Ankle inversion-eversion compliance is an important feature of conventional prosthetic feet, and control of inversion, or roll, in robotic prostheses could improve balance for people with amputation. We designed a tethered ankle-foot prosthesis with two independently-actuated toes that are coordinated to provide plantarflexion and inversion-eversion torques. This configuration allows a simple lightweight structure with a total mass of 0.72 kg. Strain gages on the toes measure torque with less than 2.7% RMS error, while compliance in the Bowden cable tether provides series elasticity. Benchtop tests demonstrated a 90% rise time of less than 33 ms and peak torques of 180 N·m in plantarflexion and ±30 N·m in inversion-eversion. The phase-limited closedloop torque bandwidth is 20 Hz with a 90 N·m amplitude chirp in plantarflexion, and 24 Hz with a 20 N·m amplitude chirp in inversion-eversion. The system has low sensitivity to toe position disturbances at frequencies of up to 18 Hz. Walking trials with five values of constant inversion-eversion torque demonstrated RMS torque tracking errors of less than 3.7% in plantarflexion and less than 5.9% in inversion-eversion. These properties make the platform suitable for haptic rendering of virtual devices in experiments with humans, which may reveal strategies for improving balance or allow controlled comparisons of conventional prosthesis features. A similar morphology may be effective for autonomous devices.


EDAS (EGNOS Data Access Service) is the EGNOS ground-based service (through the Internet), which provides free of charge access to all the data generated and collected by the EGNOS infrastructure. EDAS gathers all the raw data coming from the GPS, GLONASS and EGNOS GEO satellites collected by all the receivers located at the EGNOS stations, which are mainly distributed over Europe and North Africa. Once the data are received, EDAS disseminates them over the Internet in real time and through an FTP archive, resulting in the different services depending on the protocol and on format used, along with the type of information available to users. In addition to the aforementioned data, EDAS is also delivering its own products. Among those EDAS products, this paper will investigate the potential use of EDAS Differential GNSS corrections to support landbased applications such as mapping, transportation and emergency services, with special attention to precision agriculture. EDAS service provision is performed by ESSP, as EGNOS Services Provider, under contract with the European GNSS Agency (GSA), the EGNOS program manager. The European Commission (EC) is the owner of EGNOS system (including EDAS) and has delegated the exploitation of EGNOS to the GSA. ESSP also manages the EGNOS Helpdesk, which provides technical support to users answering any potential question or clarification about EDAS, along with the registration of new EDAS users. Firstly, the paper will introduce the EDAS system and its architecture, presenting the main types of data disseminated through its different services and the online information available to the users. As part of this introduction, special attention will be put on the description of the EDAS Ntrip service, which will be the main enabler for the study to be conducted in the scope of this paper. As already mentioned, EDAS is providing differential corrections to the GPS and GLONASS satellites in RTCM format using the Ntrip protocol, taking the EGNOS stations as reference stations. Using this service, GNSS receivers can improve the accuracy of satellite-based positioning systems up to sub-meter level applying Differential GNSS (DGNSS) techniques. Ntrip is an RTCM standard widely adopted for disseminating differential corrections and GNSS streaming data to stationary or mobile users over the Internet. It supports wireless Internet access through Mobile IP Networks, allowing simultaneous mobile devices or receiver connections to a broadcasting host (caster). In order to provide some valuable elements to assess the EDAS DGNSS corrections ability to support land applications, a performance analysis in terms of accuracy and availability has been done, which shows the achieved performance results for different locations in Europe. The EDAS DGNSS corrections have been applied to the GNSS measurements from public reference stations at selected locations in real-time to obtain statistics depending on the baseline distance between rover and reference station and the location over Europe. The results have been assessed, identifying in which conditions and baseline restrictions the EDAS DGNSS Service could provide an enhanced navigation position with respect to GNSS stand-alone and position errors lower than 1 meter. In addition, focusing on the potential added value of the EDAS DGNSS corrections for precision agriculture, the positioning results from the previous exercise have been post-processed to compute the pass-to-pass accuracy according to ISO 12188-1 (Tractors and machinery for agriculture and forestry Test procedures for positioning and guidance systems in agriculture Part1: Dynamic testing of satellite-based positioning devices). The passto-pass accuracy is a common indicator of the repeatability of measurements specific to agriculture, which is used for assessing the precision of the guidance equipment. The pass-to-pass corresponds to a short-term dynamic performance determined from off-track errors along straight segment passes occurring within a 15 minute time frame. Considering that, for applications like seeding, planting, spreading and spraying, a pass-to-pass accuracy (15 minutes, 95 th percentile) below 20 cm is typically required, the obtained results have been analysed to identify the maximum distance from the EDAS reference stations to still meet this performance level. Finally, based on the baseline restrictions from EGNOS stations driven by the previous performance assessment, estimated coverage maps is provided for at least these performance levels:  Sub-metric EDAS DGNSS accuracy performance: understanding that this performance level could be enough for a variety of applications in the mapping, transportation and emergency services domains.  EDAS DGNSS performance improving GNSS only solution: This could be an alternative to improve the GNSS standalone solution for compatible receivers that do not use EGNOS or for users working in challenging environments (e.g. no GEO visibility).  EDAS DGNSS pass-to-pass accuracy (15 minutes, 95 th percentile) below 20 cm: This performance could be sufficient for some precision agriculture applications, such as seeding, planting, spreading and spraying. With regards to the coverage maps, the GPRS/GSM coverage within Europe will be considered to take into account the fact that EDAS Ntrip service requires Internet access. In conclusion, the paper provides an indication of the positioning performance supported by the EDAS DGNSS corrections, including the associated coverage areas under different performance criteria which could be of interest for different land applications in the agriculture, mapping, transportation or emergency services domains.


To understand and mitigate the role of surface water composition and associated membrane fouling in the removal of nC60 nanoparticles by low-pressure membranes, experiments were carried out with microfiltration membranes using natural feed waters, mimicking separation in real industrial water treatment plants. The effects of water composition, the presence of nanoparticles, and membrane fouling were investigated with a dead-end bench-scale system operated under constant flux conditions including a hydraulic backwash cleaning procedure. nC60 nanoparticles can be efficiently removed by microfiltration and the removal efficiency is found to be independent of the water surface composition. However, the water composition controls the extent of fouling occurring during filtration. A synergistic effect on membrane fouling between nC60 and surface water constituents such as natural organic matter (NOM) and its fractions is observed: the synergistic effect resulted in a transmembrane pressure (TMP) increase always higher than the sum of the TMP increase due to the filtration of nC60 in ultrapure water and the TMP increase due to the surface water without nC60.


The distinctive Shell approach to innovation derives from how the innovation process is managed and executed. The management approach is a combination of a robust business process, with clear objectives and decision points, and a light-touch style of management that recognises the emotive aspects of innovation such as creativity, drive and change. An important aspect is the integration of sustainable development in the innovation effort. Sustainable innovation incorporates the values of society as a third driver in addition to customer needs and technological options. Successful innovation management requires a transparent and effective innovation business process based on a sound understanding of the nature and characteristics of the innovation process. Innovation is a quest for bringing an idea to market, while managing innovation is about creating value during that process by involving the stakeholders, identifying and reducing the risks, structuring the decision-making process and improving the chances of success – knowing that ultimately the winner is unpredictable.


Insect neuropeptides have been isolated from a wide variety of insects. These small peptide hormones are involved in numerous essential regulation processes, such as growth, molting, metamorphosis, reproduction and diuresis. The neuropeptides and in particular their receptors represent promising targets for a novel generation of selective and environmentally beneficial insecticides. The myokinins form a large group of insect neuropeptides expressing myotropic and potent diuretic activities. Their short sequences and interference with vital physiological insect specific processes render the myokinins prime candidates for the design of metabolically stable peptidomimetics.
The first part of the thesis deals with the development of a valid binding model for the neuropeptide helicokinin I to its receptor of Helicoverpa zea, a serious agricultural pest. This includes a comprehensive receptor assay guided structure-activity study of helicokinin insect neuropeptides and first peptidomimetic analogues. In accordance to the "membrane compartment theory" the membrane bound conformation of helicokinin I and selected linear analogues are determined by NMR spectroscopy. Conclusions of the "biological active" conformation are drawn by comparing the membrane bound structures with the biological results. Further on, preferred conformations of the relevant neuropeptides tachykinin and Myosuppressin are elucidated.
The second part of this work describes the "conformational design", using small cyclic helicokinin analogues. Five cyclopeptides of different size have been synthesized and studied in the receptor assay and by NMR spectroscopy in a membrane mimicking environment.
The last part of this dissertation focuses on the synthesis of tailor-made mimics of the C-terminal type-I β-turn in helicokinin I. Three new scaffolds have been carefully selected, based on molecular modeling studies and synthesized. The scaffolds have been integrated in the helicokinin sequence, and their ability to mimic the β-turn structure was studied by conformational analysis.


It is generally accepted within mainstream marketing circles that integrated marketing communication (IMC) is a desired state within organisations. This is despite the fact that, as in many areas of marketing discourse, there is still no clear accepted definition of IMC. In recent years, some scholars have argued, rather controversially, that in this post-modern world, integration of marketing communication is impossible (Christensen, Torp & Firat 2005). This paper, through a case study of a major Australian health care organisation, reviews the struggles to integrate conmmnications, not just in a narrow marketing sense, but across the organisation. This paper offers new insights into the reality of implementing communication programmes in complex organisations and highlights the key barriers to integration of marketing communications faced by organisations.


In general, vaccine baits need to be stored at appropriate temperatures . Storage under any other conditions prior to distribution in the field may have a serious negative impact on the vaccine titre! Even at frozen temperature conditions, the vaccine titre should remain stable for a certain period of time. The maximum duration of storage can vary from product to product. In any storage facility, the power supply should be secured by adequate back-up systems. It is advisable to contact the (...)


"Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.... The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete." (1) INTRODUCTION The public image of corporate America has taken a beating. (2) Arguably, no period of history has seen corporations struggle through such a widespread range of civil and criminal enforcement activities at the hands of government agencies. (3) On any given day the business sections of the country's newspapers are full of grand jury testimony, indictments, and settlement agreements between federal enforcement agencies and high-profile corporations or their boards of directors. According to the Washington Post, "[a] former top mutual fund executive pleaded guilty ... to tampering with evidence to thwart a probe of illegal trading and agreed to pay $400,000 to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that he cut deals giving special trading privileges to certain wealthy customers." (4) On the same day, "[t]he New York Stock Exchange ... found evidence that the five largest of seven 'specialist' firms that control trading on the exchange regularly engaged in abusive practices.... [that] have cost investors as much as $150 million," (5) and "[a] former executive with the McKesson Corporation pleaded guilty ... to securities fraud charges in connection with an accounting scandal that cost shareholders of the company $9 billion." (6) While the New York Times affirmed that "Richard M. Scrushy, the founder and ousted chief executive of HealthSouth, refused to answer lawmakers' questions ... about his knowledge of a fraud scheme at the company," (7) the Wall Street Journal reported that "[j]ury deliberations in the fraud trial of a former Rite Aid Corp executive headed into a third day, after jurors failed to reach a verdict yesterday." (8) Although shockingly extensive, perhaps the most troubling aspect of these headlines is that they represent only one day in the life of corporate America. In response to the increased pressure resulting from these public embarrassments, corporations have turned to internal investigations as a way of placating federal investigators and fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders. (9) At the most basic level, internal investigations involve an extensive fact-finding effort on the part of either a corporation's general counsel or an independent legal professional. (10) Corporations may initiate an internal investigation "in response to an ongoing government investigation or agency subpoena, pursuant to a consent decree with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), or another government agency," (11) or "[a]n investigation may ... be prompted internally, through either a complaint or grievance from an employee or group of employees." (12) Once a threat to a corporation's stability becomes apparent, both directors and managers may hold an affirmative duty to investigate any potential irregularities. (13) Accordingly, the decision to conduct an internal investigation can have far-reaching impacts, both positive and negative. (14) Regardless of the immediate motivation, a corporation may realize some important benefits from conducting an internal investigation. (15) First, a corporation that releases the results of an internal investigation to government regulators may be able to secure more lenient civil or criminal penalties. (16) Second, conducting an internal investigation allows a corporation to respond proactively to any potential litigation by controlling the flow of relevant information. (17) Third, even in the absence of litigation, an internal investigation may help improve corporate performance. (18) At the very least an internal investigation is concrete evidence that a corporation's directors have fulfilled their fiduciary duties to their shareholders. …


Mobile TV services are expected to become a key application in future wireless networks. The recently proposed terrestrial digital broadcast technology, DVB-H, especially designed for mobile services, is regarded as a powerful alternative to the 3G cellular networks that already offer these services but on a point-to-point basis. Unfortunately, the cost of supporting real-time streaming and full area coverage seems to be very high compared to fixed TV services. In this article we discuss hybrid IP datacast DVB-H and 3G systems as a possible solution for providing affordable network infrastructure and services. Our approach is DVB-H centric. The 3G cellular system plays the role of providing interactivity, error reporting, and repair for the DVB-H broadcast channel. To enable an easy and efficient interworking of DVB-H and 3G, we employ forward error correction at the application layer with digital fountain coding. The main way to provide lower cost services is to avoid full DVB-H area coverage from the beginning and to perform an incremental DVB-H network deployment that follows the user demand. In this direction, to hide the discontinuity in coverage from the perception of users, we propose to take advantage of the bursty character of DVB-H transmissions and the mobility of users. This is possible by sending additional parity data, either with the DVB-H or the cellular network, in the time intervals between original service bursts. We evaluate the potential DVB-H infrastructure cost savings determined by transmitting additional parity data in DVB-H when targeting vehicular users. The implications of delivering parity data through the cellular network also are discussed. The numerical investigations show a potential for significant cost savings compared with the traditional approaches. Affordable Mobile TV Services in Hybrid Cellular and DVB-H Systems BARQUERO LAYOUT 3/2/07 3:08 PM Page 34


Global food security and agricultural land management represent two urgent and intimately related challenges that humans must face. We quantify the changes in the global agricultural land footprint if the world were to adhere to the dietary guidelines put forth by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), while accounting for the land use change incurred by import/export required to meet those guidelines. We analyze data at country, continental, and global levels. USDA guidelines are viewed as an improvement on the current land-intensive diet of the average American, but despite this our results show that global adherence to the guidelines would require 1 gigahectare of additional land—roughly the size of Canada—under current agricultural practice. The results also show a strong divide between Eastern and Western hemispheres, with many Western hemisphere countries showing net land sparing under a USDA guideline diet, while many Eastern hemisphere countries show net land use increase under a USDA guideline diet. We conclude that national dietary guidelines should be developed using not just health but also global land use and equity as criteria. Because global lands are a limited resource, national dietary guidelines also need to be coordinated internationally, in much the same way greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly coordinated.


This is a retrospective case series of 27 dogs with emphysematous cystitis. Medical records from two veterinary teaching hospitals from 1992 to 2014 were reviewed. The aims of the study were to determine imaging findings, common underlying disease processes, and prevalent bacterial species and their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in dogs with emphysematous cystitis. The most common lower urinary tract sign was hematuria. Gas was detected in the wall and lumen of the urinary bladder in 14 of 27 dogs (51.9%), in only the wall of the bladder in 9 of 27 dogs (33%), and in only the lumen of the bladder in 4 of 27 dogs (14.8%). Comorbid diseases were identified in all but one case. The most common comorbid disease processes were diabetes mellitus in 33% of dogs, neurologic disease in 26% of dogs, and adrenal disease in 19% of dogs. Bacterial isolates included Escherichia coli, Enterococcus spp., Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, Streptococcus spp., and Actinomyces spp. Enterococcus spp. were always isolated in mixed infections with gas-producing bacterial species. During the period of study, most isolates were predicted to be susceptible to beta-lactam drugs, but updated veterinary breakpoints suggest that fluoroquinolones or trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole would be more appropriate choices for empiric therapy.


Multiple factors operate when a bilingual mind processes and stores information and they operate in unison, sometimes cooperating and sometimes competing. The central argument in this chapter is that it is the inherent drive for efficiency in communication that underlies interactions among these factors. The support for this argument is drawn from an eclectic array of empirical investigations into bilingual processing, memory retrieval, and language acquisition. The efficiency argument helps answer some pertinent questions in the field, such as when and why we can expect language transfer. The need for considering both naturalistic (corpus or elicited) and experimental data is highlighted together with the benefits of combining typological insights into language contrasts with psycholinguistic findings about language processing.


In this work is displayed the retrospective analysis of 50 courses of ECT consisting of 427 ECT units, carried out in a period of one year in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of Universitatsmedizin Gottingen. The courses of ECT were analysed using medical reports for clinical and electrophysiological parameters. The progression of the diseases is considered as drug-resistant. The procedure of the ECT happened under specific stimulation patterns using average impedance. The minimum duration of the convulsions described in the literature was achieved in average. By this can be said, appropriate stimulation conditions were fulfilled. The viewed patients were classified in three groups. The first group considers the entire patient group. The patients in the second group suffering from schizophrenia (n = 8 courses of ECT, n = 66 ECT units) and in the third group the ones with affective disorders (n = 42 courses of ECT, n = 361 ECT units) are subsumed. On overall average the patients received 9 ECT units per course of ECT within a treatment period of 25 days. The results of this study are showing that the ECT is an effective form of therapy in the treatment of affective disorders and schizophrenia. Within the group analysis can be found, in the affective as well as in the schizophrenic patterns of the disorders, an improvement in the comparison between the pre and post data collection in the relevant scales (MMSE, HAMD-21, GAF, CDSS, PANSS) took place. On a statistical basis the improvement is significant in most of the scales. When considering the overall situation (condition?) in the GAF scale 35 out of 50 patients increased by 20% and 17 out of 50 increased by 50%. On average the cognition of the whole group of patients is, considered the MMSE-scale post ECT, within standard range. The improvement of the depression is best displayed using the analysis of the HAMD-21: 17 out of 42 patients were responders and 8 of 42 achieved remission. The antipsychotic effects of ECT are visible in the improvement for ≥ 20% in the score of the PANSS for seven out of eight patients. In the differentiated consideration of the ECT records and electrophysiological parameters is clear that the mainly as poor in side effects specified LART stimulation was carried out. This is consistent to the current literature (n = 319 out of 427 ECT units). The stimulation intensity increased significantly in all three groups from the beginning to the end of all respective ECT units of the ECT course. In respect of the duration of the motoric convulsion, it happened a significant reduction in all of the three groups. On the other hand it was not significant in the electroencephalographic convulsion activity. Overall these results make the anticonvulsive effect of the ECT clear. Noticeable is that the anaesthetic Methohexital and the muscle relaxant Succinylcholin was administered in increased dosage per kg body weight than in literature indicated. Further gathered electrophysiological parameters are in standard range, if it is already defined, but showed an inconsistent overall picture. The extensive research of specific literature confirms the interpretation of the electrophysiological parameters is being discussed controversially. There is a considerable need for research in this subject. This should lead to the development of conventions of key quality parameters. Also remarkable is: the ECT treatment took place for the group with schizophrenia the first time after more than 17 years of documented duration of their diseases. In the group with affective disorders the first course of ECT took place after more than 9 years of duration of their diseases. The reason for this is quite likely the common practice to execute the ECT as "therapy of last choice". This could mean that a disproportionately high amount of patients are suffering from particularly severe courses of the disease. The pre ECT scales confirm this thesis. Despite the good effectiveness in both examined clinical pictures, in daily clinical practice the big majority is carried out at patients with affective disorders. The reason could be regional peculiarities or a late indication in treatment algorithm. There is a need for action, paying special attention to de-stigmatize the ECT, the scientific analysis of the mode of action and continuative crossover diagnosis in research the ECT. The results of this work show clearly, the ECT is an effective therapeutic procedure and should applied earlier in the progression of affective disorders and schizophrenia diseases. Ideally should this considered in established ECT guidelines.


The internet may be a utopia for free expression, but it also harbours nihilistic groups and individuals spreading bizarre creeds, unhindered by the risk-averse gatekeepers of the mass media - and not all are as harmless as the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua or Sexastrianism. With few entry barriers, ready anonymity and no centralised control, the internet offers wired extremists unprecedented access to a potential global audience of billions. Technology allows us to select the information we wish to receive - so those of a fanatical bent can filter out moderating voices and ignore countervailing arguments, retreating into a virtual world of their own design that reaffirms their views. In The Devil's Long Tail, Stevens and O'Hara argue that we misunderstand online extremism if we think intervention is the best way to counter it. Policies designed to disrupt radical networks fail because they ignore the factors that push people to the margins. Extremists are driven less by ideas than by the benefits of participating in a tightly-knit, self-defined, group. Rather, extreme ideas should be left to sink or swim in the internet's marketplace of ideas. The internet and the web are valuable creations of a free society. Censoring them impoverishes us all while leaving the radical impulse intact.


Objective. Around one-third of patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) fail to respond to first-line methotrexate (MTX) or anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) therapy, with even fewer achieving ≥ American College of Rheumatology Pediatric 70% criteria for response (ACRpedi70), though individual responses cannot yet be accurately predicted. Because change in serum S100-protein myeloid-related protein complex 8/14 (MRP8/14) is associated with therapeutic response, we tested granulocyte-specific S100-protein S100A12 as a potential biomarker for treatment response. Methods. S100A12 serum concentration was determined by ELISA in patients treated with MTX (n = 75) and anti-TNF (n = 88) at baseline and followup. Treatment response (≥ ACRpedi50 score), achievement of inactive disease, and improvement in Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score (JADAS)-10 score were recorded. Results. Baseline S100A12 concentration was measured in patients treated with anti-TNF [etanercept n = 81, adalimumab n = 7; median 200, interquartile range (IQR) 133–440 ng/ml] and MTX (median 220, IQR 100–440 ng/ml). Of the patients in the anti-TNF therapy group, 74 (84%) were also receiving MTX. Responders to MTX (n = 57/75) and anti-TNF (n = 66/88) therapy had higher baseline S100A12 concentration compared to nonresponders: median 240 (IQR 125–615) ng/ml versus 150 (IQR 87–233) ng/ml, p = 0.021 for MTX, and median 308 (IQR 150–624) ng/ml versus 151 (IQR 83–201) ng/ml, p = 0.002, for anti-TNF therapy. Followup S100A12 could be measured in 44/75 MTX-treated patients (34/44 responders) and 39/88 anti-TNF-treated patients (26/39 responders). Responders had significantly reduced S100A12 concentration (MTX: p = 0.031, anti-TNF: p < 0.001) at followup versus baseline. Baseline serum S100A12 in both univariate and multivariate regression models for anti-TNF therapy and univariate analysis alone for MTX therapy was significantly associated with change in JADAS-10. Conclusion. Responders to MTX or anti-TNF treatment can be identified by higher pretreatment S100A12 serum concentration levels.


"Building Material Science" for students of "Civil Engineering" consists of two parts – Part 1 "Material science" and Part 2 " Modern building materials" and studing sn 1 semesters. Part 1 "Material science" include 16 hours of lectures, 16 hours of labs and 54 hours of individual work. Part 2 " Modern building materials" has 18 hours of lectures, 18 hours of labs and 54 hours of individual work.
 "Building Material Science" is one of the basic technical disciplines in the curriculum for "Civil Engineering" field of study.
The study of materials that are used in construction, alloy's properties dependence on the chemical composition, structure, methods of treatment and external environments is of great importance for the Civil Engineering bachelors training. The study of the theory and practice of different methods of materials strengthening is to provide a high reliability and longevity of the building construction, machine's details, devices, tools etc.
Selecting the most appropriate material of construction for an application involves the making of numerous important decisions. This is true whether it be for the construction of a bridge, a household appliance, a piece of chemical processing equipment, or the decorative facing of a building. Factors such as physical and mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, workability, and cost must all be taken into consideration.
With the introduction of new metallic alloys and advances in the production of the so-called exotic metals, what was the best choice several years ago may no longer be so. Over the years, improvements have been made to specific properties of various alloys. These improvements include methods to increase mechanical, physical, and corrosion resistance properties. Alternatives in composition have also been formulated to improve the workability of many alloys.
In order to conduct a meaningful evaluation of a design, all the data needed to select the most appropriate material must be available. It is the purpose of this book to supply as much of this information as possible for commercially available metallic materials.


From the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, medieval León possessed a thriving Jewish community whose presence can be traced via archaeological and documentary remains. As regards the treasury of San Isidoro de León, however, there is no evidence for the involvement of living Jews with its luxury objects—an involvement that has been documented in comparable centers elsewhere in Iberia and Europe. Apart from a possible but unproven relationship to its textiles, a Jewish connection to the Treasury of San Isidoro remains ideological and limited to the presence of Abraham's relics in a single treasury object. However, both living and ideological Jews can be associated with León's cathedral, where a portion of the Jewish community's annual taxes was earmarked to light its altars and where the sculptural program featured the blind synagogue.


The Atellan farce, a popular form of theatrical entertainment which originated from the Oscan town of Atella and was performed in Latin outside Campania, is generally referred to as a theatre of improvisation. Its comic character is based on the use of fixed characters and situations. In Pomponius' and Novius' plays, which have come down to us only in fragments, the tone is farcical and the action seems to fade into the grotesque: the speeches featuring in the fragments are often full of obscene double meanings. It would be useful to reconstruct the features of the stage space, the circumstances of the performance, and the principles of acting in order to better understand this form of drama. The fabula Atellana has its revival in the age of Sulla, when it draws much of its inspiration from the comoedia palliata.


"We need to have a world that is banded with security envelopes, meaning secure environments through which people and cargo can move rapidly, efficiently, and safely without sacrificing security. And in that kind of a world, it would be possible with the proper security vetting, with the proper technology, with the proper travel documents, with the proper tracking of cargo to move relatively freely from point to point all across the globe with the understanding that those within the security envelope we have a high confidence and trust about so that they don't have to be stopped at every point mechanically and re-vetted and rechecked. And those outside the envelope would be those on which we could focus our resources in terms the kind of in-depth analysis and the kind of in-depth vetting that is necessary to make sure bad people can't come in to do bad things." Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff (May 19, 2005). New technologies do not determine human fates; instead, they alter the spectrum of potentialities within which people may act. Force-multiplying destructive technologies and global communications technologies that enable the coordination of far-flung resources (both previously only available to nation state or multinational corporate actors) are rapidly diffusing throughout global society lowering the barrier of entry to, and effectiveness of, direct violent challenges to state interests and power by non-state actors, consequently threatening existing national and global security structures premised on maintaining order through nation state accountability in international affairs. The seed input value of potentially catastrophic outcomes to global security has devolved from nation states (the traditional target of preemptive national or collective security power) to groups of organized but non-state or stateless actors (the traditional target of reactive law enforcement power). These organized groups (and soon perhaps even disaffected individuals) are acquiring the capabilities and competencies to inflict the kind of catastrophic outcomes that can threaten national survival and global security by undermining the public confidence in security arrangements that maintain the economic and political systems of modern democratic states. In simple terms, the threat to national and global security is no longer confined only to belligerent nation states but increasingly includes non-state actors such as 'international terrorists' and others pursuing political or economic ends counter to economically globalized nation state interests through potentially catastrophic violent means and not easily subject to any single nation state's law enforcement power. Further, modern global transportation and communication systems, and the ability to blend in with or recruit from domestic immigrant populations, allow these groups to act within target states and without regard to national borders. As Thomas Friedman states in The World is Flat, 21st century terrorism is the globalization of 20th century terrorism. In response to these threats, nation states are under political pressure to take a preemptive rather than reactive approach by increasingly focusing instruments and techniques of national security power - intelligence and surveillance - against them. Preemption of terrorist acts that can occur at any place and any time requires producing actionable intelligence – that is, information useful to anticipate and counter future events before they occur. Since organized terrorism generally requires communications and precursor behaviors by actors who move among the general population and, thus, are likely evidenced by transactions or interactions recorded in databases or otherwise observable, counterterrorism intelligence in part requires surveillance or analysis of communications and transactions to uncover evidence of organization, relationships, or other relevant patterns of behavior indicative or predictive of potential threats. Surveillance (observation of behavior or communications) or dataveillance (analysis of database records) is the observation, collection, or analysis of events or data in order to identify potential threats on which additional security resources or power can then be increasingly selectively focused or exercised, and is inherently a requirement for any strategy based on preemption. Therefore, directly threatened nation states, particularly the United States, its allies, and other militarily or economically dependent states are developing transnational counterterrorism strategies through inter-governmental agencies and structures premised on global information sharing and the surveillance of international movements of people, goods, and services through cooperating security services and law enforcement agencies. Indeed, in response to the events of 9/11 the United Nations adopted Resolution 1368 calling for increased cooperation between countries to prevent and suppress terrorism. Increasingly such security arrangements are being developed through inter-governmental organizations such as the OECD, the EC, NATO, etc. or multilateral organizations such as the G-8 or Council of Europe in order to harmonize security, monitoring, or surveillance powers. In other cases, the United States is imposing its security requirements on others unilaterally or through coerced bilateral agreements, in some cases in contravention of multilateral agreements already in place. However, other emergent technological trends, as well as the existing custodial arrangements of communication and transaction infrastructure and data, hamper the ability of any nation state or group of nation states to produce actionable intelligence by engaging in widespread general surveillance wholly on their own. Vast data volumes and limited analytical resources make it impossible to watch everyone, everyplace, or everything. Further, in many cases, the states do not have direct access to the infrastructure or data that needs to be monitored to produce actionable intelligence since the vast majority of relevant communication and transaction infrastructure and data is in private hands. Thus, the states increasingly rely on - or compel - private actors to monitor, surveil, or analyze data and behaviors beyond the reach or capacity of traditional state surveillance or monitoring power. This privatization of intelligence and surveillance has two facets - first, the states increasingly outsource intelligence or surveillance functions directly, relying on private contractors to carry out previously state functions (for example, using private sector data aggregators to generate threat scores for air passengers), and, second, the states compel private concerns to internalize surveillance and monitoring within their existing business practices (for example, imposing know your customer rules and anti-money laundering reporting in the financial sector, or data retention requirements on communication service providers). The result is that states increasingly rely on private actors to direct where, and on whom, state power is to be focused and exercised - that is, to determine who is to be trusted... or not. This paper examines these trends - both the globalization and the privatization of intelligence and surveillance - and their impact on state power, social control, and individual freedom. In particular, this paper analyzes how these current trends run counter to the general historic trend in modern democracies in which security power has increasingly been focused in the individual nation state subject to democratic controls and accountability; whether these trends are expanding, eroding, or transforming such power by diffusing its focus throughout a panoptic global security state; and how these trends relate to accountability, transparency, and oversight within a liberal democratic framework.


Long-term research on gauged watersheds within the USDA Forest Service's Experimental Forest and Range (EFR) network has contributed substantially to our understanding of relationships among forests, water, and hydrologic processes and watershed management, yet there is only limited information from coastal forests. This article summarizes key findings from hydrology and water-quality studies based on long-term monitoring on first-, second-, and third-order watersheds on the Santee Experimental Forest, which are a part of the headwaters of the east branch of the Cooper River that drains into the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The watersheds are representative forest ecosystems that are characteristic of the low-gradient Atlantic Coastal Plain. The longterm (35-year) water balance shows an average annual runoff of 22% of the precipitation and an estimated 75% for the evapotranspiration (ET), leaving the balance to groundwater. Non-growing season prescribed fire, an operational management practice, shows no effects on streamflow and nutrient export. The long-term records were fundamental to understanding the effects of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 on the water balance of the paired watersheds that were related to vegetation damage by Hugo and post-Hugo responses of vegetation. The long-term precipitation records showed that the frequency of large rainfall events has increased over the last two decades. Although there was an increase in air temperature, there was no effect of that increase on annual streamflow and water table depths. The long-term watershed records provide information needed to improve design, planning, and assessment methods and tools used for addressing the potential impacts of hydrologic responses on extreme events; risk and vulnerability assessments of land use; and climate and forest disturbance on hydrology, ecology, biogeochemistry, and water supply. Journal of South Carolina Water Resources, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages 46–55, 2019


The video-EEG is a common diagnostic tool nowadays. The technical achievements of the last decade have brought a simplification of the equipment required to obtain good quality recordings, with little more than a computer and a video camera being necessary. However, the medical and technical staff must be well trained to execute and interpret the study. It is very useful in the diagnosis of paroxysmal events, for the classification and characterization of epileptic seizures and to quantify epileptiform discharges. Due to the importance of a correct diagnosis to avoid mistreating many neurological patients, this tool should be accessible to clinicians. In spite of the advances of recent years, 20-30% of patients diagnosed with epilepsy are not really epileptic, a fact that it is excessive and unacceptable.


In recent years there has been a concerted effort by feminist
historians to retrieve women from historical obscurity and
reinsert them into the historical landscape. Early research
concentrated on this task of reclamation and produced a number
of self-contained monographs and studies of women's lives.
However, the emphasis has shifted towards viewing the sexual
divison of labour as a central object of study and as a tool of
analysis and evaluating its impact on the historical process.
It is argued that in this way feminist history can transform
our knowledge of the past and contribute to a greater understanding
of the process of historical change.
The present study seeks to contribute to this project by
examining the lives of working women in Scotland between 1850
and 1914. It takes issue with standard accounts which assume
that women's paid labour and women's organisation at the
point of production will take male forms and argues that gender
ideologies had a significant impact on women's experience of
work.
The pattern of women's employment 1S examined and it is
illustrated that because work has been defined according to the
male norm of full-time permanent work, outside the home, the
extent of women's paid labour has been seriously underestimated.
It is also argued that in order to account for the characteristics
of female employment it is necessary to take ideological factors
into consideration and that notions of what constitutes women's 'proper' role in society had a
pattern of women's employment.
important role played by trade
powerful influence on the
The study identifies the
unions in maintaining
occupational segregation and confirming women's work as
unskilled and low paid. It is also suggested that the model
of labour organisations was influenced inter-alia by an ideology
of gender which limited its ability to relate to the experience
of women workers. It is argued that women's experience of
work was mediated by their subordination as a gender and
that this generated particular forms of resistance and
organisation which did not necessarily conform to the standard
male forms.
The study concludes that we have to reappraise the received view
of women workers as apathetic and difficult to organise and
suggests that alternative forms of labour organisations which
do not reflect but challenge gender divisions are required.


While sociologists have long debated the relationship between the status characteristics of criminal offenders and the sentences they receive, they have done so with data sets drawn from state courts whose prosecutorial resources are focused almost entirely on low status defendants. Qualitative and quantitative data analyzed in this paper are drawn from ten federal district courts whose statutes and resources provide greater potential for the prosecution of the white-collar crimes of higher status offenders. Three questions are addressed: (1) Are there substantial jurisdictional differences in the prosecution of white-collar cases? if so, (2) Are there corresponding jurisdictional differences in the sentencing of white-collar cases? and (3) Within jurisdictions, are there further differences in the factors that influence sentencing decisions in white-collar as compared to other kinds of cases? The data are analyzed from a perspective that emphasizes organizational considerations: we conceptualize the criminal justice process as a loosely coupled system and the use of prosecutorial resources as proactive and reactive. We argue that the expanded prosecution of white-collar persons for their white-collar crimes requires a proactive prosecutorial policy and a tightening of the coupling between plea negotiations and sentencing decisions in the prosecutorial and judicial subsystems. Our quantitative analysis reveals that one district follows a uniquely proactive pattern. As expected, this proactive district also exhibits a unique leniency in the sentencing of college educated white-collar criminals that is related to earlier plea and charging decisions. A rather different and unanticipated pattern of leniency is found in this district for less educated white-collar offenders. A conclusion of this study is that there may be an inverse relationship between the volume of white-collar prosecutions and the severity with which they are sentenced.


Background/Context Children from Asian ethnic backgrounds currently constitute the second largest group of child immigrants in the United States. Although stereotyped as model minority students due to their academic and economic success, studies have revealed that many Asian immigrant students struggle in school. Research has also shown that, compared to child immigrants from an Indo-European language background such as Spanish and French, Asian child immigrants experience more challenges in learning English as a second language (L2) due to greater cross-linguistic differences. However, little is known about the long-term English language outcomes of first-generation Asian child immigrants. Purpose/Objective The present study examines the effects of learner-level and input-level factors on first-generation Asian child immigrants' long-term English outcomes. Research Design Data for the current study are selected from a larger correlational and cross-sectional study that examined the effect of the age of arrival variable on Chinese immigrants' English L2 outcomes. We used two criteria to select participants from the larger study: (1) those who had arrived in the United States between the ages of 5 to 18 (to qualify as a "child immigrant"), and (2) those who had resided in the United States for at least 10 years (to examine long-term outcomes). These criteria resulted in the current sample of 69 participants. The English language proficiency data include participants' phonological production ratings, performances on a grammaticality judgment task, and their self-ratings of English proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Conclusions/Recommendations The current study showed a complex interplay of factors affecting former child immigrants' English L2 acquisition. Although age of arrival played a critical role in their L2 learning outcomes, it exerted varying degrees of influence by L2 domain. Age of arrival was a strong predictor of L2 phonological production, grammar knowledge, and oral language proficiency, but not literacy skills. L2 input, language learning aptitude, and child immigrants' affective status also contributed to their L2 outcomes, and carried more weight than age of arrival. We interpreted the results to be in line with the multiple sensitive period hypothesis in developmental psycholinguistics research. The results also suggested that literacy is not susceptible to age-related effects in the same way in which oral language and more specifically the phonological and syntactic systems are. Literacy as a cultural construct rather than a biologically unique human system is intensively taught throughout the school years and curriculum. Malleable factors, such as instruction and reading strategies, are thus perhaps more important in determining child immigrants' long-term literacy outcomes.


The essentiality and centrality of race persists as a cultural norm in education research. While critical race theory (CRT) has successfully addressed the unaccounted pedagogical biases which created structural and cultural
disadvantages for students of minority backgrounds, it has not provided adequate discussion on how to wrestle with the perplexing concept of race. A limitation of CRT studies which uses minority counter-stories and other personal narratives as a research framework (Gillborn, 2009) is that
discussions of race becomes restricted to a particular type of racial discourse which focuses on difference, otherness, separatism and victimhood (Litowiz, 2009).
Minority discourses tend to portray race and ethnicity as fixed, unitary and essential category, although this is not necessarily how people of racial minority and mixed-race groups perform and experience race (Dewan, 2008;
Weedon, 2004). Complexity, fluidity and multidimensionality of individual identities are compromised through ethnographic inquiries which construct people's racialised identities (Nayak, 2006). Through this process, binaries
of "good / bad" and "non-white victims/guilty whites" also continue to be reproduced and emphasised (Zink, 2007), and they can become a barrier to structural study of race and racism, as researchers' motives may be subverted
by "personal concerns over how they are perceived as individuals" (Leonardo, 2009, p. 264). A Need for evaluating the way we, as educators and education researchers, view race and conduct race researches has been
suggested (Pollock, 2004; Warmington, 2009). This paper will focus on contemporary discourses of race (see Spencer,
2006) and address constraints and paradoxes which race researchers have faced in dealing with concepts of race, ethnicity and culture. Drawing on an emerging theoretical perspective called post-race which "offer[s] an
opportunity to experiment, to re-imagine and to think outside the category of race" (Nayak, 2006, p. 427), I will discuss pedagogical benefits and methodological importance of challenging the category of race itself, and of
questioning whether there is a gap between 'race' as represented in educational research and race as "a lived experience, a lived relationship" (Warmington, 2009, p. 283). Critical discussion of applying post-race
perspective in educational research in Australian context has not been offered. It will contribute to important contemporary discussions on educational policy, social integrity, racism, and national identity.


Abstract An analysis of remotely sensed imagery reveals that fluvial planform geometries within aggrading continental areas are dominated by distributive fluvial systems (DFSs). We documented the gradient, length, apex location, planform, termination type, and tectonic and climatic setting of 415 examples of fluvial systems which in planform display a radial, distributive channel pattern and have an apex–toe distance > 30 km (large DFSs). The longest of these DFSs is 704 km in length, with the majority (72%) ranging between 30 and 100 km in length. Gradients on individual systems range from 0.00003 (0.0018°) to 0.02656 (1.5°). Six planform types are recognized, those with: (1) a single braided channel that bifurcates downstream into braided and/or straight channels, (2) a single dominant braided channel, (3) a single dominant braided channel which becomes sinuous downstream often bifurcating, (4) a single dominant sinuous channel, (5) a single sinuous channel that bifurcates downstream into smaller sinuous channels, and (6) multiple sinuous channels. Of the studied examples 58% occur within exorheic basins and 42% in endorheic basins, with seven different termination types recognized. In many examples, channel planform changes downstream from a distributive pattern to a contributory pattern. In others, channels terminate at an axial fluvial system, at the coast, in eolian dune fields, playa lakes, permanent lakes, or wetlands. Large DFSs and their catchments are developed in all climatic regimes, including drylands, tropical, subtropical, continental, and polar climates. Large DFSs occur in all tectonic settings, including extensional, compressional, strike-slip, and cratonic tectonic regimes. General trends and relationships between the different studied parameters can be observed, leading to a broad understanding of the main controls on large DFS development. All of the planform types occur in all tectonic settings and all climate zones. Braided planforms dominate all tectonic settings, but particularly compressional regimes. High-gradient braided systems tend to be associated with areas of high relief and are well developed in dryland climates where discharge is inferred to be intermittent in comparison to tropical climates. Large DFSs with sinuous planforms do occur in dryland climates but tend to predominate in wetter, more tropical climates where discharge is more constant and the fluvial systems can distribute bedload more efficiently. Sinuous systems also tend to have significantly lower gradients than braided systems. Although these general observations can be made, there are significant variations from these trends, which are inferred to be controlled by variations in (1) discharge related to climate and (2) sediment supply, which is a function of climate, catchment size, catchment lithology, and catchment relief. Large DFS length is controlled by the available horizontal accommodation space, which in turn is strongly related to tectonic setting. The longest DFSs occur in peripheral foreland basins and cratonic settings where lateral systems can develop across an extensive basinwards slope. Extensional, strike-slip, and piggy-back basins are narrower and have much more limited horizontal accommodation space. Consequently DFSs developed in these settings are shorter, with radii often less than 30 km. DFSs dominate in aggradational settings such as actively subsiding sedimentary basins and therefore form a significant proportion of alluvial sedimentary successions preserved in the rock record.


"[S]cience … is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power. Such persuasions must take account of the structure of facts and artifacts, as well as of language-mediated actors in the knowledge game."[1]

"If the poem's score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness. A sonnet by Byron may score high on the vertical, but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry."[2]

Drawing on an internet software development background where I was formerly a PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor)[3] and MySQL (Structured Query Language)[4] programmer, over the past two years it has been possible for me to engage with AustLit tagged-text data along the lines of enquiry suggested by Franco Moretti and William St Clair. In the absence of proprietary software suiting my research needs, this has meant building functions that enact specific analytical outcomes. These outcomes, presented within the context of 'new empiricism' at ASAL[5] and mini-ASAL conferences during 2007 and 2008, represent many hours of data mining, function programming and … rendering. I deliberately use the word 'rendering' because I wish to suggest early on the practice of 3D computer graphic modelling and animation where an underlying mesh, in this case a vast resource of publication data legitimately downloaded from the AustLit website, is worked through a series of hand-made, hand-coded tools to generate useable representations for academic debate. As these representations do not wear their underlying design on their sleeve, the resulting images of statistical analysis, deployed in my research for the purposes of discussing publication trends in Australian literary history, tend to elide their links with the technological labour that preceded their creation. In this sense, one might say – with apologies to Van Maanen who is writing about ethnography – that the 'fieldworker, having finished the job of collecting data, simply vanished behind a steady descriptive narrative justified largely by the respectable image and ideology of … [new empiricist] practice'.[6] Which is to say, like the commonplace computer desktop or laptop screen, in using computer technologies to facilitate interpretive work my statistical graphs placed 'a premium on surface manipulation and thinking in ignorance of [their] underlying mechanism'.[7] Essentially, it asked viewers to suspend disbelief and become absorbed in, even seduced by, a 'certain kind of secular magic' that was being performed on the screen.[8] As Martyn Jessop claims, 'Images are seductive and there is a natural tendency to instinctively believe whatever one sees with one's own eyes but in the case of digital visualisations what is seen is entirely a constructed object'.[9]

This is an important observation because 'new empiricism' and its related practices capitalise on the notion of computers employing neutral, carefully structured logic with an absence of poetics and felt emotion. Indeed, it is the ways that computers 'think' which is taken to be 'their most culturally important characteristic'[10] and contemporary social rhetoric surrounding technology encourages us to view computers as communicating (or 'thinking') in a logic that proceeds towards very specific ends. New empiricism, in denoting precise rational procedures linked with computing, seeks to be an expression of those ends and is connected with the production of digitally based visual texts, like my own statistical graphs, that seemingly 'speak for themselves' about Australian literary history. This might be because 'the kind of knowledge the computer encourages is rationalist, linear and analytic, mimicking the public communication of science'[11] and the possibility of objectivity, of which the humanities secretly desires.[12]

Yet information systems and information use are also highly 'socio-technical in nature [:] … they develop their own personality as determined through the initial design of the system and its ongoing human interface, and they reflect the politics of the organisational structure and its human actors'.[13] Perhaps new empiricism, in its perceived relevance to Australian literature and the humanities in general, is a system of analysis that represents what Fredric Jameson lamented as the 'depthlessness' of postmodernism,[14] privileging the consumption of visual images over deeper, critical forms of thinking? Indeed, does the move from 'close' reading to 'distant' reading parallel the loss of the felt authenticity of emotion and the rise of simulation and surface? Such questions are beyond the scope of this essay. However, if changes in 'technologies do not just expedite … knowledge transmission, but deliver it in alternative ways which require different interpretive and behavioural skills',[15] then by considering the embodiment of the disciplinary space of Australian literature on a computer screen (through AustLit) as a type of 'cultural work', we might begin to take account of 'the representational logic of the [computer] medium' in discussions of empiricism and modern-day forms of Australian literary knowledge production.[16]

This essay will explore the work behind the charting. This will include the necessary apologetics and methodological uncertainties that contextualise analytic labour, and it will put forward an alternative reading of new empiricism which suggests that internet and computing technologies are shaping the cultural grammar of the domain of Australian literature in ways yet to be fully understood but in ways which need to be corralled methodologically. It will propose that in the contemporary humanities environment new empiricism should continue to provide important 'reference points from which qualitative data can be understood'[17] and as a way for literary scholars to visualise quantitative research but from within the framework of an Australian Charter for the Computer-Based Representation of Literary History. In so doing, I will draw upon standards from The London Charter. Established in relation to Cultural History, The London Charter has argued that 'computer-based visualisation methods' should be 'applied with scholarly rigour, and that the outcomes of research that include computer-based visualisation should accurately convey to users the status of the knowledge that they represent, such as distinctions between evidence and hypothesis, and between different levels of probability'.[18] This is not to adjudicate what shape and form an Australian Charter might take but rather to raise the possibility of an in-built scholarly apparatus for empiricism in Australian literary history.[19] It should also be noted that The London Charter is not the only feasible template: the Text Encoding Initiative (for scholarly editors) and the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative are other possible models for collective standards …[20]


»From exporting to importing social problems: transnational migration in Germany since the mid-nineteenth century«. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germans abroad and foreigners in Germany have experienced the most various forms of emigration and immigration: the older German emigration to eastern and south-east Europe, especially to Russia and Austria-Hungary; the transatlantic mass emigration from nineteenth-century Germany; the mass movement of foreign migrant workers, especially from Congress Poland and Austrian Galicia, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; forced labor by foreign workers ('Fremdarbeiter') in Nazi Germany; emigration from Nazi Germany on political, ideological, and racial grounds; forced resettlement in German-occupied Europe during World War II; movements of millions of expellees and refugees at the end of the war and in its aftermath; the admission of foreigners seeking political asylum; finally, the enlistment of millions of 'guest workers,' beginning in the mid-1950s and increasing massively after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Many of these foreigners on the labor market changed from highly mobile migrant workers into true immigrants, thus confronting Germany with challenges that recall of the experiences of nineteenth-century German immigrants abroad, nearly forgotten in German collective memory.


Standard state-machine replication involves consensus on a sequence of totally ordered requests through, for example, the Paxos protocol. Serialized request processing seriously limits our ability to leverage prevalent multicore servers. This tension between concurrency and consistency is not inherent because the total-ordering of requests is merely a simplifying convenience that is unnecessary for consistency. Replicated state machines can be made parallel by consensus on partial-order traces, rather than on totally ordered requests, that capture causal orders in one replica execution and to be replayed in an order-preserving manner on others. The result is a new multi-core friendly replicated state-machine framework that achieves strong consistency while preserving parallelism in multi-threaded applications. On 12-core machines with hyper-threading, evaluations on typical applications show that we can scale with the number of cores, achieving up to a 16 times throughput increase over standard replicated state machines.


This is a subset of F. Max Mullers great collection The Sacred Books of the East which includes translations of all the most important works of the seven non-Christian religions which have exercised a profound influence on the civilizations of the continent of Asia. The works have been translated by leading authorities in their field.


The central Amazon forest is projected to experience larger interannual precipitation variability, with uncertain impacts on terrestrial hydrologic fluxes. How surface runoff, groundwater, and evapotranspiration (ET) change as a function of annual precipitation (AP) has large climate and biogeochemical implications. A process-based hydrological model is used to examine the sensitivity of hydrologic budgets and stream discharge Qs generation to AP in an upland Amazon catchment. The authors find that AP strongly controls infiltration, base flow, and surface runoff, but not ET. Hence, AP alone can predict interannual changes in these fluxes except ET. Experiments with perturbed rainfall show the strong control derives from the predominant groundwater component that varies linearly with AP but is insensitive to seasonal rainfall fluctuations. Most rainfall from large storms infiltrates and becomes base flow rather than runoff or ET. Annual baseflow index (BFI; the fraction of stream discharge from base flow) is nearly constant (;0.8) when AP is below ;2500 mm yr and decreases with AP above this value, which represents an inflection point for increased storage-dependent saturation excess. These results indicate that the system is energy limited and groundwater dominated in dry seasons, which implies some resilience of ET to moderate droughts. The results suggest AP is a good predictor for interannual changes in infiltration. Both the seasonal near-surface soil moisture and surface runoff are correlated more strongly to the subsurface fluxes than to precipitation over monthly and annual time scales. Finally, the results confirm the importance of central Amazon groundwater flow and its buffering effect on storms and droughts, implying needed model development in regional to global models.


The hypoglycemia seen in the fasting PPARα null mouse is thought to be due to impaired liver fatty acid β-oxidation. The etiology of hypoglycemia in the PPARα null mouse was determined via stable isotope studies. Glucose, lactate, and glycerol flux was assessed in the fasted and fed states in 4-month-old PPARα null mice and in C57BL/6 WT maintained on standard chow using a new protocol for flux assessment in the fasted and fed states. Hepatic glucose production (HGP) and glucose carbon recycling were estimated using [U-13C6]glucose, and HGP, lactate, and glycerol turnover was estimated utilizing either [U-13C3]lactate or [2-13C]glycerol infused subcutaneously via Alza miniosmotic pumps. At the end of a 17-h fast, HGP was higher in the PPARα null mice than in WT by 37% (p < 0.01). However, recycling of glucose carbon from lactate back to glucose was lower in the PPARα null than in WT (39% versus 51%,p < 0.02). The lack of conversion of lactate to glucose was confirmed using an [U-13C3]lactate infusion. In the fasted state, HGP from lactate and lactate production were decreased by 65 and 55%, respectively (p < 0.05) in PPARα null mice. In contrast, when [2-13C]glycerol was infused, glycerol production and HGP from glycerol increased by 80 and 250%, respectively (p < 0.01), in the fasted state of PPARα null mice. The increased HGP from glycerol was not suppressed in the fed state. While little change was evident for phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) expression, pyruvate kinase expression was decreased 16-fold in fasted PPARα null mice as compared with the wild-type control. The fasted and fed insulin levels were comparable, but blood glucose levels were lower in the PPARα null mice than in controls. In conclusion, PPARα receptor function creates a setpoint for a metabolic network that regulates the rate and route of HGP in the fasted and fed states, in part, by controlling the flux of glycerol and lactate between the triose-phosphate and pyruvate/lactate pools.


Field observations were made on the fl ower visiting behaviour of honeybee foragers in commercial fruit plantations of apricot, Japanese plums, sour cherry, apple and pear. The number of inspected cultivars was 18. The intensity of fl ower visiting by honey bees was markedly different when data of different fruit species are compared. Most intense bee activity was registered on the Japanese plums, somewhat less on apricots, the intensity diminished signifi cantly with apples and pears. Our data presented on the honeybee visitation of Japanese plums can be regarded as new fi nding because no information has been available so far on the relative attractiveness of this fruit species compared to European fruit tree species. Japanese plums were somewhat more attractive to honeybees than apricot and much more attractive than sour cherry, apple and pear. The behaviour of honeybees as visiting the blooming trees displayed specifi c differences according to the fruit species (apricot, sour cherry, pear), which coincide largely with earlier results. It is notable that the fl ower visiting behaviour of honeybees on Japanese plums has been found to be fairly similar to the same on European plums.


Prediction of daily transportation mode use (car, public transit, or active travel) is a important task in transportation research. Unlike statistical models that impose a predetermined model structure, machine learning models are learned from the data, making them more flexible with higher prediction accuracy. However, prediction of mid-to long-term habitual modes still largely relies on traditional statistical analysis using small samples of cross-sectional data. Low interpretability of "black-box" machine learning models limits their usefulness for generating behavior insights needed for designing appropriate interventions. This paper, leveraging a set of unique longitudinal life course data, is the first use case to demonstrate machine learning methods applied for both predicting and interpreting regularly used travel modes. We combine sequence clustering and tree-based machine learning methods coupled with TreeExplainer to predict and interpret habitual travel modes using mid-to long-term predictors. Five life course clusters are derived to provide evaluation and interpretation contexts. This allows us to improve upon a recently developed TreeExplainer method to better distinguish predictor importance locally and globally; and predictor interactions across subpopulations within distinctive life history contexts. Our results demonstrate a promising step toward interpretable machine learning applications to mid-to long-term prediction of travel modes for transportation planning.


The welfare culture consists of doctrines and ideologies, beliefs, ideas, values and ideal norms that various groups and actors in the society have concerning the welfare state. The new ways of thinking, which are derived from the cultural turn and paradigm shift in social sciences, is in actual environments influenced and strengthened by economic and social changes, and also by the increasing number of old people. The Nordic welfare model (Denmark, Fin-land, Norway and Sweden), which is distinct from the other welfare models, is because of its basic ideological foundation, which also pertains to Finland, the general frame for the welfare culture. The characteristics of the environments in which people live, such as risks and uncertainties, impact thoughts and ideas they have about actual and preferred conditions, and influence the interest in renewal of welfare arrangements, schemes and services. Following this lead, we examine the changes in the legislation concerning social eldercare services and changes in provision and use of elder-care services in Finland. We also examine the division of responsibility for social eldercare between the public and private sector. Because the welfare arrangements are embedded in a complex cultural context, the research helps us to understand the shaping of the social eldercare. Great changes in the Finnish eldercare in favour of care at home or in a home-like environment have taken place. The goal "more home care, less institutional care" will serve even in the future as guidance in social eldercare.


Summary In two series of psychiatric patients (numbering about 6,000 and 2,000 respectively), the mean age of the mothers at the time of the patients' birth was found to be very significantly above expectation from the general population, and this was so for each of the major diagnostic groups. In the second series, the age of the fathers was also found to be very significantly above that expected from a sample survey of the general population, and this was so for each diagnostic group. Fathers' age was raised more than mothers', and was highest for schizophrenia. The raised parental age could not be explained in terms of the patient's year of birth or his father's social class. The raised mothers' age could largely be accounted for by regression on the raised fathers' age. The present findings, and those of previous studies, seem best explained on the hypothesis of a constitutional parental trait leading to delayed marriage.


Background: Ascorbate (vitamin C) has been evaluated as a potential treatment for cancer as an independent agent and in combination with standard chemotherapies. This review assesses the evidence for safety and clinical effectiveness of intravenous (IV) ascorbate in treating various types of cancer. Methods: Single arm and randomized Phase I/II trials were included in this review. The PubMed, MEDLINE, and Cochrane databases were searched. Results were screened by three of the authors (GN, RP, and CJP) to determine if they met inclusion criteria, and then summarized using a narrative approach. Results: A total of 23 trials involving 385 patients met the inclusion criteria. Only one trial, in ovarian cancer, randomized patients to receive vitamin C or standard of care (chemotherapy). That trial reported an 8.75 month increase in progression-free survival (PFS) and an improved trend in overall survival (OS) in the vitamin C treated arm. Conclusion: Overall, vitamin C has been shown to be safe in nearly all patient populations, alone and in combination with chemotherapies. The promising results support the need for randomized placebo-controlled trials such as the ongoing placebo-controlled trials of vitamin C and chemotherapy in prostate cancer.


As the pace of implementing personalized medicine concepts increases, high-throughput variant calling on hundreds of individual genomes per day is a reality that will likely be faced by sequencing facilities across the country in the near future. While the scientific best practices for human variant calling workflows have been well defined, they also pose serious computational challenges at this high scale. Therefore, efforts in both academia and the private sector have focused on developing alternative workflows that may substantially reduce the computational cost per individual genome. Isaac is an "ultra-fast" variant calling workflow, designed by Illumina, Inc, and is claimed to be six times faster than BWA-GATK, with comparable sensitivity and specificity. This report is an independent review of Isaac, mainly focused on the accuracy of variant calls. We note that Isaac is indeed quite fast, and provide some benchmarks on a few hardware architectures. The overall conclusion from our analysis is that the Isaac workflow has undergone substantial improvement from version 01.14.11.27 to Isaac_2.0. The call accuracy is especially high on NA12878, however exomes tend to have a high fraction of false positive calls. We did not manage to reproduce the 99% sensitivity and specificity reported in the Illumina whitepaper, however that might be improved with further tweaking of the options. This report includes the information about some of the command-line parameters and documentation.


Abstract Near-field optical probes have been used to produce a subdiffraction-limited observation area for fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) experiments on supported membranes. The design of a bent, etched fiber probe that is compatible with biological imaging in an aqueous environment is described. This probe design is used for proof of principle experiments to measure lipid diffusion in a fluid-supported bilayer. A reduction in excitation area of approximately one order of magnitude (relative to a confocal FCS experiment) is obtained with a probe aperture diameter of 140 nm. We also demonstrate a simple approach for modeling the autocorrelation decay due to diffusion within the excitation profile at the near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) probe aperture. The use of probes with smaller apertures is expected to provide an additional order of magnitude reduction in the observation area, thus enabling the study of cellular membranes with higher concentrations of fluorophores than is currently possible with diffraction-limited techniques.


The symmetry energy coefficients in finite nuclei have been studied systematically with a covariant density functional theory (DFT) and compared with the values calculated using several available mass tables. Due to the contamination of the shell effect, the nuclear symmetry energy coefficients extracted from the binding energies have large fluctuations around the nuclei with double magic numbers. The size of this contamination is shown to be smaller for the nuclei with a larger isospin value. After subtracting the shell effect with the Strutinsky method, the obtained nuclear symmetry energy coefficients with different isospin values are shown to decrease smoothly with the mass number A and are subsequently fitted to the relation . The resultant volume bv and surface bs coefficients from axially deformed covariant DFT calculations are 121.73 and 197.98 MeV, respectively. The ratio bs/bv = 1.63 is in good agreement with the value derived from the previous calculations with the non-relativistic Skyrme energy functionals. The coefficients bv and bs corresponding to several available mass tables are also extracted. It is shown that there is a strong linear correlation between the volume bv and surface bs coefficients and the ratios bs/bv are in between 1.6 and 2.0 for all the cases.


Since the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia, most of the world's attention has focused on the horrific inter-ethnic conflict that has ravaged the lands of the South Slavs. Inter-ethnic strife, in fact, has been the primary factor that accounts for the failed transition from communism to democracy. At the same time, another phenomenon that is often associated with ethnic politics is evident in Croatia and Serbia and has contributed to the shortcomings of democracy and the violence of the post-communist transition. The politics of intra-ethnic competition, or flanking, has generated significant conflict within Croatia and Serbia. The dominant nationalist parties in each republic, the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) led by Franjo Tudjman and the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) led by Slobodan Milosevic, have faced pressure from parties on the extreme right who have challenged the leading parties' claims to represent their respective nations. In Croatia, the Tudjman regime felt threatened in 1991 and 1992 by the activities of Dobroslav Paraga's Croatian Party of [State] Right (HSP). And in 1993 the Milosevic regime attempted to discredit and marginalize its erstwhile coalition partner, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS), which is led by Vojislav Seselj. In each case, intense intra-ethnic competition erupted into fratricidal violence and jeopardized the democratic rights of the political opposition. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the patterns of flanking in Croatia and Serbia and to assess the relative impact each has had for the failure to build democratic regimes. I. Flanking Patterns in Ethnically-Divided Societies and the Repercussions for Democracy In Donald Horowitz's study of ethnic politics in Asia and Africa, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (1985), a major effort is made to identify the central patterns and forms of ethnic politics. Flanking is one of those patterns. Flanking may be defined as the attempt of an insurgent party representing one ethnic group to challenge the dominant party of the same ethnic group by staking out a more extreme (they might say more "patriotic" or "loyal") position. Ethnic party systems are prone to a politics of centrifugal "outbidding" because party competition tends to occur not between ethnic groups but within them. In an ethnic party system (i.e., a party system in which most politically significant groups are organized on an ethnic basis), party identification is ascriptively defined. Since an ethnic party's pool of support is found within the ethnic group and not outside it, ethnic parties behave more like interest groups who myopically seek to promote their own ethnic interests regardless of their impact on the whole. In this way, an ethnic party system tends to reinforce social cleavages rather than bridge them.(1) This contrasts sharply with the voluntary-associational parties found in most Western liberal-democracies. Non-ethnic parties tend to be inclusive in their membership and seek to represent the interests of a number of different segments of society; hence, the interest aggregation function normally attributed to such parties. Moreover, inter-party competition tends to focus on the mass of undecided voters located in the ideological center. This gravitation towards the middle gives parties an electoral incentive to moderate their positions. In an ethnic party system, ascriptively-defined party membership effectively precludes vote transferability by "floating voters." In Horowitz's succinct formulation, "[t]here are many working-class Tories, but very few Hindu Akalis...."(2) As a result, what intra-group competition occurs is located on the "flanks" of each party as insurgent and more radical ethnic parties push the dominant parties to extreme positions. The existence of flanking parties puts pressure on dominant parties to shun moderation and inter-ethnic negotiations lest they be branded with the stigma of selling out or betraying one's nation. …


Some features of perpendicular recording were investigated by means of stand-still recording experiments. For this purpose several radio frequency (RF)-sputtered Co-Cr layers of two different compositions were used as media while a Permalloy single pole (SP) head was used as a write transducer. A magnetoresistive transducer (MRT) was utilized to read the recorded pattern. Further, an analytical model was developed enabling the magnetization induced by the head field in the recording medium to be calculated. Both calculations and experimental results show a sharpening of the transition, due to the demagnetizing field. For a good approximation it is sufficient to consider only the vertical head field component and vertical magnetization in the recording medium. This is a consequence of the well-developed perpendicular anisotropy and negligible in-plane remanence of the Co-Cr layers. In addition the read-out signal is completely determined by the magnetic surface charges. The remanent magnetization in the recording medium and therefore the read-out amplitude is limited by demagnetization and consequently determined by the coercivity of the Co-Cr layer. The medium noise of a dc-erased medium indicates magnetic structures of much larger dimensions than the size of the individual crystallites. This noise appears to be dependent on the saturation magnetization of the Co-Cr medium. Activation of the single pole head by a homogeneous field results in a nonlinear behavior, caused by head saturation effects. This is supported by simple one-dimensional calculations of the head field.


Abstract We here investigate the sedimentology of the early Danian (ca. 66–64 Ma) Salamanca Formation in the north-central San Jorge Basin, southern Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina, in order to place the outstandingly diverse and well-preserved fossil floras it contains into specific environmental settings. These assemblages are among very few of Danian age from the entire Southern Hemisphere and thus provide critical data about geographic variation in recovery from the end-Cretaceous extinction. Understanding the depositional context of the Salamanca floras is necessary for comparison with other assemblages and for interpreting their exceptional preservation. The Salamanca Formation was deposited above a widespread erosional sequence boundary (SB-1) resulting from a relative base level rise and widespread marine transgression during the early Danian (Chron C29n). In response to this increase in accommodation space, a broad, shallow estuary formed that most likely extended westward at least as far as the San Bernardo belt. A transgressive systems tract was deposited in this estuary, consisting of bioturbated sand fining upwards to silt. The maximum marine flooding surface at the beginning of the highstand systems tract is defined by well laminated, unburrowed, clay deposits of a low energy, deep shelf. The Salamanca highstand systems tract (HST) consists of sandy and silty facies capped by accreting subtidal bars and sandy shoals containing an abundance of tidal indicators, suggesting deposition proximal to the San Jorge paleo-estuary head. A second sequence boundary (SB-2), formed during Chron C28r and early C28n, separates the older highstand deposits from younger lowstand and transgressive deposits. These consist of estuarine sand shoals, trough cross-bedded sands deposited in aggrading, fluvially influenced tidal channels, tidal flat muds, and bayhead deltas. The best preservation of compression floras and petrified trees occurred near the tops of subtidal bars below SB-2; at the end of the shallowing-upward cycle that caps the second HST; and in fluvially-influenced tidal channels, tidal flat mudstones, and bayhead deltas of the lowstand and transgressive systems tracts that lie above SB-2. These settings were proximal to the source forests and had rapid rates of burial. We interpret the dark muds of the Banco Negro Inferior, which cap the Salamanca Formation, as a late transgressive and highstand systems tract deposited during a time of rising groundwater table and declining river slopes in a widespread, lowland coastal forest.


Average service time, quality-of-service (QoS), and service reliability associated with heterogeneous parallel and distributed computing systems (DCSs) are analytically characterized in a realistic setting for which tangible, stochastic communication delays are present with nonexponential distributions. The departure from the traditionally assumed exponential distributions for event times, such as task-execution times, communication arrival times and load-transfer delays, gives rise to a non-Markovian dynamical problem for which a novel age dependent, renewal-based distributed queuing model is developed. Numerical examples offered by the model shed light on the operational and system settings for which the Markovian setting, resulting from employing an exponential-distribution assumption on the event times, yields inaccurate predictions. A key benefit of the model is that it offers a rigorous framework for devising optimal dynamic task reallocation (DTR) policies systematically in heterogeneous DCSs by optimally selecting the fraction of the excess loads that need to be exchanged among the servers, thereby controlling the degree of cooperative processing in a DCSs. Key results on performance prediction and optimization of DCSs are validated using Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation as well as experiments on a distributed computing testbed. The scalability, in the number of servers, of the age-dependent model is studied and a linearly scalable analytical approximation is derived.


Abstract The Negishi palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction between 3-ethoxy-4-iodo-1H-pyrazole and various benzylzinc halides was extensively studied. Using simplified, robust, and optimized reaction conditions, a series of electron-poor benzylzinc halides were prepared and used to synthesize 4-benzyl-3-ethoxy-1H-pyrazoles derivatives. From these, iodination on C5 of the pyrazole nucleus led to the corresponding 4-benzyl-3-ethoxy-5-iodo-1H-pyrazoles, these are original building blocks for the preparation of libraries of new chemical entities.


The foreign exchange component of international equity investing is key to the experience that investors will have when they buy assets in denominations other than their base currency. Indeed a traditional, un-hedged international investment, with full foreign currency exposure, can in fact be thought of as a long position, of equal magnitude, in both the foreign equity and the foreign currency. In this article, the authors use traditional portfolio metrics to address the question of whether exposure to foreign currency is likely to help, or hinder, investors over the long run. They argue that the portfolio approach is a helpful but underutilized framework that requires the careful consideration of six elements; the returns of equities and currencies, their risks, the correlation between equity and currency, and the costs to hedge. The authors find that, under certain empirically justified assumptions, currency is rarely sufficiently negatively correlated to justify its place in strategic international allocations. They conclude that the "new neutral" for long-term international investors should be to remove foreign currency exposure from their portfolios.


High–beta stocks typically fail to outperform low–beta stocks. Investors have heterogeneous opinions about value, and the difference between the return expected by the marginal investor and by the typical investor increases with the divergence of opinion. The author suggests that the divergence of opinion diminishes following an initial public offering, producing long–run underperformance of such offerings. Because divergence of opinion, uncertainty, and beta risk are correlated, according to the author, this causes an uncertainty–induced bias that increases with beta, producing a relatively flat security market line, flatter than the risk–return relationship anticipated by the typical investor. An implication of this theory is that investors can improve their return relative to risk by exploiting the flatness of the security market line.


A simple UV spectrophotometric method using first order derivative technique was developed for the simultaneous estimation of atorvastatin calcium and aspirin in capsules. The atorvastatin calcium and aspirin stock solutions were prepared in (50: 50 v/v) methanol: water and scanned in UV- region for first order derivative spectrum. The zero crossing point for atorvastatin calcium and aspirin was 243 nm and 276 nm respectively. Linearity was established over the concentration range of 6-14 μg/ml and 20-100 μg/ml for atorvastatin calcium and aspirin with correlation coefficient (r2) value 0.998 and 0.999 respectively. The method was validated according to ICH guidelines for validation parameters like accuracy, precision, limit of detection and limit of quantification. They found to be within limits. The method was successfully applied for quantitative estimation of atorvastatin calcium and aspirin in capsules.


The standard approach to the design of individual space-time codes is based on optimizing diversity and coding gains. This geometric approach leads to remarkable examples, such as perfect space-time block codes (?Perfect space-time block codes.? F. Oggier et al., Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 52, no. 9, pp. 3885-3902, Sep. 2006), for which the complexity of maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding is considerable. Code diversity is an alternative and complementary approach where a small number of feedback bits are used to select from a family of space-time codes. Different codes lead to different induced channels at the receiver, where channel state information (CSI) is used to instruct the transmitter how to choose the code. This method of feedback provides gains associated with beamforming while minimizing the number of feedback bits. Thus, code diversity can be viewed as the integration of space-time coding with a fixed set of beams. It complements the standard approach to code design by taking advantage of different (possibly equivalent) realizations of a particular code design. Feedback can be combined with suboptimal low-complexity decoding of the component codes to match ML decoding performance of any individual code in the family. It can also be combined with ML decoding of the component codes to improve performance beyond ML decoding performance of any individual code. One method of implementing code diversity is the use of feedback to adapt the phase of a transmitted signal. The values of code diversity is verified in the simulations on 4 ? 4 quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (QOSTBC), multi-user detection of Alamouti signaling and the Golden code. It shows that our code diversity scheme is more robust in the case of erroneous feedback compared with other low-rate feedback schemes such as transmit antenna selection and its variations. This paper introduces a family of full rate circulant codes which can be linearly decoded by Fourier decomposition of circulant matrices within the code diversity framework.


Analysis of Improved Fenestration for Code-Compliant Residential Buildings in Hot and Humid Climates. (August 2005) Jaya Mukhopadhyay, Dip Arch., Tulsi Vidya Bharati School of Habitat Studies Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Jeff S. Haberl This thesis presents an analysis of energy efficient residential windows in hot and humid climates. To accomplish this analysis, the use of accurate simulation tools such as DOE-2.1e is required, which incorporates the results from the WINDOW-5.2 simulation program to assess accurate fenestration performance. The thesis also investigates the use of optimal glazing types, which, for future applications, could be specified in the code to reduce annual net energy consumption to zero. Results show that combinations of low-E and double pane, clear-glazed windows, which are optimally shaded according to orientation are the best solution for lowering both annual energy consumption and peak electricity loads. The study also concludes that the method used to model fenestration in the simulation program plays an important role in accurately determining the effectiveness of the glazing option used. In this particular study, the use of the WINDOW-5.2 program is highly recommended especially for high performance windows (i.e., low-E glazing). Finally, a discussion on the incorporation of super high performance windows (i.e., super low-E, ultra low-E and dynamic / switchable glazing) into the IECC code concludes that these types of glazing strategies can reduce annual net energy use of the window to zero. Future work identified by this thesis includes a more extensive examination of the passive solar potential of high performance fenestration, and an examination of the appropriate methods for specifying these properties in future versions of the IECC code. This implies that future specifications for fenestration in the IECC code could aim for zero net annual energy consumption levels from residential fenestration.