In 2000-2002, a salvage excavation was conducted on the site of the old North Brisbane Burial Ground, situated 1.6km from the centre of Brisbane. This cemetery operated between 1843 and 1875 and received some 5000 interments. In keeping with Victorian era funerary tradition, the deceased were interred in wooden coffins covered inside and out with fabric, and fitted with cast iron coffin handles and pressed metal decorations. After the closure of the Burial Ground, it remained neglected for 30 years, after which it was resumed and incorporated into a larger land package subsequently used for sporting facilities. Part of this area was also used as a municipal landfill and effluent disposal site for over 40 years. The latest redevelopment in 2000-2002 disturbed 397 graves from the original Burial Ground, and a salvage excavation was conducted to remove the exposed burials. Human remains, coffin wood, textiles and metal artefacts were found to be in a surprisingly poor state of preservation after only 160 years of burial. By the time of excavation, 54% of human remains, 6% of coffin wood, 77% of textiles and 22% of metal coffin furniture had completely disappeared from the archaeological record. This thesis set out to discover why the human remains and artefacts excavated from the Burial Ground were so poorly preserved. A detailed taphonomic study of the site was conducted, including a thorough analysis of soil conditions before, during and after the period of the Burial Ground's operation up until the time of excavation, and an analysis of the types of degradation affecting the human remains and artefacts excavated from the site. Mathematical equations usually employed in the field of engineering were applied to the Burial Ground site to calculate soil temperature for different depths and groundcover situations throughout the 160 year history of the site, and to calculate the force exerted on coffins and human remains by different depths of overburden. It was determined that the factors responsible for the advanced decomposition of the archaeological assemblage at the site were: soil temperature; soil pH; chemical attack; high soil salt content; fluctuations in groundwater level; the continual addition of micro-organisms to the soil profile; continual disturbance of the soil; and the excessive weight of overburden. While some of these factors could be partly related to climate or the natural environment, most were a direct result of human activity and urban development in the period after the Burial Ground was resumed. The identification of the factors responsible for the degradation of archaeological materials at the North Brisbane Burial Ground has shown that changes in soil conditions caused by a range of human activities are the major determinants of whether human remains and artefacts are preserved or destroyed. A greater understanding of these processes allows more informed decisions to be made regarding the management of inhumation cemetery sites influenced by ongoing urban development.


The Working Group on Social Responsibility (WGSR) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will meet in Copenhagen from May 17 to 21, 2010 for what is likely to be its last meeting to work on ISO 26000, an international guide on social responsibility. One of the central challenges for the WGSR is to define the scope of an organization's responsibility for human rights abuses committed by third parties. ISO 26000, approved by a large majority in a recent "Draft International Standard" ballot, answers this question largely in terms of an organization's degree of control or influence over others' conduct. This "leverage-based" approach is based on the concept of "sphere of influence", introduced into SR discourse by Professor John Ruggie as part of the United Nations Global Compact. Now, as the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General on Business and Human Rights, Professor Ruggie has warned the WGSR not to take this approach because it is inconsistent with the three-part "protect, respect, remedy" framework endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. This short paper argues that ISO 26000 should maintain its "sphere of influence" approach because it reflects broad societal expectations, is consistent with "due diligence," does not encourage inappropriate political interference or strategic gaming, is simple and intuitive, builds on existing ISO environmental management standards, avoids making a false distinction between supporting human rights and avoiding abuses, and is a necessary part of the solution to the business and human rights problem.


Background: In less developed countries like Ethiopia, malaria is traditionally treated by remedies prepared from medicinal plants. One such plant that falls in this category is Embelia schimperi Vatke whose fruits are employed for the treatment of a variety of ailments including taeniasis and malaria. Objective: In the present study, the in vivo antimalarial activity of embelin isolated from the fruits of Embelia schimperi Vatke and its semisynthetic aromatic amine derivatives was evaluated. Methods: Silica gel column chromatography was used to isolate embelin from the ethyl acetate extract of the fruits of E. schimperi. Aromatic substituted embelin derivatives were semi-synthesized by using a one-step condensation reaction of embelin with aromatic amines. The compounds were characterized based on their UV, IR, HR-ESIMS, 1H and 13C NMR and DEPT-135 spectral data. Antimalarial activity was evaluated using a modified Peter's 4-day suppressive test against chloroquine sensitive Plasmodium berghei infection in mice. Results: Embelin and the semi-synthetic derivatives showed significant (p<0.05) in vivo antimalarial activity in a dose-dependent manner with 47.8-74.7% parasite suppression at tested doses of 100-400 mg/kg. Among the compounds semi-synthesized, 5-(p-tolylamino)-2-hydroxy-3-undecylcyclohexa-2,5-diene-1,4-dione showed maximum antimalarial activity (74.7 % suppression) at a dose of 400 mg/kg. No major signs of toxicity were observed when either embelin or the semi-synthesized derivatives were administrated to mice at the highest tested dose (2 g/kg). Conclusion: The results underline that the antimalarial activity of embelin can be improved by preparing its aromatic semi-synthetic amine derivatives without affecting the safety of the parent molecule.


In the last years, a lot of important changes occurred inside the European Union after the entering of 12 new member States. The rate of economic growth of the new member States has been higher the other EU members. In Hungary, particularly, the growth level has reached an intermediate position, placing itself at 4% GDP per capita. Comparative analysis are needed to better understand the process of catching-up and to evaluate how the integration between EU regions and countries is going on. The aim of this paper is to compare the economic and efficiency performance of firms in Hungary and Emilia-Romagna, considering a specific sector, meat processing and storage, of the food industry). We will investigate if in the last years the integration process has ultimately led to narrow the gap in the economic performances and efficiency of the firms. The choice of meat processing industry is due to the fact that in Hungary there's a remarkable animal production, whereas in the Emilia-Romagna region the meat industry reflects an organizational structure based on the concentration and specialization in agri-food 'districts;. This paper compares the financial-economic performances and the technical efficiency of firms involved in the industry of meat processing in Hungary and in an Italian region, Emilia-Romagna. We will also discuss and compare the different results obtained throughout governance and structure of meat industry. We will underline the main role of the "industrial districts" in Emilia-Romagna, and how the Hungarian entrepreneurial system could handle the competition in the global market.


This paper argues that terrorism, beyond its immediate impact on innocent victims, also raises the costs of crime, and therefore, imposes a negative externality on potential criminals. Terrorism raises the costs of crime through two channels: (i) by increasing the presence and activity of the police force, and (ii) causing more people to stay at home rather than going out for leisure activities. Our analysis exploits a panel of 120 fatal terror attacks and all reported crimes for 17 districts throughout Israel between 2000 and 2005. After controlling for the fixed-effect of each district and for district-specific time trends, we show that terror attacks reduce property crimes such as burglary, auto-theft, and thefts-from-cars. Terror also reduces assaults and aggravated assaults which occur in private homes, but increases incidents of trespassing and "disrupting the police." Taken as a whole, the results are consistent with a stronger deterrence effect produced by an increased police presence after a terror attack. A higher level of policing is likely to catch more people trespassing, and at the same time, reduce the number of property crimes. The decline in crimes committed in private houses is likely an indication that the tendency for individuals to stay home after a terror attack further increases the costs of crime.


"Divided Nations: Why Global Governance is Failing and What We Can Do About It." Ian Goldin. Oxford University Press. March 2013. ---
Humanity today faces a number of international challenges which spill over national boundaries: climate change, finance, pandemics, cyber security, and migration. It is becoming increasingly apparent that bodies created to assist in global governance – those such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank – are inadequate for the task of managing such risk in the 21st century, writes Ian Goldin, in his exploration of whether the answer is to reform the existing structures, or to consider a new and radical approach. Martin Hearson feels that Divided Nations offers some sage advice for reflection on shifting global power dynamics, but its case would be much more powerful without such a strong dose of globalisation hyperbole.


In this paper we report the simulation-based design of experiment (DoE) study for three different types of III-V based pin photodetectors operating at various wavelengths. Our DoE work shows that the optimal configuration for each device is strongly determined by the wavelength at which we are aiming to operate the photodetector and that a trade-off exists between low dark current and high photocurrent. Heterostructure devices provide the optimum performance in particular for longer wavelengths.


The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), which is grounded below present-day sea level and, thus, is highly sensitive to climatic changes, is likely to have had a very dynamic history over the last several million years. WAIS collapse would result in a global sealevel rise of 3-5 m over present levels yet little is known of how it has behaved in the past. Large uncertainties exist regarding the chronology, extent, rates, and spatial and temporal variability of past advances and retreats of the WAIS across the continental shelves, particularly in the Amundsen Sea sector, where no drilling has taken place despite the intense interest in the current and potential behavior of the glaciers feeding into the over-deepened Pine Island Bay. These uncertainties are mainly due to the paucity of data from drill core from this sector. We propose a series of drill cores for the Amundsen Sea Embayment shelf, which is unambiguously fed by the WAIS, where seismic data reveal seaward-dipping sedimentary sequences that are estimated to span the time from the pre-glacial conditions, Miocene or older, to the most recent glacial cycle. Our drilling strategy is to target a transect that includes the oldest sedimentary sequences deposited onto bedrock in the south to the youngest sequences in the north of the western and eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment continental shelf. This transect will yield a detailed history of the glacial cycles in the Pine Island-Amundsen Sea region and allow correlations to the glacial history known from the Ross Sea and to global climate records. In addition, deep-water sites on the continental rise of the embayment are selected for recovering continuous records of glacially transported sediments and the details of climatic and oceanographic changes throughout glacial-interglacial cycles. Because so little is known about the stratigraphy on the Amundsen Sea shelf, new drill core will allow a wide range of questions to be addressed, including:
(1) What is the history of advance and retreat of the WAIS in this sector and thus its contribution to past sea-level changes in terms of both rate and magnitude? Have sectors of the marine-based WAIS experienced significant collapses?
(2) How does this glacial history correlate with periods of climate warming and changes in ocean circulation? How do warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) incursions onto the continental shelf affect the stability of marine-based ice sheet margins?
(3) How did the WAIS behave in the middle Pliocene, the last time Earth's atmosphere contained more than 400 ppm CO2 and when the Arctic was significantly warmer than today?
(4) When did the WAIS first expand onto the ASE continental shelf? Was ice sheet expansion related to uplift in neighboring Marie Byrd Land or related to largescale climate trends?


ABSTRACT Sierra Leone has recently emerged from a long period of political instability and civil war, and is ranked among the world's poorest countries. Thousands of displaced people are in the process of returning to their villages to rebuild their mainly farming-based livelihoods, and many are growing food crops for the first time in a decade. With pressure on food production increasing in rural areas, the inland valley swamps have been identified by the government as a vital resource for sustaining rural livelihoods and achieving food security through the production of rice and other commodities. However, previous government policies directed at enhanced wetland production have largely failed to achieve their goals, and have been criticised for neglecting the institutional challenges of development. Drawing on recent fieldwork carried out in two rural communities in the Eastern Province, this paper considers how institutional arrangements function in Sierra Leone's swamp wetlands, and explores how stresses associated with a post-conflict environment are shaping land-use decisions and mediating access to resources in new ways. The findings of the enquiry have implications for Sierra Leone's recently adopted commitment to decentralisation, a move that has, in theory, seen the state strengthen its position at the local level, and will allegedly create new spaces for increased interaction between state agencies, traditional leaders and communities. Two institutional challenges are examined – access to land and access to labour – that must be addressed if decentralised reforms to resource management are to be effective for wetland rice production. The analysis concludes by considering one recent initiative at the forefront of efforts to decentralise the Ministry of Agriculture, the 'Agricultural Business Unit' (ABU) initiative, to elucidate some of the challenges faced in post-conflict wetland rehabilitation.


This study estimates the benefits to agricultural and human health of reducing ozone in the San Joaquin Valley of California, and the costs of ozone control. The San Joaquin Valley's highly valued crops suffer from high ozone levels. Federal and state primary ozone standards are based on health effects, not effects on other sectors, and do not consider costs of attaining the standards. The methods here allow comparison of both total and marginal benefits and costs. The results suggest that net gains can be achieved for the entire valley by reducing ozone below 1990 levels, although results vary by region.


Since late 2007, rubies and sapphires have been mined by hand methods from both eluvial and primary deposits at Winza in central Tanzania. The gem corundum is related to "dikes" of amphibolitic rocks that belong to the Paleoproterozoic Usagaran Belt. Based on crystal morphology, Winza corundum is subdivided into two types: prismatic-tabular-rhombohedral and dipyramidal. In general, medium red and dark (orangy) red top-quality rubies are rhombohedral. Pinkish red and purplish red rubies, as well as pink, purple, and blue (often strongly color zoned) sapphires are, for the most part, dipyramidal. The top-quality rubies are characterized by a distinct assemblage of long tube-, fiber-, needle-, or hair-like inclusions containing an orange-brown material (most likely limonite). The lower-quality material generally contains a larger amount of solid inclusions (mostly amphibole crystals), fissures, and growth features. Unique to corundum from this locality are bluish violet color zones oriented parallel to the prism and basal pinacoid, and occasionally also parallel to rhombohedral and dipyramidal faces. The relatively high Fe content of Winza rubies separates them from most other natural and almost all synthetic counterparts.


This paper describes and analyzes a teaching approach that frames ecommerce within an introductory Business Information Systems (BIS) class. The framework is guided by the systems development life cycle (SDLC) as a foundational and defining concept in the information systems (IS) discipline. Within this framework, the teaching approach employs a semester-long series of three assignments in which students propose and analyze an Internet start-up business. Although the assignments loosely parallel the SDLC, they do not emphasize systems development; and as such, they can be readily employed in an undergraduate or graduate core business course. At the same time, the assignments do provide a context for discussing the SDLC at the end of the semester, thus providing a substantive basis for exemplifying the relevance of both ecommerce and information systems alike. Such a context also lends to a discussion of how ecommerce systems change the traditional view of the SDLC. In addition to positioning and presenting the teaching approach and an example case, the paper discusses lessons learned from the experience of having implemented the assignments. The assignments provide an interesting context; and the advancement of the teaching approach has implications as a reproducible teaching exercise as well as for ecommerce and information systems pedagogical research.


As language documentation gains recognition as an important methodology for linguistics, and as communities mount ever more impressive revitalization projects, the interests of academic and community scholars are converging. It is useful to look to those involved in revitalization for their views on what they treasure most in the existing records of their languages and what they wish were there. Decisions about documentation are tightly bound up with ideas about what constitutes the essence of a language. If a language is viewed as encompassing such things as discourse structure, styles of interaction, constructions that meld structure and substance, prefabricated collocations and idiomatic expressions, recurring lexical choices, and conventionalized prosodic structures, then all of these must be part of the record.


Abstract Current solutions for privacy-preserving data sharing among multiple parties either depend on a centralized authority that must be trusted and provides only weakest-link security (e.g., the entity that manages private/secret cryptographic keys), or leverage on decentralized but impractical approaches (e.g., secure multi-party computation). When the data to be shared are of a sensitive nature and the number of data providers is high, these solutions are not appropriate. Therefore, we present UnLynx, a new decentralized system for efficient privacy-preserving data sharing. We consider m servers that constitute a collective authority whose goal is to verifiably compute on data sent from n data providers. UnLynx guarantees the confidentiality, unlinkability between data providers and their data, privacy of the end result and the correctness of computations by the servers. Furthermore, to support differentially private queries, UnLynx can collectively add noise under encryption. All of this is achieved through a combination of a set of new distributed and secure protocols that are based on homomorphic cryptography, verifiable shuffling and zero-knowledge proofs. UnLynx is highly parallelizable and modular by design as it enables multiple security/privacy vs. runtime tradeoffs. Our evaluation shows that UnLynx can execute a secure survey on 400,000 personal data records containing 5 encrypted attributes, distributed over 20 independent databases, for a total of 2,000,000 ciphertexts, in 24 minutes.


In this chapter we discuss and illustrate how network text analysis and social network analysis can be used to investigate complex governance networks. After briefly defining and describing 'governance networks,' we discuss the importance of investigating their complex structural properties and the roles actors play in them. Then we describe and illustrate how AutoMap (network text analysis software) and ORA (dynamic network analysis software) can be used in such investigations with two applications in the cases of an urban governance network and that of a statewide policymaking processes. We also discuss the general problems in using archival data sources in network analyses, specific problems and strengths in using AutoMap in network extraction from archival data. We present the protocol we developed for the applications of AutoMap and ORA in the appendix of the chapter.


A distributed system may be modeled by objects that run concurrently, each with its own processor, and communicate by remote method calls. However objects may have to wait for response to external calls; which can lead to inefficient use of processor capacity or even to deadlock. This paper addresses this limitation by means of asynchronous method calls and conditional processor release points. Although at the cost of additional internal nondeterminism in the objects, this approach seems attractive in asynchronous or unreliable distributed environments. The concepts are illustrated by the small object-oriented language Creol and its operational semantics, which is defined using rewriting logic as a semantic framework. Thus, Creol specifications may be executed with Maude as a language interpreter, which allows an incremental development of the language constructs and their operational semantics supported by testing in Maude. However, for prototyping of highly nondeterministic systems, Maude's deterministic engine may be a limitation to practical testing. To overcome this problem, a rewrite strategy based on a pseudo-random number generator is proposed, providing Maude with nondeterministic behavior.


HOW CAN a person get a copy of a recent United States Supreme Court opinion, the briefs that were submitted to the Court, or a recording--at least a transcript--of the oral arguments? Back in the early 1990s--that is, before the days of the World Wide Web--there was a simple answer: "With great difficulty." A person could pay for access to a specialized legal database or subscribe to one of the Court reporting services, which, for a hefty fee, would send regular updates on the Court's work. Of course, there were always the timely and reliable stories filed by the Supreme Court journalists whose job was to follow the Court (see the article by Charles Bierbauer on p. 63). And since its inception in the Warren Court era, the American Bar Association publication Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases has provided analyses of the issues and arguments in every case. (1) But before the web, to read the full text of the Court's new opinions, a person had to visit a law library or sign up with an expensive commercial provider of legal information. Similarly, the parties' briefs were generally available for public review only at the Supreme Court, at special federal document repositories around the country, and after unpredictable delays, through commercial services. To view oral arguments? Forget about it. A single company was authorized to produce the transcripts, which one had to pay to review. The other alternative was to travel to Washington, D.C. to wait in line on the Court's steps for an opportunity to observe a portion of an argument. In fact, in 1993, when University of California--San Diego professor Peter Irons released cassette copies of portions of the oral arguments in just a selected number of historical cases, he found he had to defy a National Archives rule in order to do so. (2) The web--and the Court itself--has changed all that, which most people, including the justices, agree is a good thing. Although the issues before the Court are often unavoidably technical, the justices strive to write in plain English for a readership that extends beyond the legal community. For many, however, this new period of Supreme Court access really dawned with the overwhelming public interest in Bush v. Gore). (3) True, the World Wide Web had already quietly opened a window on the Court's work, with opinions becoming available free of charge on a number of websites. The Court had even launched its own website on April 17, 2000. And a tiny "dotcom" called Findlaw (4) had already hit on the idea of regularly scanning and posting the Supreme Court briefs on its website for all to see-for free. (5) (All of this took place with little fanfare.) With Bush v. Gore, however, Americans who suddenly found themselves listening to oral arguments on the radio learned that they could download the full audio files and read the full argument transcripts at the Supreme Court's official website. When the election decisions were handed down, every major news site linked to the full text opinions. Teachers thus learned that they could gain access to all the source materials that go into a Supreme Court case, including the parties' briefs, the oral argument transcripts, and the prior opinions and statutes that frame the issues-all for the price of an Internet connection. Now, instead of wondering whether Supreme Court materials are accessible and, if so, at what cost, the question is which free site will work best? A number of first-rate websites are devoted to current issues and analysis of the Supreme Court. The following sites are particularly useful when looking for primary source documents and news. The Official Supremes www.supremecourtus.gov Since its first cautious step into cyberspace in spring 2000, this site has made up for lost time by growing into a superb, timely, and well-designed source for all things "Supreme: And if it doesn't have the specific documents, it almost certainly will explain where to find them. …


Amniotic Band Syndrome is a sporadic congenital disorder that may result in constriction bands, amputation and multiple craniofacial, visceral and body wall defects. Its incidence is estimated at approximately 1:5000 to 1:10,000 pregnancies. Band formation most frequently affects the distal segments, including the hand. We report a case of constriction amniotic bands involving the trunk. (Iran J Dermatol 2010;13: 103-104)


This paper adapts Meucci's [2006a, 2006b] copula opinion pooling (COP) framework to examine whether fixed income hedge fund strategies enhance the risk-return spectrum of traditional bond portfolios. In contrast to the Black-Litterman setup, the COP approach does not rely on linear dependencies, and avoids the problems associated with the assumption of normally distributed asset returns. We analyze three scenarios that represent investor expectations about the performance of fixed income portfolios, and we add fixed income hedge fund strategies such as fixed income arbitrage, convertible bond arbitrage, and distressed securities, given expected shortfall constraints. Our results suggest that investor market expectations and attitudes toward potential losses are both important in determining the relative weight of hedge funds in the optimal portfolio. Depending on the model parameters, the allocation to hedge funds can vary greatly, from 0% to 85%.


There has been a great deal of interest recently in understanding the potential role of fintech firms in expanding credit access to the underbanked and credit-constrained consumers. We explore the supply side of fintech credit, focusing on unsecured personal loans and mortgage loans. We investigate whether fintech firms are more likely than other lenders to reach out to "underserved consumers," such as minorities; those with low income, low credit scores, or thin credit histories; or those who have a history of being denied for credit. Using a rich data set of credit offers from Mintel, in conjunction with credit information from TransUnion and other consumer credit data from the FRBNY/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we compare similar credit offers that were made by banks, fintech firms, and other nonbank lenders. Fintech firms are more likely than banks to offer mortgage credit to consumers with lower income, lower-credit scores, and those who have been denied credit in the recent past. Fintechs are also more likely than banks to offer personal loans to consumers who had filed for bankruptcy (thus also more likely to receive credit card offers overall) and those who had recently been denied credit. For both personal loans and mortgage loans, fintech firms are more likely than other lenders to reach out and offer credit to nonprime consumers.


The interaction between poverty and social policy is an issue of longstanding interest in academic and policy circles. There are active debates on how to measure poverty, including where to draw the threshold determining whether a family is deemed to be living in poverty and how to measure resources available. These decisions have profound impacts on our understanding of the anti-poverty effectiveness of social welfare programs. In the context of the United States, focusing solely on cash income transfers shows little progress against poverty over the past 50 years, but substantive gains are obtained if the resource concept is expanded to include in-kind transfers and refundable tax credits. Beyond poverty, the research literature has examined the effects of social welfare policy on a host of outcomes such as labor supply, consumption, health, wealth, fertility, and marriage. Most of this work finds the disincentive effects of welfare programs on work, saving, and family structure to be small, but the income and consumption smoothing benefits to be sizable, and some recent work has found positive long-term effects of transfer programs on the health and education of children. More research is needed, however, on how to measure poverty, especially in the face of deteriorating quality of household surveys, on the long-term consequences of transfer programs, and on alternative designs of the welfare state.


Public heritage buildings (PHBs) were evaluated with the aim to determine their operational energy
performance and the objectives of identifying improvement potentials for their long term
sustainable reuse. Six listed churches initially used for worship and later converted to community
uses were selected and surveyed as case study buildings using purposive sampling technique. A
qualitative analytical approach based on ranking the performance of the surveyed building's energy
consumption assessment compared to others within the same geographical region was adopted.
Findings show that a greater number of the surveyed buildings are low-performing with their
energy use being exacerbated by the combination and interplay of multiple factors such as building
use pattern, efficiency of services and lighting etc. Results of the findings imply that potential and
identifiable prospects for efficiency improvements and CO2 emissions reduction exists within the
operation of the buildings. Recommended actions for wide-scale improvements in the form of
capital replacement, retrofit/refurbishment, behavioural and improved operational management and
control were suggested. The study concluded wider opportunities towards achieving energy saving
such as energy management programme, building energy refurbishment scheme and use of
energy efficient equipment could enhance stainable reuse of PHBs.


Resorcyclic acid lactones (RALs) are natural products, with some having been shown to be potent inhibitors of several protein kinases and mammalian cell proliferation and tumour growth in animals. LL-Z1640-2 (also known as 5Z-7-oxo-zeanol or C292) is a cis-enone RAL, isolated in 1978 from fungal broth and classified as an anti-protozoal agent. Later, in 1999, its cytokine releasing inhibiting activity was discovered, with subsequent data showing it could selectively and irreversibly inhibit transforming growth factor activating kinase-1 (TAK1) activity at low concentrations. It is also reported as having significant activity versus tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) production in cells.
This thesis documents and describes the work undertaken towards a total synthesis of the 14-membered macrocycle, LL-Z1640-2. The presence of two internal bonds and three stereogenic centres poses a challenge synthetically, but this has been effectively overcome with the development of a flexible, economic and efficient synthesis, beginning from the commercially available starting materials, methyl 2,4,6-trihydroxybenzoate and 2-deoxy-D-ribose.
The original route relied on a Wittig olefination to introduce the E-double bond, with moderate selectivity and success. Later, an improved method was built upon, which utilised Grubbs mediated cross-metathesis to form the desired E-olefin in good yield and selectivity. Once the entire carbon framework had been established via a one-pot oxidation-Grignard adition of the appropriate alkyne unit, subsequent transformations enabled the formation of the seco-acid. This very successfully underwent Mitsunobu macrolactonisation, with complete inversion of the stereocentre, to afford the macrocyclic lactone. From this intermediate, the desired natural product LL-Z1640-2 could be generated in three steps.

A number of natural products and biologically important compounds contain spirocyclic pyran and piperidines ring systems as part of their overall structures. In 1996, pinnaic acid and halichlorine were isolated from their respective marine natural sources. It was subsequently shown that they exhibited inhibitory activity towards certain biological substances and for this reason they became targets for total synthesis. Characterised by an azaspiro[4.5]decane ring system, the difficulty in achieving total syntheses of such compounds is immense. The aim of the project was to develop a concise method towards the generation of highly functionalised spirocyclic piperidine units. The regioselective aza-Achmatowicz oxidative rearrangement was used as the key step to rearrange α-amino furan building blocks into their respective enones. Importantly, this rearrangement was proven to be viable and to proceed with compounds possessing a terminal olefin, with no over-oxidation observed. This thesis also describes the investigation and efforts made into the production of more functionalised units, as well as studies into the synthesis of the cores of halichlorine and polymaxenolide, again using the aza-Achmatowicz and Achmatowicz rearrangement respectively.


Background: Comprehensive outcome measurement in pediatric palliative care focusing on the entire unit of care, that is, the affected child and its family, is crucial to depict treatment effects. Despite its increasing relevance, no appropriate multidimensional outcome measures exist for the largest patient group in this field, namely children with severe neurological impairments. Aim: The aim of this study was to develop and validate a family-centered multidimensional outcome measure for pediatric palliative care patients with severe neurological impairment that encompasses the entire unit of care. Design: Based on results of a qualitative study, the questionnaire was developed by consensus-based generation of questions. It was validated in a multicenter prospective study employing exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses as well as reliability and item analyses. Setting: A total of 11 pediatric palliative care teams across Germany aided in the recruitment of study participants. Questionnaires were answered by 149 parents of children with severe neurological impairment and 157 professional caregivers. Results: The exploratory factor analysis of parent data revealed a 6-factor structure of the questionnaire representing: symptoms, the child's social participation, normalcy, social support, coping with the disease and caregiver's competencies. This structure was verified by a confirmatory factor analysis of professional caregiver data. Five separate items regarding siblings, partners, and further symptoms not applicable for all patients were added to ensure full multidimensionality. Conclusion: A validated outcome tool for severely neurologically impaired pediatric palliative care patients, the FACETS-OF-PPC, now exists. Due to its concise length and appropriate psychometric properties, it is well suited for clinical application.


"They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper," exclaimed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at an OPEC summit in November 2007. Unkind words about the American currency from an Iranian president could normally be dismissed as political bluster, but in this case it was bluster with a disturbing kernel of truth to it. Over the course of 2007, states with large dollar holdings were becoming increasingly fearful about the dollar's long-term global purchasing power, but they simply had less incentive to sound the alarm about it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A dollar was once redeemable for a fixed amount of precious metal, but has for four decades now been redeemable only for near-worthless metal--pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. It is valuable only to the extent that vast numbers of people believe that vast numbers of other people will continue, of their own volition, to exchange intrinsically valuable things for it. Should this confidence evaporate, the dollar is truly just "a worthless piece of paper." It is hard to imagine that this confidence could be fatally undermined any time soon. History, however, does not provide kind testimony to the durability of national monies. Many dozens of them lost more than half of their purchasing power between 1950 and 1975 alone--including the dollar, which lost 57 percent. The Iranian president was not alone, however, in disparaging the dollar on the world stage in autumn 2007. The dollar is "losing its status as the world currency," Xu Jian, a Chinese central bank vice director, told a conference in Beijing on November 7. "We will favor stronger currencies over weaker ones, and will readjust accordingly," said Cheng Siwei, vice chairman of China's National People's Congress, at the same meeting. Their concerns were echoed two weeks later by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. "We have never been experiencing such big pres-sure," Wen said. "We are worried about how to preserve the value of our [US$1.5 trillion in] reserves." On the same day as Xu and Cheng's comments, the price of gold climbed to US$833.50 per ounce, a record high in nominal terms (though in real terms still substantially below its peak in the early 1980s). Oil prices leapt to a record high US$98 a barrel. The stock market tumbled. The ABX indexes tied to high-risk mortgages fell sharply. The newswires also reported an estimate that US banks would have to write down as much as US$600 billion as a result of the housing market bust and the associated collapse of the Structured Investment Vehicle (SIV) markets. Last but not least in the parade of worrying economic news, the dollar fell to a record low 1.46 dollars/euro, down more than 75 percent from its high in 2000. Teasing out cause and effect at any given moment is never simple in financial markets, but the signs are recognizable from the 1960s. Like China and the dollar-saturated Persian Gulf states today, European governments made similar remarks in the '60s about the reliability of the dollar as a store of value--just a few years before President Nixon demonetized gold in order to pre-empt a run on America's dwindling gold stock. In the private markets, the illustrious French economist Jacques Rueff noted that people were turning to "tangible goods, gold, land, houses, corporate shares, paintings and other works of art having an intrinsic value because of their scarcity or the demand for them." Sound familiar? Indeed, this is the story of our decade to date. In the 1960s, Rueff pinned the blame squarely on "the growing insolvency" of the dollar. Then, as today, US monetary policy was spreading inflation to countries importing such policy through fixed exchange rates, encouraging them to seek out other more reliable long-term stores of wealth. Today, of course, foreign governments are not asking the United States for their gold back, as it reneged on its redemption pledge long ago. But they are warning that they will begin exchanging their growing hoards of dollars for other currencies and assets. …


The value of creative writing techniques on personal and vocational development in a HE setting has been extensively researched and detailed in recent years (Brew and Boud 1996; Pennebaker 1997) Although writing retreats for academics have been reported as having a positive effect on the participants (Moore 2003; Murray 2005), the long term benefits on staff development are not entirely clear. This paper seeks to build on existing work in the field by interviewing academics from the University of Brighton and the University of Sussex who participated in two writing retreats held in March and April of 2007. Interviews have been carried out in order to evaluate the notion that retreats might be more than a pleasurable experience for those who take part and to evaluate any tangible effects on academic staff development. In the course of the paper, the writer also seeks to explore their identity as a new researcher and their struggle to write within an academic framework while remaining faithful to their creative voice. The paper seeks to provide narratives from the retreat participants are in-keeping with the holistic approach to staff development and self discovery that the writing retreats sought to provide. The methods consist of semi-structured interviews with an emphasis on facilitating a conversation rather than an interrogation using client and therapist models and a catalytic approach to interviewing. The paper seeks to make suggestions for taking the retreats forward in order to support academic staff development and to explore issues of writing in an academically rigorous way that manages to tell an engaging story. The author will reflect on their experience and difficulties with telling the stories of their interviewees. Post-graduate and newer researchers who are having problems with academic writing or telling the story of their research may be interested in this session.


"This volume explores the intersection of psychology and theology, but it is not a simple intersection. It is an intersection affected by rich theological and ecclesiological traditions, by the ravages and wonders of modern psychology, and by the character and qualities of today's ministers and communities of faith." (from the introduction) For two millennia Christians have been caring for souls. Since the Enlightenment, though, the Christian concept of the soul has been usurped by modern and postmodern notions of the self. "Somehow we misplaced the soul even as we developed a thriving science of the psyche," lament the editors of this volume. Thus there is a clash between Western therapeutic culture and the church's understanding of the soul's nature and its care. As a result, some Christians deride psychology as dangerous. Others believe that it has much to offer Christians interested in caring for the soul. What is the proper relationship between psychology and theology? Is soul care the shared task of these two fields? This collection of essays is a multidisciplinary dialogue on the interface between psychology and theology that takes seriously the long, rich tradition of soul care in the church. In this volume you'll find incisive discussions of the current state of theology and psychologyovercoming the acquiescence to secularismtheological resources for developing Christian psychologytaking theology to heart in psychologytaking psychology to heart in theology and Christian life Contributors include Jeffry H. Boyd, Ellen T. Charry, Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, L. Gregory Jones, Stanton L. Jones, Cynthia Neal Kimball, Bryan N. Maier, Michael Mangis, Philip G. Monroe, Stephen K. Moroney, Dennis L. Okholm, David Powlison, Robert C. Roberts, Richard L. Schultz, Myrla Seibold, Brett Webb-Mitchell and David Alan Williams. Providing insight and analysis from nineteen psychologists and theologians, Care for the Soul is essential reading for psychologists and counselors, pastors and theologians, and students or professors of psychology and theology.


In this beautiful and thorough investigation, The Secret Language of Color celebrates and illuminates the countless ways in which color colors our world.Why is the sky blue, the grass green, a rose red? Most of us have no idea how to answer these questions, nor are we aware that color pervades nearly all aspects of life, from the subatomic realm and the natural world to human culture and psychology.Organized into chapters that begin with a fascinating explanation of the physics and chemistry of color, The Secret Language of Color travels from outer space to Earth, from plants to animals to humans. In these chapters we learn about how and why we see color, the nature of rainbows, animals with color vision far superior and far inferior to our own, how our language influences the colors we see, and much more. Between these chapters, authors Joann Eckstut and Ariele Eckstut turn their attention to the individual hues of the visible spectrum?red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet?presenting each in fascinating, in-depth detail.Including hundreds of stunning photographs and dozens of informative, often entertaining graphics, every page is a breathtaking demonstration of color and its role in the world around us. Whether? you see red, are a shrinking violet, or talk a blue streak, this is the perfect book for anyone interested in the history, science, culture, and beatuty of color in the natural and man-made world.


Since September 11th, there have been massive increases in personal, commercial, and governmental expenditures on anti-terrorism strategies, as well as a proliferation of programs designed to fight terrorism. These increases in spending and program development have focused attention on the most significant and central policy question related to these interventions: Do these programs work? To explore research evidence regarding this question, we conducted a Campbell systematic review on counter-terrorism strategies to determine the scope and strength of evaluation research in this area.
In the course of our review, we discovered that there is an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism strategies. From over 20,000 studies we located on terrorism, we found only seven which contained moderately rigorous evaluations of counterterrorism programs. We conclude that there is little scientific knowledge about the effectiveness of most counter-terrorism interventions. Further, from the evidence we were able to locate, it appears that some evaluated interventions either didn't work or sometimes increased the likelihood of terrorism and terrorism-related harm.
The findings of this review dramatically emphasize the need for government leaders, policy makers, researchers, and funding agencies to include and insist on evaluations of the effectiveness of these programs in their agendas. These agendas would include identifying ways to overcome methodological and data challenges often associated with terrorism research, increasing funding to evaluate existing programs through methodologically rigorous evaluation designs, and paying attention to existing evaluations of programs when implementing them. Further, programs should be assessed to establish if they cause more harm than good or if they create unanticipated consequences.


This thesis is concerned with the development, analysis and implementation of efficient reduced order models (ROMs) for the simulation and optimization of parametrized partial differential equations (PDEs). Indeed, since the high-fidelity approximation of many complex models easily leads to solve large-scale problems, the need to perform multiple simulations to explore different scenarios, as well as to achieve rapid responses, often requires unaffordable computational resources. Alleviating this extreme computational effort represents the main motivation for developing ROMs, i.e. low-dimensional approximations of the underlying high-fidelity problem. Among a wide range of model order reduction approaches, here we focus on the so-called projection-based methods, in particular Galerkin and Petrov-Galerkin reduced basis methods. In this context, the goal is to generate low cost and fast, but still sufficiently accurate ROMs which characterize the system response for the whole range of input parameters we are interested in. In particular, several challenges have to be faced to ensure reliability and computational efficiency. As regards the former, this thesis presents some heuristic approaches to approximate the stability factor of parameterized nonlinear PDEs, a key ingredient of any a posteriori error estimate. Concerning computational efficiency, we propose different strategies to combine the `Matrix Discrete Empirical Interpolation Method' (MDEIM) with a state approximation resulting either from a proper orthogonal decomposition or a greedy approach. Specifically, we exploit the MDEIM to develop fast and efficient ROMs for nonaffinely parametrized elliptic and parabolic PDEs, as well as for the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations. The efficacy of the proposed methods is demonstrated on a variety of computationally-intensive applications, such as the shape optimization of an acoustic device, the simulation of blood flow in cerebral aneurysms and the simulation of solute dynamics in blood flow and arterial walls. %and coupled blood flow and mass transport in human arteries. Furthermore, the above-mentioned techniques have been exploited to develop a model order reduction framework for parametrized optimization problems constrained by either linear or nonlinear stationary PDEs. In particular, among this wide class of problems, here we focus on those featuring high-dimensional control variables. To cope with this high dimensionality and complexity, we propose an all-at-once optimize-then-reduce paradigm, where a simultaneous state and control reduction is performed. This methodology is applied first to a data reconstruction problem arising in hemodynamics, and then to several optimal flow control problems.


A new approach to feature based frontal face recognition with Gabor wavelets and support vector machines is presented in this paper. The feature points are automatically extracted using the local characteristics of each individual face. A kernel that computes the similarity between two feature vectors, is used to map the face features to a space with higher dimension. To find the identity of a test face, the possible labels of each feature vector of that face is found with support vector machines, then the last decision is made by considering all of those labels. By using Gabor features the number of support vectors is reduced compared to directly using the actual image data, and also a better generalization performance is achieved.


This article examines Pope Francis' encyclical letter, Laudato si', from the perspective of a spirituality of presence, which it relates to resiliency, or the ability of organizations to respond to current or emerging crises. This spirituality consists of two dimensions: the prophetic and the contemplative. This article explores both dimensions and demonstrates their application in a business context. In addition, an important part of a spirituality of presence is Sabbath, which allows for the rest and re-centering of the individual and organization. Once "frenetic activity" ceases, both the leader and the organization can begin the work of anticipating, preparing for, and responding to crises. The focus of this article, therefore, is on the person of the business leader and how he or she might prepare for resiliency individually and then lead an organization through a crisis. The particular crisis the article is concerned with is environmental deterioration as treated in the papal encyclical.


What kinds of lessons can be learned from stories of those who resisted past abuses and injustices? How should such stories be recovered, and what do they have to teach us about present day struggles for justice and accountability? This paper investigates how Levi, Broz, and Arendt formulate the political role of storytelling as response to distinctive challenges associated with efforts to resist systematic forms of abuse and injustice. It focuses on how these thinkers reflected on such themes as witnesses, who were personally affected, to varying degrees, by atrocities under investigation. Despite their differences, these thinkers share a common concern with the way that organised atrocities are associated with systemic logics and grey zones that make people feel that it would be meaningless or futile to resist. To confront such challenges, Levi, Arendt and Broz all suggest, it is important to recover stories of resistance that are not usually heard or told in ways that defy the expectations of public audiences. Their distinctive storytelling strategies are not rooted in clashing theories of resistance, but rather reflect different perspectives on what is needed to make resistance meaningful in contexts where the failure of resistance is intolerable.


Abstract The morphologies of subaerial vertebrate tracks and invertebrate traces in surficial sediments can be used in paleoenvironmental reconstructions by providing details about the initial substrate conditions (e.g., water content) and any changes experienced during trace preservation. A qualitative field study was undertaken to identify the factors affecting track taphonomy in saline lake-margin environments, supported by experiments to isolate selected factors that modify track morphology and substrate characteristics. Flamingo tracks, ubiquitous around saline, alkaline Lake Bogoria in the Kenya Rift, were the focus of field study, although other vertebrate tracks and surficial invertebrate trails and tunnels were also considered. A complex and interacting set of environmental factors were identified, such as the effect of lake-level fluctuations on substrate grain size and capillary evaporation. Several factors affect the early taphonomic modification, destruction, stabilization, and/or cementation of tracks and their associated substrates. The laboratory experiments tested the effects of pore-water salinity, clay mineralogy (e.g., swelling or non-swelling clays), drying method (e.g., solar radiation or wind), and wetting-and-drying cycles on tracks. These data were supported by statistical analyses of impression depth and planimetric area. The results show that track morphology in smectitic substrates is altered rapidly by wetting and drying, particularly if the substrates contain saline pore waters, but morphology is less affected in non-swelling clays. The degree of morphologic alteration and/or resistance to wetting and drying varies with the rate of substrate drying and the type of the resulting salt efflorescence (e.g., interstitial vs. surficial crust). These short-term, process-related taphonomic effects help to explain the morphologic variants of tracks in lake-marginal settings, and provide insights into the preserved distribution patterns of subaerial ichnofossil assemblages.


In the spring of 1993, nearly 40 percent of Milwaukee-area residents experienced a nationally publicized outbreak of cryptosporidium, a parasite that infested the metropolitan drinking water supply. Using open-ended survey data gathered from 610 adult residents in the wake of that outbreak, this study looks at factors related to the ways in which people make sense of their quantitative personal risk estimates. The concepts of informal reasoning and attribution aided this endeavor. Analysis of open-ended comments about the risk of getting ill from a waterborne parasite indicated that explanations of personal risk were consistent with predictions made by attribution theory. Good outcomes, which included having remained healthy during the outbreak, were associated with a greater likelihood that respondents would attribute causation to themselves, while one specific bad outcome, having experienced the illness, was associated with a greater likelihood that respondents would attribute causation externally. This study also examined predictors of whether respondents employed probabilistic language in those attributions. Analysis indicated that income was positively related to the use of probability-oriented language, while age and race were negatively related to the use of such language (i.e., persons of color and older individuals were less likely to use such language).


Green roof design has proceeded without integration of
arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). A literature survey was
therefore conducted in order to determine which aspects of green
roof functioning might be enhanced by AMF, and subsequently levels
of AMF and endophyte colonization were determined for seven plant
species used in green roofs. Plants were sampled from an
experimental green roof and from the field. A commercial growing
medium was also tested for AMF inoculum potential. Colonization was
poor in both field and rooftop samples of the commercially popular
succulent, Sedum acre, but significantly higher in Solidago
bicolor, a proposed green roof species. The commercial growing
medium was found to contain extremely low levels of viable AMF
propagules. Although the apparent lack of mycorrhizal dependency of
S. acre helps to explain its popularity as a green roof plant, its
overuse precludes the important ecosystem services potentially
provided by AMF symbioses.


Aim To investigate whether the publication of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) glaucoma guidelines had an effect on the agreement of examination findings between professionals involved in an established glaucoma referral refinement pathway. Methods To report inter-professional agreement for the clinical examination findings of optometrists with a special interest in glaucoma (OSI), optometrists with no specialist interest in glaucoma (non-OSI) and a glaucoma consultant. Part 1 investigated agreement between an OSI and consultant and part 2 investigated agreement of clinical findings between the non-OSI and a specialist clinician (OSI or consultant). Results Part 1: Agreement between OSI and consultant in determining an abnormal intraocular pressure (IOP) (>21 mm Hg) expressed as a percentage positive predictive value (PPPV) was no different pre-NICE (60.6%) and post-NICE (61.4%, p=0.51) guidelines. PPPV for identification of an abnormal optic disc was better pre-NICE (60.6%) than post-NICE (42.7%, p=0.02). The appropriate referral rate for patients referred by an OSI was higher pre-NICE (69.6%) than post-NICE (61.2%) (p=0.07). Part 2: The PPPV between non-OSI and specialist clinician for an abnormal IOP was better pre-NICE (62.5%) than post-NICE (50.9%, p=0.12). This was also observed for abnormal optic discs, 70.0% pre-NICE and 52.9% post-NICE (p=0.04). Conclusions The accuracy for detecting an abnormal IOP by the OSI has remained unchanged post-NICE, but there was a reduction in accuracy in detecting an abnormal optic disc as well as the appropriate referral rate. For the non-OSI, there was a decline in both IOP and optic disc assessment accuracy.


Introduction High maternal, perinatal and under-five morbidity and mortality are some of the formidable development challenges in Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that worldwide, as many as 1500 women die every day due to complications related to pregnancy or childbirth (WHO 2010). The partograph or partogram, an inexpensive tool, was designed by WHO to be used by midwives for decision-making during labour. Many studies conducted in and out of Africa reflect sub-optimal use of the partograph. Aim of the study The aim of the study was to describe the utilisation of the partograph by registered midwives working in the maternity sections of public hospitals in the uMgungundlovu District in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Methodology A quantitative descriptive cross-sectional study was used to describe the use of the partograph in the selected hospitals, and carried out in two phases. In phase one, 197 participants completed a questionnaire. In phase two, retrospective audits on 310 completed maternity records were done. The collected data was analysed using SPSS version 20 and presented in frequency tables, cross-tabulations and graphs. Results The results revealed that there were certain parameters that were given more focus when it came to correct and consistent recording, such as contractions (80.0%) and cervical dilatation (89%) whilst others were poorly done, such as the duration of labour (13.5%), pain relief (23.5%) and unrecorded partographs from the primary health care clinics and community health centres (80.8%).


OBJECTIVE
The effect of the case management relationship on clinical outcomes was examined among homeless persons with serious mental illness.

METHODS
The sample consisted of the first two cohorts that entered the Access to Community Care and Effective Services and Supports (ACCESS) program, a five-year demonstration program for mentally ill homeless persons funded by the Center for Mental Health Services in 1994. At baseline, three months, and 12 months, clients were characterized as not having a relationship with their case manager or as having a low or high therapeutic alliance with their case manager. Analyses were conducted to test the association between the case manager relationship at baseline, three months, and 12 months and clinical outcomes at 12 months.

RESULTS
Multivariate analyses of covariance were conducted for 2,798 clients who had outcome data at 12 months. No significant associations were found between the relationship with the case manager at baseline and outcomes at 12 months. At three months, clients who had formed an alliance with their case manager had significantly fewer days of homelessness at 12 months. Clients who reported a high alliance with their case manager at 12 months had significantly fewer days of homelessness at 12 months than those with a low alliance, and those with a low alliance at 12 months had fewer days of homelessness than clients who reported no relationship with their case manager. Clients with a higher alliance at both three and 12 months reported greater general life satisfaction at 12 months.

CONCLUSIONS
The study found that clients' relationship with their case manager was significantly associated with homelessness and modestly associated with general life satisfaction.


As a new nurse you're entering one of the most challenging and rewarding fields. You will quickly learn how to navigate a complex medical landscape, care for sick and vulnerable patients, and manage stressful situations with skill and ease. This book will be your reassuring guide through all this and more. Veteran nurse Kathy Quan teaches you how to: * Balance a hectic schedule, handle stress, and avoid burnout * Deal with doctors and other medical professionals * Continue education while working * Use software, smartphones, and apps to help treat patients Packed with tips and strategies from nurses who have seen and done it all, this revised and updated guide gives you all the tools you need to get through those first critical months on the job--and beyond.


Musicians often play under circumstances in which pressure may lead to anxiety and performance deterioration. Theories suggest that a drop in performance is due to a shift in focus of attention towards task-irrelevant information. In this study, we asked music students to report what they think and where they focus attention in three situations: when they play under pressure (Study 1; n = 81), the moment just before choking under pressure and when they try to recover after a mistake (Study 2; n = 25). Focus of attention was examined using retrospective verbal reports and point-spread distributions. Besides a notable focus on music-related information (36.9%), music students reported a considerable number of worries and disturbing thoughts (26.1%) during playing under pressure (Study 1). Just before choking, they showed even more worries and disturbing thoughts (46.4%) at the cost of music-related focus (21.1%) (Study 2), as also confirmed by the point-spread distributions. During recovery after a mistake, attention was mainly focused on music-related information (53.0%) and less on thoughts that give confidence (18.5%) and physical aspects (16.6%). It is advisable to help music students with improving their performance, for example, by attentional control training or providing training with elevated levels of anxiety.


Liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs) together with other natural gas liquids (NGLs) have played an important role in the current U.S. shale gas boom. Depressed gas prices in recent years have made pure natural gas operations less profitable. The result is that liquids components in gas production have become increasingly important in ensuring the profitability of shale gas operations. In this paper we investigate whether the shale gas expansion, which has led to an increase in associated LPG production, has also affected the historically strong relationship between LPG and oil prices. Revealing the strength and stability of the LPG/oil relationship is relevant when it comes to the future profitability and development of the U.S. natural gas sector. Our results suggest that the LPG/oil relationship has weakened in recent years with a move towards cheaper liquids relative to oil. This is consistent with developments in the natural gas sector with increased liquids production. A consequence is that U.S. natural gas operations cannot automatically rely on high liquids prices to ensure profitability.


In this paper we investigate the link between government debt-to-GDP ratio and real per capita income growth in Italy over 1861-2009. We model our regression analysis on a standard production function. Our results support the hypotheses of a negative relation between public debt and growth and of a stronger effect of foreign debt compared to domestic debt before World War I. The effect of public debt on growth appears to work mainly through reduced investment. These results help explain the different reaction of per capita GDP growth to the debt-ratio over 1880-1914 (when the negative correlation between the two variables is particularly strong) and 1985-2007 (when the correlation appears to break down when debt starts declining). A descriptive analysis of fiscal policy in these two periods suggests that differences in the timing of fiscal consolidation as well as in the size and composition of the budget are additional explanatory factors.


Various data indicate that nitric oxide (NO) is an endogenous signal in plants that mediates responses to several stimuli. Experimental evidence in support of such signalling roles for NO has been obtained via the application of NO, usually in the form of NO donors, via the measurement of endogenous NO, and through the manipulation of endogenous NO content by chemical and genetic means. Stomatal closure, initiated by abscisic acid (ABA), is effected through a complex symphony of intracellular signalling in which NO appears to be one component. Exogenous NO induces stomatal closure, ABA triggers NO generation, removal of NO by scavengers inhibits stomatal closure in response to ABA, and ABA-induced stomatal closure is reduced in mutants that are impaired in NO generation. The data indicate that ABA-induced guard cell NO generation requires both nitric oxide synthase-like activity and, in Arabidopsis, the NIA1 isoform of nitrate reductase (NR). NO stimulates mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activity and cGMP production. Both these NO-stimulated events are required for ABA-induced stomatal closure. ABA also stimulates the generation of H2O2 in guard cells, and pharmacological and genetic data demonstrate that NO accumulation in these cells is dependent on such production. Recent data have extended this model to maize mesophyll cells where the induction of antioxidant defences by water stress and ABA required the generation of H2O2 and NO and the activation of a MAPK. Published data suggest that drought and salinity induce NO generation which activates cellular processes that afford some protection against the oxidative stress associated with these conditions. Exogenous NO can also protect cells against oxidative stress. Thus, the data suggest an emerging model of stress responses in which ABA has several ameliorative functions. These include the rapid induction of stomatal closure to reduce transpirational water loss and the activation of antioxidant defences to combat oxidative stress. These are two processes that both involve NO as a key signalling intermediate.


The future of the Arctic region is a subject of heated debates in both scientific and policy circles. The region has an enormous economic potential as a storehouse of mineral resources and as a provider of shorter and more cost-effective transportation between Europe and Asia. The Arctic is therefore an essential strategic element of the domestic and foreign policies of all Arctic states. In addition, there is an increasing economic interest in the region on the part of non-Arctic states. However, at present, the future of the Arctic region development remains highly uncertain. Scenario building is a suitable methodology to imagine alternative plausible futures of such a complex and multi-dimensional process and to elaborate successful and robust development strategies. This paper provides an overview of the scenario frameworks of Arctic futures presented in the literature and analyses key factors that determine these scenarios. Overall, we find a growing interest of the international foresight research community in the Arctic region that is evident from a number of thorough scenario-building exercises published recently. At the same time, we observe two drawbacks. First, the existing studies lack a numerical element, that is, the overwhelming majority of the scenario frameworks that can be found in the literature are fully qualitative. Quantitative estimates would strengthen the scenario narratives and enrich communication, which make them a useful addition to support a qualitative scenario framework. Second, the existing studies use a mixture of both internal and external factors to describe the underlying uncertainty. This limits the number of factors that can be taken into consideration and may be confusing for a potential user of these scenario frameworks due to the lack of a systemic view. Such a confusion can happen, for example, if some of the external factors underpinning a particular scenario suddenly develop in a direction that was not anticipated within the scenario framework. The effect of such a change on the set of scenarios and the validity of the scenarios despite this change will be of interest to the user, and a clear systems perspective would be conducive to address these questions. Separating internal and external factors in a scenario building exercise is particularly useful given that the volatility of the global geopolitical, geoeconomic and environmental dynamics is only increasing. It is our intention to address these two drawbacks in a scenario building exercise within the "Emerging trade routes between Europe and Asia" scenario-building project led by IIASA within the Northern Dimension Institute (NDI) Think Tank Action co-funded by the European Union and coordinated by Aalto University, Finland.


Background Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting are two of the most frequent manifestations that appear in cancer patients that significantly affect the course of their disease. Purpose The objectives of this study are: to describe the antiemetic treatment used in patients with breast cancer treated with chemotherapy, to determine the degree of adaptation to the good clinical practise guides for the management of this type of complication, in other words how closely treatment followed the ASCO, MASCC and NCCN guideline recommendations, to analyse the effectiveness of those treatments and known adverse reactions that patients may suffer because of antiemetic or chemotherapy drugs. Materials and Methods A descriptive, transversal and observational study of one month. The study included breast cancer patients from the day hospital who had received at least one previous chemotherapy cycle. Variables were collected using a questionnaire completed by the patient and pharmacy service software. Results Of 47 patients, 32 agreed to participate in the study, with a mean age of 50.7 years (SD = 9.8). On day 1 post-chemotherapy, 34.4% of treatments did not follow the guidelines and on days 2, 3 and 4 this increased to 46.9%. 31.3% of patients experienced acute nausea and 15.6% acute emesis, 43.8% developed late nausea and 18.75% late vomiting. The number of patients with anticipatory nausea and vomiting was lower. The complete response to antiemetic treatment (absence of nausea, vomiting and need for antiemetic rescue medication) was achieved in 50% of patients. The most common averse events suffered by patients were fatigue, weakness (75.0%) and insomnia (56.3%). Conclusions The lack of compliance with guidelines together with the results obtained of inefficiency of the treatment mean that we require new therapeutic strategies to allow us to obtain better control of emesis. No conflict of interest.


This article examines the reasons why Foucault thought that morality based on the care of the self died out in the modern age. I pay special attention to his contention that modern political thought was a key player in bringing about this demise. The essay consists of two parts. In Part One, I overview Foucault's conception of the care of the self and situate it within his later work on ancient philosophy and culture. In Part Two, I turn to his remarks on the incompatibility between the ancient tradition of the care of the self and an ascendant modern political philosophy based on the notions of rights and the juridical subject. To conclude, I suggest that while Foucault may have overstated this compatibility he opened the door to consider how the care of the self could be taken up in the context of modern and contemporary political theory.


Abstract Based on long-term ethnographic research on contemporary exhumations of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), as well as analysis of the exhumation of Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen, this paper looks at the ways in which the dictator's moral exemplarity has evolved over time since his military victory in 1939. During the early years of his dictatorship, Franco's propaganda machine built the legend of a historical character touched by divine providence who sacrificed himself to save Spain from communism. His moral charisma was enriched by associating his historical mission with a constellation of moral exemplars drawn from medieval and imperial Spain. After his death, his moral exemplarity dwindled as democratic Spain embraced a political discourse of national reconciliation. Yet, since 2000, a new negative exemplarity of Franco as a war criminal has come into sharp focus, in connection with the exhumation of the mass graves of tens of thousands of Republican civilians executed by his army and paramilitary. In recent years, Franco has reemerged as a fascist exemplar alongside a rise of the extreme right. To understand the revival of his fascist exemplarity, I focus on two processes: the rise of the political party Vox, which claims undisguised admiration for Franco's legacy (a process I call "neo-exemplarity"), and the dismantling in October 2019 of Franco's honorable burial and the debate over the treatment that his mortal remains deserve (a process I call "necro-exemplarity").


The results of the quantitative analyses indicate that preservice teacher attitudes and perceptions related to the integration of mathematics, science, and technology education were positive upon completion of the program, though less positive than expressed prior to beginning the program. The mathematics, science, and technology education communities are undergoing major reform in curriculum design, instructional approaches, and assessment practices. National standards for content, professional development, and assessment have been developed for mathematics, science, and technology education in the United States (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989, 1991, 1995, 2000; National Research Council, 1996; International Technology Education Association, 2000). Although promoting discipline-specific standards, these reform documents also recognize and recommend connections between and among the disciplines. It is the union of science, mathematics, and technology that forms the scientific endeavor and that makes it so successful. Although each of these human enterprises has a character and history of its own, each is dependent on and reinforces the others. (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993, p. 3) The science and mathematics are important to the understanding of the processes and meaning of technology. Their integration with the technology education curricula is vital. (Johnson, 1989, p. 3) Given the nature of the reform efforts, along with national goals for student achievement in mathematics and science, there is no doubt that we are in a new era where educators in mathematics, science, and technology must find ways to join forces to meet the curricular challenge before them. The consistent message heard across the disciplines emphasizes the need to collaborate, integrate, focus on literacy, facilitate inquiry and problem solving, and provide educational experiences that are of value to all students regardless of background or aspirations. To enable teachers to provide an integrated teaching and learning environment, changes in teacher preparation are essential. Various attempts have been made to integrate science and mathematics methods courses in teacher education programs (Foss & Pinchback, 1998; Haigh & Rehfeld, 1995; Huntley, 1999; Lonning & DeFranco, 1994; Lonning, DeFranco, & Weinland, 1998; Miller, Metheny, & Davison, 1997; Stuessy, 1993; Stuessy & Naizer, 1996; Watanabe & Huntley, 1998). These courses most often have been targeted at the preparation of preservice elementary or middle school teachers. Very few integrated science and mathematics methods courses have been designed for preservice secondary school teachers (see, for example, Austin, Converse, Sass, & Tomlins, 1992). Inservice professional development opportunities generally have been designed for practicing teachers to develop integrated science and mathematics activities/units (Francis & Underhill, 1996; Slater, Coltharp, & Scott, 1998; Underhill, Abdi, & Peters, 1994) or to use specific integrated science and mathematics curriculum materials such as Activities Integrating Math and Science (AIMS; Deal, 1994; Nye & Thigpin, 1993) and Teaching Integrated Mathematics and Science (TIMS; Goldberg & Wagreich, 1991; Isaacs, Wagreich, & Gartzman, 1997). A few inservice professional development opportunities integrate technology education, along with science and mathematics education (James, Lamb, Householder, & Bailey, 2000; LaPorte & Sanders, 1993; Meier, Cobbs, & Nicol, 1998; Scarborough, 1993a, 1993b;Wicklein & Schell, 1995). The literature associated with teacher preparation and integrated science, mathematics, and technology education is laden with obstacles or barriers including philosophical and epistemological differences among the disciplines, teacher content and pedagogical content knowledge in the disciplines, teacher perceptions and beliefs, school and administrative structures, assessment practices, and appropriate instructional resources (Czerniak, Weber, Jr. …


Insurance policies are traditionally classified as unilateral or "reverse-unilateral" contracts, a characterization we find largely incorrect, with problematic consequences for adjudication of insurance coverage disputes. In addition to the general difficulties attending the unilateral classification, the concept as applied to insurance policies is not only unhelpful but incorrect. Insurance policies are more accurately viewed as bilateral contracts. In addition, the unilateral characterization of insurance policies introduces error and inconsistency into the litigation of insurance controversies. In particular, the unilateral view tends toward excessive formalism and focus on so-called "conditions" precedent to coverage, eschewing material breach analysis and encouraging needless forfeitures as well as unwisely removing the concept of anticipatory repudiation and corresponding remedy from insurance law. Categorizing insurance policies as unilateral fails to appreciate the ongoing, iterative nature of insurance policies and the insurer-policyholder relationship. Recognizing the bilateral nature of insurance policies holds substantial potential for improving insurance coverage adjudication.


Background: Many studies have examined the consequences of prolonged television viewing, but few studies have examined the psychological states that contribute to this behavior. In this study, we evaluated the construct and predictive validity of psychosocial correlates of television viewing in a population of African American (AA) breast cancer survivors (BCS). Methods: AA BCS (N = 342, Mean age = 54 years) completed measures of decisional balance, self-efficacy, family support, and time spent watching television online. Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) was used to examine the construct and predictive validity as well as the differential item functioning of the instruments among population subgroups. Results: The construct validity of the measures was supported among subgroups. The scales were measuring the construct similarly among the education and body size groups, but not among age groups. Subsequent analysis indicated that pros (β = -0.19, P < 0.05), cons (β = 0.18, P < 0.05), and self-efficacy (β = -0.16, P < 0.05) were significantly associated with time spent watching television. Conclusions: Minor modifications may be needed to support the validity and reliability of the decisional balance and self-efficacy subscales among older survivors. More studies are needed to modify these measures to establish sufficient levels of construct and predictive validity in this population.


We produced transform-limited pulses as short as 130 fs with 160-mW average output power from a passively mode-locked Nd:glass laser. This is to our knowledge the first demonstration of an intracavity semiconductor antiresonant Fabry–Perot saturable absorber continuously starting a Kerr-induced passively mode-locked laser. The antiresonant Fabry–Perot saturable absorber, even with dispersion compensation, produced only picosecond pulses, and femtosecond performance was observed only with the addition of an intracavity long-pass wavelength filter. We propose a new mode-locking mechanism, which we refer to as Kerr-shift mode locking, in which the wavelength-dependent intracavity aperture and self-phase modulation in Nd:glass combine to produce a self-wavelength shift that reduces intracavity losses for femtosecond pulses.


The application of time series techniques in economics has become increasingly important, both for forecasting purposes and in the empirical analysis of time series in general. In this book, Terence Mills not only brings together recent research at the frontiers of the subject, but also analyses the areas of most importance to applied economics. It is an up-to-date text which extends the basic techniques of analysis to cover the development of methods that can be used to analyse a wide range of economic problems. The book analyses three basic areas of time series analysis: univariate models, multivariate models, and non-linear models. In each case the basic theory is outlined and then extended to cover recent developments. Particular emphasis is placed on applications of the theory to important areas of applied economics and on the computer software and programs needed to implement the techniques. This book clearly distinguishes itself from its competitors by emphasising the techniques of time series modelling rather than technical aspects such as estimation, and by the breadth of the models considered. It features many detailed real-world examples using a wide range of actual time series. It will be useful to econometricians and specialists in forecasting and finance and accessible to most practitioners in economics and the allied professions.


A Dictionary of Unorthodox Oral Expressions for English Learners and Teachers Ee Wen Ting Department of Linguistics and English Language, BYU Master of Arts To learn a language successfully, one needs to incorporate terms which are used commonly by native speakers but cannot be found in dictionaries. Words like uh-huh, oops, ouch, and brrr, are some examples of these terms. These expressions, commonly categorized under such linguistic labels as interjections (Ameka, 1992), alternants (Poyatos, 2002), and response cries (Goffman,1981), are what Dr. Lynn Henrichsen (1993) and Rebecca Oyer (1999) termed Unorthodox Oral Expressions (UOEs). These utterances are considered unorthodox because many of them are not formal or standard English words. Because of that, "we do not consider them part of the productive system of English," so English dictionaries and textbooks rarely include these words (Luthy, 1983, p.19). Also, they are used mostly in informal speech rather than in formal written English. Hence, non-native English learners usually don't have the opportunity to learn these informal utterances in English classes (Chittaladakorn, 2011; Oyer, 1999). Though unorthodox, these expressions are important for English language learners (ELL) to learn so that they will be able to carry out more natural and native-like conversations and understand what these utterances mean when native speakers use them. Because UOEs are so under-taught and there are so few teaching UOEs, there is a great need for a UOE dictionary that includes not only pronunciation and meaning, but also the syntactic features and semantic and pragmatic functions of these expressions. This project includes the creation of an online UOE dictionary to fill that need in English language acquisition. Key Acronyms: UOE: unorthodox oral expression, ELL: English language learners, ESL: English as a second language, EFL: English as a foreign language, NES: native English speaker, NNES: non-native English speaker


In the last few decades there has been an exceptional growth in the use of the GPS (Global Positioning System). The usage of GPS navigation has escalated from the military area and commercialised for civilian use. Since the Selective Availability was turned off in the year 2000, the accuracy of civilian GPS has improved from 100 meters to 20 meters. In the last decade, several improvements to the GPS have been implemented, including new signals for civil use and better accuracy and integrity for all users. As a result, the GPS applications are now widespread in aviation, rail, marine, and particularly in passenger cars and personal handheld devices. This research builds on research reported in relevant publications and focuses on the immediate variables external to a GPS device such as cloud cover, weather, obstructions, split signals and user preferences, and tests the accuracy of three GPS devices. The testing was conducted in three types of weather conditions (sunny, cloudy and rainy) and four environmental conditions were selected (tree canopies area, a suburban area, a city street with tall buildings and an indoor environment). Based on the literature reviewed these represented a 100% tree canopy, a varied percentage of canopy open and a closed canopy. The proposed testing methods therefore measure the travelled distance for each device in each weather and canopy combination, to analyse the accuracy and evaluate the possible factors that influence the accuracy. The research project showed that the environmental conditions, GPS technique employed and the speed of movement all influence the GPS accuracy. These results confirm the results found in the literature regarding the impact of different canopy types on GPS accuracy. The findings of this study have implications for the way a digital investigator must audit and report evidence extracted from GPS devices. Future research is also required to further explore other factors that are found to influence GPS accuracy by other studies. Findings from such research will further the understanding of GPS


In this paper we study the impact of misreported treatment status on the estimation of causal treatment effects. We characterise the bias introduced by misclassification on the average treatment effect on the treated under the assumption of selection on observables. Although the bias of matching-type estimators computed from misclassified data cannot in general be signed, we show that the bias is most likely to be downward if misclassification does not depend on variables entering the selection-on-observables assumption, or only depends on such variables via the propensity score index. We extend the framework to multiple treatments. We provide results to bound the returns to a number of educational qualifications in the UK semi-parametrically, and by using the unique nature of our data we assess the plausibility for the two biases from measurement error and from omitted variables to cancel out.


The importance of dentists to be able to manage a medical emergency in dental practice has been an established concept for many years, with medical emergency training being incorporated into dental undergraduate training programs as far as back as 1981. However, for far longer than this, dentists have held a professional role in the staffing of military field hospitals, providing emergency care to injured and ill members of the armed forces. Despite awareness of the importance of such skills, Australian studies have shown dentists often lack appropriate proficiencies and equipment for the effective and efficient management of medical crises that may arise as a part of routine dentistry. The only identified literature review on medical emergencies within dentistry recently found the majority of both students and graduate dentists were unable to correctly perform life support procedures3. This is a finding of concern when recent studies on the prevalence of medical emergencies in dentistry suggest that the incidence may be increasing, due to a myriad of factors. The populations of developed countries are generally getting older and consequently suffer from more acute and chronic conditions; notably, it has been argued that patients with multiple chronic diseases are more likely to suffer from a medical emergency. Simultaneously, a greater number of practitioners are utilising drugs such as sedatives compared to years past. These findings coincide with observations that dentists are being taught less clinical medical science than they have historically, and are further being seen as service providers to a consumerist public, rather than their trained role as health professionals. Although all schools of dentistry in Australia require their students to hold first aid and basic life support (BLS) certification, the requirements for practicing dentists to undergo ongoing training or medical emergency certification varies across countries and governing bodies. Australian dentists are not specifically required to undergo ongoing training in the management of medical emergencies, despite it being strongly recommended by the Australian Dental Association. Further, the public's expectation of dentists' competence in medical emergency management is likely much higher than what dentists may hold of themselves15, and reports on unpublished studies corroborate this suggestion. In the current military framework, Australian Defence Force (ADF) Dental Officers (DO) are often involved in the early triaging and stabilisation of injured members who have been evacuated to a role two facility but are not yet in receipt of advanced medical care. This too mandates a high level of knowledge and proficiency in emergency medical management. Given the special semi-autonomous status afforded to the self-regulation of dentistry there is a professional responsibility to meet or exceed public expectations, or such deficiencies may be legislatively mandated. To date, no published studies could be found examining the public's opinion of dentists' ability to manage a medical emergency in a dental setting, nor whether a patient's own medical status impacts on whether they visit a dentist because of concerns about a medical emergency. Based on this, the aim of this research is to quantify the public's attitudes towards dentists' proficiency in a medical crisis.


Tremendous amount of parameters make deep neural networks impractical to be deployed for edge-device-based real-world applications due to the limit of computational power and storage space. Existing studies have made progress on learning quantized deep models to reduce model size and energy consumption, i.e. converting full-precision weights ($r$'s) into discrete values ($q$'s) in a supervised training manner. However, the training process for quantization is non-differentiable, which leads to either infinite or zero gradients ($g_r$) w.r.t. $r$. To address this problem, most training-based quantization methods use the gradient w.r.t. $q$ ($g_q$) with clipping to approximate $g_r$ by Straight-Through-Estimator (STE) or manually design their computation. However, these methods only heuristically make training-based quantization applicable, without further analysis on how the approximated gradients can assist training of a quantized network. In this paper, we propose to learn $g_r$ by a neural network. Specifically, a meta network is trained using $g_q$ and $r$ as inputs, and outputs $g_r$ for subsequent weight updates. The meta network is updated together with the original quantized network. Our proposed method alleviates the problem of non-differentiability, and can be trained in an end-to-end manner. Extensive experiments are conducted with CIFAR10/100 and ImageNet on various deep networks to demonstrate the advantage of our proposed method in terms of a faster convergence rate and better performance. Codes are released at: \texttt{https://github.com/csyhhu/MetaQuant}