In developing countries, resource-dependent communities are disproportionately affected, jet less equipped to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. Though generally associated with institutional adjustments, technology transfer, absorption and diffusion provide outstanding opportunities to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities and the ecosystems on which they rely to the risks of climate variability and extremes. In spite of the potential for technology diffusion as it emerges from the international regime, scientific evidence suggests that global efforts to transfer climate-smart technologies needed for successful adaptation in developing countries have fallen short. This paper examines current challenges and opportunities related to technology transfer for climate change adaptation in developing countries, as well as the contribution of the United Nations Development Programme--Climate Change Adaptation Team (UNDP-CCA) in promoting technology absorption and diffusion at the country level. ********** These days, climate change is one of the most prominent challenges facing humanity. Recent data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States suggest that June 2010 was the hottest month of June on record. (1) Resource-dependent communities in developing countries are disproportionately affected, yet less equipped to cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. As extreme weather reaches its peak, the need to adapt becomes an urgent priority. The transfer of technology--which in the broadest sense includes not only materials and equipment, but also the technical and commercial information and human skills needed to properly understand and use it--is presented as one of the main pillars to increase the resilience of vulnerable communities and their ecosystems to climate risks. Yet today, global efforts to transfer and diffuse climate-smart technologies have fallen short of what is required for significant adaptation in the coming decades. (2) The experience of the UNDP Environment and Energy Group in promoting the absorption and diffusion of technology in developing countries can help pave the way for successful transfer of technology to developing countries. We begin by elaborating on the opportunities and constraints associated with the transfer of technology in developing countries, then go on to present the portfolio of UNDP's projects addressing the absorption and diffusion of technology in climate change adaptation in developing countries. Our final section explores the prospects for scaling up efforts to transfer technology for climate change adaptation in developing countries. OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS TO TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES From the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to the Bali Action Plan ten years later, several multilateral environmental agreements have been developed to assist developing countries in adapting to climate change; namely, by facilitating innovation and diffusion of technology that can bolster the resilience of vulnerable communities to climate change, variability and extremes. For example, Article 4.5 of the UNFCCC urges developed countries who are party to the Convention (Annex I countries) to promote, finance and facilitate the transfer of environmentally sound technologies and know-how to developing countries. Yet despite their commitments, the difficulty of fulfilling this critical need has highlighted the importance of moving toward concrete actions. Today, the World Trade Organization's (WTO) agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) provides potential opportunities to speed up the transfer of technology for adaptation. While addressing some concerns, significant challenges still need to be overcome in developing countries in order for adaptation technologies to deliver their full promises. …


Along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia sea urchin disease outbreaks are statistically linked to North Atlantic hurricanes and warm sea temperatures. The amoebic pathogen Paramoeba invadens, which causes these disease outbreaks, is unable to withstand typical minimum sea temperatures along this coast, suggesting that it is reintroduced during periods of peak temperatures. Here, we examine hypotheses for mechanisms of introduction or persistence of P. invadens using data on sea urchin disease outbreaks from a 5‐yr field experiment (2010–2014), in combination with high‐temporal‐resolution oceanographic and meteorologic data. Disease outbreaks were observed in 4 yr, with the onset of mass mortality (≥50% morbidity or mortality) ranging from mid August to mid October. Physical data suggest that P. invadens originates in warm offshore surface waters that are transported to the coast during strong storms. Disease outbreaks were associated with passing hurricanes in 2 yr (2010 and 2011). In 2012, a disease outbreak occurred in the absence of a storm and following a strong positive anomaly in winter sea temperature, suggesting survival of the pathogen from 2011. In 2014, a disease outbreak occurred in association with a strong storm (nor'easter) that was not a hurricane. Our findings indicate that changing environmental conditions of increasing minimum sea temperatures and increasing intensity of storms may be altering the dynamics of this disease. These inferences remain equivocal, however, indicating the need for high‐resolution dynamical modeling of the physical environment and rapid identification of P. invadens in the environment using genetic tools.


This Chapter provides a framework for examining the ambivalent and reciprocal relationship between emotions and constitutional law through three interrelated lenses: text, instrument, and symbol. In the years before the Civil War, discourse about feelings impacted institutional struggles for interpretive supremacy over the constitutional text, affected the Constitution's ability to function as a legal mechanism for emotion management, and shaped its status as a national symbol.


The effects of 2,3-butanedione monoxime (BDM) on intracellular Ca transient and cross-bridge function were studied in frog single ®bres from the anterior tibialis muscle of Rana temporaria (sarcomere length, 2.2 lm; temperature, 2±4 °C). The  ̄uorescent dye  ̄uo-3 was used to monitor the intracellular free calcium concentration ([Ca]i) during isometric contractions. BDM (1±5 mM) reduced the amplitude of the Ca transient during twitches, but this effect was too small to explain the marked inhibition of BDM on twitch force. [Ca]i reached at the end of 1-s tetanic stimulation was not signi®cantly affected by BDM (1.0 and 1.8 mM) while the maximum tetanic tension was substantially reduced. The rate of relaxation during isometric tetanus was increased by BDM whereas the rate of decay of the Ca transient was reduced in the presence of BDM. The results strongly suggest that BDM, under the experimental conditions used, mainly affects the contractile machinery resulting in altered performance of the cross-bridges. These effects of BDM were evaluated in terms of the cross-bridge model of Huxley (1957) which was ®tted to the experimental force±velocity data in the presence and absence of BDM.


Combining ability variances and effects were estimated for important agronomic and biochemical traits in sugarcane using line x tester mating design. Five commercially grown varieties and one line from germplasm collection were involved in this study of which three were used as females (lines) and three as males (testers). The six agronomic characters studied were number of millable stalk per stool, stalk diameter, stalk height, weight of millable stalk, refroctometre brix and plant volume. The five bio-chemical characters studied include polatronic reading (pol), fibre, purity, brix and pure obtainable cane-sugar (POCS). Among the lines, Aiwa and Mana and among the testers Vatu and Mentor were found to be the best general combiners for most of the agronomic and bio-chemical characters. Four out of nine crosses namely Aiwa x Mentor, Kaba x Vatu, Kaba x Yasawa and Mana x Yasawa were found to be the best crosses. Analysis of Variance for bio-chemical characters showed that only one character (% fibre) was significant. The line x tester interaction was not significant for any of the characters studied. Estimates of variance due to gca and sca and their ratio revealed predominantly non-additive gene action for these characters. Non-additive gene action can be exploited in F1 generation. Development of new hybrid varieties with improved agronomic and bio-chemical characters is therefore suggested.


Evidence in rodents suggests that islet pretreatment to reduce islet immunogenicity will also require some form of immunosuppression of the recipient for islet allograft acceptance in highly reactive donor-recipient pairs. We attempted to ascertain whether outbred dogs would also require treatment of both donor islets and the recipient to prolong islet allograft survival. Untreated canine islets are uniformly rejected in 6-10 days in beagles. Tissue culture alone, at 37°C for 7 days, or treatment of freshly prepared islets with antila monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) (B1F6 + 7.2) did not prolong canine islet allograft survival. Treatment of culture-maintained canine islets with anti-la MoAbs plus complement resulted in prolongation of islet allograft survival for 188 and 368 days in two of seven pancreatectomized nonimmunosuppressed beagles. The administration of low doses of cyclosporin A (CsA) intramuscularly, to recipients of untreated canine islet allografts had no effect on graft survival. By contrast, six of nine CsA-treated recipients of islets that were also treated with anti-la MoAbs (B1F6 + 7.2) plus complement showed prolongation of graft survival. Euglycemia was sustained for 19, 34, 89, and 300 days after the CsA was discontinued (day 30) in four of these animals. Two animals had unstable grafts from the beginning that failed 23 and 29 days after transplantation. Our results indicate that simple maneuvers like short-term tissue culture at 37°C and treatment of freshly isolated islets with anti-la MoAbs and complement are inadequate to prevent rejection in outbred pancreatectomized beagles. In contrast, low-dosage CsA acts synergistically with the in vitro treatment of islets with anti-la MoAbs to prolong islet allograft survival in outbred dogs with induced diabetes mellitus.


Abstract In 2013, more than seventy per cent of Norwegian reception centres for asylum seekers were decentralized or partly decentralized, meaning that the residents lived in ordinary homes dispersed around the town or local area, instead of in a centralized institution. The article presents results from a research project aiming to document and identify how localization, type of buildings and housing quality of asylum centres influence the asylum seekers' well-being. The main focus of the article is on decentralized asylum centres. The results are based on qualitative case studies of seven selected centres. The housing standard in the case studies varied, but there was generally a lack of maintenance of the buildings. Even if decentralized accommodation was seen as improving the well-being of the residents, empowering them, making them more independent and reducing conflicts, there is a danger that poor housing quality turns it into a symbol of outsidedness.


China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a controversial addition to both the global and Asian economic architectures. Western critics have alleged it is a vehicle designed to achieve China's geostrategic goals, while scholars have argued it marks China's adoption of a 'revisionist' foreign policy strategy. This article argues that such interpretations are incorrect, as they fail to account for the evolution of China's AIIB agenda. To secure a broad membership and international legitimacy for the AIIB, China compromised with partners during governance negotiations in 2015. Western country demands saw several controversial initial proposals dropped, the governance practices of existing multilateral development banks were adopted, and cooperative partnerships were developed with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. This transition from a revisionist to status-seeking AIIB agenda reveals the flexibility of Chinese economic statecraft, and its willingness to compromise strategic goals to boost the legitimacy of its international leadership claims.


Andesite lavas from the current eruption of the Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat exhibit evidence for magma mingling, related to the intrusion of mafic magma at depth. The processes of mass transfer and flux of material involved in the interaction between mafic and silicic magmas are crucial for understanding eruption dynamics. Detailed textural, petrological and geochemical analyses coupled with field observations are used to define a classification scheme for mafic enclave types in erupted andesite from phase V (2009–2010). Type A are closest to a mafic end-member, whereas type B are significantly hybridised. Type A quench crystallisation is driven by rapid thermal equilibration during injection into the andesite. Type B enclaves form from a slower cooling vesiculating hybridised melt layer. Type C, are a composite of types A and types B, representing an interface between the types. Geochemical modelling shows that since the start of the current eruption that the dominant control on the range of enclave bulk compositions has changed from fractional crystallisation to mixing of the mafic end-member and host andesite. A change in selected elements concentrations in the mafic end-member is observed from phases I to III, halting in phase V. Volatile flux from the mafic to andesite magmas plays a vital role in eruption dynamics, but evidence for vapour transport in the erupted lavas is rarely preserved. Geochemical and petrological evidence is presented for the segregation and transport of metal-bearing vapour in shear fractures generated in the shallow conduit or dome during magma ascent. Elevated metal concentrations (Cu, Au, Ag, Pb, Zn) indicate magmatic vapours transport. Volatiles were resorbed into the partial melt generated during frictional heating (>1000 °C) at the slip surface as a peraluminous partial melt recrystallised. The shear zones provide evidence for degassing and an insight into controls on eruption style.


the Mitchell Institute. The phrase "multi-domain operations" (known as MDOs) is now pervasive in current military writings and analysis. Unfortunately, most authors fail to define it, leading to confusion. Worse, it can seem as if people are discussing the same set of issues when they are not. This paper attempts to rectify the situation, examining each component word and then the phrase as a whole. Warfighting in a single domain is about gaining access to the domain in question, controlling the domain, and exploiting that control to create effects. However, multi-domain operations are more than operations in adjacent domains. To possess meaning as a distinct phrase, there must be some relationship in the access, control, and exploitation of the domains. Therefore, this paper argues that multi-domain operations are a set of tactical actions taken in one domain in order to enhance the access, control, or exploitation of one or more different domains. There are two types of multi-domain operations. First, a set of tactical actions that could exploit two or more domains to create effects on a target or objective simultaneously—convergence. Second, a multi-domain operation could gain access and control in one domain in order to create opportunities in a separate domain— establishing windows of domain superiority. True MDOs require a common language, integrated capabilities, packaging of these multi-domain capabilities, and the elimination of classification stovepipes. M ITC HELL INSTUTE or erospace St ud ies No. 22 November 2018


Abstract The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of electromyography (EMG) normalization methods for a high-speed 20-m sprint. Comparisons were based on intra-individual reliability and magnitude of normalized EMG signals from three repeat sessions separated by 1 day (between days) and 1 week (between weeks) from the initial test. Surface EMGs were recorded (n=16) from the medial and lateral gastrocnemius and soleus during the normalization methods (isometric: maximum/sub-maximum/body weight; isotonic: maximum/sub-maximum/body weight; isokinetic: 1.05 rad · s–1, 1.31 rad · s–1, 1.83 rad · s–1; squat jump). The EMG data from the 20-m sprint were normalized using each method and using the within-sprint peak EMG (sprint peak). Intra-individual reliability of the EMG was assessed using typical error of measurement as a percentage of intra-individual coefficient of variance (TEMCV%). Sprint peak normalization improved intra-individual reliability of EMG (soleus: <4.91CV%; medial gastrocnemius: <6.2CV%; lateral gastrocnemius: <7.1CV%) compared with un-normalized EMG (soleus: <13.3CV%; medial gastrocnemius: <16.5CV%; lateral gastrocnemius: <16.3CV%) both between days and between weeks. Squat jump normalization improved the soleus (<11.2CV%) and medial gastrocnemius (<15.7CV%) reliability between days and weeks and provided a representative measure of triceps surae muscle activation. The intra-individual reliability of the medial gastrocnemius EMG data was improved both between days and weeks when using isotonic normalization. Isometric and isokinetic normalization showed no improvement in intra-individual reliability either between days or weeks for any muscle. The method of normalization influenced the between-stride muscle interaction during the 20-m sprint. The results of this study suggest that peak normalization can be used to normalize high-speed muscle actions, while normalizing EMG to a squat jump may provide an alternative method to represent relative muscle activation.


The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) discipline is concerned with design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use. HCI and System Usability Design have greater significance in electronic government (e-government) as the usability problems can adversely affect millions of people. The goal of the study is to examine the extent of "Interactive Web Applications" in India, USA, Finland and China. In addition to measuring the number of websites and web portals, the study will determine if the design of those "Interactive Web-applications" base sites are effective from the HCI and system usability perspective. The present study will enhance ongoing research on the subject .


Individuals with severe, undiagnosed developmental disorders (DDs) are enriched for damaging de novo mutations (DNMs) in developmentally important genes. We exome sequenced 4,293 families with individuals with DDs, and meta-analysed these data with published data on 3,287 individuals with similar disorders. We show that the most significant factors influencing the diagnostic yield of de novo mutations are the sex of the affected individual, the relatedness of their parents and the age of both father and mother. We identified 94 genes enriched for damaging de novo mutation at genome-wide significance (P < 7 × 10−7), including 14 genes for which compelling data for causation was previously lacking. We have characterised the phenotypic diversity among these genetic disorders. We demonstrate that, at current cost differentials, exome sequencing has much greater power than genome sequencing for novel gene discovery in genetically heterogeneous disorders. We estimate that 42% of our cohort carry pathogenic DNMs (single nucleotide variants and indels) in coding sequences, with approximately half operating by a loss-of-function mechanism, and the remainder resulting in altered-function (e.g. activating, dominant negative). We established that most haplo insufficient developmental disorders have already been identified, but that many altered-function disorders remain to be discovered. Extrapolating from the DDD cohort to the general population, we estimate that developmental disorders caused by DNMs have an average birth prevalence of 1 in 213 to 1 in 448 (0.22-0.47% of live births), depending on parental age. Abbreviations PTV Protein-Truncating Variant DNM De Novo Mutation DD Developmental Disorder DDD Deciphering Developmental Disorders study


While monadic effects are widespread in modern functional programming, the idea of formulating computational effects as algebraic theories seems a less familiar one to programmers. One appealing feature of such algebraic effects is the clear decoupling between specification and implementation (or in more model-theoretic terms, syntax versus semantics). With monads, this distinction is arguably less clear. But perhaps the most compelling reason for considering algebraic effects is the relative ease by which such effects can be combined. This point is clearly of much relevance to the semantics of programming languages since in much of modern software development, one often deals with multiple interacting effects. As a simple example, we may want a program that not only keeps track of some state across the computation (e.g. a parser consuming a string of text), but also account for the possibility of failure. But it is well known that there is more than one way to combine these state and exception effects, each corresponding to a different composition. Neither can be considered canonical, since both have their use cases. It turns out that under the lens of algebraic effects, both interactions can be understood in terms of straightforward amalgamations of the respective equational laws. Both of these constructions arise naturally from the categorical structure of Lawvere theories, a more abstract formulation of equational theories as categories. In this dissertation we seek to further the understanding of combining effects, especially from this more algebraic perspective. Of particular interest is a distributive tensor construction on Lawvere theories that does not seem to be very widely known. The distributive tensor plays a leading role in many examples of computational interest, and two such applications will be considered in some depth. Firstly, from the observation that various combinatorial search strategies are characterised by two equivalent formulations as bunch monadic types and as more structured theories of monoids, we give a number of correspondence results. Furthermore, it is also shown that the list monad transformer is exactly a distributive tensor from the theory of monoids. The second application considers in some detail a derivation of the geometrically convex monad, that is the combination of probabilistic and nondeterministic choice effects, called combined choice. As it is no easy task to capture the equational properties between probabilistic and nondeterministic choice, a technique is explored for reasoning about such equations visually by taking a geometric interpretation of the free models of combined choice, as convex polygons on a plane.


Engineering product design requires both technical aptitude and an understanding of the nontechnical requirements in the marketplace, economic or otherwise. Engineering education has long focused on the technical side of product design, but there is increasing demand for market-aware engineers in industry. Market-awareness and customer-focus are also associated with entrepreneurship, which has been given increased focus in engineering education. A common tool for gauging customer interest in industry is the focus group. Herein we examine the effect of customer voice as presented in a focus group for influencing engineering product design generated by students as part of the virtual internship and epistemic game Nephrotex. We find that customer exposure is related to decreased product cost without a change in product quality. Therefore, we suggest that the injection of customer voice into the engineering curriculum is a valid method by which to improve engineering design pedagogy.


In patients receiving locoregional therapy for liver metastases degradable microspheres are being increasingly used in an attempt to improve cytotoxic delivery to the tumour. However, counterproductive arteriovenous shunting through the liver following intrahepatic arterial injection can occur, leading to deposition in the lung. Measurement of the degree of shunting is important in the monitoring of this kind of therapy. In this study we describe the use of technetium-labelled microspheres of serum albumin (99Tcm MSA) to measure baseline shunting during hepatic arterial perfusion scintigraphy in five patients with liver metastases of colorectal origin, and assess the significance of the values obtained for relative lung uptake (RLU) which we define as: RLU = Activity in lung field/Activity in liver + lung fields X 100%. We found that shunting was less than 5% in all cases, zero shunting occurring in 14 of the 16 patients studied. The sources of error in this technique have been assessed, the most important being the presence of free pertechnetate in the injectate. The use of Boots 10 ml vials and glass syringes respectively to dispense and administer this radiopharmaceutical reduces this error to a small predictable level. In our small group of patients, we found no evidence to suggest that use of the vasoactive agent angiotensin II significantly increases baseline shunting in patients with colorectal liver tumour.


Phytoplankton characteristics, such as biomass, blooms and composition, reflect the degradation of trophic state in a broad range and the pretictive power is limited (Vollenweider 1968, Reynolds 1997 etc.). The EU-WFD gives the great chance to specify this reaction for different water body types, determined by hydrological and geomorphological processes. The biological descriptions of specific water body types will give us a deeper inside of the response of biological groups to disturbances and the opportunity to define more specific management tools to achieve a higher ecological status. The water body types must represent typical habitats, which are inhabited by specific assemblages of organisms. Therefore, the types would fit the best with biological characteristics,if they are defined as ecotopes (Platteeuw and van der Molen 2001).On the other hand, it is almost unsolvable to define characteristic habitats, which are meaningful for all four biological groups (fish, macrophytes/phytobenthos, phytoplankton, macroinvertebrates), and to reduce the number of types to a realistic and practicable level (10 to 20 types). This is because Germany ́s landscape cover three ecoregions (alps; highlands; flatland) and a lot of different geomorphotypes. This impossible task given by the WFD results in a typology of lakes or rivers, which are adequately only to those biological groups, for which the typology was primarily developed. Development of assessment method for macroinvertebrates are the most advanced ones in Germany. Thus, the authorised typology of rivers is dominated by criteria important for macroinvertebrates. The typology of lakes is a result of former national assessment criteria and of criteria suggested by EU-WFD and is derived from a data set of 319 lakes larger than 0.5 km (Mathes et al. 2002). We have to arrange our biotic data within this given typology, since it is unproductive to develop specific typology for each biological group. We have to verify the typologys applicability for phytoplankton and propose additional criteria, when they are absolutely necessary. Concerning the classification of river phytoplankton, only few of all types must be evaluated by phytoplankton. Our first preliminary results reveal that even within one degradation state and one water type the reaction of phytoplankton on trophic disturbances is still very broad. Therefore, we recommend the description of alternative states within one degradation status. Describing alternative states also for reference conditions, which are likely in shallow lakes and rivers with a alternative dominance of macrophytes or phytoplankton, is useful for considering the interaction of the different biological groups.


Navigation is an essential element of many remote robot operations including search and rescue, reconnaissance, and space exploration. Previous reports on using remote mobile robots suggest that navigation is difficult due to poor situation awareness. It has been recommended by experts in human-robot interaction that interfaces between humans and robots provide more spatial information and better situational context in order to improve an operator's situation awareness. This paper presents an ecological interface paradigm that combines video, map, and robot-pose information into a 3-D mixed-reality display. The ecological paradigm is validated in planar worlds by comparing it against the standard interface paradigm in a series of simulated and real-world user studies. Based on the experiment results, observations in the literature, and working hypotheses, we present a series of principles for presenting information to an operator of a remote robot.


The gently ESE-dipping Outer Hebrides Fault Zone may be traced for c. 170 km through the Lewisian gneisses of northwestern Scotland and defines broad, arcuate swings in strike from NE–SW to almost north–south. This study evaluates the kinematic evolution of the fault zone within the hinge region of such a strike swing exposed in the small isles north of Barra. New structural mapping of this area has concentrated on the geometry, kinematic significance and the relative age of different structural elements of the fault zone, and provides a comparison with the better known tectonics of the northern portions of the Outer Hebrides Fault Zone. Hitherto unrecognized top-to-the-NW ductile thrusting in this southern portion of the fault zone, coupled with abundant evidence of extensional reactivation and lack of sinistral strike-slip in phyllonites as reported further north, suggests that the present segmented and arcuate geometry is a primary feature of the fault system. The original thrust template governed the subsequent reactivation and relative importance of both late Caledonian strike-slip and extensional collapse components. Inherited structural architectures may thus provide geometric constraints on the nature and patterns of subsequent reactivation and tectonism.


Amy Schlitz's book Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! set in 1255 England is an extraordinary children's book that explores life in a medieval village. This is not your typical storybook and is not to be read in the typical fashion. As we learn from the forward, the author—a school librarian—wrote it with the intention that a group of students studying medieval history would put on a dramatization of the book. Because she did not want a couple of students to have the lead roles and the rest to have minor ones, she wrote it as a series of 23 monologues that intertwine. This lesson plan provides background information on the book and suggestions on how to use it.


The second volume on the Iron Age settlement at Most na Soci evaluates from various aspects the structures and small finds that has been presented in the first book.
The first section of the book opens with the chronology of the settlement and the architecture in Posocje. The following chapter present the small finds. These include metal artefacts that mainly consist of jewellery, but also tools and other objects that the inhabitants of Most na Soci used in their everyday activities. Pottery is also numerously represented and presented here as to the composition of the fabrics, the typology of forms and their chronological spans.
The second section presents the analyses of some of the raw materials that the artisans used in their work: clay temper, bronze, iron and stone. The results reveal their composition and the origin of the raw materials, which is significant as there are no major ore deposits in the area of Most na Soci.
The third section presents the organic remains. Firstly, there are the remains of the structural wood used in house construction. The settlement also yielded crop plants, mainly cereals, but also fruit that they either gathered locally or imported from areas with a warmer climate. A special study presents the scarce remains of textile. This section is rounded off with the discussion on the remains of animals that were reared and consumed in this part of Posocje during the Iron Age.
The results and findings of these expertises are brought together in the introductory study that also provides a broader cultural and historical context of the site and underlines its place among the most important centres of the south-eastern Alpine Hallstatt culture.


In its 2014 decision of Bhasin v. Hrynew, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that a duty of honest performance exists between contracting parties. Academics, practitioners, and courts across the nation have since contemplated the meaning and role of such a duty. This article looks to Australia's doctrine of "equitable estoppel," the equivalent of Canada's "promissory estoppel," to explain the outcome of the Supreme Court's decision. It thereby posits that the duty of honest performance can be re-characterized and interpreted as equitable estoppel. In that manner, the article provides a perspective that clarifies the newly proclaimed duty, and potentially answers several of the outstanding questions regarding the Supreme Court's conclusions in Bhasin.


SUMMARY Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), an important foodborne pathogen, can cause mild to severe bloody diarrhoea (BD), sometimes followed by life-threatening complications such as haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS). A total of 44 O157 strains isolated from different patients from 2000 through 2009 in Switzerland were further characterized and linked to medical history data. Non-bloody diarrhoea was experienced by 15·9%, BD by 61·4% of the patients, and 29·5% developed HUS. All strains belonged to MLST type 11, were positive for stx2 variants (stx2 and/or stx2c), eae and ehxA, and only two strains showed antibiotic resistance. Of the 44 strains, nine phage types (PTs) were detected the most frequent being PT32 (43·2%) and PT8 (18·2%). By PFGE, 39 different patterns were found. This high genetic diversity within the strains leads to the conclusion that STEC O157 infections in Switzerland most often occur as sporadic cases.


A novel concept in vibrational spectroscopy called two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectroscopy is described. In 2D IR, a spectrum defined by two independent wavenumbers is generated by a cross-correlation analysis of dynamic fluctuations of IR signals induced by an external perturbation. 2D IR spectra are especially suited for elucidating various chemical interactions among functional groups. Notable features of the 2D IR approach are: simplification of complex spectra consisting of many overlapped peaks; enhancement of spectral resolution by spreading peaks over the second dimension; and establishment of unambiguous assignments through correlation analysis of bands selectively coupled by various interaction mechanisms. The procedure for generating 2D IR correlation spectra and the properties of the 2D spectra are discussed in detail. Examples of 2D IR spectra are presented for atactic polystyrene and the proteinacious component of human stratum corneum to demonstrate the utility of this technique.


Paspalum atratum and P. lenticulare are perennial grasses, native to South America. The objective was to evaluate seasonal growth, frost tolerance, cattle preference, nutritional characteristics, seed yield and germination of 11 ecotypes of P. atratum and P. lenticulare with regard to their potential as alternatives to introduced species. Forage yield was evaluated during 3 growing seasons between 2011 and 2014. Digestibility and CP concentration were assessed in summer 2014, cattle preference in winter 2013 and summer 2015, frost tolerance after the first frosts in June 2012, flowering time during 2013 and 2014 and seed yield and germination in 2014. A marked warm-season growing period was observed for both species with annual forage yields varying from 5 to 12 t DM/ha. Flowering did not occur until autumn, with mean seed yield of 280 kg/ha and germination of 16% for P. atratum and 19% for P. lenticulare. Most ecotypes were able to tolerate winter temperatures and behaved as perennials. Although no differences were observed for DM digestibility and CP concentration among accessions, cattle preferentially grazed accession P. atratum U44. Further studies are needed to evaluate persistence under grazing and animal performance.


The vocal fry register has previously been detected in the voices of young women. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which vocal fry is present among young female Canadian English speakers and to investigate the attitudes people have towards speakers who exhibit vocal fry. To investigate the presence of vocal fry, we collected data from 21 female participants in an interview setting. The majority of participants exhibited vocal fry in their regular speech patterns, and this feature was more pronounced at the end of a phrase. Vocal fry is quite common at the end of a phrase or sentence; however, its use as a social marker has not been thoroughly studied. To investigate attitudes towards speakers with vocal fry, we collected data using an online questionnaire. Overall, we found the 56 male and female participants to hold negative attitudes towards speakers with vocal fry and positive attitudes towards speakers without vocal fry. Findings from this study will contribute to the growing literature on this vocal register.


We introduce a geometrically transparent strict saddle property for nonsmooth functions. This property guarantees that simple proximal algorithms on weakly convex problems converge only to local minimizers, when randomly initialized. We argue that the strict saddle property may be a realistic assumption in applications, since it provably holds for generic semi-algebraic optimization problems.


Tunneling conductance spectroscopy in normal metal-superconductor junctions is an important tool for probing Andreev bound states in mesoscopic superconducting devices, such as Majorana nanowires.
In an ideal superconducting device, the subgap conductance obeys specific symmetry relations, due to particle-hole symmetry and unitarity of the scattering matrix.
However, experimental data often exhibits deviations from these symmetries or even their explicit breakdown.
In this work, we identify a mechanism that leads to conductance asymmetries without quasiparticle poisoning.
In particular, we investigate the effects of finite bias and include the voltage dependence in the tunnel barrier transparency, finding significant conductance asymmetries for realistic device parameters.
It is important to identify the physical origin of conductance asymmetries: in contrast to other possible mechanisms such as quasiparticle poisoning, finite-bias effects are not detrimental to the performance of a topological qubit.
To that end we identify features that can be used to experimentally determine whether finite-bias effects are the source of conductance asymmetries.


Japan's jazz community—both musicians and audience—has been begrudgingly recognized in the United States for its talent, knowledge, and level of appreciation. Underpinning this tentative admiration, however, has been a tacit agreement that, for cultural reasons, Japanese jazz "can't swing." In Blue Nippon E. Taylor Atkins shows how, strangely, Japan's own attitude toward jazz is founded on this same ambivalence about its authenticity.

Engagingly told through the voices of many musicians, Blue Nippon explores the true and legitimate nature of Japanese jazz. Atkins peers into 1920s dancehalls to examine the Japanese Jazz Age and reveal the origins of urban modernism with its new set of social mores, gender relations, and consumer practices. He shows how the interwar jazz period then became a troubling symbol of Japan's intimacy with the West—but how, even during the Pacific war, the roots of jazz had taken hold too deeply for the "total jazz ban" that some nationalists desired. While the allied occupation was a setback in the search for an indigenous jazz sound, Japanese musicians again sought American validation. Atkins closes out his cultural history with an examination of the contemporary jazz scene that rose up out of Japan's spectacular economic prominence in the 1960s and 1970s but then leveled off by the 1990s, as tensions over authenticity and identity persisted.

With its depiction of jazz as a transforming global phenomenon, Blue Nippon will make enjoyable reading not only for jazz fans worldwide but also for ethnomusicologists, and students of cultural studies, Asian studies, and modernism.


We investigate the influence of African biomass burning, biogenic, lightning and anthropogenic emissions on the tropospheric ozone over Africa and globally using a coupled global chemistry climate model. Our model studies indicate that surface ozone concentration may rise by up to 50 ppbv in the burning region during the biomass burning seasons. Biogenic emissions yield between 5–30 ppbv increase in the near surface ozone concentration over tropical Africa. The impact of lightning on surface ozone is negligible , while anthropogenic emissions yield a maximum of 7 ppbv increase in the annual-mean surface ozone concentration over Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. Our results show that biogenic emissions are the most important African emission source affecting total tropospheric ozone. The influence of each of the African emissions on the global tropospheric ozone burden (TOB) of 384 Tg yields about 9.5 Tg, 19.6 Tg, 9.0 Tg and 4.7 Tg for biomass burning, biogenic, lightning and anthropogenic emissions emitted in Africa respectively. The impact of each of these emission categories on African TOB of 33 Tg is 2.5 Tg, 4.1 Tg, 1.75 Tg and 0.89 Tg respectively , which together represents about 28% of the total TOB calculated over Africa. Our model calculations also suggest that more than 70% of the tropospheric ozone produced by each of the African emissions is found outside the continent , thus exerting a noticeable influence on a large part of the tropical troposphere. Apart from the Atlantic and In-dian Ocean, Latin America experiences the largest impact of African emissions, followed by Oceania, the Middle East, Southeast and south-central Asia, northern North America (i.e. the United States and Canada), Europe and north-central Asia, for all the emission categories.


Every triathlete wants to be faster, and most know that adding strength training to their programme will help them get there. In "Strength Training for Triathletes", fitness phenomenon Patrick Hagerman explains how small changes in muscle strength add up to big race results. For triathletes, the benefits of strength training are many, from increased stability in the water and on the bike to a faster metabolism. Stronger muscles can work longer before feeling fatigued, making strength training indispensable to endurance athletes.Clearly organised by discipline (swim, bike, run) and by muscle group, "Strength Training for Triathletes" helps athletes quickly find the best exercise for their unique training needs. Every exercise is accompanied by full-colour art, making the routines easy and inviting to follow.This groundbreaking book further explains how triathletes can adjust their workouts to emphasize endurance, strength, or power, and how to balance the three to reach race goals. It includes complete information on structuring a periodised weight routine to maximize results, whether the race the reader is preparing for is a sprint, Olympic, half-Ironman or full Ironman event. Sample seasonal plans for each race distance and instruction on how to adapt training plans to individual needs make it easy for readers to develop specific approaches and reach their personal goals.This is the only strength training book designed specifically for triathletes. It features more than 60 exercises organised by sport and muscle group. It is in full-colour throughout with comprehensive illustrations.


Abstract Accelerometers are incorporated into many consumer devices providing new ways to monitor gait, mobility, and fall risk. However, many health benefits have not been realised because of issues with data quality that results from gravitational 'cross-talk' when the wearable device is tilted. Here we present an adaptive filter designed to improve the quality of accelerometer data prior to measuring dynamic pelvic sway patterns during a six minute walk test in people with and without Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Optical motion capture was used as the gold standard. Improved wearable device accuracy (≤4.4% NRMSE) was achieved using gyroscopic corrections and scaling filter thresholds by step frequency. The people with MS presented significantly greater pelvis sway range to compensate for their lower limb weaknesses and joint contractures. The visualisation of asymmetric pelvic sway in people with MS illustrates the potential to better understand their mobility impairments for reducing fall risk.


Silicon isotope ratios (expressed as δ30Si) in marine microfossils can provide insights into silica cycling over geologic time. Here we used δ30Si of sponge spicules and radiolarian tests from the Paleogene Equatorial Transect (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 199) spanning the Eocene and Oligocene (~50–23 Ma) to reconstruct dissolved silica (DSi) concentrations in deep waters and to examine upper ocean δ30Si. The δ30Si values range from −3.16 to +0.18‰ and from −0.07 to +1.42‰ for the sponge and radiolarian records, respectively. Both records show a transition toward lower δ30Si values around 37 Ma. The shift in radiolarian δ30Si is interpreted as a consequence of changes in the δ30Si of source DSi to the region. The decrease in sponge δ30Si is interpreted as a transition from low DSi concentrations to higher DSi concentrations, most likely related to the shift toward a solely Southern Ocean source of deep water in the Pacific during the Paleogene that has been suggested by results from paleoceanographic tracers such as neodymium and carbon isotopes. Sponge δ30Si provides relatively direct information about the nutrient content of deep water and is a useful complement to other tracers of deep water circulation in the oceans of the past.


The opening chapter of the thesis reviews efficiency wage literature. After considering the theoretical justifications that have been offered for a link from wages to effort, which is at the heart of efficiency wage theory, the chapter continues with an account of the attempts made so far in the literature to test this theory. The first of two empirical chapters examines how effort varies across individual characteristics. The efficiency wage link between individuals' earnings and their effort is investigated in a two-stage least squares framework, to allow for the endogeneity of earnings. Further tests check for the existence of a reverse causality argument. The chapter ends with an investigation into the effect of local unemployment rates on effort. A second empirical chapter examines the effect of workplace characteristics on effort. The influence of trade unions is considered by examining whether management policies to elicit effort from their employees, for example raising the cost of job loss or human resource management techniques, have differential effects on effort according to the degree of unionisation of the workplace. The final chapter is theoretical, considering group norms for effort, whereby the effort choice of individuals is influenced by their colleagues at work. Under the assumption that if a firm observes a single worker shirking, all members of that individual's workgroup will receive a sanction or lose a reward, the effort equilibrium of the workgroup is derived as a non-cooperative Nash equilibrium in expectations and effort choices. Given this equilibrium, the analysis continues by examining whether or not it would be in the workgroup's interest to establish a group norm for supplying effort. Thus the chapter provides a theoretical justification for the existence of, and adherence to, group norms for effort, which has been absent from previous analyses which have included such a concept.


High-resolution and accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM) generation from satellite imagery is a challenging problem. In this work, a stereo 3-D reconstruction framework is outlined that is applicable to nonstereoscopic satellite image pairs that may be captured by different satellites. The orthographic height maps given by stereo reconstruction are compared to height maps given by a multiview approach based on Probabilistic Volumetric Representation (PVR). Height map qualities are measured in comparison to manually prepared ground-truth height maps in three sites from different parts of the world with urban, semi-urban and rural features. The results along with strengths and weaknesses of the two techniques are summarized.


Skills development policies in South Africa and further afield consider learning in and from the workplace as critical to the training of artisans at intermediate level. Since the inception of democracy, South Africa has become part of a globally competitive economic arena where highly skilled workers capable of engaging with new technology in a changing environment are increasingly required. Continuous innovation, it is held (Kraak, 1997), is dependent on the presence of two knowledge forms in society and work: an abundance of formal (scientific and technological) knowledge, and skilled worker 'know-how' or tacit knowledge. In the
present system of technical and vocational education, theoretical learning and some practical skills are obtained in institutions, mostly in the recently renamed TVET colleges, while job specific training occurs through prescribed periods of work placement. In light of common assumptions about the value of workplace learning, this research was concerned with exploring whether, and how such learning is taking place. It sought to understand the methodologies, practices, and affordances available to learning in the workplace, from the perspective of candidate apprenticeship/learnership students. To this end this study employed a qualitative approach for investigating how candidates experienced and interacted with the 'real world environment' of the workplace. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposively selected sample comprising candidates engaged in programmes that necessitated a workplace learning component, namely, the apprenticeship and learnership in fitting and turning, motor/diesel and the auto electrical trades. Data analysis was undertaken using both Atlas ti software and manual methods for coding and identification of themes. Lenses used to describe and explain learning in the workplace included the conceptual frameworks of Engestrom's (1987) Activity theory; Vygotsky's (1978) notion of learning via the 'expert other' within a Zone of Proximal Development; and Lave and Wenger's (1991) theorising of situated learning in Communities of Practice. This triangular juxtaposition of complementary theories formed a richly informative explanatory system for my further exploration. As a qualified artisan myself I was familiar with the negative connotations of a historical 'sit by Nellie' approach, a phrase used to caricature the way apprentices learned in the past, by simply being passive observers of the experts. However, my findings were to reveal a vastly different picture of learning in this modern, visual and tactile age. Learners in this study experienced a range of learning modalities, methodologies and affordances that were reported in 'thick' descriptions, building a vivid picture of engagement and interaction. In addition to the abundance of learning opportunities candidates experienced, their responses revealed the indisputably central role played by 'expert others' in moving them towards competence – the expert artisan emerging as the quintessential didactic…


This paper outlines a study investigating the impact of the use of learning objects on the development of two key competencies from the revised New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 2007). It specifically focuses on the key competencies of 'thinking' and 'relating to others', and explores how teachers in an urban intermediate school (year 7 and 8) planned and integrated learning objects into a wider 'community' social studies topic, and the impact this integration had on student competency development. Outcomes from the study indicate that learning objects can, for some students, provide a motivating and engaging learning experience through which thinking capabilities and relationship skills can be enhanced, but that such development is dependent upon several factors including the design, content, and level of interactivity of the objects, how closely they align with learning goals, the careful selection of student groupings, and how access to the learning objects is organised and managed. The study also revealed some issues with the use of new digital data collection tools, particularly related to the accuracy of coding of visual information, and how to best translate this into text format for publication without 'diluting' its richness and meaning.


We have used the available samples of Gigahertz Peaked Spectrum (GPS) galaxies to investigate their evolution properties in the framework of the "youth" scenario. Care was taken to properly allow for the different selection criteria used to define the samples. We find that the observed redshift and peak frequency distributions can be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of simple luminosity evolution of individual sources, along the lines discussed by Fanti et al. (1995, AA 1999, in Proc. of KNAW Colloq.), although the derived parameter values have large uncertainties due to ambiguities in the selection of GPS sources and to the incompleteness of redshift measurements. However the simplest self-similar model, whereby the evolution is controlled only by the radial profile of the density of the ambient medium is not good enough and one additional parameter needs to be introduced. The fit requires a decrease of the emitted power and of the peak luminosity with source age or with decreasing peak frequency, at variance with the Snellen et al. (2000, MNRAS, 319, 445) model. On the other hand, our analysis confirms the rather flat slope of the luminosity function, found by Snellen et al. (2000) who also report indications of a high luminosity break, not required by the data sets we have used. Our results suggest that the GPS galaxies are the precursors of extended radio sources with luminosities below the break of the luminosity function. No cosmological evolution of the GPS galaxy population is required by presently available data.


To establish conditions which might permit deliberate gene disruptions in Neurospora crassa, we studied transformation with linear DNA fragments. The transformation frequency observed was increased about twofold in comparison with that obtained with circular plasmid DNA. However, only a low proportion, approximately 10%, of the integration events occurred at the homologous site, whereas most integrations of transforming DNA took place in nonhomologous regions. It was also found that multiple integration events frequently occurred in individual transformants. A plasmid, designated pJP12, was constructed that contains the N. crassa am+ gene interrupted by insertion into its coding region of a DNA segment carrying a functional Neurospora qa-2+ gene. A fragment of Neurospora DNA that contains this am qa-2+ construction was obtained from plasmid pJP12 and used to transform an am+ qa-2 strain in an attempt to disrupt the resident am+ gene. After the initial qa-2+ transformants were converted to homokaryons by appropriate crosses, 10 independent transformants with an am mutant phenotype were found among 117 examined. Each of these qa-2+ am transformants showed the loss of a hybridization band in Southern blots of genomic DNA that corresponded to the normal am+ gene and the presence of a new hybridization band, consistent with an alteration in the am+ region.


In 1986, the Supreme Court's leading conservative William H. Rehnquist, labelled by Newsweek as 'The Court's Mr. Right' was made Chief Justice. Almost immediately, legal scholars, practitioners, and pundits began questioning what his influence would be, and would he remake our constitutional corpus in his own image? Would the centre hold, or fold? This collected volume, which follows in the series edited by the late Bernard Schwartz, includes The Warren Court and The Burger Court, and contains the work of a varied body of scholars and practitioners. It includes an overview of the Rehnquist Court's influence to date, a detailed examination of the seminal issues confronted by the Court, and places the Court in broad historical perspective. Some of the issues examined in detail are First Amendment rights and cyberspace, criminal justice reform, the Court's pattern of constitutional interpretation, the international impact of the Rehnquist Court, and The Supreme Court's increasing interaction with state constitutional law.


Although he has largely receded from the public consciousness, John Mitchell Jr., the editor and publisher of the Richmond Planet, was well known to many black, and not a few white, Americans in his day. A contemporary of Booker T. Washington, Mitchell contrasted sharply with Washington in temperament. In his career as an editor, politician, and businessman, Mitchell followed the trajectory of optimism, bitter disappointment, and retrenchment that characterized African American life in the Reconstruction and Jim Crow South. Best known for his crusade against lynching in the 1880s, Mitchell was also involved in a number of civil rights crusades that seem more contemporary to the 1950s and 1960s than the turn of that century. He led a boycott against segregated streetcars in 1904 and fought residential segregation in Richmond in 1911. His political career included eight years on the Richmond city council, which ended with disenfranchisement in 1896. As Jim Crow strengthened its hold on the South, Mitchell, like many African American leaders, turned to creating strong financial institutions within the black community. He became a bank president and urged Planet readers to comport themselves as gentlemen, but a year after he ran for governor in 1921, Mitchell's fortunes suffered a drastic reversal. His bank failed, and he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years in the state penitentiary. The conviction was overturned on technicalities, but the so-called reforms that allowed state regulation of black businesses had done their worst, and Mitchell died in poverty and some disgrace. Basing her portrait on thorough primary research conducted over several decades, Ann Field Alexander brings Mitchell to life in all his complexity and contradiction, a combative, resilient figure of protest and accommodation who epitomizes the African American experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


Over the past decade, the field of urban tourism has consolidated with the appearance of several books that concentrate upon the Western European and North American experience. Recently, the scope and range of urban research has widened considerably, including the welcome appearance of studies that examine the tourism phenomenon in cities outside the Euro-American heartland.Despite this growing international body of debate and scholarship on tourism and cities, particularly in the developed North, literature that relates to the developing world as a whole, and to Africa in particular, remains sparse. The task of Urban Tourism in the Developing World: The South African Experience is to augment the current international scholarship concerning urban tourism in the developing world. More especially, the contributors draw attention to a range of case studies from South Africa that provide some starting points to address the uneven scholarly coverage of urban tourism the African context has received to date. In addition, the research material presented here seeks to contribute toward raising the South African, and indeed the African profile, within growing international scholarship concerning issues of urban tourism and development.This collection aims to expand an emerging South African and African tourism research "voice" concerning the tourism and development nexus, as well as to stem critiques that this body of research appears to have developed in a theoretical vacuum, divorced from broader international tourism research discourses. This collection of essays not only further develops an independent South African tourism perspective, but also presents research that is closely tied to international urban tourism research debates. In addition, this analysis of urban tourism in the South African context enriches the rather Western-oriented theories of urban tourism discourse through its emphasis on how urban tourism is evolving in urban Africa.


Relative quantifier scope in German depends, in contrast to English, very much on word order. The scope possibilities of a quantifier are determined by its surface position, its base position and the type of the quantifier. In this paper we propose a multicomponent analysis for German quantifiers computing the scope of the quantifier, in particular its minimal nuclear scope, depending on the syntactic configuration it occurs in.


Courting the Abyss updates the philosophy of free expression for a world that is very different from the one in which it originated. The notion that a free society should allow Klansmen, neo-Nazis, sundry extremists, and pornographers to spread their doctrines as freely as everyone else has come increasingly under fire. At the same time, in the wake of 9/11, the Right and the Left continue to wage war over the utility of an absolute vision of free speech in a time of increased national security. Courting the Abyss revisits the tangled history of free speech, finding resolutions to these debates hidden at the very roots of the liberal tradition. A mesmerizing account of the role of public communication in the Anglo-American world, Courting the Abyss shows that liberty's earliest advocates recognized its fraternal relationship with wickedness and evil. While we understand freedom of expression to mean "anything goes," John Durham Peters asks why its advocates so often celebrate a sojourn in hell and the overcoming of suffering. He directs us to such well-known sources as the prose and poetry of John Milton and the political and philosophical theory of John Locke, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., as well as lesser-known sources such as the theology of Paul of Tarsus. In various ways they all, he shows, envisioned an attitude of self-mastery or self-transcendence as a response to the inevitable dangers of free speech, a troubled legacy that continues to inform ruling norms about knowledge, ethical responsibility, and democracy today. A world of gigabytes, undiminished religious passion, and relentless scientific discovery calls for a fresh account of liberty that recognizes its risk and its splendor. Instead of celebrating noxious doctrine as proof of society's robustness, Courting the Abyss invites us to rethink public communication today by looking more deeply into the unfathomable mystery of liberty and evil.


This paper tests whether the Ricardian Equivalence proposition holds in a life cycle consumption laboratory experiment. This proposition is a fundamental assumption underlying numerous studies on intertemporal choice and has important implications for tax policy. Using nonparametric and panel data methods, we find that the Ricardian Equivalence proposition does not hold in general. Our results suggest that taxation has a significant and strong impact on consumption choice. Over the life cycle, a tax relief increases consumption on average by about 22% of the tax rebate. A tax increase causes consumption to decrease by about 30% of the tax increase. These results are robust with respect to variations in the difficulty to smooth consumption. In our experiment, we find the behavior of about 62% of our subjects to be inconsistent with the Ricardian proposition. Our results show dynamic effects; taxation influences consumption beyond the current period.


Intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy is a preferred treatment option that should be offered to all women for front-line treatment of stage III optimally debulked ovarian cancer. Patients should be provided with information on the survival and toxicity for both IP and intravenous (IV) therapies, as well as practical information about the administration of each regimen, so that they may play an active role in the decision-making process. When making a decision between IP and IV therapeutic options, the experience and preference of the oncologist are critical factors in determining appropriate therapy for each woman.


Key theorists and scholars of democracy have focused on understanding and enhancing the institutions and practices that shape decision-making. Indeed, the most influential contemporary normative account—the deliberative version—though increasingly adapted to the complex realities of contemporary politics, retains a tight focus on the conditions of legitimate will formation. This remains the core underpinning of the normative impetus for innovation and reform in contemporary democratic politics. Yet missing from even the adapted deliberative account is detailed consideration of what happens after will formation. I turn here to the policy and administration literature to show how the inescapably attritional and opaque policy process can magnify asymmetries that theorists and scholars of contemporary democracy, chief among them deliberative democrats, ought to be much better attuned to. I argue that in failing to consider these problems adequately, contemporary democratic thinkers, scholars, and reformers risk lending legitimacy to institutions and practices that might sustain the very biases they are mobilized against. As such, I identify institutional innovations and governing practices that can embed aspects of democratic deliberation "downstream" in the policy process in order to counter distortions and rebalance asymmetries. I conclude by calling for theorists, researchers, and reformers to explore the value of these institutions and practices, and to expand the repertoire of governing mechanisms available to counter the distortions that occur through the policy process.


The gap statistic is a statistical method for determining the number of optimal clusters for an unsupervised clustering algorithm and has been shown to outperform other cluster validity indices for the K-means clustering algorithm. In this paper, we assess the performance of the gap statistic when applied to the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm and introduce a fuzzy gap statistic. We compare the gap statistic performance versus the partition coefficient and entropy indices introduced by Bezdek, the Xie-Beni and extended Xie-Beni indices, and the Fukuyama-Sugeno index. We show that the fuzzy gap statistic is more robust than the ordinary gap statistic for the IRIS data set, and we show promising results when comparing the gap statistic to the traditional fuzzy clustering indices.


Modern age is an era of science and technology. This development and advancement in science has totally transformed the life. Science education has to be given top priority, if we are to keep pace with the developed countries. Curriculum and teaching learning process determine the quality of education. Pakistan is lagging behind in the field of education, particularly in the field of science education. Study was comparative in nature and was aimed at ascertaining the effectiveness of curriculum, teaching and examination system of GCE A-level and F.Sc. level in basic sciences (chemistry). The major objectives of the study were: (1) to compare the policy objectives of basic sciences (chemistry) curriculum at intermediate and GCE A-level; (2) to compare chemistry curriculum at intermediate and GCE A-level with special reference to objectives; content; teaching methodology; evaluation; (3) to critically review the teaching methodology of intermediate and GCE A-level in basic sciences (chemistry); (4) to undertake the comparative review of examination systems of intermediate and GCE A-level in basic sciences (chemistry); and (5) to suggest measures for the improvement of intermediate science education programme and GCE A-level.

All the experts working in ministry of education Islamabad, curriculum bureaus in the provinces, teachers teaching chemistry at intermediate (F.Sc.) level and students studying chemistry at intermediate level along with experts, teachers and students of GCE A-level in all the institutions offering A-level/F.Sc. programmes in Pakistan constituted the population of the study.

Forty experts (20 from each system) from the Curriculum Wing Islamabad and Provincial Curriculum Centers, Textbook Boards, Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education along with Principals, Edexcel, British Council, Subject Specialists (A-level system) were randomly selected.

Seventy-five institutions, 50 institutions offering F.Sc. and 25 institutions offering A-level were randomly selected as sample of the study from all over Pakistan. Three chemistry teachers from each institution were also included in the sample. The sample also included ten chemistry students from each sampled institution.

Three questionnaires (one each for curriculum experts, teachers and the students) were developed and validated through pilot testing and administered to the sample for collection of data. Researcher personally visited respondents and thus 100% data were collected. Collected data were tabulated and analyzed by using percentage and two-way chi square.

The experts of both the systems opined that the objectives of chemistry were well defined and clear but opinion of the teachers of both the systems differed significantly. According to the teachers of F.Sc. Programme the objectives of chemistry were not well defined and clear whereas the teachers of A-level expressed that objectives of chemistry were well defined and clear. Majority of the teachers of Pakistani system were found dissatisfied with the present scheme of studies being offered at higher secondary level whereas majority of the teachers of A-level expressed their satisfaction on the scheme of studies of A-level.

According to the teachers of F.Sc. Programme, objectives of chemistry were not well defined and clear. Curriculum be over hauled and modified according to the needs and requirements of 21st century. Science education plays a pivotal role in the development of a country therefore, the education system be same in all respect to bring it at par with the needs of international level.


For patients with identical clinical-pathological characteristics or the same stage of lung cancer, great uncertainties remain regarding how some patients will be cured while other patients will have cancer recurrence, metastasis, or death after surgical resection. Identification of patients at high risk of recurrence, those who are unlikely to respond to specific chemotherapeutic agents, is the rationale for measuring specific biochemical markers. Thus, main investigational studies nowadays are focused in identifying molecular markers of recurrence, beyond pathologic stage, after surgical treatment and factors that can predict a benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy in poor prognosis subgroups, to individualize treatments. Advances in genomics and proteomics have generated many candidate markers with potential clinical value. Gene expression profiling (GEP) by microarray or real-time quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) can be useful in the classification or prognosis of various types of cancer, including lung cancer. A number of prognostic gene expression signatures have been reported to predict survival in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this review, we focus on the role of GEP in early-stage NSCLC as predictive and prognostic biomarker and its potential use for a 'personalized' medicine in the years to come.


Most existing datasets for sound event recognition (SER) are relatively small and/or domain-specific, with the exception of AudioSet, based on over 2 M tracks from YouTube videos and encompassing over 500 sound classes. However, AudioSet is not an open dataset as its official release consists of pre-computed audio features. Downloading the original audio tracks can be problematic due to YouTube videos gradually disappearing and usage rights issues. To provide an alternative benchmark dataset and thus foster SER research, we introduce FSD50K, an open dataset containing over 51 k audio clips totalling over 100 h of audio manually labeled using 200 classes drawn from the AudioSet Ontology. The audio clips are licensed under Creative Commons licenses, making the dataset freely distributable (including waveforms). We provide a detailed description of the FSD50K creation process, tailored to the particularities of Freesound data, including challenges encountered and solutions adopted. We include a comprehensive dataset characterization along with discussion of limitations and key factors to allow its audio-informed usage. Finally, we conduct sound event classification experiments to provide baseline systems as well as insight on the main factors to consider when splitting Freesound audio data for SER. Our goal is to develop a dataset to be widely adopted by the community as a new open benchmark for SER research.


Despite the long history of the continuum equation approach in hydrology, it is not a necessary approach to the formulation of a physically based representation of hillslope hydrology. The Multiple Interacting Pathways (MIPs) model is a discrete realization that allows hillslope response and transport to be simultaneously explored in a way that reflects the potential occurrence of preferential flows and lengths of pathways. The MIPs model uses random particle tracking methods to represent the flow of water within the subsurface alongside velocity distributions that acknowledge preferential flows and transition probability matrices, which control flow pathways. An initial realization of this model is presented here in application to a tracer experiment carried out in Gårdsjön, Sweden. The model is used as an exploratory tool, testing several hypotheses in relation to this experiment. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes and practices of Jordanian surgeons on the control of surgical-site infections, evaluated by the Center of Disease Control's guidelines toward the prevention of surgical-site infections, in addition to gaining respondents opinions on infection control in Jordan. This study was conducted through the distribution of 75 questionnaires given to surgeons at five hospitals in Jordan. Additional insight on SSI infection control was gained through interviews with two cardiac surgeons and three infection control directors. The results of the survey were compared with the Center for Disease Control's guide to surgical-site infection to determine surgeon compliance with international recommended guidelines in patient antiseptic bathing, setting and method of patient hair removal, and use of antibiotic prophylaxis, in addition to measuring respondents' views toward their own compliance of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative infection control protocol. Of the 75 surveys distributed, 57 were returned indicating a 76% response rate. Survey results suggest that a significant portion of surgeons surveyed were not in compliance with CDC recommended guidelines, with only 47.4% recommending preoperative bathing, 29.8% of surgeons removing patient hair in the operating room, only 57.1% using clippers as a means to removing patient hair prior to surgery, and 12.3% not using antibiotic prophylaxis regularly. Yet, when surgeons were questioned as to how well they follow preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative infection control protocol, 61.4%, 73.7%, and 72% respectively rated their adherence to these guidelines as "excellent" or "very good". These results suggest the need for more education toward the prevention of surgical-site infections toward attending surgeons and surgical residents in addition to more effective surveillance of infection control programs at hospitals.


In the current article, adapted from a lecture he gave at the Computer Museum on November 10, 1983, Evans summarizes the events, organizations, product lines, and motivations that led to the System/360, IBM's major shift to compatible processors, peripherals, and software for both business and scientific applications. A version of this article was published in the Computer Museum Report (Number 9, Summer 1984). Some of this IBM history has been detailed in the Annals previously; see special issues on the 701 (Vol. 5, No. 2) and 650 (Vol. 8, No. 1) and articles by Bashe, Hurd, McPherson et al., Phelps, etc.; also see the recent volume by Bashe et al., IBM's Early ' Computers (MIT Press, 1985). We are pleased to have the author's personal view of the principles involved in the System/360, the environment during its development, some of the problems encountered, and the consequences of the 360, both for IBM and for the information processing industry.


Carex rugulosa Kuk. develops riverside vegetation in brackish marshes along the lower parts of rivers. Because the rhizomatous ramets grow densely (590–950/m2) in its developed population, it is expected that seedlings cannot get enough light to grow if seeds germinate in crowded ramets. We studied the reproductive contribution of seed in a marshy meadow of the Ohashi River, Japan. The number of seeds produced was 6900–14 200/m2 in 2002. The number of buried seeds in the following germination season differed among sites from 1190 to 2690/m2. No seedlings were observed at plots where the ramets from rhizomes grew densely. In contrast, seedlings appeared in plots where all rhizomatous ramets were artificially cut. The number of seedlings corresponded to 17.5–39.5% of that of buried seeds. All these seedlings were submerged and died when it rained heavily. In the genotype analysis using allozyme detection, one of the phosphoglucoisomerase loci (Pgi-2) indicated a pair of alleles. Among eight plots (each plot was 50 or 60-cm square), four showed an excess of heterozygotes and two showed homozygote domination in the Pgi-2 genotype. These results suggest that: (i) seed germination is suppressed in crowded ramets; (ii) seedling survival is severely reduced by inundation; and (iii) the population is usually maintained by clonal growth. As germination is induced in open areas, it is hypothesized that the main role of seed is recovery after vegetation decline caused by environmental stresses or colonization to other areas without dense vegetation.


Camera motion estimation is one of the most significant steps for structure-from-motion (SFM) with a monocular camera. The normalized 8-point, the 7-point, and the 5-point algorithms are normally adopted to perform the estimation, each of which has distinct performance characteristics. Given unique needs and challenges associated to civil infrastructure SFM scenarios, selection of the proper algorithm directly impacts the structure reconstruction results. In this paper, a comparison study of the aforementioned algorithms is conducted to identify the most suitable algorithm, in terms of accuracy and reliability, for reconstructing civil infrastructure. The free variables tested are baseline, depth, and motion. A concrete girder bridge was selected as the "test-bed" to reconstruct using an off-the-shelf camera capturing imagery from all possible positions that maximally the bridge's features and geometry. The feature points in the images were extracted and matched via the SURF descriptor. Finally, camera motions are estimated based on the corresponding image points by applying the aforementioned algorithms, and the results evaluated.


We consider a unidirectional design approach to tackle the traffic asymmetry in an elastic optical network (EON). We decouple a bidirectional transponder into a pair of separate unidirectional transmitters and unidirectional receivers, and consider different multi-flow transmitters that use either an array of laser diodes or a broadband laser source with filters to generate multiple sub-carriers. To evaluate the benefit of this unidirectional design, we have considered the routing and spectrum allocation optimization problem for the EON. An integer linear programming model and an efficient heuristic algorithm based on spectrum window planes have been developed. Simulation results show that the proposed unidirectional design approach can significantly improve capacity utilization and minimize network cost compared to one based on bidirectional symmetric traffic flows. It is also efficient for network scenarios with spatial traffic asymmetry and where multi-period network planning is required.


The free-fall absolute gravimeter is commonly used for precise gravitational acceleration measurement. The g value is obtained through quadratic fitting of the position-time data pairs of the freely falling test mass. However, recoil vibrations are generated during the release of the test mass resulting from the movement of the center of mass of the chamber, and errors may arise from these vibrations in the measurement process. To solve the recoil vibration problem, previous researchers have developed the recoil compensation structure to achieve a basically stationary center of mass during the drop. In this paper, counterweights of a variety of masses are tested on our recoil compensated gravimeter, while recoil vibrations are recorded and analyzed accordingly. The multibody simulation indicates that compensated counterweights can significantly reduce the recoil vibration amplitude, making a more precise measurement attainable. In the experiments, accelerometers and seismometers are employed respectively in the simultaneous measurement of recoil vibrations of dropping chamber and reflector. Then all the vibration signals are analyzed and compared, and the outcome confirms the effectiveness of the gravimeter in performing high precision measurement as what is observed in the previous simulations. With a proper design of the counterweight mass, the recoil effect can be significantly reduced during the test procedure, which indicates a potential for high precision measurement.


Personalisation of e-learning environments is an interesting research area in which the learning experience of learners is generally believed to be improved when his or her personal learning preferences are taken into account. One such learning preference is the V-A-K instrument that classifies learners as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic. In this research, the outcomes of an experiment are described after students in the second year of university were exposed to a unit that was redesigned to fit in the V-A-K learning styles. It was found that the was no performance improvement when the students were exposed to that specific personalised learning environment and it was surprisingly noted from the statistical evidence that they underperformed in general both with respect to their previous performances and their performances in the same course but for a different unit that served as a control. The personalisation framework used an adaptive method to generate learning paths for each student and it was found that the method performed satisfactorily in its selection process. The findings of this research adds to the existing body of discourse and consolidates the belief that learning styles as determined by self-assessment instruments do not necessarily improve performances. On the other hand, it brings an interesting observation with respect to e-learning environments and the use of multimedia. A pedagogical method of instructional design that brings a sound balance in the use of different elements can indeed be of universal application and each and every learner will find his or her space in it. Indeed working towards more flexibility and adaptability of the environment might be a better approach rather than to work on the adaptivity of the environment.


Background: Although oxygen is one of the oldest drugs available, it is still one of the most inappropriately administered drugs leading to over utilization of this very expensive resource. Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study was done in a large emergency department (ED) in India. The pattern of oxygen usage was studied before and after the strict implementation of an oxygen treatment algorithm. The algorithm was taught to all doctors and nurses and its implementation was monitored regularly. The main outcome measures were proportion of patients receiving oxygen therapy, inappropriate usage, and avoidable direct medical cost to the patient. Results: The 3-week pre-protocol observation phase in April 2016 included 3769 patients and the 3-week post-protocol observation phase in April 2017 included 4608 patients. The baseline demographic pattern was similar in both the pre-protocol and post-protocol groups. After the strict implementation of the algorithm, the number of patients receiving oxygen therapy decreased from 9.63% to 4.82%, a relative decrease of 51.4%. The average amount of total oxygen used decreased from 55.4 liters per person in pre-protocol group to 42.1 liters per person in the post-protocol group with a mean difference of 13.28 (95% CI 5.30-21.26; P = 0.001). Inappropriate oxygen usage decreased from 37.2% to 8.6%. There was a significant decrease in inappropriate oxygen use for indications like low sensorium (60.8% vs 21.7%) and trauma (88.5% vs 15.8%). The mortality rate in the pre-protocol phase was 2.7% as compared with 3.2% in the post-protocol phase. The total duration of inappropriate oxygen usage significantly decreased from 987 h to 89 h over the 21-day study period. Conclusion: The implementation of an oxygen therapy algorithm significantly reduces inappropriate oxygen use and decreases treatment cost to the patient with no additional mortality risk.


Procedure is not just a programme or a nexus of formalities. It is something done by legal experts and lay participants in a highly concerted ensemble. Procedure frames and advances all law-relevant activities. This book, written by three authors from different disciplinary backgrounds, provides an in-depth comparison of criminal defence work in different legal cultures. Via an ethnographic comparison, this book also shows how defence work responds to the challenges of different procedural regimes and how it contributes to their individual outcomes. Criminal Defence and Procedure opens up new horizons for legal comparison, inviting novel understandings of procedural law as well as possibilities of legal reform.


Gaddhafi's forty-two-year rule in Libya ended after uprisings against his government led to a civil war and eventually intervention by the international community. On 31 March 2011, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reported to the international community that it had overall command of international military operations over Libya and that the aim of NATO actions was to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas from attack or the threat of attack. This article seeks to highlight the miscarriages of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), in particular the Third Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The article will canvass the capture and murder of Gaddhafi, in that way highlighting the breaches of another body of law, namely International Human Rights Law. It is assumed that, because of the involvement of international parties, the nature of the conflict which started as a civil war turned into a conflict with enough international elements to bring it under the purview of the Geneva Conventions. The common underlying purpose of international humanitarian law and international human rights law is the protection of the life, health and dignity of human beings, regardless of circumstances. It is therefore not surprising that the content of some of the rules is similar. Both bodies of law aim, for example, to protect human life, prohibit torture or cruel treatment, process, include provisions for the protection of women and children and regulate aspects of the right to food and health. On that note, the two bodies of law must ensure to uphold and protect their core objectives and principles, thereby preventing similar atrocity cases like the Gaddhafi matter in future.


Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by a progressive loss of motor function due to premature spinal and cortical motor neuron degeneration and death. Mutations in the superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene cause approximately 20% of inherited cases of ALS. Overexpression of a mutant form of SOD1 (G93A) in mice appears to produce disease progression through an unknown gain of toxicity. To further elucidate mechanisms of neurodegeneration in ALS, we examined expression patterns of the transmembrane glycoprotein, basigin (CD147, Emmprin) in end-stage of the SOD1 G93A mouse model. Basigin, a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily, has various physiological roles including trafficking of monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs) to the plasma membrane, induction of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), and leukocyte activation. We focused on interactions of basigin with MCTs and implications for energy-metabolism in the disease state. The astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle hypothesis states that lactate release from glucose metabolism in glia fuels neuronal metabolism, particularly in states of oxidative stress. Previous studies have shown that inhibition or down-regulation of MCTs leads to impaired lactate transport and neuronal degeneration, likely due to a lack of energy resources. Basigin is essential for localization of MCT1 and MCT4 to the plasma membrane, and inhibition of basigin has been shown to prevent lactate release by astrocytes. Additionally, basigin has been implicated in several other neurological diseases, including roles in leukocyte transmigration in multiple sclerosis and regulation of the γ-secretase complex in Alzheimer's disease. Interactions with MCT isoforms and implication in related diseases make basigin a viable candidate for study in ALS. We show that basigin co-localizes with MCT1 at the plasma membrane and is well-expressed in myelin-rich areas. We also show that basigin mRNA levels are reduced in brain and spinal cord in SOD1 end-stage disease. Basigin protein levels show differential expression, but not uniform down-regulation. These preliminary results indicate that basigin is likely involved in ALSrelated neurodegeneration. Further investigation of the role of basigin in disease and normal states may provide insights regarding pathological changes in ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) induced changes in basigin expression patterns Chakravarti et al. 2011


Dual‐continuum models are useful for describing flow in porous systems with significant local pressure disequilibrium between slow moving water, contained in the porous matrix, and fast moving water in preferential pathways. The formation and intensity of preferential flow depends on the contrast between the hydraulic properties of the two flow domains as well as on the properties of their interface. In this study, we focused on both physical coupling of the flow domains through the mass transfer term and numerical coupling of the respective governing equations. The set of governing equations was alternatively solved using a sequentially coupled (SC) approach and a fully coupled (FC) approach. The SC approach was shown to be computationally more efficient for strongly developed preferential flow in systems with high interfacial resistance; however, it becomes numerically unstable for weak preferential flow associated with low interfacial resistance. The FC approach is a computationally more expensive yet numerically more robust alternative, capable of simulating a complete class of intermediate flow regimes ranging from strongly preferential flow in a dual‐continuum system to nonpreferential flow in a single‐continuum system. To illustrate the performance of the numerical coupling approaches in conjunction with the effect of different interfacial resistances, we present a simple example problem involving one‐dimensional near‐saturated flow in a vertical soil column.


Do humans learn the sentence and sound patterns of natural languages through distinct learning mechanisms? Our understanding of human learning is increasingly informed by findings from multiple fields—psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and education. A convergence of insights is forging a "new science of learning" within cognitive science, which promises to play a key role in developing intelligent machines (1, 2). A long-standing fundamental issue in theories of human learning is whether there are specialized learning mechanisms for certain tasks or spheres of activity (domains). For example, is learning how to open a door (turning the handle before pulling) the same kind of "learning" as putting up and taking down scaffolding (where disassembly must be done in the reverse order of assembly)? Surprisingly, this issue plays out within the domain of human language.


In this chapter, we study the variable use of phrase-final intonation contours
in French by male adolescents recorded in guided interviews in a multi-ethnic
working-class suburb of Paris. We show that speakers use pragmatically neutral rising or
falling intonation when listing target words depicted on images shown by a fieldworker,
but resort to a characteristic rising-falling intonation attributed to a working-class
youth vernacular in contact with immigrant languages when negotiating the interpretation
of pictures or competing for the floor with their friends listening to the interview.
These instances of intra-speaker prosodic variation are analyzed as style-shifting
(Bell 1984, 2001) where speakers draw on different prosodic resources to signal change
in footing, i.e. their orientation to their own and others' role in the interaction
(Goffman 1981) or the propositional content of utterances put forward by other participants in the conversational exchange. It is argued that phrase-final rising-falling intonation, typical in certain types of imperative in French, has a much broader pragmatic meaning in working-class youth vernacular where it seems to function as a micro-level style feature indexing common ground and in-group affiliation with members of the adolescent peer group.


This thesis explores how political preferences are shaped by institutions, economic conditions, and personality. Each chapter is a distinct contribution and provides a different perspective on the formation of political preferences and, ultimately, voting behaviour. These different approaches relate to the fields of comparative political economy, behavioural economics, and political psychology. Methodologically, this thesis is empirically applied and the results of these separate enquiries into political preferences are grounded in statistical analysis.
A first substantive chapter introduces a median voter data set that provides insight into the ideological position of the electoral centre in over 50 democracies. A second chapter uses this new data and studies cross-national voting behaviour in 18 Western democracies over
1960-2003. It is found that electoral behaviour is closely related to the salience of the following economic institutions: labour organization, skill specificity, and public sector employment. This research shows that political preferences are endogenous to economic institutions and implies the existence of institutional advantages to partisan politics. A third substantive chapter focuses on ideological change in the United States and tests the proposition that voters advance a more liberal agenda in prosperous times and shift towards being more conservative in dire economic times. A reference-dependent utility model relates income growth to political preferences by way of the demand for public goods and the optimal tax rate. This work thus links voting behaviour to economic business cycles and shows that ideological change is endogenous to income growth rates. Finally, a fourth chapter presents the largest study to date of the influence of the big five personality traits on political ideology. In line with prior research in political psychology, it is found that openness to experience strongly predicts liberal ideology and that conscientiousness strongly predicts conservative ideology. A variety of childhood experiences are also studied that may have a differential effect on political ideology based on an individual's personality profile. The findings of this final chapter provide new evidence for the idea that differences in political preferences are deeply intertwined with variation in the nature and nurture of individual personalities. Generally, this thesis provides some new insights into the complex world of political preference formation and does so by exploring the influential role of institutions, economic conditions, and personality.