increased viral replication and cellular activation, and were consistently greater in children with undetectable viraemia; (ii) central naive cells, which were fairly constant in HIV-1 infected children of all ages regardless of CD4 count; (iii) CD31- memory cells that increased as CD4 count fell and (iv) CD31+ memory cells that despite their high level of activation and proliferation remained a small population across age, viral load and CD4 count. Treatment interruption and the resulting increased viraemia and decreased CD4 count were associated with only transient changes to the percentage contribution of each subset, which supports the existence of a setpoint for each subpopulation. This thesis infers the importance of thymic output in maintaining the CD4 count and hence the potential for using RTEs in monitoring response to treatment and sheds light on the role and origin of CD31+ memory cells as a small but highly activated population that may be important in disease pathogenesis.


Lignocellulosic biomass is an important renewable resource that could substitute fossil feedstocks as a raw material for high value chemicals production. While the cellulosic fraction of biomass gives access to saccharides only, lignin could possibly give access to low molecular weight aromatic compounds. Strong alkalinity of the reaction medium is necessary in order to dissolve lignin and to obtain an electrically conducting solution. However, strong alkalinity is supposed to be one of the reasons for consecutive oxidations to undesired organic acids and carbon dioxide. The high pH also limits the use of only a few metals as electrode materials. We report the use of pure deep eutectic solvents (DES) in order to dissolve lignin in combination with electrochemical oxidative depolymerisation. We also present successful extraction of the products through liquid–liquid extraction and their characterization by size exclusion chromatography and GC-MS, proving that a successful depolymerisation of lignin was achieved. Guaiacol and vanillin were the two most abundant detected products.


This study examined the effects of alteration of tropical rainforest vegetation structure and composition on bird community structure and the influence of life‐history traits on species persistence in the Kalakad‐Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Western Ghats. Systematic sampling for vegetation and point count surveys for birds were carried out in cardamom plantations abandoned for 5 and 15 years, plantation‐rainforest edges, a selectively logged forest patch and adjoining undisturbed rainforest sites. Principal components analysis of vegetation variables revealed clear differences between undisturbed and altered sites in woody plant and cane densities, canopy cover and vertical stratification. Bird species richness was lowest in cardamom plantations abandoned for 5 years and highest in logged and undisturbed forest. Bird species richness and similarity with undisturbed forest were significantly positively related to the vegetation component representing woody plant and cane (Calamus spp.) densities. Sites that were more similar in tree species composition had more similar bird communities whereas similarity in foliage profile between sites did not influence bird community similarity. Birds that were rare, were large‐bodied and belonged to the carnivore, omnivore, bark‐surface feeder and terrestrial insectivore guilds were adversely affected by habitat alteration. Restoring woody plant and cane densities and rainforest floristic composition in disturbed habitats may be required for management and conservation of bird communities typical to the region.


During the start-up of the propulsion system of a satellite or spacecraft, the opening of the tank isolation valve will cause the propellant to flow into an evacuated feedline and slam against a closed thruster valve. This filling process, called priming, can cause severe pressure peaks that could lead to structural failure. In the case of monopropellants such as hydrazine, also, the risk of adiabatic compression detonation must be taken into account in the design of the feedline subsystem. The phenomenon of priming involves complex two-phase flow: the liquid entering the evacuated pipe undergoes flash evaporation creating a vapor cushion in front of the liquid that mixes with the residual inert gas in the line. Moreover, the dissolved pressurizing gas in the liquid will desorb making the priming process difficult to model. In order to study this phenomenon, a new test-bench has been built at DLR Lampoldshausen which allows fluid transient experiments in the same conditions as the operating space system. Tests are performed with water and ethanol at different conditions (tank pressure, vacuum level, pressurizing gas helium vs. nitrogen, etc.). The effect of the geometry is also investigated, comparing different test-elements such as straight, tees, and elbow pipes. The pressure profile is found to be dependent on the geometry and on the downstream conditions. The acoustic wave reflection caused by the pipe geometry and fluid dynamic effects such as the aforementioned desorption and flash evaporation induce a complex pressure profile of the first pressure peak. Finally, numerical simulations of the priming process are performed by means of EcosimPro software in conjunction with European Space Propulsion System Simulation (ESPSS) libraries and results are compared with experiments.


The validation of remote sensing products (RSPs) is fundamental work before the proper use of RSPs. This paper mainly introduces the technical specification for the validation of remote sensing product, which is used to guide user how to validate the available products. The validation of remote sensing products (VRSP) mainly there are two levels. The first level focuses on the validation at pixel scale and the other is the product level which contains a number of pixels that are distributed in different land use types which are selected to represent both the space-time characteristics of surface parameters investigated. At pixel scale, the validation procedure mainly consists of three steps: sampling design for ground observation, data collection and estimation the mean value at pixel scale. The data types of ground observation include the wireless sensor network, which are used to capture multi-scale heterogeneities of surface parameters, and the footprint which could be a flux observation such as eddy covariance (EC) and large aperture scintillometer (LAS). After finishing the validation at pixel scale, the second-level validation for the whole remote sensing product is followed. The assessment with indexes is then used to evaluate the performance of the validation. Last, a validation report on the description of the validation will be included in the technical specification.


In this paper, we propose an OBDA approach for accessing geospatial data stored in relational databases using the R2RML mappings and OGC standard GeoSPARQL. On the theoretical side, we provide a formalization of GeoSPARQL in terms of SPARQL entailment regime. For a practical query answering algorithm, we introduce an extension to the existing SPARQL-to-SQL translation method to support GeoSPARQL features. Our approach has been implemented in the system Ontop-spatial, an extension of the OBDA system Ontop for creating virtual geospatial RDF graphs on top of geospatial relational databases. We present an experimental evaluation of our system using and extending a state-of-theart benchmark. To measure the performance of our system, we compare it to two state-of-the-art geospatial RDF stores –a free and open-source one, and a commercial one– and confirm its efficiency. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


BACKGROUND
Prostate cancer mainly affects elderly men, and its incidence has steadily increased over the last decade. The management of this disease is replete with controversy. In men with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer, hormone therapy is almost universally accepted as the initial treatment of choice and produces good responses in most patients. However, many patients will relapse and become resistant to further hormone manipulation; the outlook for these patients is poor. Many have disease extending to the skeleton, which is associated with severe pain. Therapies for these men include chemotherapy, bisphosphonates, palliative radiotherapy, and radioisotopes. Systemic chemotherapy has been evaluated in men with hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) for many years, with disappointing results. However, more recent studies with newer agents have shown encouraging results. There is therefore a need to explore the value of chemotherapy in this disease.

OBJECTIVES
The present review aims to assess the role of chemotherapy in men with metastatic HRPC. The major outcome was overall survival. Secondary objectives include the effect of chemotherapy on pain relief, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response, quality of life, and treatment-related toxicity.

SEARCH STRATEGY
Trials were identified by searching electronic databases, such as MEDLINE, and handsearching of relevant journals and conference proceedings. There was no restriction of language or location.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Only published randomised trials of chemotherapy in HRPC patients were eligible for inclusion in this review. Randomised comparisons of different chemotherapeutic regimens, chemotherapy versus best standard of care or placebo, were relevant to this review. Randomised, dose-escalation studies were not included in this review.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Data extraction tables were designed specifically for this review to aid data collection. Data from relevant studies were extracted and included information on trial design, participants, and outcomes. Trial quality was also assessed using a scoring system for randomisation, blinding, and description of patient withdrawal.

MAIN RESULTS
Out of 107 randomised trials of chemotherapy in advanced prostate cancer identified by the search strategy, 47 were included in this review and represented 6929 patients with HRPC. Only two trials compared the same chemotherapeutic interventions and therefore a meta-analysis was considered inappropriate. The quality of some trials was poor because of poor reporting, low-patient recruitment, or poor trial design. For clarity, trials were categorised according to the major drug used, but this was not a definitive grouping, since many trials used several agents and would be eligible for inclusion in a number of categories. Drug categories included estramustine, 5-fluorouracil, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, mitoxantrone, and docetaxel. Only studies using docetaxel reported a significant improvement in overall survival compared to best standard of care, although the increase was small (< 2.5 months). The mean percentage of patients achieving at least a 50% reduction in PSA compared to baseline was as follows: estramustine 48%; 5-fluorouracil 20%; doxorubicin 50% (one study only); mitoxantrone 33%; and docetaxel 52%. Pain relief was reported in 35% to 76% of patients receiving either single agents or combination regimens. A three weekly regime of docetaxel significantly improved pain relief compared to mitoxantrone plus prednisone (the latter regimen approved as standard therapy for HRPC in the USA). All chemotherapeutics, either as single agents or in combination, were associated with toxicity; the major ones being myelosuppression, gastrointestinal toxicity, cardiac toxicity, neuropathy, and alopecia. Quality of life was significantly improved with docetaxel compared to mitoxantrone plus prednisone.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Patients with HRPC have not traditionally been offered chemotherapy as a routine treatment because of treatment-related toxicity and poor responses. Recent data from randomised studies, in particular those using docetaxel, have provided encouraging improvements in overall survival, palliation of symptoms, and improvements in quality of life. Chemotherapy should be considered as a treatment option for patients with HRPC. However, patients should make an informed decision based on the risks and benefits of chemotherapy.


Coming out', defined in terms of identifying self as lesbian, as well as disclosure of this information to others, is seen as an issue only within a heterosexist society. Heterosexism serves to reflect and create social representations, containing inflexible conceptualizations of gender, and social identities, incorporating power inequalities. The study was based on content analysis of individual semi-structured depth interviews, with forty lesbians on perceptions and experiences of coming out; thirty heterosexual women and men on attitudes to homosexuality; and twenty women on communication with family and friends. Lesbian and heterosexual interviews were supplemented with stereotype tasks, including the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire. Coming out to self was shown to be based upon strong emotional feelings directed towards women, together with awareness of lesbianism as an option, and a level of emotional acceptance of homosexuality. Coming out to family, heterosexual friends etc. involved risks and benefits. The study revealed a social context reflecting lesbian 'invisibility', heterosexuals' lack of interest and minimal contact with lesbians; perceptions of threat and abnormality; and a masculine, abnormal, aggressive, lesbian stereotype. Heterosexual subjects defined 'lesbian' in terms of sex only, and perceived lesbians as masculine. Lesbian subjects perceived lesbianism as more than sex, and lesbians as androgynous. Communication issues most similar to coming out concerned identity, relationships, or a different way of life; threat, loss or stigma; or reactions of others. Case studies analysed within Breakwell's threatened identity model suggested extension of the theory to include additional identity principles of authenticity/integrity and affiliation. It is argued that changes, at the level of social representations, relating to gender conceptualization, and the consequent power inequalities, are necessary for aiding the coming out process.


With vision impairment affecting millions of people world-wide, various strategies aiming at vision restoration are being undertaken. Thanks to decades of extensive research, electrical stimulation approaches to vision restoration began to undergo clinical trials. Quite recently, another technique employing optogenetic therapy emerged as a possible alternative. Both artificial vision restoration strategies reported poor spatial resolution so far. In this article, we compared the spatial resolution inferred ex vivo under ideal conditions using a computational model analysis of the retinal ganglion cell (RGC) spiking activity. The RGC spiking was stimulated in epiretinal configuration by either optogenetic or electrical means. RGCs activity was recorded from the ex vivo retina of transgenic late-stage photoreceptor-degenerated mice (rd10) using a high-density Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) based microelectrode array. The majority of retinal samples were stimulated by both, optogenetic and electrical stimuli using a spatial grating stimulus. A population-level analysis of the spiking activity of identified RGCs was performed and the spatial resolution achieved through electrical and optogenetic photo-stimulation was inferred using a support vector machine classifier. The best f1 score of the classifier for the electrical stimulation in epiretinal configuration was 86% for 32 micron wide gratings and increased to 100% for 128 microns. For optogenetically activated cells, we obtained high f1 scores of 82% for 10 microns grid width for a photo-stimulation frequency of 2.5 Hz and 73% for a photo-stimulation frequency of 10 Hz. A subsequent analysis, considering only the RGCs modulated in both electrical and optogenetic stimulation protocols revealed no significant difference in the prediction accuracy between the two stimulation modalities. The results presented here indicate that a high spatial resolution can be achieved for electrical or optogenetic artificial stimulation using the activated retinal ganglion cell output.


In this study, the amount of cement used in a concrete mix is minimized to reduce the toxic effects on users by adjusting the concrete mixture contents. The reduction of cement is achieved by using various admixtures (ground granulated blast-furnace slag, flyash, ordinary Portland cement, and activated Hwangtoh powder). To apply the mix to construction, material property tests such as compressive strength, slump, and pH are performed. Preliminary experimental results showed that the Hwangtoh concrete could be used as a healthy construction material. Also, the health issues and effects of Hwangtoh mortar are quantitatively evaluated through an animal clinical test. Mice are placed in Hwangtoh mortar and cement mortar cages to record their activity. For the test, five cages are made with Hwangtoh and ordinary Portland cement mortar floors, using Hwangtoh powder replacement ratios of 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% of the normal cement mortar mixing ratio, and two cages are made with Hwangtoh mortar living quarters. The activity parameter measurements included weight, food intake, water intake, residential space selection, breeding activity, and aggression. The study results can be used to evaluate the benefits of using Hwangtoh as a cement replacing admixture for lifestyle, health and sustainability.


This step-by-step, highly visual text provides a comprehensive introduction to managing and maintaining computer hardware and software. Written by best-selling author and educator Jean Andrews, A+ Guide to IT Technical Support, 9th Edition closely integrates the CompTIA+ Exam objectives to prepare you for the 220-901 and 220-902 certification exams. The new Ninth Edition also features extensive updates to reflect current technology, techniques, and industry standards in the dynamic, fast-paced field of PC repair and information technology. Each chapter covers both core concepts and advanced topics, organizing material to facilitate practical application and encourage you to learn by doing. The new edition features more coverage of updated hardware, security, virtualization, new coverage of cloud computing, Linux and Mac OS, and increased emphasis on mobile devices. Supported by a wide range of supplemental resources to enhance learning with Lab Manuals, CourseNotes online labs and the optional MindTap that includes online labs, certification test prep and interactive exercises and activities, this proven text offers students an ideal way to prepare for success as a professional IT support technician and administrator.


Abstract. Canopy height (CH) and leaf area index (LAI) provide key information about crop growth and productivity. A rapid and accurate retrieval of CH and LAI is critical for a variety of agricultural applications. LiDAR and RGB photogrammetry have been increasingly used in plant phenotyping in recent years thanks to the developments in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and sensor technology. The goal of this study is to investigate the potential of UAV LiDAR and RGB photogrammetry in estimating crop CH and LAI. To this end, a high resolution 32 channel LiDAR and RGB cameras mounted on DJI Matrice 600 Pro UAV were employed to collect data at sorghum fields near Maricopa, Arizona, USA. A series of canopy structure metrics were extracted using LiDAR and RGB photogrammetry-based point clouds. Random Forest Regression (RFR) models were established based on the UAV-LiDAR and photogrammetry-derived metrics and field-measured LAI. The results show that both UAV-LiDAR and RGB photogrammetry demonstrated promising accuracies in CH extraction and LAI estimation. Overall, UAV-LiDAR yielded superior performance than RGB photogrammetry in both low and high canopy density sorghum fields. In addition, Pearson's correlation coefficient, as well as RFR-based variable importance analysis demonstrated that height-based metrics from both LiDAR and photogrammetric point clouds were more useful than density-based metrics in LAI estimation. This study proved that UAV-based LiDAR and photogrammetry are important tool in sustainable field management and high-throughput phenotyping, but LiDAR is more accurate than RGB photogrammetry due to its greater canopy penetration capability.


We provide a direct test of the role of social preferences in voluntary cooperation. We elicit individuals' cooperation preference in one experiment and make a point prediction about the contribution to a repeated public good. This allows for a novel test as to whether there are "types" of players who behave consistently with their elicited preferences. We find clear-cut evidence for the existence of "types". People who express free rider preferences show the most systematic deviation from the predicted contributions, because they contribute in the first half of the experiment. We also show that the interaction of heterogeneous types explains a large part of the dynamics of free riding.


The European Alps support several ground beetle Nebria (Nebriola) species, which are morphologically similar. A study conducted on a Nebriola population located between the Eastern Pennine and Western Lepontine Italian Alps revealed the presence of two species, Nebria (Nebriola) cordicollis and N. (Nebriola) gosteliae, and some individuals that possibly represented an unknown taxonomic unit (UTU). Therefore, to further elucidate and characterise the morphological units at the site, we completed a comparative analysis using geometric morphometrics applying the semilandmarks approach. We examined the pronotum, the right elytron, and the median lobe of aedeagus. The quantitative analysis evaluated the overall variation in shape and size of the three structures. Results supported the hypothesised presence of three distinct groups of individuals, with different morphologies for the anatomical traits examined. The pronotum and median lobe of aedeagus exhibited more marked differences among the groups, while the right elytron showed reduced differentiation. These results confirmed that the three groups were separate taxa, and were therefore correctly classified. Based on our findings, we considered the UTU a new species, which is here described as Nebria (Nebriola) casalei sp. nov.


This paper raises the question whether it is possible to develop a theory of bordering which will encompass the diverse types of border and boundary experience. I have previously argued that the only way to create a common language between the different disciplinary languages (including geographers, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, economists and others) is to create a common set of theoretical constructs and frameworks which can be used as a generalized explanatory model for understanding changing border/boundary phenomenon (Newman 2003). In essence, this paper reiterates a question asked long ago in one of the classic studies of international boundaries, namely how are boundaries (borders) to be redefined in the settings of contemporary time and place (Jones 1959).


Prader-Willi syndrome is a consequence of several genetic defects in the 15q11-q13 region, including methylation changes, and is associated in newborns with hypotonia, poor suck, a reduced growth velocity, and developmental delay. We present the case of a newborn with severe hypotonia delivered via caesarean surgery at full term in the "Elias" University Emergency Hospital. Although the newborn had normal respiratory and cardiovascular parameters, the clinical examination had revealed hypotonia, lethargy and hypogonadism. The risk factors are unknown for this particularly case, as there was no additional risk identified prenatally. The particularity of this case is that the newborn had since birth very severe hypotonia and poor suck.


Projects are the life blood of any organization. Revised to reflect the latest changes to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge and the Project Management Professional Exam, the fourth edition of The AMA Handbook of Project Management provides readers with a clear overview of a complex discipline. Covering everything from individual projects to programs and strategic alignment, it addresses: project initiation and planning; communication and interpersonal skills; scheduling, budgeting and meeting business objectives; managing political and resource issues; implementing a PMO; and measuring value and competencies. The book compiles essays and advice from the field's top professionals and features new chapters on stakeholder management, agile project management, program management, project governance, knowledge management, and more. Updated with fresh examples, case studies and solutions to specific project management dilemmas, it remains an essential reference to the critical concepts and theories all project managers must master.


The present work deals with RFID (radio--‐frequency identification) technology, which is nowadays mainly used to identify and track products, items or even employees. This technology facilitates the collection, storing and processing of information in order to, for instance, provide a higher stock visibility, eliminate manufacturing errors or increase production speeds. It is replacing more and more the less efficient bar code system, and its increasing importance in a various number of sectors, as well as its many different ways of using the technology, give reasons and motivation to look with more detail into the subject.

As mentioned, bar code applications have many deficiencies and disadvantages in comparison with an RFID system they are becoming old--‐fashioned in the meantime, and are more rarely applied by companies in a multitude of industries. But RFID technology is not just meant to substitute the bar code system, it is a technology that opens new ways and new possibilities of affecting positively many industrial, administrative, stocking and transporting processes, among others that will be seen.

This work is meant to be a reference for engineers and managers, providing in the first place, an introduction to get more familiar with the subject through description of the physical phenomena and technical characteristics of RFID. Further more, the work is meant to be used as a tool for managers and engineers to evaluate the implantation of RFID in their respective companies and business unites, which is the way to extract the most value out of this document.

In this sense, the core and innovating part of this work will be the mapping table in the third chapter with specific results that could be used by any company to find the appropriate applications of RFID within their field of business. It will serve as a primary selection and evaluation tool that would precede future next steps to find out in which fields the application would be more profitable, like for example the deep economic analysis of the applications considered.

Basically, the approach will be as follows. An evaluation table has been elaborated and structured to point out the relation between specific industry sectors, the advantages of the RFID technology and business units within a company such as supply chain, logistics and maintenance. A numerical value will be extracted to compare values with each other so as to support and propose the application of RFID in a specific business unit. Finally through interpretation of the relationship between advantages, business unites and industry sectors, it will be possible to extract valuable information from the table and be able to answer some concrete questions from it, which any manager would like to have solved in advance when dealing with the possibility of implantation of RFID technology in his company


We present results of experimental and theoretical investigations of intersymbol interference in 4-PAM transmission in short-range optical communications links based on the power penalty. A test link comprised of a directly modulated 850 nm VCSEL with up to 200 m of multimode fiber and direct detection was used. The link bandwidth was below 10 GHz and the maximum achieved data rate with 4-PAM was 44 Gbps over 100 m of fiber. In the same case and at similar sensitivity, only 32 Gbps could be achieved with OOK. If typical forward error correction could be applied, the sensitivity of the 4-PAM system was improved by up to 4 dB, reaching -10 dBm at 25 Gbps.


In the last decade, three countries have figured prominently as cases of late-late developing countries that achieved worldwide success with their Information Technology (IT) industries: India, Ireland, and Israel. This paper focuses on the Israeli case and argues that unlike India and Ireland, Israel's competitive advantage in the IT industries, is in Research and Development (RD (b) however, these policies, focused on diffusion and not on creation of capabilities, were successful only because of the existence of an already sophisticated and extensive R&D capability in the universities - markedly different from other NICs. Looking at the present the paper concludes that the same operational model that led Israel's IT industry to success might now be undermining its future growth.


Children born prematurely are at high risk for long-term abnormal development, including deficits in attentional abilities that persist throughout adolescence. The severity of these cognitive difficulties varies significantly among preterm-born children, with both the level of prematurity and sex being the most relevant factors for the determination of their neurodevelopmental outcomes. In order to understand the neurostructural correlate of these disabilities, we used a brain connectome approach to analyze the effects of gender and degree of prematurity on the attentional system network related to executive control in school age preterm children. Our results suggest that being born extremely premature, as well as being born male, differentially affects brain connectivity and development.


Transgenic mice overexpressing the 695-amino acid isoform of human Alzheimer β-amyloid (Aβ) precursor protein containing a Lys670 → Asn, Met671 → Leu mutation had normal learning and memory in spatial reference and alternation tasks at 3 months of age but showed impairment by 9 to 10 months of age. A fivefold increase in Aβ(1–40) and a 14-fold increase in Aβ(1–42/43) accompanied the appearance of these behavioral deficits. Numerous Aβ plaques that stained with Congo red dye were present in cortical and limbic structures of mice with elevated amounts of Aβ. The correlative appearance of behavioral, biochemical, and pathological abnormalities reminiscent of Alzheimer's disease in these transgenic mice suggests new opportunities for exploring the pathophysiology and neurobiology of this disease.


Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. SI systems are typically made up of a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. The inspiration often comes from nature, especially biological systems. The agents follow very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of "intelligent" global behavior, unknown to the individual agents. Natural examples of SI include ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, bacterial growth, and fish schooling.

Research in SI started in the late 1980s. Besides the applications to conventional optimization problems, SI can be employed in library materials acquisition, communications, medical dataset classification, dynamic control, heating system planning, moving objects tracking, and prediction. Indeed, SI can be applied to a variety of fields in fundamental research, engineering, industries, and social sciences.

The main objective of this special issue is to provide the readers with a collection of high quality research articles that address the broad challenges in application aspects of swarm intelligence and reflect the emerging trends in state-of-the-art algorithms.

The special issue received 42 high quality submissions from different countries all over the world. All submitted papers followed the same standard (peer-reviewed by at least three independent reviewers) as applied to regular submissions to "this journal". Due to the limited space, 15 papers were finally included. The primary guideline was to demonstrate the wide scope of SI algorithms and applications in various aspects. Besides, mathematically oriented papers with promising potential in practical problems were also included.

The paper authored by Y.-L. Wu et al. (National Chiao Tung University and Ming Chuan University) presents an integer programming model of the studied problem by considering how to select materials in order to maximize the average preference and the budget execution rate under some practical restrictions including departmental budget and limitation of the number of materials in each category and each language. They propose a discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) with scout particles, design an initialization algorithm and a penalty function to cope with the constraints, and employ the scout particles to enhance the exploration within the solution space.

In the paper by Z. Yin et al. (Harbin Institute of Technology), they propose an efficient multiuser detector based on a suboptimal code mapping multiuser detector and artificial bee colony algorithm (SCM-ABC-MUD) and implement the proposed algorithm in direct-sequence ultrawideband (DS-UWB) systems under the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel.

M. S. Uzer et al. (Selcuk University) offer a hybrid approach that uses the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm for feature selection and support vector machines for classification. For the diagnosis of hepatitis, liver disorders, and diabetes datasets from the UCI database, the proposed system reached classification accuracies of 94.92%, 74.81%, and 79.29%, respectively.

Another paper is by M. Karakose (Firat University) and U. Cigdem (Gaziosmanpasa University). It proposes a new approach for improvement of DNA computing with adaptive parameters towards the desired goal using quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (QPSO). Experimental results obtained with MATLAB and FPGA demonstrate ability to provide effective optimization, considerable convergence speed, and high accuracy according to DNA computing algorithm.

In the paper by Y. Celik (Karamanoglu Mehmetbey University) and E. Ulker (Selcuk University), their research proposes an improved marriage in honey bees optimization (IMBO) by adding Levy flight algorithm for queen mating flight and neighboring for worker drone improving. The IMBO algorithm's performance and its success are tested on the well-known six unconstrained test functions and compared with other metaheuristic optimization algorithms.

M. Baygin (Ardahan University) and M. Karakose (Firat University) study a new approach of immune system-based optimal estimate for dynamic control of group elevator systems. The method is mainly based on estimation of optimal way by optimizing all calls with genetic, immune system and DNA computing algorithms, and it is evaluated with a fuzzy system. With dynamic and adaptive control approach in this study, a significant progress on group elevator control systems has been achieved in terms of time and energy efficiency according to traditional methods.

The paper by M. Karakose (Firat University) proposes a reinforcement-learning based artificial immune classifier. The proposed new approach has many contributions according to other methods in the literature such as effectiveness, less memory cell, high accuracy, speed, and data adaptability. Some benchmark data and remote image data are used for experimental results. The comparative results with supervised/unsupervised based artificial immune system, negative selection classifier, and resource limited artificial immune classifier are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed new method.

In their paper, T. J. Choi et al. (Sungkyunkwan University) and (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology) present an adaptive parameter control DE algorithm. The control parameters of each individual are adapted based on the average of successfully evolved individuals' parameter values using the Cauchy distribution. The experimental results show that their proposed algorithm is more robust than the standard DE algorithm and several state-of-the-art adaptive DE algorithms in solving various unimodal and multimodal problems.

In the paper by R.-J. Ma et al. (Southwest Jiaotong University and CSR Qishuyan Institute Co., Ltd.), the authors present an integral mathematical model and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm based on the life cycle cost (LCC) approach for the heating system planning (HSP) problem. The results show that the improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm can more preferably solve the HSP problem than PSO algorithm.

In the paper by M. Tang et al. (National University of Defense Technology and Universite Pierre et Marie Curie), they report that the flocking has some negative effects on the human, as the infectious disease H7N9 will easily be transmitted from the denser flocking birds to the human. Their paper focuses on the H7N9 virus transmission in the flocking birds and from the flocking birds to the human. Some interesting results have been shown: (1) only some simple rules could result in an emergence such as the flocking; (2) the minimum distance between birds could affect H7N9 virus transmission in the flocking birds and even affect the virus transmissions from the flocking birds to the human.

Y. Wang et al. (China University of Petroleum) present a memory-based multiagent coevolution algorithm for robust tracking the moving objects. Each agent can remember, retrieve, or forget the appearance of the object through its own memory system by its own experience. Experimental results show that their proposed method can deal with large appearance changes and heavy occlusions when tracking a moving object.

The paper by Q. Ni and J. Deng (Southeast University and Soochow University) analyzes the performance of PSO with the proposed random topologies and explores the relationship between population topology and the performance of PSO from the perspective of graph theory characteristics in population topologies. Further, in a relatively new PSO variant which named logistic dynamic particle optimization, an extensive simulation study is presented to discuss the effectiveness of the random topology and the design strategies of population topology.

Y. Zhou and H. Zheng (Guangxi University for Nationalities, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Hybrid Computation and IC Design Analysis) propose a novel complex valued cuckoo search algorithm. They use complex-valued encoding to expand the information of nest individuals and denote the gene of individuals by plurality. The value of independent variables for objective function is determined by modules, and a sign of them is determined by angles. The position of nest is divided into real part gene and imaginary gene. Six typical functions are tested, and the usefulness of the proposed algorithm is verified.

The paper by R. Alwee et al. (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia) introduces a hybrid model that combines support vector regression (SVR) and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) to be applied in crime rates forecasting. Particle swarm optimization is used to estimate the parameters of the SVR and ARIMA models. The experimental results show that their proposed hybrid model is able to produce more accurate forecasting results as compared to the individual models.

Finally, K. S. Lim et al. (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, and University of Malaya) describe an improved Vector Evaluated Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm by incorporating the nondominated solutions as the guidance for a swarm rather than using the best solution from another swarm. The results suggest that the improved Vector Evaluated Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm has impressive performance compared with the conventional Vector Evaluated Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm.


ABSTRACT
 Croizet & Jobert (1828) described as Rhinoceros elatus a large rhinoceros from the late Pliocene deposits of the Puy-de-Dôme District (Auvergne, France). In the following century and a half, the species had been sporadically recognized and its name had been almost forgotten. Guérin (1972) described as Dicerorhinus jeanvireti the remains of the same species from the locality of Vialette (Haute-Loire, France), pretending that "elatus" was a nomen oblitum. After that, the name "jeanvireti" was used by most of the following authors. At present, there is general agreement in the literature that the two names are synonyms but some authors prefer "elatus" while others use "jeanvireti", thus leading to increasing confusion. The present investigation reveals that "elatus" deserves the right of priority because in 1972 it was not a nomen oblitum. The younger synonym "jeanvireti", according to the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, cannot be considered a valid name. Furthermore, most of the rhinoceros remains described by Croizet & Jobert (1828), namely the syntypes of the species, are still existing and are housed at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Since this material has never been described in detail after Croizet & Jobert's work, it is revised in modern key and compared to close fossil species. Among this material, an articulated anterior leg is hereby designated as lectotype of the species Stephanorhinus elatus Croizet & Jobert, 1828.


Background Overuse of antibiotics, such as fluoroquinolones and third-generation cephalosporins, is a major cause of the emergence of extended-spectrum beta lactamase producing enterobacteriaceae. The use of levofloxacin in elderly inpatients is widespread. Purpose We investigated the conditions in which this drug was prescribed. Materials and Methods From 1st January to 31st March 2012, information was recorded on every new levofloxacin prescription from the geriatric units: indication, dose, duration, patient's medical history, renal function and previous antibiotic. In parallel, levofloxacin consumption was assessed and expressed in terms of the number of Defined Daily Doses (DDD) per 1000 patient-days (PD). The consumption was compared with the data from the French antibiotic network "RAISIN". Results 87 patients had a levofloxacin prescription: 55% for community-acquired pneumonia, 20% for nursing-associated pneumonia, 16% for nosocomial pneumonia, and 9% for others indications. 77% of the patients had previously received another antibiotic (47 amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, 20 ceftriaxone). Among patients without signs of gravity (tachycardia, tachypnea, hypotension), 1 in every 2 received levofloxacin associated with ceftriaxone, although this combination is only for intensive care patients according to the French Society of Infectious Diseases. The mean duration of treatment was 10 days. In 1 in every 2 cases, dosage was too high according to the renal function. As a result, the exposure to levofloxacin was 49 DDD per 1000 PD in acute-care units, and 37 DDD per 1000 PD in skilled units. These results are 4 to 7 times higher than those recorded in the "RAISIN" network. For 20% of the patients, levofloxacin was ineffective and another line of antibiotic was prescribed. Conclusions Our results suggest that to reduce exposure to fluoroquinolones we should avoid systematic association with ceftriaxone, prescribe levofloxacin as the second line after amoxicillin/clavulanic acid and reduce dose and duration. No conflict of interest.


Interaction between Turkey and Iraq is rapidly increasing, with economic and strategic interests driving political cooperation, yet there are still longer-term challenges remain to be solved, particularly in relation to energy and water security. Iraq is one of Turkey's most important trading partners and is becoming an essential source of energy. It attaches great deal of importance to Iraq's stability and territorial integrity and sees those matters as crucial to its own security and stability. Turkey has become more active in Iraqi affairs, including burgeoning trade and investment relations, close communication with infl uential political actors and pro-active engagement with Iraqi Kurds. The elimination of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is a major security objective on the agenda of Turkish-Iraqi bilateral relations. Moreover, the future status of Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city of Kurds, Arabs, and Turcomans, among them Muslims and Christians and home to some of the Iraq's largest oil reserves, is another cause for concern for Turkey. Turkey's principal anxiety is that the oil riches of Kirkuk will only encourage the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to seek greater autonomy, which may spill over into its own borders and spark unrest among Turkey's own Kurdish population. Essentially, energy, economy and reconstruction form the crux of the Turkish involvement in Iraq.


ABSTRACT This article discusses meanings of people–place relationships, relating to ethnicity–class–gender intersections. The case examined concerns the 'contested place-making' of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm (UK), where the Travellers were eventually evicted from a place they owned. The material consists mainly of online slideshows in the Guardian. Visuals and place share the role of concretizing news, situating them and underlining their truth claims. Hence, news visuals are well suited for discussions of relationships between places and peoples. The study comprises theories of media, place and identity, relating to mobility, minorities and globalization. Methodologically, compositional analysis, discourse-theoretical method and an intersectional approach are combined. The place conflict is rarely understood in terms of justice. Instead, ethnicity–class–gender intersections appear as significant in the imagery, countering certain old stereotypes, but also connecting to discourses of 'threatening minorities', and 'bad mobility'. Manifested through excessive imagery of barricades/fences/walls/gates, 'identity management' meets 'place management', detaching some identities from some places. The Travellers thus appear as anomalies, separated from others. This is partly connected to the slideshow format, where linguistic elaboration on motifs is very limited, partly to the selection of certain themes and motifs in the slideshows, and partly to the societal politics surrounding the issue.


We present an exact diagonalization study of the low-energy singlet and triplet states for both the one-dimensional (1D) and 2D t-J models. A scan of the parameter ratio J/t shows that for most low-energy states in both 1D and 2D the excitation energy takes the form E(t,J)=a . t+b . J. In 1D this is the natural conse quence of the factorization of the low-energy wave functions, i.e., spin-charge separation. Examination of the low-energy eigenstates in 2D shows that most of these are collective modes, which for larger J correspond to a periodic modulation of the hole density. The modulation is well reproduced by treating holes as hard-core bosons with an attractive interaction.


BACKGROUND
Young adults today have grown up in a society where information and communication technology (ICT) support empowerment and social participation. Young adults with mild-to-moderate intellectual disability are at risk for marginalization by the digital divide. The aim was to map and describe how municipal organizations in Sweden organize support in terms of policy and strategies to enable the use of ICT in social care for adults with a mild-to-moderate intellectual disability.

METHODS
A quantitative, cross-sectional survey including all municipalities in Sweden (n = 290) was conducted (response rate: 51%, n = 147). Descriptive statistics were used.

RESULTS
Findings indicate a lack of organizational support for staff as well as for young adults with mild-to-moderate intellectual disability.

CONCLUSION
Municipalities request more knowledge about strategies for making ICT available. Despite the lack of comprehensive strategies for ICT, some Swedish municipalities have taken the initiative in this area.


This article aims to refine the description of the artefacts and the geomorphological, geological, pedological and chronological (optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) analyses of sedimentary deposits) characterisation of the Rincão I site (southeastern Brazil) to contribute to the understanding of early human–environment interactions. The archaeological site occupation took place on hillslopes truncated by the Mogi‐Guaçu River's lateral (~1200 m) and vertical (~5 m) movements during the Late Quaternary, in an area where in situ bedrock outcrops are uncommon. This geological context favoured human groups simultaneously having access to the resources provided by the alluvial plain and hillslopes. Here we describe how about three hundred lithic artefacts are associated with soils that originated from sandy colluvium with OSL ages between 20.3 and 5.5 thousand years. These ages are consistent with the local palaeopedological and geomorphological contexts of landscape changes, and partly controversial from the perspective of models currently in vogue for the human occupation of southeastern Brazil. The vestiges of past human presence amid the hillslope sandy colluvium deposits include: 1) a set of flakes and formal artefacts (one stemmed point and three convex artefacts) made of sandstone obtained from hillslopes near (<10 km) the site; and 2) predominant detritus and flakes of quartz and flint obtained mostly from the adjacent (<1.5 km) alluvial plain, linked to flaking sequences other than those of the formal artefacts. Only quartz artefacts were found in the lower levels of the site stratigraphy, whereas in the intermediate and upper levels quartz, flint and sandstone artefacts were found, suggesting that there were changes in the raw materials used for flaking over time. The formal artefacts from the site have technological attributes like the ones observed in assemblages associated with a previously known lithic industry (Rioclarense), but a different pattern of choice of raw materials. This suggests that technical standards underwent a process of adaptation to the environmental particularities surrounding the Rincão I site.