OBJECTIVES
To estimate the excess costs for children in the years surrounding initial diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and to estimate differences in treatment costs by ethnicity.

DESIGN
We identified children diagnosed with ADHD and estimated their health service costs in the 2 years before and 2 years after initial diagnosis of ADHD. Costs were compared with those for children without ADHD. We adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, pharmacy co-pay, estimated family income, coexisting mental health disorders, and chronic medical conditions.

SETTING
Nonprofit, integrated health care delivery system in northern California from January 1, 1996, to December 31, 2004.

PARTICIPANTS
Children aged 2 to 10 years with (n = 3122) and without (n = 15 899) ADHD. Main Exposure Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Health care costs and use in the years before and after initial ADHD diagnosis as well as costs of ADHD-related services.

RESULTS
Compared with children without ADHD, children with ADHD had mean costs that were $488 more in the second year before their ADHD diagnosis, $678 more in the year before their diagnosis, $1328 more in the year after their diagnosis, and $1040 more in the second year after their diagnosis. Asian Americans diagnosed with ADHD had lower total ADHD-related mean costs per year than white Americans diagnosed with ADHD ($221 lower), and Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans all had lower ADHD-related pharmacy mean costs than white Americans ($95, $63, and $77 lower, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS
Children with ADHD use significantly more health services before and after their diagnosis than children without ADHD. Among children diagnosed with ADHD, nonwhite Americans (especially Asian Americans) use fewer ADHD-related services than white Americans.


A nearly complete spider spinneret was found in Middle Devonian rocks (about 385 to 380 million years old) near Gilboa, New York. This is the earliest evidence yet discovered for silk production from opisthosomal spigots, and therefore for spiders. Two previously known Devonian fossils described as spiders lack any apomorphies of the order Araneae and are probably not spiders. The spigots of the Devonian spinneret resemble those of members of the living suborder Mesothelae, but the number of spigots and their distribution are like those of members of the suborder Opisthothelae, infraorder Mygalomorphae. The Devonian spider belonged to a clade that may be the sister group of all other spiders, of Mesothelae, or of Opisthothelae.


Acidic deposition has resulted in the loss of available soil Ca from base-poor soils in the northeastern United States. In 1999, wollastonite (CaSiO₃) was experimentally added to a watershed at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire in an attempt to restore the base saturation of the soil to its estimated pre-acidification level. We measured the total Ca in the O horizon and the top 10 cm of mineral soil to track the fate of the added Ca. We also measured soil pH and exchangeable cations to assess the impact of the treatment on soil acidity. In the first 11 yr after treatment, Ca was transported downward through the forest floor and upper mineral soil in a progressive fashion. By Year 11, at least 650 kg ha⁻¹ of the 1028 kg ha⁻¹ of Ca that was added to the watershed was no longer in the O horizon or the top 10 cm of mineral soil. Soil pH and exchangeable Ca concentrations increased significantly in organic and mineral soils after treatment. Exchangeable H and Al concentrations decreased significantly. The pool of exchangeable Ca increased significantly after treatment, peaking in the O horizons 3 yr after treatment and in the upper mineral soil 7 yr after treatment. The pools of exchangeable Al and H steadily and significantly decreased through the study period. Only about 3% of the added Ca was exported from the watershed in stream water after 11 yr. Wollastonite treatment was thus an effective means of increasing available pools of Ca in this forest ecosystem.


Contains the principal treaties concerning litigation and arbitration, as well as selected American and foreign statutes relating to jurisdiction of courts, recognition of judgments, discovery and secrecy, and claims against foreign sovereigns. Documents range from excerpts of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Act, and the Federal Arbitration Act, to rules of various arbitral institutions, excerpts from British statutes and rules dealing with jurisdiction and judgments, and the confidential documents laws of the United Kingdom, France, and Switzerland. Prepared for use with Lowenfield's International Litigation and Arbitration, but may also be used with other course materials.


ARCTIC GIMMICKSThe Arctic is widely presented as the object of a geopolitical race for natural resources, ou and gas in particular, with Russia as the main driver. Russia is often portrayed as taking an expansionist and muitarist stance in a mad dash to grab territory and thereby energy resources in the Arctic, whether in relation to Norway in the Barents Sea and Svalbard, or Canada and Denmark at the north pole.A case in point is the planting of a flag on the seabed under the north pole by Russian scientists in 2007. In the west this was often described as an underwater land-grab demonstrating Russia's imperialist and expansionist approach to the Arctic.In western coverage of the event there was little mention of the fact that it is common for explorers to plant their national flags when they reach difficult targets - Mount Everest, the south pole, the north pole, the moon, and so on. Much coverage also ignored the fact that Russia (unlike the US and several other countries) has ratified the law ofthe sea convention and appears to be trying to promote its Arctic interests within this legal framework, including the submission of continental-shelf documentation to the UN to substantiate its territorial claims.Western commentators also tend to overlook similarities between the Russian approach and the approaches of their own countries to the Arctic. The foUowing case serves as an example. In January 2008, only half a year after the infamous flag-planting, Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg went on an expedition to Antarctica. He stopped on Dronning Maud Land and emphasized Norway's claim to it, although this claim is not recognized by many other countries. The territory is on the other side ofthe planet and there has never been a permanent Norwegian settlement there, except for Norwegian polar scientists carrying out research. A television crew also filmed Stoltenberg settling in for the night in a polar sleeping bag in a tent at -19C, demonstrating his youthfulness and physical capabuity. The trip was widely covered in the Norwegian media, without any critical questions concerning the prime minister and his politics, or Norwegian Antarctic policy. Upon his return, Stoltenberg was interviewed on the main Norwegian television channel, which is fully state-owned. The venue was Anne Gross void' s weU-established talk show, in which the presenter establishes a friendly and intimate tone with her interviewees and asks slightly personal but not overly critical questions. The show has become an excellent opportunity for celebrities to promote themselves. OveraU, the media coverage of the Antarctic trip was a one-sided celebration of Norwegian prowess in polar exploration and science, a unique opportunity for the personal political promotion of Jens Stoltenberg, and perhaps a celebration of Norway's macho-oriented polar exploration traditions. It was also a way of revitalizing Norwegian territorial claims in the remote Antarctic.The point here is not to criticize Stoltenberg as a politician or his Antarctic visit and its media coverage, but rather to show that the Russian flag-planting incident at the north pole is not unique. In both in the Stoltenberg and Russian flag-planting cases, the opportunity to use government resources (including government-controUed media) to promote individual and sectoral interests for a domestic audience was at least as important a driver as any international political agenda.RUSSIA'S ARCTIC STRATEGY TOWARDS 2020Of course polar policy does not consist solely, or even mainly, of flag-planting and talk-show coverage of prime ministerial expeditions to Antarctica. Moving on from such gimmickry to more formal Arctic policy, what really is Russia's approach to the Arctic and its energy resources? To answer that question, we need to assess the main official Russian policy document on the Arctic, "Principals of state policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic to 2020 and beyond. …


This paper presents a new complicated-knowledge representation method for the self-reconfiguration of complex systems such as complex software systems, complex manufacturing systems, and knowledgeable manufacturing systems. Herein, new concepts of a knowledge mesh (KM) and an agent mesh (AM) are proposed along with a new KM-based approach to complicated-knowledge representation. KM is the representation of such complicated macroknowledge as an advanced manufacturing mode, focusing on knowledge about the structure, functions, and information flows of an advanced manufacturing system. The multiple set, KM, and the mapping relationships between both, are then formally defined. The union, intersection, and minus operations on the multiple sets are proposed, and their properties proved. Then, the perfectness of a KM, the redundancy set between the two KMs, and the multiple redundancy set on the redundancy set are defined. Three examples are provided to illustrate the concepts of the KM, multiple set, multiple redundancy set, and logical operations. On the basis of the above, the KM-based inference engine is presented. In logical operations on KMs, each KM is taken as an operand. A new KM obtained by operations on KM multiple sets can be mapped into an AM for automatic reconfiguration of complex software systems. Finally, the combination of two real management modes is exemplified for the effective application of the new KM-based method to the self-reconfiguration of complex systems. It is worth mentioning that KM multiple sets can also be taken as a new formal representation of software systems if their corresponding AMs are the real software systems.


In this paper, we propose an approach of clustering data in parallel coordinates through interactive local operations. Different from many other methods in which clustering is globally applied to the whole dataset, our interactive scheme allows users to directly apply attractive and repulsive operators at regions of interests, taking advantages of an electricity interaction metaphor, for clutter reduction and cluster detection. Our design enables users to interact directly with the parallel coordinate plots and provides great flexibility in exploring and revealing underlying patterns. With instant feedback, our work allows users to dynamically adjust the clustering parameters to reach an optimum. We also supply the user with a graph indicating the logical relationship between clusters. Our experiments show that our scheme is more efficient than traditional methods in performing visual analysis tasks.


We model the US business cycle using a dynamic factor model that identifies common factors underlying fluctuations in state-level income and employment growth. We find three such common factors, each of which is associated with a set of factor loadings that indicate the extent to which each state's economy is related to the national business cycle. According to the factor loadings, there is a great deal of heterogeneity in the nature of the links between state and national economies. In addition to exhibiting geographic patterns, the closeness of state economies to the national business cycle is related not only to differences in industry mix but also to non-industry variables such as agglomeration and neighbor effects. Finally, we find that the common factors tend to explain large proportions of the total variability in state-level business cycles, although, again, there is a great deal of cross-state heterogeneity.


The goal of financial reporting is to provide useful information for decision makers. Effective financial reporting is essential for efficient financial markets and provides transparency and accountability. Globally, there are two primary financial reporting systems. The United States, uses generally accepted accounting principles (U.S. GAAP). Outside the United States, the rest of the world uses international financial reporting standards (IFRS). Both systems require both financial and non-financial disclosures for companies that issue financial statements.
One required disclosure for both GAAP and IFRS is for companies to calculate earnings per share (EPS). This is an important financial ratio, but it is not the only important financial ratio. However, it is currently the only financial ratio that is required in company annual reports both in GAAP and in IFRS. In this paper, we recommend additional financial disclosures including a recommended set of financial ratios. These additional disclosures would be inexpensive but would provide relevant additional information to investors and thus would improve the quality of financial reporting.


This is a philosophic proof, but is it a scientific proof? Science has drifted into philosophy, and it finds itself unable to stay as a pure activity as Popper demanded. And so Shollenberger`s proof can be seen as scientific in that all evidence must make sense within the unifying presence, and because science necessarily drifts into philosophy for big questions about what is beyond caricature (infinite). When science is limited to empiricism and existentialism, science can only test theories that permit predictions (that necessarily make a caricature of their subject). The caricature-giver is beyond Popper`s science. You can find this book at Amazon: The First Scientific Proof of God: Reveals God's Intelligent Design and a Modern Creation Theory .


The thesis describes the design of a novel non-linear controller for the plasma vertical position in a Tokamak that maximizes the stability region and is robust to certain disturbances and measurement noise. The plasma vertical position in a Tokamak can be open loop unstable with time-varying dynamics. The limitation in the output power of the control amplifier makes the time varying unstable system particularly difficult to control. Fixed-coefficient linear controllers usually fail to maintain control in the presence of large disturbances, like Edge Localized Modes (ELMs), which saturate the amplifier output. During the saturation period the vertical position of the plasma will grow exponentially with the unstable eigenvalue and may reach values that cannot be controlled by the energy provided by the control amplifier which is limited by economic restraints. The primary sources of disturbances and measurement noise that effect the vertical position are the ELMs and the 600 Hz noise from the thyristor power supplies. The former are present during high energy confinement plasma configurations in the form pulses. A simple model structure is derived for the vertical position which includes the effect of the disturbances and the measurement noise and the control amplifier. The model is validated against experimental data from the JET and the COMPASS-D Tokamaks. A method to measure the maximum obtainable stability region of unstable systems subject to control limitations is derived and used to determine the conditions for a maximum stabilizer controller. A novel technique to determine the existence, the stability and the period of possible limit cycles for relay controlled systems is derived and used to determine the stability region of unstable systems incorporating relay controllers with and without time delays. A novel non-linear controller for the vertical position based on a discrete time adaptive near-minimum time algorithm (DANTOC) is designed to stabilize the system, to maximize the stability region and to be robust to the aforementioned sources of disturbances and measurement noise. The controller is tested in simulation for the JET Tokamak and the results demonstrate its feasibility in controlling the vertical position for different plasma configurations. The controller is also tested on the COMPASS-D Tokamak and the results demonstrate the improvement with respect to a simple linear P + D controller in the presence of the aforementioned sources of disturbances and measurement noise. The proposed controller represents a much better solution than existing conventional controllers for the control of the plasma vertical position for the new generation of Tokamaks.


ABSTRACT Digital technologies have become an increasingly prominent feature of children's lives both within and outside educational environments (McCoy, Quail, and Smyth 2012. Influences on 9-Year-Olds' Learning: Home, School and Community. Dublin: Department of Children and Youth Affairs). Despite considerable media debate, we have little robust evidence on the impact of technology use on children's development, both academically and socially. Much of the literature in this area relies on small-scale cross-sectional studies. Using longitudinal data on 8500 9-year-old children in Ireland, we examine the influence of early mobile phone ownership on children's performance in reading and maths between 9 and 13 years of age. Across both reading and maths domains, children who already report owning a phone by the age of nine fare less well in terms of their academic development as they move into adolescence. The measured effects are sizeable, implying about 4 percentile lower ranking on standardised tests for an average student. Our results are consistent with the idea that there may be significant educational costs arising from early mobile phone use by children. Parents and policymakers should consider whether the benefits of phone availability for children are sufficiently large to justify such costs. We suggest a range of direct and indirect cognitive effects that could help explain these results.


Scientific background: GAGs mimetics properties on regenerative process.Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are sulfated polysaccharides actually considered as major structural components of the extracellular matrix as well as regulators of cells functions during homeostatic and pathological processes. These GAGs activities are based on their ability to interact with heparin binding growth-factors (HBGF), chemokines and enzymes, to protect them from proteolytic degradation and to potentialyze their interaction with cell surface specific receptors and/or other components of the ECM. GAGs are characterized by their extensive structural diversity, based on the number and location of sulfate or acetylate groups, that would determine specific biological interactions.As comparative tool to study the relationship between the complexity of GAGs chemical structures and their biological functions, we used synthetic GAGs mimetics, derivate from a polymer of dextran and functionalized with carboxylate, sulfate and/or acetate groups. They are structurally and functionally related to natural heparan sulfates. These compounds improved both the rate and quality of regenerative process in numerous animal models of injury after topical treatment.Our hypothesize is that specific HS cooperative interactions with HBGF and ECM compounds could influence both therapeutic progenitors and stem cells properties by compartmentalizing them to specific microenvironment niches, and protecting them against deleterious signals. Such abilities to modulate stem cell biology could be a new way to explain and to take advantage of regenerative properties of these compounds. The principal aim of this work was to demonstrate the effects of GAGs mimetics on Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC) properties for application in bone repair. GAGs mimetics as new potentializing agents of mesenchymal stem cells propertiesDuring osteogenesis, a controlled expression of functional HS is required to interact and regulate the activity of growth promoting and osteogenic differentiation factors. However effects of GAGs on MSC properties remain to be analyzed. We focus on two GAGs mimetics leader molecules [OTR4131] and [OTR4120], with distinct chemical characteristics, since sulfated mimetic [OTR4120] was previously shown to stimulate bone repair in vivo. We demonstrate that its acetylated and sulfated counterpart [OTR4131] enhances proliferation, whereas [OTR4120] clearly stimulates migration and osteogenic differentiation properties of rat MSC in vitro, that could explain its bone regenerative effect in vivo. This indicates that GAGs mimetics would be of great interest for potential application in therapy, since according to their structural signature they could modulate specific activities of progenitors and stem cells, and represent an alternative to exogenous growth factor treatments. New matricial strategy for bone repair associating GAGs mimetics to biomaterials and human MSCCell based therapy associated to biomaterials for repair of bone defects are promising but not enough efficient. We proposed to develop matricial strategy, associating efficient micro-environment molecules such as GAGs mimetics, to optimize cell therapeutic approaches. First we validated that GAGs mimetics are effective on human MSC proliferation, migration and differentiation properties in vitro. We demonstrated that colonization efficiency of hydroxyapatite/β-tricalcium phosphate biomaterial scaffolds by human MSC was improved when scaffolds are functionalized with GAGs mimetics in vitro. Finally osteoformation in vivo was evaluated after ectopic transplantation of functionalized and/or cellularized biomaterials in nude mice: few effects were observed on bone formation, whereas osteoclastogenesis and vascularization were clearly modulated by GAGs mimetics immobilized. GAGs mimetics as new mobilizing agents of stem cells...


What drives educational innovation to emerge at local level? We contribute on this question by examining three highly innovative districts in Indonesia. Our specific aim is to understand how the innovations are related to the districts' socio-cultural context. Through a combination of qualitative research methods comprising of observations, interviews, and group discussions with stakeholders in each study location, we identified three aspects of the socio-cultural context – resulting from the embodiment of social norms within a districts' social networks – that significantly determined how local innovations are defined and implemented in each district: (1) the norms of trust among community members, (2) tradition, or lack thereof, of collaboration at community and elite levels, (3) people's participation. We recommend that districts establish innovation exchange connections so that they can learn from each other, and that central government to be cognizant of local differences when crafting national education policies.


Epitope tagging of expressed proteins is a versatile tool for the detection and purification of the proteins. This approach has been used in protein-protein interaction studies, protein localization, and immunoprecipitation. Among the most popular tag systems is the FLAG epitope tag, which is recognized by three monoclonal antibodies M1, M2, and M5. We describe novel approaches to the detection of epitope-tagged proteins via fluorescence resonance energy transfer on beads. We have synthesized and characterized biotinylated and fluorescein-labeled FLAG peptides and examined the binding of FLAG peptides to commercial streptavidin beads using flow cytometric analysis. A requirement of assay development is the elucidation of parameters that characterize the binding interactions between component systems. We have thus compiled a set of Kd values determined from a series of equilibrium binding experiments with beads, peptides, and antibodies. We have defined conditions for binding biotinylated and fluoresceinated FLAG peptides to beads. Site occupancies of the peptides were determined to be on the order of several million sites per bead and Kd values in the 0.3-2.0 nM range. The affinity for antibody attachment to peptides was determined to be in the low nanomolar range (less than 10 nM) for measurements on beads and solution. We demonstrate the applicability of this methodology to assay development, by detecting femtomole amounts of N-terminal FLAG-bacteria alkaline phosphatase fusion protein. These characterizations form the basis of generalizable and high throughput assays for proteins with known epitopes, for research, proteomic, or clinical applications.


Composite membranes were formed by deposition of plasma-polymerized acrylic acid (PPAA) films onto porous commercial membranes to improve the rejection, especially of chlorinated compounds, in ultrafiltration of E-stage bleach effluent. Although increased rejections were accompanied by reduced flux, in most cases, the reductions were not significant considering the extent of increased rejections. A good composite membrane showed the AOX removal of 94% (76% before the modification) and the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal of 84% (67% before the modification) with 33% reduction of the flux. The permeate was optically clean. The improved rejection is attributed to the tightly crosslinked network of a plasma polymer film and its negatively charged surface. Ultrathin film thickness and the hydrophilic property of a plasma polymer film minimize the reduction of flux. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


Copyright © 2021 Phcog.Net. This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. ABSTRACT Introduction: The literature demonstrates a scarcity of pharmacological and toxicological studies that reveal the usefulness and safety in using products that present as active raw material Bauhinia guianensis Aubl. This study aimed to research the botanical aspects, traditional use, and phytochemical composition of the vegetal species Bauhinia guianensis Aubl., described in international scientific literature. Methods: A search was carried out in different databases, specifically in the Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde-BVS, Embase, Lilacs, PubMed/Medline, CAPES Periodic, ResearchGate, SciELO, ScienceDirect and Scopus, with the descriptor "Bauhinia guianensis Aubl.", published between 1996 and 2020. Results: The results show few studies on this vegetal species, mainly related to the in vivo study of the antiinflammatory and antinociceptive activities that extracts from both the plant how much of your endophytic fungi can present. Conclusion: It is also important to identify the active constituents since there are rare analyses of the composition and structure of metabolites present in this plant or its endophytic fungi. This plant species is a promising source for obtaining biologically natural compounds that validate the ethanopharmacological use of Bauhinia guianensis Aubl.


In this study Fe-doped TiO2 (0.35 to 3.50 wt% Fe) nanotubes (NTs) were prepared as the potential photosensitizer for near-visible light driven photodynamic therapy (PDT) against cervical cancer cells (HeLa). Characterization of the prepared nanotubes by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed the successful incorporation of Fe3+ as a dopant into the TiO2 matrix, which was mainly composed of an anatase phase, while elemental mapping using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) showed homogenous distribution of the dopant ions in TiO2 for both low and high doping levels. UV-Vis studies showed that Fe doping in TiO2 increases the light absorption within the visible range, particularly in the case of 0.70 and 1.40 wt% Fe–TiO2 and provides additional energy levels within the band gap, which promotes the photo-excited charge transport towards the conduction band. Photo-cytotoxic activity of the prepared Fe-doped TiO2 NTs was investigated in vitro against cervical cancer cells (HeLa) and compared with human normal fibroblasts (GM07492). Fe-doped TiO2 NTs exhibited no or lower dark cytotoxicity than un-doped TiO2 NTs, which confirms their superior biocompatibility. Under the near-visible light irradiation (∼405 nm) Fe-doped TiO2 NTs showed higher photo-cytotoxic efficiency than un-doped TiO2 NTs, which was found to be dependent on the NTs concentration, but not on the incubation time of cells after near-visible light irradiation. The highest activity was observed for 0.70 and 1.40 wt% Fe–TiO2 NTs. Fluorescent labeling of treated HeLa cells showed distinct morphological changes, particularly in the perimitochondrial area suggesting a mitochondria-involved apoptosis of cells, but also the nuclei and cytoskeleton were subject to Fe–TiO2 NTs induced photo-damage. Apoptosis of PDT treated HeLa cells was also confirmed using ethidium homodimer (EthD-1).


Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to identify the multiple types of data that can be collected and analyzed by practitioners across the cold chain, the ICT infrastructure required to enable data capture and how to utilize the data for decision making in cold chain logistics.

Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis based literature review of 38 selected research articles, published between 2000 and 2016, was used to create an overview of data capture, technologies used for collection and sharing of data, and decision making that can be supported by the data, across the cold chain and for different types of perishable food products.

Findings
There is a need to understand how continuous monitoring of conditions such as temperature, humidity, and vibration can be translated to support real-time assessment of quality, determination of actual remaining shelf life of products and use of those for decision making in cold chains. Firms across the cold chain need to adopt appropriate technologies suited to the specific contexts to capture data across the cold chain. Analysis of such data over longer periods can also unearth patterns of product deterioration under different transportation conditions, which can lead to redesigning the transportation network to minimize quality loss or to take precautions to avoid the adverse transportation conditions.

Research limitations/implications
The findings need to be validated through further empirical research and modeling. There are opportunities to identify all relevant parameters to capture product condition as well as transaction data across the cold chain processes for fish, meat and dairy products. Such data can then be used for supply chain (SC) planning and pricing products in the retail stores based on product conditions and traceability information. Addressing some of the above research gaps will call for multi-disciplinary research involving food science and engineering, information technologies, computer science and logistics and SC management scholars.

Practical implications
The findings of this research can be beneficial for multiple players involved in the cold chain like food processing companies, logistics service providers, ports and wholesalers and retailers to understand how data can be effectively used for better decision making in cold chain and to invest in the specific technologies, which will suit the purpose. To ensure adoption of data analytics across the cold chain, it is also important to identify the player in the cold chain, which will drive and coordinate the effort.

Originality/value
This paper is one of the earliest to recognize the need for a comprehensive assessment for adoption and application of data analytics in cold chain management and provides directions for future research.


Bet-Shlimon's article considers the question of how, in the urban arena of Kirkuk, oil acted as a catalyst for development projects in which political, economic, and ideological threads were inextricably intertwined. It contends that the presence of oil in Kirkuk created certain factors that shaped both the trajectory of urban development and its political implications. One of these factors was the presence of many foreign, especially British, workers and executives of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). The company's size also meant that a large number of the city's residents worked for this foreign-owned enterprise, leading to labor organization and interventions by the company in order to promote capitalist ideals. Second, the fact that the oil industry had greater access to resources and materials than the Kirkuk municipality allowed the IPC to spearhead housing, water, and other infrastructural projects. Finally, as the site where Iraq's oil wealth was produced, Kirkuk was of vital importance to the Iraqi and British governments, both of whom pressured the IPC to act in ways that would benefit their interests. Throughout these projects and the interactions that accompanied them, the IPC, British government, and Iraqi government operated on the assumption that urban development could counter the influence of communism and lead to the attainment of modernity.


The 2018 UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs (UN HLM) provided a crucial opportunity to mobilise political leadership and new resources and action to improve the lives of people affected by NCDs worldwide. This page collects key resources developed by NCDA in 2018 to support NCD advocates in their efforts relating to the third High-Level Meeting on NCDs. Elements within it provide an overview of the HLM, including the background for the meeting, and presents the NCD Alliance modality and campaign priorities to help mobilise the NCD community & guide advocacy at global, regional and national level for strong engagement and commitments at the UN HLM. For more information visit enoughncds.com


While vote-buying is common, little is known about how politicians determine who to target. We argue that vote-buying can be sustained by an internalized norm of reciprocity. Receiving money engenders feelings of obligation. Combining survey data on vote-buying with an experiment-based measure of reciprocity, we show that politicians target reciprocal individuals. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of social preferences in determining political behavior.


UPPAAL 4.0 is the result of over two and a half years of development and contains many new features, additions to the modeling language, performance improvements, enhancements and polish to the easy to use graphical user interface, and is accompanied by several open source libraries. The tool and libraries are available free of charge for academic, educational and evaluation purposes from http://www.uppaal.com/. We describe three of the new features: user defined functions, priorities and symmetry reduction


Summary The porosity and permeability structure of fractured reservoirs is highly heterogeneous, however typical subsurface data are unable to quantify this heterogeneity across scales of analysis that are most relevant for fluid flow. Comprehensive analysis of outcrop analogues can provide detailed, quantitative characterisation of the fracture network to produce robust ranges of values for input to discrete fracture network (DFN) or other fracture models. We compare fracture intensities measured from 3D X-Ray Computed Micro-Tomography with those calculated from scan lines measured along 1D tape measure transects in outcrop, and from multiple virtual scan lines in 3D point cloud data acquired from terrestrial laser scanning (lidar) and digital photogrammetry. Micro-tomography is also useful to help extend understanding of fracture intensities to analysis of fracture porosity.


Small businesses and venture capital are a natural pair. While many small businesses are born of technical expertise and innovation, few are well financed. One of the reasons for this lack of financing is that small concerns are often viewed as risky investments. Small businesses are rarely led by experienced business people and, as many statistics demonstrate, are more likely than not to fail. Unlike their under financed counterparts, venture capital companies ("VCCs") are well financed and what they lack in technical capability, they make up for in business acumen and financial wherewithal. Moreover, risky investments with large upsides are exactly the type of opportunities that can produce significant returns for venture capital funds In the commercial marketplace, many small businesses receive venture capital infusions to transform their ideas and research into viable products. This same principle should apply to federal procurement, where Government procurement policies favor small business contracting, but early stage research and development funding is difficult to come by. VCC investment would be utilized to fill the gap between Government policy and economic reality. This type of investment would increase the pool of potential small businesses for federal procurement and help to diversify the government's contractor portfolio. Overall, this would have a positive impact on competition, a fundamental tenet of government procurement. There are also technological benefits: with the assistance of venture capital investments, small companies would have the freedom to develop cutting-edge technologies that larger, more established corporations are either unwilling or unable to develop. The mutually beneficial relationship between small business contractors and VCCs has been frustrated due to a complicated web of government regulations that, while well intended, have the effect of holding back promising small businesses in the federal marketplace. In this harsh economic climate, venture capital is crucial to small, innovative businesses. Although VCCs have felt the impact of the recession, they remain well equipped to aid small concerns and their assistance is imperative. As a result, now is the time to advance a compromise position that protects small business programs while encouraging venture capital investment in federal contractors.


Sampling is a fundamental technique, and sampling without replacement is often desirable when duplicate samples are not beneficial. Within machine learning, sampling is useful for generating diverse outputs from a trained model. We present an elegant procedure for sampling without replacement from a broad class of randomized programs, including generative neural models that construct outputs sequentially. Our procedure is efficient even for exponentially-large output spaces. Unlike prior work, our approach is incremental, i.e., samples can be drawn one at a time, allowing for increased flexibility. We also present a new estimator for computing expectations from samples drawn without replacement. We show that incremental sampling without replacement is applicable to many domains, e.g., program synthesis and combinatorial optimization.


The Global Commonwealth of Citizens critically examines the prospects for cosmopolitan democracy as a viable and humane response to the challenges of globalization. Arising after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decisive affirmation of Western-style democracy, cosmopolitan democracy envisions a world politics in which democratic participation by citizens is not constrained by national borders, and where democracy spreads through dialogue and incentives, not coercion and war. This is an incisive and thought-provoking book by one of the world's leading proponents of cosmopolitan democracy.

Daniele Archibugi looks at all aspects of cosmopolitan democracy in theory and practice. Is democracy beyond nation-states feasible? Is it possible to inform global governance with democratic norms and values, and if so, how? Archibugi carefully answers questions like these and forcefully responds to skeptics and critics. He argues that democracy can be extended to the global political arena by strengthening and reforming existing international organizations and creating new ones, and he calls for dramatic changes in the foreign policies of nations to make them compatible with global public interests. Archibugi advocates giving voice to new global players such as social movements, cultural communities, and minorities. He proposes building institutional channels across borders to address common problems, and encourages democratic governance at the local, national, regional, and global levels.

The Global Commonwealth of Citizens is an accessible introduction to the subject that will be of interest to students and scholars in political science, international relations, international law, and human rights.


1. The short-term effect of oral feeding on albumin synthesis rate was investigated in 12 healthy volunteers using two meal regimens. Albumin synthesis was measured over 90 min after injection of a 'flooding' amount (43 mg/kg body weight) of phenylalanine enriched to 7.5, 10 or 15 atoms % with the stable isotope [ring-2H5]phenylalanine. 2. In one set of subjects, consumption of five small hourly meals resulted in a consistent and significant increase (P < 0.05) in albumin fractional synthesis rate from a mean (+/- SEM) fasting value of 5.8 (+/- 0.4)%/day to 7.1 (+/- 0.4)%/day in the fed state. 3. A second study in which albumin synthesis was measured 30 min after consumption of a single larger meal was carried out in another set of volunteers. The fractional rate of albumin synthesis was again significantly elevated after feeding (P < 0.05), rising from 7.1 (+/- 0.4)%/day in the fasted state to 9.1 (+/- 0.6)%/day in the fed state. In both studies, similar responses were observed in the absolute rate of albumin synthesis (mg day-1 kg-1). 4. Albumin secretion time was significantly shorter (P < 0.05) after feeding in both studies, suggesting that the acute stimulation in albumin synthesis observed after feeding may in part be mediated via a post-transcriptional mechanism. 5. The response of total liver protein synthesis to oral feeding was investigated in an animal model employing adult rats studied with a flooding amount of [2,6-3H]phenylalanine.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


The red algal genus Gloiophloea J. Agardh (Galaxauraceae, Nemaliales) includes multiaxial, dichotomously branched plants that are composed internally of a filamentous central axis, radiating dichotomously branched medullary filaments, and a loose cortex of spherical, pigmented cells.

An examination of the three species presently included has shown that only the type species, G. scinaioides J. Agardh, should be maintained. Gloiophloea articulata Weber-van Bosse from Cargados Carajos, near Mauritius, is known only from a single collection of sterile plants. It differs from G. scinaioides in lacking an apical pit, having periclinal medullary filaments which loosely fill the internal cavity rather than being restricted to a central axis, and producing a cortex composed of files of closely appressing cells, rather than a loose matrix. Gloiophloea articulata appears more closely allied to the family Gymnoploeaceae of the order Gigartinales, in particular the genus Nemastoma J. Agardh. Sexual material needs to be examined, however, before the species can be placed without doubt. Gloiophloea perrinae Levring from southern Australia was distinguished from G. scinaioides in having a firmer texture and in minor differences in its cortical composition and cystocarp shape. Variations in these characters occur within the type species, however, and are probably due to age and growing conditions. Gloiophloea perrinae is therefore reduced to synonymy with G. scinaioides. In culture, carpospores of G. scinaioides give rise to a filamentous tetrasporophyte which produces cruciate tetrasporangia. Tetraspores in turn produce a filamentous protonemal gametophyte which gives rise to the fleshy gametophyte directly. The life history of Gloiophloea is therefore identical to that of the closely related genus Scinaia Bivona-Bernardi.


In this paper we isolate a particular refinement of the notion of Nash equilibrium that is characterized by two properties: (i) it provides a unified framework for both backwards and forward induction; and (it) it is mechanically computable. We provide an effective procedure that allows players, given the extensive-form representation of a game, to compute a set of "reasonable paths" through the tree. The set of reasonable paths corresponds to the set of strategies that survive iterated elimination of (weakly) dominated strategies in the strategic form. We prove that whenever our procedure identifies a unique path, that path corresponds to a Nash equilibrium. Moreover, our procedure rules out all Nash equilibria that contain (weakly) dominated strategies. Further, our notion of "reasonable" paths leads to the backwards induction solution in the case of games of perfect information, and to forward induction in the case of games of imperfect information. We model the players' reasoning process by giving a theory (with which each player is supposed to be endowed), from which statements characterizing the players' behavior are deducible. Such a theory is not yet complete, in that it cannot handle true (irrational) deviations. We point at directions for future work by showing how such a theory can be made complete provided we reinterpret some of its axioms as defeasible inference rules.


Submarine lobe-fringe deposits form heterolithic successions that may include a high proportion of hybrid beds. The identification of lobe-fringe successions aids interpretation of paleogeographic setting and the degree of basin confinement. Here, for the first time, the sedimentological and architectural differences between frontal and lateral lobe-fringe deposits are investigated. Extensive outcrop and core data from Fan 4, Skoorsteenberg Formation, Karoo Basin, South Africa, allow the rates and style of facies changes from axis to fringe settings of lobes and lobe complexes in both down-dip (frontal) and across-strike (lateral) directions to be tightly constrained over an 800 km2 study area. Fan 4 comprises three sand-prone divisions that form compensationally stacked lobe complexes, separated by thick packages of thin-bedded siltstone and sandstone intercalated with (muddy) siltstone, interpreted as the fringes of lobe complexes. Lobe-fringe facies associations comprise: i) thick-bedded structureless or planar-laminated sandstones that pinch and swell, and are associated with underlying debrites; ii) argillaceous and mudclast-rich hybrid beds; and iii) current-ripple-laminated sandstones and siltstones. Typically, frontal fringes contain high proportions of hybrid beds and transition from thick-bedded sandstones over length scales of 1 to 2 km. In contrast, lateral fringe deposits tend to comprise current-ripple-laminated sandstones that transition to thick-bedded sandstones in the lobe axis over several kilometers. Variability of primary flow processes are interpreted to control the documented differences in facies association. Preferential deposition of hybrid beds in frontal fringe positions is related to the dominantly downstream momentum of the high-density core of the flow. In contrast, the ripple-laminated thin beds in lateral fringe positions are interpreted to be deposited by more dilute low-density (parts of the) flows. The development of recognition criteria to distinguish between frontal and lateral lobe-fringe successions is critical to improving paleogeographic reconstructions of submarine fans at outcrop and in the subsurface, and will help to reduce uncertainty during hydrocarbon field appraisal and development


As a leading mobilizer of international development and educational knowledge, the World Bank has been critiqued in two key areas: (1) the dominance of economic thinking in its policies, and (2) its Northern-generated knowledge which informs its work in the Global South. In this paper, we investigate the disciplinary foundation of Bank knowledge, as well as its geographic representation. This study pays particular attention to knowledge mobilization relating to one of the most contentious policy prescriptions worldwide, and one that the Bank has historically supported: private sector engagement in education. By employing the concepts of economic imperialism and policy networks to frame our study, and through the use of a bibliometric methodological approach, we trace the authorship patterns of publications cited in a series of key World Bank documents on private sector engagement in education. Our findings show that the World Bank mobilizes research production from the Global North, which reflects a disproportionate economic disciplinary focus. Moreover, through a mapping of the cited authors, this network is shown to be highly narrow and privileges authors from a small subset of elite institutions.


Technical Abstract: Transposable element (TE)-mediated transformation of non-drosophilid insects is becoming a viable and robust gene introduction method for many insects of economic and medical importance (Handler 2002). Transformation may be used for gene identification and characterization, and for creating strains with genes encoding lethality or sterility. The New World Screwworm (NWS), Cochliomyia hominivorax (Coquerel), was once a devastating, repulsive, and costly pest of livestock and other warm-blooded creatures (including humans) in the United States and Mexico. It has been susccessfully eradicated from the entire North American continent. The eradication program was the first implementation of the sterile insect technique (SIT). The annual estimated savings benefit to livestock producers in the U.S. and Mexico exceeds $750 million (Wyss 2000). This insect is prevented from reinfesting North America by the ongoing release of sterile, irradiated adult flies at the barrier zone in Panama. Sterile flies for release are produced in a highly secure mass-rearing production facility in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico. Transformation technology now has been adapted for and applied to the NWS. Using a piggyBac TE system, a green fluorescent marker gene has been introduced to the germ line of a laboratory strain (P95) of screwworms, resulting in several transgenic lines of uniquely marked strains. The genetics and characterization of these new transgenic lines will be presented, along with discussion of the utilization of transgenic insects in the NWS SIT Program.


A new species of parasitic copepod Anchistrotos tangi sp. n. (Cyclopoida: Taeniacanthidae) is described based on adult female specimens collected from the gills of hilsa shad, Tenualosa ilisha (Hamilton, 1822) (Actinopterygii: Clupeidae) captured off Iraq. The new species differs from its congeners by having the following combination of characters in the adult female: 1) the rostral area sclerotised; 2) the presence of row of spinules on the proximal and distal margins of the anal somite; 3) the maxilliped claw with 2 long whip-like setae just crossing the distal edge of claw with serrated terminal margin; and 4) the leg 5 ornamented with patched spinules distally. This is the ninth nominal species of Anchistrotos Brian, 1906.


The primary question we seek to address in this paper is does monetary or price stability contribute to asset price stability. The literature in this regard, although rich and growing, is not yet settled with there being still no clear consensus on how one affects the other. Given the evidence of a stabilizing monetary policy and stable headline prices in the post-reform period since the mid -1990s, we argue that Indian economy is a fit case-study to examine such a nexus. Accordingly, we study the impact of money and price variability on asset prices volatility in India. We use data on BSE Sensex to proxy for asset prices and include variability of money supply and wholesale prices as explanatory variables for the volatility of the former. Using monthly data from 1980:04 to 2003:03, and employing alternative methodologies such as GARCH, MA, EWMA to estimate asset prices volatility, we test the hypothesis whether money and price variability have any bearing on asset prices volatility during the sample period as well as during the post-liberalization period alone. We obtain evidence in favour of a nexus between the two phenomena. JEL Classification: E 44 ; G28 ; G21


Two clinical trials and a large set of in vitro transporter experiments were performed to investigate if the hepatobiliary disposition of the direct thrombin inhibitor prodrug AZD0837 is the mechanism for the drug-drug interaction with ketoconazole observed in a previous clinical study. In Study 1, [(3)H]AZD0837 was administered to healthy male volunteers (n = 8) to quantify and identify the metabolites excreted in bile. Bile was sampled directly from the jejunum by duodenal aspiration via an oro-enteric tube. In Study 2, the effect of ketoconazole on the plasma and bile pharmacokinetics of AZD0837, the intermediate metabolite (AR-H069927), and the active form (AR-H067637) was investigated (n = 17). Co-administration with ketoconazole elevated the plasma exposure to AZD0837 and the active form approximately 2-fold compared to placebo, which may be explained by inhibited CYP3A4 metabolism and reduced biliary clearance, respectively. High concentrations of the active form was measured in bile with a bile-to-plasma AUC ratio of approximately 75, indicating involvement of transporter-mediated excretion of the compound. AZD0837 and its metabolites were further investigated as substrates of hepatic uptake and efflux transporters in vitro. Studies in MDCK-MDR1 cell monolayers and P-glycoprotein (P-gp) expressing membrane vesicles identified AZD0837, the intermediate, and the active form as substrates of P-gp. The active form was also identified as a substrate of the multidrug and toxin extrusion 1 (MATE1) transporter and the organic cation transporter 1 (OCT1), in HEK cells transfected with the respective transporter. Ketoconazole was shown to inhibit all of these three transporters; in particular, inhibition of P-gp and MATE1 occurred in a clinically relevant concentration range. In conclusion, the hepatobiliary transport pathways of AZD0837 and its metabolites were identified in vitro and in vivo. Inhibition of the canalicular transporters P-gp and MATE1 may lead to enhanced plasma exposure to the active form, which could, at least in part, explain the clinical interaction with ketoconazole.


Workstation clusters have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional parallel supercomputers for many workloads requiring high performance computing. The use of parallel computing for scientific simulations has increased tremendously in the last ten years, and parallel implementations of scientific simulation codes are now in widespread use. There are two dominant parallel hardware/software architectures in use today: distributed memory, and shared memory. Systems implementing shared memory provide cooperating processes with a shared memory address space that can be accessed by all processors. In shared memory systems, parallel processing occurs through the use of shared data structures, or through emulation of message passing semantics in software. Distributed memory systems are composed of a number of interconnected computational nodes, which do not share memory, but can communicate with each other through a high-performance network of some kind. Parallelism is achieved on distributed memory systems with multiple copies of the parallel program running on different nodes, sending messages to each other to coordinate computations. The messages used in a distributed memory parallel program typically contain application data, synchronization information, and other data that controls the execution of the parallel program.


By definition, Open Source Hardware (OSH) is "hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design". The advantages of OSH are multiple and the movement has been growing exponentially over the last couple years, leading to the spread and evolution of 3D printing technologies, the creation of affordable and easy to use micro-controller boards (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.), as well as a plurality of other "hands-on"/DIY projects. As we have seen over the past few years with 3D printing, where the number of projects benefiting clinical practice as grown significantly, the highly educated and technology savvy Medical Physics community is positioned to take advantage of and benefit from paradigm-shifting movements. Sharing of knowledge, know-how, and technology can be a key factor in furthering the impact medical physicists can have. Whether it is to develop phantoms, applicators, detector holders or devices based on the use of motors and sensors, sharing design files significantly enables further development. Because these designs would be massively peer-reviewed through their online publication, improvements would be made, and the creators of the design would be rewarded with an increase number of citation of their work. A curated database of software and hardware projects can be an invaluable to the field, but a critical mass of contributors is likely needed to guarantee the most impact. This symposium will discuss the benefits and hurdles for such an endeavor.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Learn how an open source hardware architecture functions including intellectual property rights; 2. Learn how open source hardware projects can impact the medical physics field and be introduced to successful applied examples; 3. Learn about projects currently being undertaken by researchers in the field that promise to provide a platform for collaborative sharing of open source hardware in medical physics.


Although norms regulating the income of political parties have existed in Estonia for years, the first step to limit the expenses of electoral campaigns was made in 2005 when a law that prohibited political outdoor advertising during the active campaign period and provided for the liability of violating the prohibition was adopted. Soon after the adoption, the new norms received strong criticism from different sectors of society (scientists, politicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs etc) and brought about several problems, including cases that consciously tested the boundaries of the prohibition. Still the Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of the prohibition of political outdoor advertising. The article is based on the hypothesis that the prohibition may not "work" in practice in Estonia – the aims of the legislator may be unachievable. More concretely, J.G. Backhaus's evaluative and normative analyses are used in order to show why the prohibition did not and will not work in practice.


Research reported here was designed (a) to study diurnal variation in dry matter yield and nonstructural carbohydrate percentages in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) and (b) to compare overnight dry matter and carbohydrate changes in alfalfa cut and left in the field with the changes in standing alfalfa. First- and second-growth alfalfa were harvested at 7 AM and 7 PM over three 3-day periods. Each evening, additional alfalfa samples were cut and left overnight in the field so that overnight dry matter and carbohydrate changes in cut and uncut alfalfa could be compared. Dry matter yields were measured, and freeze-dried, ground samples were analyzed for carbohydrates. Sucrose and reducing sugars were extracted with ethanol. Starch in the remaining residue was hydrolyzed with amy-loglucosidase. The carbohydrates in the extracts were quantitatively assayed using ferricyanide, resorcinol, and phenol-sulfuric acid procedures. Dry matter yields, as well as starch and sucrose concentrations, were significantly higher in the evening than the following morning. Glucose and fructose percentages did not chauge from evening to morning. Through the day, dry matter increased by 5 to 12%, but half or more of this increase disappeared during the night. Standing alfalfa lost 5.5% of its dry matter overnight, while cut forage lost 7.2% overnight in May and 11.0% in July. Dry matter losses in the cut forage were closely related to night temperature, with greatest losses occurring on warmest nights. Cut forage, however, retained higher starch, sucrose, and fructose concentrations through the night than the standing crop. Seventy percent of the night loss of dry matter in standing alfalfa was nonstructural carbohydrate, but only 20% of the loss in cut material was carbohydrate.


Abstract: Six specimens of concrete frame columns reinforced by post-build wing walls on the opposite faces were designed and fabricated to investigate their seismic performance. Axial compression ratio was considered as the critical factor and divided into 0.31, 0.36, and 0.40 before reinforcement. HRB400 steel grade was used to the longitudinal bar and the ratio of longitudinal reinforcement divided into 1.23%, 1.05% and 0.82%, stirrup reinforcement ratio was 0.6%, and the stirrups were made by HPB300 steel grade. To meet with requirement of 'strong shear, weak bending', the ratio of the shear span to effective depth of columns was equal to 2.4. All specimens were subjected into cyclic reversing load. The testing results showed that wing walls reinforced significantly increased the seismic bearing capacity of the specimens and the wing walls damaged seriously, but the columns were not. The limited drift was ranged from 0.021 to 0.033. The post-build wing walls under horizontal motion may dissipate energy effectively while ensuring that the existing columns without obvious damage under vertical loads and earthquake strong motion.


We investigated the inventory of presolar silicate, oxide, and silicon carbide (SiC) grains of fine‐grained chondrule rims in six Mighei‐type (CM) carbonaceous chondrites (Banten, Jbilet Winselwan, Maribo, Murchison, Murray and Yamato 791198), and the CM‐related carbonaceous chondrite Sutter's Mill. Sixteen O‐anomalous grains (nine silicates, six oxides) were detected, corresponding to a combined matrix‐normalized abundance of ~18 ppm, together with 21 presolar SiC grains (~42 ppm). Twelve of the O‐rich grains are enriched in 17O, and could originate from low‐mass asymptotic giant branch stars. One grain is enriched in 17O and significantly depleted in 18O, indicative of additional cool bottom processing or hot bottom burning in its stellar parent, and three grains are of likely core‐collapse supernova origin showing enhanced 18O/16O ratios relative to the solar system ratio. We find a presolar silicate/oxide ratio of 1.5, significantly lower than the ratios typically observed for chondritic meteorites. This may indicate a higher degree of aqueous alteration in the studied meteorites, or hint at a heterogeneous distribution of presolar silicates and oxides in the solar nebula. Nevertheless, the low O‐anomalous grain abundance is consistent with aqueous alteration occurring in the protosolar nebula and/or on the respective parent bodies. Six O‐rich presolar grains were studied by Auger Electron Spectroscopy, revealing two Fe‐rich silicates, one forsterite‐like Mg‐rich silicate, two Al‐oxides with spinel‐like compositions, and one Fe‐(Mg‐)oxide. Scanning electron and transmission electron microscopic investigation of a relatively large silicate grain (490 nm × 735 nm) revealed that it was crystalline åkermanite (Ca2Mg[Si2O7]) or a an åkermanite‐diopside (MgCaSi2O6) intergrowth.


Title of Dissertation: HOUSEHOLD ENERGY USE, INDOOR AIR POLLUTION, AND HEALTH IMPACTS IN INIDA: A WELFARE ANALYSIS Yabei Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Dissertation directed by: Professor Richard Just Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics This dissertation develops a unified analytical framework to understand the relationships among household energy use, indoor air pollution (IAP), and health impacts and enables policy-makers to analyze welfare effects of various interventions. This unified analytical framework includes four interlinked modules. Module 1 studies the determinants of IAP and constructs an IAP index to predict typical IAP exposure. Module 2 analyzes the impacts of IAP exposure on health, including both selfreported respiratory symptoms and physician-measured spirometry indicators. Module 3 uses a novel approach to model household behavior regarding energy technology choices based on utility maximizing behavior. Households are assumed to choose a cooking energy technology based on its attributes: cooking cost, convenience, and cleanliness. Household valuation of these attributes depends on household characteristics. Then based on the household utility function estimated from Module 3, Module 4 evaluates welfare change from various policy interventions. Empirical estimation relies primarily on two surveys recently conducted in India: a social science and environmental health survey entitled Health, Environment, and Economic Development and a multi-topic national representative sample survey called the India Human Development Survey. The two surveys were fielded between late 2004 and early 2005 and contain uniquely rich information on household energy use, indoor air pollution levels, and health indicators. This dissertation provides quantitative evidence that IAP has significant health impacts comparable to smoking. Based on analysis of IAP impacts on spirometry indicators, the evidence suggests that IAP has major impacts on restrictive lung disease rather than obstructive lung disease. These results explain why certain diseases are more highly associated with IAP exposure. Considering that traditional biomass will likely continue to be the most popular cooking fuel in rural areas of India in the near future, and that households can achieve considerable welfare gains from improvement in stoves and kitchen ventilation, the analysis suggests that the Indian government should consider reviving the improved stove program with a new advanced stove strategy coupled with conducting advocacy campaigns on how to improve kitchen ventilation. The analysis suggests small overall welfare effects of the pending phasing out of LPG subsidies. HOUSEHOLD ENERGY USE, INDOOR AIR POLLUTION, AND HEALTH IMPACTS IN INIDA: A WELFARE ANALYSIS


Drawing on a design perspective, the research explores the application
of tangible interaction in museums and cultural heritage sites. Tangible
interaction is today a quite consolidated research area inside HCI
(Human-Computer Interaction) and Interaction Design. It refers to a
new way of interacting with computer systems that is more similar to
the way one commonly interacts with the real world: instead of using
generic devices like the mouse or the keyboard, one interacts using
specific objects or the body. In this way, tangible interaction is able to
bridge the gap between the world of atoms and the world of bits (Ishii
et al., 1997).
Since the early 2000s, tangible interaction has also been applied to the
cultural heritage field for the creation of onsite interactive installations
that better integrate digital technologies, the materiality of the objects
and the physicality of the experience during the visit.
So far, research in the field of tangible interaction applied to cultural
heritage has mainly focused on developing new systems and
evaluating them while a move towards more theoretical and conceptual
works is still missing. As a consequence, there is not a common
language in the field, there is not a deep understanding of what has
been done and what is missing, and there is not a formalization of the
aspects that make up the design of tangible interaction systems in the
cultural heritage field. This situation might generate issues such as
ambiguity and misunderstanding between the different professionals
involved in projects, it might slow down innovation in the field, and
last but not least, it might make the design process slower, less efficient
and effective.
This research represents a first attempt to overcome at least partially
these problems by replying to three main questions that are:
1. How has tangible interaction been applied to onsite interactive
installations in the cultural sector?
2. What kind of experiences of cultural heritage does tangible
interaction allow?
3. What are the aspects that make up the design of a tangible
interaction system?
In order to answer these questions a theoretical framework for tangible
interaction in museums and cultural heritage sites is proposed,
similarly to what has been done in the past for other types of
technologies (e.g. Spallazzo, 2012). The framework developed as part of this research can be intended as both a conceptual framework and the
theoretical foundations of a design framework. Indeed, not only it
shows what tangible interaction is by providing a categorization of past
tangible interaction systems, but it also identifies a set of aspects that
make up the design of such interactive systems. These aspects represent
themes around which choices have to be made during the process of
design, and the knowledge of which can facilitate or inspire the design
process itself.
The framework has been developed starting from the collection and
analysis of more than 60 tangible interaction projects. In particular, the
projects have been analysed using a thematic analysis, combining an
inductive (bottom-up) and deductive (top-down) approach in order to
identify themes and subthemes (categories and subcategories). In order
to discuss and develop further reflections about the framework being
proposed, the research goes on presenting a reconstruction and analysis
of a practical case study, the interactive exhibition "Voices from Forte
Pozzacchio" developed as part of the EU funded "meSch" research
project.
The proposed framework can be beneficial for researchers as it
provides a language and a conceptual model that can help them to
reflect and discuss about the topic, to orient future research, to
cooperate with other researchers. It can also be used to provide
different practitioners (e.g. designers, developers and cultural heritage
professionals) with a shared view of what tangible interaction is, that
can help reduce misunderstandings and can facilitate collaboration
between them. In addition, the framework lays the theoretical
foundations for a design framework, addressed to designers or design
teams, that aims to provide them with a greater awareness of important
aspects to consider during the design process, potentially making it
more effective and efficient.


Purpose The teaching of cooking is an important aspect of school-based efforts to promote healthy diets among children, and is frequently done by external agencies. Within a limited evidence base relating to cooking interventions in schools, there are important questions about how interventions are integrated within school settings. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a mobile classroom (Cooking Bus) sought to strengthen connections between schools and cooking, and drawing on the concept of the sociotechnical network, theorise the interactions between the Bus and school contexts. Design/methodology/approach Methods comprised a postal questionnaire to 76 schools which had received a Bus visit, and case studies of the Bus' work in five schools, including a range of school sizes and urban/rural locations. Case studies comprised observation of Cooking Bus sessions, and interviews with school staff. Findings The Cooking Bus forged connections with schools through aligning intervention and schools' goals, focussing on pupils' cooking skills, training teachers and contributing to schools' existing cooking-related activities. The Bus expanded its sociotechnical network through post-visit integration of cooking activities within schools, particularly teachers' use of intervention cooking kits. Research limitations/implications The paper highlights the need for research on the long-term impacts of school cooking interventions, and better understanding of the interaction between interventions and school contexts. Originality/value This paper adds to the limited evidence base on school-based cooking interventions by theorising how cooking interventions relate to school settings, and how they may achieve integration.


Many recent papers have studied movements in stock, bond, and currency prices over short windows of time around macro announcements. This paper adds to the announcement effects literature in two ways. First, we study the joint announcement effects across a broad range of assets--exchange rates and U.S. and foreign term structures. In order to evaluate whether the joint effects can be reconciled with conventional theory, we interpret the joint movements in light of uncovered interest rate parity or changes in risk premia. For several real macro announcements, we find that a stronger than expected release appreciates the dollar today, but that it must either (i) lower the relative risk premium for holding foreign currency rather than dollars, or (ii) imply considerable future expected dollar depreciation. The latter implies an overshooting behavior akin to that described by Dornbusch (1976). Second, we use a longer span of high frequency data than has been common in announcement work. A longer span of high frequency data contributes to the precision of our estimates and allows us to explore the possibility that the effects of macro surprises on asset prices have varied over time. We find evidence, for example, that PPI releases had a larger effect on U.S. interest rates before about 1992 than subsequently.


Nowadays electronic government starts dominating in all world countries. Some states are more experienced, while others have just started implementing it. Nevertheless, regardless of which models the country had reached, all of them should make the progress. It is important to try to overlook and analyze in essence the e-government services maturity and "E-Diamond" models at the public administration level, that are used in various countries. Having studied the peculiarities of stage models of electronic government services and having carried out their comparative analysis, the work shows the main similarities and differences of the models. Implementation of electronic government services in stage models is grounded on the complexity of service integration—a deeper integration of electronic government services is possible only having stepped through the lower integration stage. Swedish scientists A. Persson and G. Goldkuhl consider this policy of stage integration of services to be a disadvantage and they developed a contrapositional model "E-Diamond" which provides conditions to set free the stages and let them operate individually, not dependent on each other. Stages' models have different requirements for self-identification in information systems. "ANAO," "SAFAD," "Hiller&Belanger" stages' models require self-identification passing from the second to the third levels, while in stages' models "Lee&Layne" and "Recreation of Public Sector Processes" requirements for self-identification appear in the second stages of providing electronic government services. Having carried out comparative analysis of all models of electronic government services six key features of the model are distinguished, such as possible levels of implementation, attributes of different levels, targeting the customer, targeting the inside processes, possibility to evaluate services, technological background. However, out of six features the main ones are considered to be the feature of targeting at the inside organizational processes of self-government and the feature of targeting at the customer. The implementation of the above mentioned features is identified in the models of "Stages" and "E-Diamond." Both of them are quite equally targeted at restructuring inside processes and meeting the needs of customers. Assessing the models of "Stages" and "E-Diamond" according to this rather neutral targeting, they can be applied in economically developing as well as highly developed countries, thus can be considered to be universal. All in all, despite which model is used, there are lots of areas, where governments should improve their actions. They should look ahead, if they want to do their best at e-government policy.


Although differentiated relationships among leaders and their followers are fundamental to Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theory, research provides limited knowledge about whether employees' responses to individual perceptions of LMX differentiation are uniform. In a field study, we examined whether individual-level psychological empowerment buffers the negative relationship between perceived LMX differentiation and job satisfaction and found that the negative relationship is strongest under low employee psychological empowerment conditions, as compared to high psychological empowerment. Furthermore, in a multi-wave field study and an experiment, we extended these initial findings by investigating employees' perceptions of supervisory fairness as a mediator of this moderated relationship. We found that the indirect effect between perceived LMX differentiation and job satisfaction, through supervisory fairness perceptions, is strongest under low employee psychological empowerment, as compared to high psychological empowerment. Collectively, our findings showcase the importance of psychological empowerment as a tool for employees to use to counteract the negative effect of perceived differentiated contexts. Practitioner points: When employees perceive that their managers have differentiated relationships across workgroup employees, employees tend to be less satisfied in their jobs, and this negative relationship is explained through employees' perceptions of supervisory fairness. Employees with low psychological empowerment levels (e.g., employees who feel less in control of their work) report lower levels of job satisfaction when they perceive that their managers differentiate among employees. However, employees with high levels of psychological empowerment are more resilient in contexts where managers are perceived to differentiate across workgroup employees. The findings reinforce the necessity for managers and organizations to implement and promote empowerment initiatives.


Dissolving pulp was depolymerized with 2.5M HCl into cellulose fractions with decreasing molecular weight relative to acid treatment time. The cellulose fractions were dissolved at various concentrations in the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EmimAc) with co-solvent DMSO at ratio 1 : 1 (w/w) and electrospun. Size exclusion chromatography was used to evaluate the molecular weight distributions and the rheological properties were characterized with a cone-and-plate rheometer. Scanning electron microscope was used to evaluate the fiber morphology, and thereby spinnability. Zero shear viscosity as a function of cellulose concentration show that all the solutions in this study are in the entangled semi-dilute regime; where the polymer concentration is large enough for significant overlap necessary for chain entanglement. However, within the intervals studied, neither cellulose concentration nor molecular weight seems to be decisive for if a solution can be electrospun into fibers or not. It is rather the viscosity of the solution that is decisive for electrospinnability, even though the solution is in the entangled semi-dilute regime.


Ultrasound assisted extraction process (UE) was employed to extract the betalain from Malabar spinach fruit using response surface methodology (RSM). Extraction process variables such as temperature, mass of the sample, extraction time was investigated using Box-Behnken design (BBD). Quadratic polynomial model was developed. Numerical optimization shows that sample mass of 9 g, temperature of 35°C and extraction time of 18 min, were yield maximum betalain. Under these conditions, 18 mg of betalain was extracted.


There is growing interest in the ways in which, and the values according to which, economic activity is undertaken. For instance, mutual ownership has been identified as one means of helping to 'redeem' capitalism. This article engages with such issues by examining aspects of the behaviour of consumer cooperative societies in Scotland from the 1870s to the 1960s. It starts by discussing whether cooperatives represent a means of conceptualizing and undertaking economic activity that provides an alternative to the paradigm of investor‐led (neo)liberal capitalism. From this, and an outline history of consumer cooperatives in Scotland, it identifies two variables - dividend on purchases and funds for education - as proxies for the values underpinning cooperatives' economic behaviour. Analysis of these variables indicates the existence of distinct cultures of cooperation, notably in the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas. The article concludes by offering two 'lessons from history' for those interested in alternative economic networks. The first is that cooperation can, and has, conceptualized and sustained an alternative to the dominant (neo)liberal economic paradigm. The second is that the scaling‐up of such voluntaristic economic thought and behaviour is unlikely to present a macro‐level challenge to it.


The interferon-inducible transmembrane proteins (IFITMs) are a family of small transmembrane proteins belonging to the interferon (IFN)-stimulated gene (ISG) superfamily and strongly induced by IFNs. In this paper, we studied the expression profile of IFITMs in 32 organ tissues. The IFITM mRNA expression profile showed that IFITM1, IFITM2 and IFITM3 were expressed in each tissue, especially, in spermatophore, spermaduct, testicle and epididymis. The expression of IFITM1, IFITM2 and IFITM3 showed a trend from high to low. Except for IFITM3 and IFITM6, the others IFITMs were highly expressed in the bone marrow, and the expression level of them was higher in the tibia than that in other parts of the long bones. In liver, the relative expression of IFITM1 and IFITM3 was higher than that of other members. The expression level of IFITM5 was the highest in bone marrow, successively in pancreas, and it was low in skin, smooth muscle and fat. Interestingly, the expression profile of IFITM2 and IFITM7 in tissues was similar to IFITM5. The expression of IFITM2, IFITM5 and IFITM10 were higher in smooth muscle than that in skeletal muscle. IFITM2, IFITM5, IFITM7 and IFITM10 were both highly expressed in esophagus and trachea. In addition, the expression of IFITM6 in eyes was high, and also in pancreas, gallbladder and bone. In the present study, we systematically analyzed the mRNA expression profile of IFITMs in 32 organ tissues, providing the foundation for the study of the function of the IFITMs.


We investigate two-way causality between health and the hourly wage by employing insights from the human capital and compensating wage differential models, a panel formed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and dynamic panel estimation methods in this investigation. We uncover a causal relationship between two of five measures of health and the wage in which a reduction in health leads to an increase in the wage rate in a panel of U.S. young adults who had completed their formal schooling by 2006 and were continuously employed from that year through 2011. There is no evidence of a causal relationship running from the wage rate to health in this panel. The former result highlights the multidimensional nature of health. It is consistent with an extension of the compensating wage differential model in which a large amount of effort in one period is required to obtain promotions and the wage increases that accompany them in subsequent periods. That effort may cause reductions in health and result in a negative effect of health in the previous period on the current period wage. The finding also is consistent with a model in which investments in career advancement compete with investments in health for time- the ultimate scarce resource. The lack of a causal effect of the wage on health may suggest that forces that go in opposite directions in the human capital and compensating wage differential models offset each other.


Reinforcement learning can train policies that effectively perform complex tasks. However for long-horizon tasks, the performance of these methods degrades with horizon, often necessitating reasoning over and chaining lower-level skills. Hierarchical reinforcement learning aims to enable this by providing a bank of low-level skills as action abstractions. Hierarchies can further improve on this by abstracting the space states as well. We posit that a suitable state abstraction should depend on the capabilities of the available lower-level policies. We propose Value Function Spaces: a simple approach that produces such a representation by using the value functions corresponding to each lower-level skill. These value functions capture the affordances of the scene, thus forming a representation that compactly abstracts task relevant information and robustly ignores distractors. Empirical evaluations for maze-solving and robotic manipulation tasks demonstrate that our approach improves long-horizon performance and enables better zero-shot generalization than alternative model-free and model-based methods.


In the early 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy/Defense Programs (DOE/DP) initiated a project to develop a safe and efficient transportation system for defense high-level waste (DHLW). Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) provides technical oversight and test support and General Atomics provides the design and safety analysis of the shipping system. The specific activities include designing, testing, certifying and fabricating a legal-weight truck cask system for DHLW canisters that are expected to be first produced by the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) at the Savannah River Plant (SRP) in South Carolina and later produced by facilities in Washington and Idaho. A truck cask was selected in order to provide a flexible capability for transporting vitrified waste to support a variety of expected experimental program needs. The first planned shipping campaign was to transport a limited number of DHLW canisters from South Carolina to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. However, changes in experimental program plans, the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in late 1982, and the subsequent decision to have DHLW permanently placed in the eventual civilian repository resulted in revisions to the mission of the cask development program funded by DOE/DP. Given the deferral in the startup of the civilian repository and the potential for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) to develop higher capacity rail casks for DHLW shipments, the truck cask development project is currently focused on the more limited shipment needs of the 1990s. These include having the capability to be able to transport DWPF canisters for experimental and examination program needs as they arise and to potentially assist in the early decommissioning of the Nuclear Fuel Services Reprocessing plant in West Valley, New York.


Nuclear pairing gaps of normally deformed and superdeformed nuclei are investigated using the particle-number-conserving (PNC) formalism for the cranked shell model, in which the blocking effects are treated exactly. Both rotational frequency omega dependence and seniority (number of unpaired particles) nu dependence of the pairing gap (Delta) over tilde are investigated. For the ground-state bands of even-even nuclei, PNC calculations show that, in general, (Delta) over tilde decreases with increasing omega, but the omega dependence is much weaker than that calculated by the number-projected Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov approach. For the multiquasiparticle bands (seniority nu > 2), the pairing gaps stay almost omega independent. As a function of the seniority nu, the bandhead pairing gaps (Delta) over tilde(nu, omega = 0) decrease slowly with increasing nu. Even for the highest seniority nu bands identified so far, (Delta) over tilde(nu, omega = 0) remains greater than 70% of (Delta) over tilde(nu = 0, omega = 0).


Foliar applications of α-naphthaleneacetic acid, together with 6-benzyladenine, prevent the seed-induced degeneration (monocarpic senescence) in soybeans. In addition to halting leaf yellowing and shedding, this treatment prevents the loss of starch and nitrogen that occurs during senescence of these leaves. Although nitrogen and starch are normally redistributed to support pod growth, pod development is not impaired by this treatment, apparently because photosynthesis and nitrogen assimilation continue.


This book deals with a particular noteworthy vowel sound found in Welsh usually transcribed phonetically as [ɨ] and orthographically as or as (a sound not equivalent to the identically transcribed phonetic vowel [ɨ] of Russian). The distribution of [ɨ], both geographically and historically as well as within various dialects is discussed and purported relict survivals of the sound in southern Welsh dialects are examined. A broader comprehensive look at the vowel systems of Welsh is necessitated to understand its structural context before addressing its phonetic characteristics. Further comparison to similar sounds in other languages conclude with the proposal of a number of additional phonetic categories and symbols for the International Phonetic Alphabet in regard to the high vowel space area. Finally the discussion of the historical development of [ɨ] alongside the other high vowels from 400 AD to the present-day is undertaken with a novel conclusion as to its genesis – a much later genesis than that hitherto proposed. Apart from featuring original analysis, the work assembles disparate information dispersed between separate subdisciplines of dialectology, phonetics, language typology and language history, as well as data from a wide assortment of relevant dialects and languages, to give a stimulating and a wide-ranging treatment to this rather singular vowel.


This article performs a word history on correspondentia , a neo-Latin construction by Thomas Aquinas in Scholastic thought attempting to interpret Aristotle on the perception of truth, and then tracks succeeding circles of the neologism's utility. The new term " correspondentia " performs a crucial role in shaping correspondence theory in early modern hermetic thought and again in modern neo-Cartesian thought. A thread of shared discourse demonstrates an interconnected journey for the neologism from Aquinas through these contiguous conversations all the way to Swedenborg's sophisticated esoteric "science of correspondences." Typical of figures in Western esoteric and New Religious Movements, Swedenborg makes claims of ahistorical and direct apprehension of theosophical information regarding unseen realms, providing a useful case study for contextual analysis of how cultural transmission and interdiscursivity shape transcendental traditions. Swedenborg claims an ahistorical reception of his "science of correspondences" in his eight-volume masterwork Arcana Coelestia (1749–1756), where he lays out his first and most exhaustively demonstrated declarations of correspondences as the key to sacred scripture and to a vast bank of information on unseen realms. Analysis of primary sources and his environment of thought, however, betrays the Swedish polymath as deeply embedded in kabbalist, hermetic, and neo-Cartesian discourse for his impressive development of correspondence theory.


Knowledge of farm animal genomes has increased enormously over the last decade. A large part if this information is publicly available for a variety of species and through specific databases such as for pigs; PiGBASE for mapping data, Pig EST Database, TIGR SsGI for genes and data on their expression patterns and the INRA Comparative and Cytogenetic mapping home pages. Potentially these databases provide comprehensive public repositories for genome research. However, these data are difficult to combine from the different sources or with private data, but also with genome data of model organisms. This strongly hinders comparative mapping and positional fine-mapping. A new pig genome database - PACE was set up in the Netherlands to enable integration of data from the different sources. For this, the widespread database system of AceDB has been adapted and links with existing farm animal databases but also databases like LocusLink, Genbank, MGI, GeneCards are included to facilitate an efficient comparative mapping with human and mouse. In addition published information on porcine QTL has been included. This database with more than 5000 genetic markers and loci


A new digital distance relaying algorithm based on the well-known theory of least-squares is developed, and the results of testing it using numerical simulation are presented. The new technique estimates the distance to the fault and the fault resistance. To minimize the computational requirements of the digital relay, a recursive least-squares approach is used. Computer simulation results of the new least-squares algorithm seem promising, indicating that it should be considered for further testing and evaluation.


Heat-treating is a secondary process that uses heating and rapid cooling to develop a martensitic microstructure. While heat treatment is utilized to achieve higher mechanical properties and improve overall part performance, the addition of secondary operations such as quenching increase overall fabrication costs compared to single operation sintering. Sinter hardening is an operation that combines both conventional sintering and secondary heat treatment into a single process by using accelerated cooling in the sintering furnace. Prealloyed material systems that yield high hardenability, such as those alloyed with chromium and molybdenum, are capable of developing small percentages of martensite during conventional sintering. By utilizing accelerated cooling during the sintering process, these materials are capable of achieving microstructures and mechanical properties equal to or greater than heat-treated components. However, one of the drawbacks to using prealloyed base iron is that they have lower compressibility compared to standard iron powder. Because of this, specially designed lubricants are an important development to achieve the highest densities possible. A new lubricant system has been developed which provides improved density and ejection performance. The mechanical properties of prealloyed chromium materials with the high performance lubricant will be compared to other sinter hardened materials and lubricant systems.


This paper proposes a conceptually simple but surprisingly powerful method which combines the effectiveness of a discriminative object detector with the explicit correspondence offered by a nearest-neighbor approach. The method is based on training a separate linear SVM classifier for every exemplar in the training set. Each of these Exemplar-SVMs is thus defined by a single positive instance and millions of negatives. While each detector is quite specific to its exemplar, we empirically observe that an ensemble of such Exemplar-SVMs offers surprisingly good generalization. Our performance on the PASCAL VOC detection task is on par with the much more complex latent part-based model of Felzenszwalb et al., at only a modest computational cost increase. But the central benefit of our approach is that it creates an explicit association between each detection and a single training exemplar. Because most detections show good alignment to their associated exemplar, it is possible to transfer any available exemplar meta-data (segmentation, geometric structure, 3D model, etc.) directly onto the detections, which can then be used as part of overall scene understanding.


OF PROJECT Development of a Personal Visioning Guidance System The primary intent of this project was to formulate a novel guidance system to help individuals gain clarity and understanding of their "inner vision" of a desired future state. My secondary goal was to enrich the palette of resources and tools available for coaching individuals in their discovery and crafting of personal and/or professional visions. Initially, I conducted an extensive literature review that inspired my approach. Then, I followed a process for assessing existing visioning tools and then imagining new opportunities to create, conceptualize, and craft at least five novel visioning tools. The project outcome includes a Personal Visioning Guidance Model to navigate through the visioning process. In it, I described the key five stages and the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) as micro-stage in each main stage. I ideated a palette of approaches to offer a broad spectrum of possibilities for visioning tools, and I conducted front-end development of seven of them. I also presented specific learning about every stage of the model as well as those from trialing five visioning tools with two subjects. Finally, I analyzed how this project adds value and a number of actions to progress further.


Organic–inorganic halide perovskites efficiently convert sunlight to electricity in solar cells. The choice of halide (Cl, Br or I) can be used to chemically tune the spectral response of the materials and the positions of the valence and conduction bands (i.e. the ionisation potential and electron affinity). Here the band offsets of the methylammonium lead halides are reported, including relativistic corrections and using the Pb 1s core level as a reference state. The binding energy of the valence band decreases monotonically down the series, primarily due to the change from 3p to 4p to 5p valence orbitals of the halide. Type I band alignments are predicted, which implies that Br and Cl secondary phases in CH3NH3PbI3 thin-films would act as barriers to charge transport in photovoltaic devices.