The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has performed research investigating the Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint 50th male (THOR-50M) response in Oblique crash tests. This research is being expanded to investigate THOR-50M in the driver position in a 56 km/h frontal impact crash. Hybrid III 5th percentile adult female (AF05) anthropomorphic test devices (ATDs) were used in this testing to evaluate the RibEye Deflection Measurement System. The AF05 ATDs were positioned in the right front passenger and right rear passenger seating positions. For the right front passenger, the New Car Assessment Procedure (NCAP) seating procedure was used, except the seat fore-aft position was set to mid-track. For the right rear passenger, the seating followed the FMVSS No. 214 Side Impact Compliance Test Procedure. The NCAP frontal impact test procedure was followed with additional vehicle instrumentation and pre/post-test measurements. RESULTS from this test series were compared with previous NCAP crash tests. The THOR-50M showed similar kinematics to the Hybrid III 50th but predicted a higher risk of chest and femur injury. The mid-track seat position of the right front passenger AF05 led to lower levels of femur compression loading due to additional distance to the dash. BrIC for the driver and front passenger showed higher injury risk than HIC15. In all vehicles, the rear seat AF05 predicted a substantially higher risk of head, neck and chest injury than the right front passenger. The AF05 RibEye output showed a higher peak deflection (x-axis) than the chest potentiometer. Language: en


Logic synthesis is an important part of electronic design automation (EDA) flows, which enable the implementation of digital systems. As the design size and complexity increase, the data structures and algorithms for logic synthesis must adapt and improve in order to keep pace and to maintain acceptable runtime and high-quality results. Large circuits were often represented using binary decision diagrams (BDDs) that were rapidly adopted by logic synthesis tools beginning in the 1980s. Nowadays, BDD-based algorithms are still enhanced, but the possibilities for improvement are somewhat saturated after some 35 years of research. Alternatively, the first EDA applications that exploit Boolean satisfiability (SAT) were developed in the 1990s. Despite the worst-case exponential runtime of SAT solvers, rapid progress in their performance enabled the creation of efficient SAT-based algorithms. Yet, logic synthesis started using SAT solvers more diffusely only in the last decade. Therefore, thorough research is still required both for exploiting SAT solvers and for encoding logic synthesis problems into SAT. Our main goal in this thesis is to facilitate and promote the further integration of SAT solvers into EDA by proposing and evaluating novel SAT-based algorithms that can be used as building blocks in logic synthesis tools. First, we propose a rapid algorithm for LEXSAT, which generates satisfying assignments in lexicographic order. We show that LEXSAT can bring canonicity, which guarantees the generation of unique results, when using SAT solvers in EDA applications. Next, we present a new SAT-based algorithm that progressively generates irredundant sums of products (SOPs), which still play a crucial role in many logic synthesis tools. Using LEXSAT, for the first time, we can generate canonical SAT-based SOPs that, much like BDD-based SOPs, are unique for a given function and variable order but could relax canonicity in order to improve speed and scalability. Unlike BDDs, due to its progressive nature, our algorithm can generate partial SOPs for applications that can work with incomplete circuit functionality. It is noteworthy that both LEXSAT and the SAT-based SOPs are applicable beyond logic synthesis and EDA. Finally, we focus on resubstitution, which reimplements a given Boolean function as a new function that depends on a set of existing functions called divisors. We propose the carving interpolation algorithm that, unlike the traditional Craig interpolation, forces the use of a specific divisor as an input of the new function. This is particularly useful for global circuit restructuring and for some synthesis-based engineering change order (ECO) algorithms. Furthermore, we compare two existing SAT-based methodologies for resubstitution, which are used for post-mapping logic optimisation. The first methodology combines SAT-based functional dependency checking and Craig interpolation that are also used for our carving interpolation; the second methodology is based on cube enumeration and is similar to the SAT-based SOP generation. The initial implementations of our novel SAT-based algorithms offer either better performance or new features, or both, compared to their state-of-the-art versions. As the results indicate, a further thorough development of SAT-based algorithms for logic synthesis, like the one performed for BDDs in the past, can help overcome existing limitations and keep up with growing designs and design complexity.


Background. Most child deaths from motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) occur in low- and middle-income countries. Effective measures to protect children involved in MVAs include wearing age-appropriate child restraints and being seated in the rear of the vehicle. Methods. A descriptive study was used to assess use of child restraints, seating positions of children, driver restraint and vehicle overloading in Bloemfontein in 2007. Two pairs of observers stood at selected sites recording these findings. The study was done over a period of 1 month. Results. A total of 512 children in 374 vehicles were assessed. Just over a third of the children were seated on the front seat of the vehicle, and 14.1% were seated on other people's laps (73.6% of these were on the front seat). Restraints were used by 8.8% of children and 17.4% of drivers; 10 times more children used restraints if the driver was restrained versus not restrained. Between 9.3% and 20.4% of vehicles were assessed as being overloaded with passengers. Conclusion. The safety of child passengers in Bloemfontein in the event of an MVA is threatened by poor adherence to basic safety measures. Enforcement of correct seating position and use of child restraints will prevent unnecessary deaths, disabilities and suffering of child passengers injured in the event of an MVA. Driver motivation and responsibility is important in achieving safer seating of children in motor vehicles.


There is still great interest in the determination of microtopographic properties of rough metallic surfaces from light scattering measurements. According to Beckmann-Kirchhoff theory a clear relationship is established between the in-plane angular scattered light intensity and the statistical properties of the surface. We discuss one way to invert this relationship, and we introduce a new iterative procedure to retrieve the height autocorrelation function even for a very rough metallic surface (rms surface roughness of the same order of the optical wavelength). The procedure is eventually applied to the experimental data of a known metallic surface for validation.


Abstract. Variations in tropical lower-stratospheric humidity influence both the chemistry and climate of the atmosphere. We analyze tropical lower-stratospheric water vapor in 21st century simulations from 12 state-of-the-art chemistry–climate models (CCMs), using a linear regression model to determine the factors driving the trends and variability. Within CCMs, warming of the troposphere primarily drives the long-term trend in stratospheric humidity. This is partially offset in most CCMs by an increase in the strength of the Brewer–Dobson circulation, which tends to cool the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). We also apply the regression model to individual decades from the 21st century CCM runs and compare them to a regression of a decade of observations. Many of the CCMs, but not all, compare well with these observations, lending credibility to their predictions. One notable deficiency is that most CCMs underestimate the impact of the quasi-biennial oscillation on lower-stratospheric water vapor. Our analysis provides a new and potentially superior way to evaluate model trends in lower-stratospheric humidity.


A central question in the study of political development is how conflict between ethnic groups might be transcended. Findings from social psychology suggest that ethnically integrating institutions such as militaries or representative bodies may remove prejudices and exclusionary behavior that perpetuate interethnic animosity. Political scientists have tended to be skeptical, arguing that such processes may actually intensify or "freeze" conflicting ethnic identities. I use evidence from a hard case—military reform in the aftermath of a brutal, ethnically charged civil war in Burundi—to study this issue. At the macro level, the Burundian military undertook extensive quota-based integration that nonetheless resulted in a cohesive institution. A micro-level natural experiment, which produces quasirandom exposure to ethnic integration through the military retirement age, shows that exposure to ethnic integration decreases prejudicial behavior and is benign with respect to ethnic salience. Together, these results suggest promise in ethnic integration.


The high abundances and cyclic distribution of remains of the freshwater fern Azolla in early middle Eocene sediments from the Arctic Ocean have previously been related to episodic surface water freshening, which was speculated to be orbitally modulated. Our integrated palynological and cyclostratigraphical analysis of the recovered 'Azolla interval' in Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Core 302-M0004A-11X resulted in the recognition of two clear periodicities: a dominant ~1.2 m cyclicity, which we relate to changes in obliquity (~40 ka) and a weaker ~0.7 m cyclicity, which we link to precession (~21 ka). Cycles in the abundances of Azolla, cysts of freshwater-tolerant dinoflagellates, and swamp-vegetation pollen show co-variability in the obliquity domain. This strong correlation suggests periods of enhanced rainfall and runoff during Azolla blooms, presumably linked to increased local summer temperatures during obliquity maxima. Larix and bisaccate conifer pollen co-vary at the precession frequency, with peak occurrences corresponding to precession minima, possibly as a result of enhance continental runoff from a more remote source area and a stronger seasonal contrast. Coeval Azolla fossils in neighboring Nordic seas were thought to have been sourced from the Arctic. However our palaeobotanical and palynological investigations reveal that five different species of Azolla had coeval blooms and spread across different areas, both on and around the Arctic and Nordic Seas. Warm climates, high precipitation and related runoff, combined with the semi-closed palaeogeographic setting of the Arctic Ocean and Norwegian-Greenland Sea, probably led, at least episodically, to in situ Azolla blooms on extraordinarily low-salinity ocean surfaces. Climatic conditions also enabled Azolla to bloom in extensive wetlands on adjacent continents from where its remains were transported to oceanic settings. The eventual demise of the Azolla may be related to a crucial decrease in mid to high-latitude precipitation, possibly caused by decreasing global temperatures in the middle Eocene. A decrease in precipitation would likely have resulted in reducing the extent of continental wetlands and a reduction in freshwater discharge into the Arctic and Nordic seas. A slight increase in surface-water salinities may have crossed the critical threshold of salinity tolerance of Azolla. In addition, a possible increase in the exchange of water masses between the North Atlantic, the Greenland-Norwegian Sea basins, and the Arctic Ocean, caused by subsidence of the ridges or/and sea-level rise, could have resulted in a higher salinity of Arctic and Norwegian-Greenland Sea surface Ocean waters


The backscatter coefficient, known as sigma0, is an important measurement of satellite radar altimetry and a key parameter for land altimetry because of its close relationship with the physical properties and geometric features of land coverage under global/regional climate change effects. Using the TOPEX/Poseidon GDR-M dataset from January 1993 to December 2004, we study the spatial and temporal distribution of sigma0 at bands Ku and C over Xinjiang, western China. The results show that the sigma0 is influenced by the water distribution over land and the time evolution of sigma0 has clear seasonal changes. River basins or deserts are classified over the spatial distribution based on different sigma0 values. For example, high sigma0 values are found in the Tarim River Basin and low values are found in the Taklimakan Desert. The periodic components of sigma0 time series are determined using the fast Fourier transformation method. The annual variation is the dominating cycle and the semi-annual variation is the secondary signal. The amplitudes of sigma0 time series at bands Ku and C are also given and most areas have quite low amplitudes except for the Tarim River Basin. Several areas including the Tarim River Basin, Tianshan Mountain and Taklimakan Desert are selected for sigma0 time series spacial analysis to discuss the reasons for variations in sigma0. The main factors are precipitation and vegetation growth, which are affected by the global/regional climate change. The correlation between the brightness temperature, which is related to the water-vapor content in the atmosphere measured by TMR at the 21 GHz channel and sigma0 at two bands, is analyzed.


Objective: Vegetarian and vegan diets have gained popularity in Spain. There is no available information about specific food, supplementary intake and macro and micronutrient profile in Spanish ve-getarian population. This study aimed to determine and evaluate their dietary intake. Methods: One hundred two Spanish vegetarian and vegans completed a food frequency questionnaire from which their specific food consumption as well daily intake of macro and micronutrients was assessed and subsequently compared to Spanish Dietary Reference intakes. Results: In both groups the diet appeared well balanced with a healthy distribution of macronutrients and fatty acids and a high content of fiber. Vegan subjects showed higher intakes of vegetables, nuts and seeds as compared to vegetarians. At micronutrient level, almost all the vitamins and minerals intake covered Spanish Dietary Reference intakes. Intakes of vitamin B12 and D were below recommendations in both groups. In those micronutrients with a lower intake, higher proportions of vegetarians did meet recommendations as compared to vegans. Conclusions: Diet appeared well balanced regarding macronutrients and fiber. Almost all of the vitamins and mineral intake covered the Spanish DRIs, except B12 and D.
Further studies with a large sample are needed to establish conclusions to the Spanish vegetarian population.


Type II Na/Pi cotransporters play key roles in epithelial Pi transport and thereby contribute to overall Pi homeostasis. Renal proximal tubular brush border membrane expresses the IIa isoform, whereas the IIb isoform is preferentially expressed in small intestinal brush border membrane of mammals. IIa and IIb proteins are predicted to contain eight transmembrane domains with the N- and C-terminal tails facing the cytoplasm. They differ in their pH dependences: the activity of IIa increases at higher pH, whereas the IIb shows no or a slightly opposite pH dependence. To determine the structural domains responsible for the difference in pH sensitivity, mouse IIa and IIb chimeras were constructed, and their pH dependence was characterized. A region between the fourth and fifth transmembrane domains was required for conferring pH sensitivity to the IIa-mediated Na/Picotransport. Sequence comparison (IIa versus IIb) of the third extracellular loops revealed a stretch of three charged amino acids in IIa (REK) replaced by uncharged residues in IIb (GNT). Introduction of the uncharged GNT sequence (by REK) in IIa abolished its pH dependence, whereas introduction of the charged REK stretch in IIb (by GNT) led to a pH dependence similar to IIa. These findings suggest that charged residues within the third extracellular loop are involved in the pH sensitivity of IIa Na/Pi cotransporter.


Sea urchin populations were monitored in the Medes Islands Marine Reserve (NW Mediterranean) and an adjacent unprotected area in order to (1) describe temporal variability in abundance and population size-structure of sea urchins within each area (from 1991 to 1997), and (2) to compare these areas to investigate the role of fish predation level in determining sea urchin population structure over time (from 1995 to 1997). Abundance of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus (Lamarck) was monitored at 7 sites (4 inside and 3 outside the reserve), and 2 distinct habitats (fields of big boulders and vertical walls). P. lividus exhibited sign~ficant variability in density over time on boulders, both inslde and outside the reserve, whereas its density dld not vary significantly on vertical walls. P hvjdus populations differed significantly in size-structure across sites, varying from unimodal to blmodal among sltes and years. Density and mean size of P. lividus were not significantly different between the protected and the unprotected area in either of the 2 habitats. Abundance of the sea urchin Arbac~a lixula (L ) was monitored from 1995 to 1997 on vertical walls and boulders (4 sites inside and 3 sites outside the reserve). Density of A. lixula differed slgnlficantly over time on boulders, but it did not on walls. On vertlcal walls, density and mean slze of A. lixula were not significantly different between areas in both hab~tats. This study shows that in the Medes Islands region, sea urchins exhibit striking short-term fluctuations in abundance, which can lead to misinterpretation of larger-scale temporal patterns. The comparison between the protected and the unprotected area does not support the hypothesis of fish predation as the most. important factor affecting P. lividus populations in the Medes Islands, as patterns of lower sea urchin density relative to the unprotected area nearby were not maintained over time. These facts indicate that factors other than fish predation are very important in determining sea urchin population structure in the northwestern Mediterranean.


Epidural anaesthetics are another group of drugs implicated in causing arachnoiditis. Vandermeulen ( [i] ) includes arachnoiditis as a "mishap"... "solely due to ... epidural anaesthesia". Haisa et al ( [ii] ) state that lumbar adhesive arachnoiditis should be considered for differential diagnosis of back and leg pain after epidural anaesthesia. Furthermore, epidural anaesthesia may cause subarachnoid cysts or cavities, which are also recognised complications of arachnoiditis. Over a century ago, Koller first used cocaine to anaesthetise his eyes. In 1865, Halsted used cocaine anaesthesia. Corning pioneered the epidural local anaesthetic block, whilst Bier reported on subarachnoid local anaesthetic in 1899. (Bier also reported the first spinal headache). Lemmon in 1940 started using a continuous spinal technique; later intraoperative spinal anesthesia came into use; however, it was not until the 1990s that infusions of post-operative analgesia became widespread. ( [iii] )


Raymond Aron (1905–1983) assumed many guises over a long and fruitful career: journalist, polemicist, philosopher of history, counselor to political leaders and officials, theorist of nuclear deterrence and international relations. He was also France's most notable sociologist. While Aron had especially close ties with Britain, a result of his days in active exile there during the Second World War, he was widely appreciated in the United States too. His book Main Currents in Sociological Thought was hailed a masterpiece; more generally, Aron's books were extensively reviewed in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review (in earlier days, it hosted a review section), Contemporary Sociology, and Social Forces. And he was admired and cited by sociologists of the stature of Daniel Bell, Edward Shils, and David Riesman. Yet despite appearing well poised to become a major force in international sociology, analogous to his younger collaborator, Pierre Bourdieu, Aron has almost vanished from the sociological landscape. This article explains why, offering in the process some observations on the conditions—conceptual and motivational—of reputational longevity in sociological theory and showing how Aron failed to meet them. Special attention is devoted to a confusing equivocation in Aron's description of sociology and to the cultural basis of his ambivalence toward the discipline.


The investigation was carried out to remediate simazine from water by the pressure driven filtration techniques (viz. nanofiltration, reverse osmosis). The separation of simazine through the membranes showed similar trend as glucose (organic marker) and salt. Surfactant-mediated filtration showed better performance of the membranes, though it depends on the nature of membranes and surfactants. The membranes having more porous (in terms of glucose and water permeability) structure showed improvement in the separation of simazine. The Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS) added water contaminated with simazine shows better separation with respect to Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB). Pure water Flux Recovery Ratio (FRR) is higher for the membranes dealt with SDS with respect to CTAB.


The definitive book on the Great Famine from Ireland's greatest historian, combining the latest research and fresh insights. The Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration in Ireland. Between 1845 and 1852 the island's population dropped by 2.5 million-a full quarter of its citizens - and its legacy continues to be felt. For both the native Irish and those in the resulting diaspora, the famine entered folk memory and became a rallying point for nationalist movements for decades. This is a fascinating and sobering look at a dark period of global history, as well as the ramifications of the 'famine mentality' that continues to haunt Ireland to this day.


Why are classical theories often sufficient to describe the physics of our world even though everything around us is entirely composed of microscopic quantum systems? The boundary between these two fundamentally dissimilar theories remains an unsolved problem in modern physics. Position measurements of small objects allow us to probe the area where the classical approximation breaks down. In quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle dictates that any measurement of the position must be accompanied by measurement induced back-action---in this case manifested as an uncertainty in the momentum. In recent years, cavity optomechanics has become a powerful tool to perform precise position measurements and investigate their fundamental limitations. The utilization of optical micro-cavities greatly enhances the interaction between light and state-of-the-art nanomechanical oscillators. Therefore, quantum mechanical phenomena have been successfully observed in systems far beyond the microscopic world. In such a cavity optomechanical system, the fluctuations in the position of the oscillator are transduced onto the phase of the light, while fluctuations in the amplitude of the light disturb the momentum of the oscillator during the measurement. As a consequence, correlations are established between the amplitude and phase quadrature of the probe light. However, so far, observation of quantum effects has been limited exclusively to cryogenic experiments, and access to the quantum regime at room temperature has remained an elusive goal because the overwhelming amount of thermal motion masks the weak quantum effects. This thesis describes the engineering of a high-performance cavity optomechanical device and presents experimental results showing, for the first time, the broadband effects of quantum back-action at room temperature. The device strongly couples mechanical and optical modes of exceptionally high quality factors to provide a measurement sensitivity $\sim\!10^4$ times below the requirement to resolve the zero-point fluctuations of the mechanical oscillator. The quantum back-action is then observed through the correlations created between the probe light and the motion of the nanomechanical oscillator. A so-called "variational measurement", which detects the transmitted light in a homodyne detector tuned close to the amplitude quadrature, resolves the quantum noise due to these correlations at the level of 10% of the thermal noise over more than an octave of Fourier frequencies around mechanical resonance. Moreover, building on this result, an additional experiment demonstrates the ability to achieve quantum enhanced metrology. In this case, the generated quantum correlations are used to cancel quantum noise in the measurement record, which then leads to an improved relative signal-to-noise ratio in measurements of an external force. In conclusion, the successful observation of broadband quantum behavior on a macroscopic object at room temperature is an important milestone in the field of cavity optomechanics. Specifically, this result heralds the rise of optomechanical systems as a platform for quantum physics at room temperature and shows promise for generation of ponderomotive squeezing in room-temperature interferometers.


This thesis focuses on the concept of youth Subculture, used in both academic and popular discourse to describe a distinct form of youth culture. The thesis focuses on Dance Culture, the dominant youth culture in Britain during the period 1988-1990, but also a unique form of youth culture that challenges previous theories of youth culture, and questions whether youth cultures are organically formed or commercially created.
The thesis establishes how the marketing industry has become increasingly adept at understanding and responding to the cultural aspect of young peoples' lives since the youth market was first identified in the late 1950s. The commercial importance of rebellious youth cultures was first established in the 1960s. However, it took the market-driven economy of the 1980s, in which a more style-orientated advertising practice developed, to draw on the style-factor that youth cultures evoke. Due, in particular, to increases in the number of youth-oriented media in the 1980s and 1990s marketing has developed its ability to reach youthful consumers. As a result, it has come to focus on individual youth cultures, re-presenting them to consumers who seek the cultural capital they possess.
The central focus is 'youth marketing', an industry which thrived in the knowledge-based New Economy of the 1990s. Interviews .with experts in 'youth marketing' show how marketing interacted with the Dance Culture and its consistent subcultures. It shows, where previous studies of youth Subculture have failed, the crucial role that consumerism, and more specifically marketing, plays in the formation and communication of youth cultures. Marketers have increasingly come to recognise the cultural capital of Subcultures, and have become more influential in the way that they are communicated and adopted by young people. As a consequence, the thesis argues that Youth Subculture is now a concept more readily employed for selling lifestyles to consumers, as opposed to a reliable model for understanding
young peoples' culture. Rather than expressions of genuine resistance, youth cultures are, now more accurately viewed as reference points in consumer trends.
Previous studies of advertising and marketing have been based on abstract research methodologies, such as textual analysis. This research is unique in interviewing the practitioners who attempt to understand and re-present young people's culture. In this way, it presents a more accurate and grounded analysis of marketing's interaction and comprehension of young people, and also its subsequent attempts to have meaning in their cultural lives.


The Motueka Catchment is located at the north-western tip of the South Island of New Zealand. After decades of productive intensification, the ecological and social identity of this catchment is still largely intact. To keep things this way, local residents, scientists and planners have been involved in futures model building. To test the suitability of different modelling frameworks for working with stakeholders, we developed (i) an input-output economy-environment model and (ii) a system-dynamic population model. The process of building, trialing and using these models in a diverse stakeholder community has provided the opportunity for reflection on the role of mediated modelling in a sustainability-oriented, action research context of this kind. This paper employs narrative, theorising and research results to re-think the potential role of mediated modelling from a strong transdisciplinary perspective.


In 2001, California's electric sector deregulation exploded, and with it the state economy and the state political structure. The Governor of California, just recently reelected was recalled by the population, and replaced with Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the physical manifestations of this crisis received media attention, there was a major legal subtext that is still playing out in the courts and will continue for a decade. With the pivotal role that electric power plays in modern American life, and the key transitional role of the legal and regulatory system in transitioning states to a restructured and less regulated format, there are lessons drawn on how to manage an electric crisis. The article particularly examines a regulatory tool that California had available, but couldn't find the levers to activate in time, that would have significantly mitigated or perhaps eliminated the crisis. For other states that may face similar power shortages in the future, the article offers a primer on the legal and regulatory mechanisms to avoid these emergencies.


Abstract. Reduced-complexity climate models (RCMs) are critical in the policy and decision making space, and are directly used within multiple Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports to complement the results of more comprehensive Earth system models. To date, evaluation of RCMs has been limited to a few independent studies. Here we introduce a systematic evaluation of RCMs in the form of the Reduced Complexity Model Intercomparison Project (RCMIP). We expect RCMIP will extend over multiple phases, with Phase 1 being the first. In Phase 1, we focus on the RCMs' global-mean temperature responses, comparing them to observations, exploring the extent to which they emulate more complex models and considering how the relationship between temperature and cumulative emissions of CO2 varies across the RCMs. Our work uses experiments which mirror those found in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which focuses on complex Earth system and atmosphere–ocean general circulation models. Using both scenario-based and idealised experiments, we examine RCMs' global-mean temperature response under a range of forcings. We find that the RCMs can all reproduce the approximately 1 ∘C of warming since pre-industrial times, with varying representations of natural variability, volcanic eruptions and aerosols. We also find that RCMs can emulate the global-mean temperature response of CMIP models to within a root-mean-square error of 0.2 ∘C over a range of experiments. Furthermore, we find that, for the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP)-based scenario pairs that share the same IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)-consistent stratospheric-adjusted radiative forcing, the RCMs indicate higher effective radiative forcings for the SSP-based scenarios and correspondingly higher temperatures when run with the same climate settings. In our idealised setup of RCMs with a climate sensitivity of 3 ∘C, the difference for the ssp585–rcp85 pair by 2100 is around 0.23∘C(±0.12 ∘C) due to a difference in effective radiative forcings between the two scenarios. Phase 1 demonstrates the utility of RCMIP's open-source infrastructure, paving the way for further phases of RCMIP to build on the research presented here and deepen our understanding of RCMs.


The morphology of street patterns has been the subject of many studies in recent decades. While some have noted the textural and morphological differences in various parts of many cities, there have been few attempts to quantify the street patterns that contribute to these differences. For this study, we measured and compared the trends (orientations) and lengths of 4,266 streets in the old, historical part of the city of Yazd, Iran, and 4,021 streets in the new part of the city to quantify their textural (morphological) differences and similarities. In the old part of the city, the street trends are orthogonal and follow a normal (one-peak) distribution. The street lengths range from 4-317 m, follow power-law distributions, and yield street-population entropies of 1.360-1.565. The power-law distributions indicate that, in the old part of Yazd, there are many short streets and few long ones. By contrast, in the new part of the city, the street trends follow a bimodal (two-peak) distribution. The street lengths vary from 5-596 m, follow power-law distributions, and yield entropies of 1.632-2.290. All of the street populations show strong linear correlations between their scaling exponents, length ranges, and entropies, a finding that agrees with results from other cities. With regard to city planning, these correlations indicate that, as a city grows and expands, its street networks often increase in length and entropy, requiring greater energy for construction. The innovative quantitative approach used to analyze city textures in this paper can also be used to compare the sizes and shapes of buildings within and among cities.


Background and Purpose:Aging is defined as a progressive functional impairment due to reduction in adaptive response to the stress and associated with the risk of developing age-related diseases. An elderly is need of religious methods in order to face the changes and tensions of the life. There are few studies in areaof religious belief and health promotion. The aim of present study was to explore the use of religious behaviors toward health improving in Iranian elderly women. Method:This study was done by a qualitative approach. There were 25 elderly women participants. Totally, data of 25 interviews and observations were analyzed. Alongside the data collection, analysis was achieved through continuous text revision, observation and infield notes. Data were analyzed by Graneheim and Lundman's content analysis method. Results:According to the findings, totally 625 of the codes appeared about religious strategies for health promotion by elders. By reduction and abstraction of the codes two main themes appeared that were problem focused prayer and emotional focused prayer. Three subcategories constituted problem focused prayer theme that were problem solving, spending leisure times and confrontation. Subcategory of emotional focused prayer was self-control. Each subcategory was formed by more subclasses. Conclusion:According to our findings about the role of Religious practices in health promotion in Iranian Elderly women and by understanding the elderly women needs and their religious behaviors, health-care providers can provide educational preventive measurements in order to improve health promotion of older women.


Data assessment is critical for determining student behavior change in response to individualized behavior interventions in schools. This study examined the interrater agreement of the Individualized Behavior Rating Scale Tool (IBRST), a perceptual direct behavior rating tool that was used by typical school personnel to record behavior occurrence in students requiring individualized interventions. Two independent observers (teacher and data collector) used the IBRST to rate student-specific problem and appropriate behaviors during specified observation times. Data were collected across 19 students and agreement between raters was compared. Resulting linear- and quadratic-weighted kappa coefficients indicated generally adequate agreement between raters on problem behaviors and appropriate behaviors. When ratings were categorized into more or less salient behaviors, less than adequate agreement (<.60) was found for some behaviors that were less salient. Agreement remained stable from baseline to intervention. Implications for practice, limitations of the study, and directions for future research are discussed.


Many security protocols used for daily Internet traffic have been used for decades and standardization bodies like the IETF often provide extensions for legacy protocols to deal with new requirements. Even though the security aspects for extensions are carefully discussed, automated reasoning has proven to be a valuable tool to uncover security holes that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Therefore, Automated Theorem Proving (ATP) is already a customary procedure for the development of some new protocols, e.g., TLS 1.3 and MLS. IKEv2, the key exchange for the IPsec protocol suite, is expected to undergo significant changes to facilitate the integration of Post-Quantum Cryptography. We present the first formal security model for the IKEv2-handshake in a quantum setting together with an automated proof using the Tamarin Prover. Our model focuses on the core state machine, is therefore easily extendable, and aims to promote the use of ATP in IPsec-standardization. The security model captures gaps in the protocol, but treats the specific implementation (like fragmentation mechanisms, for example) as a black box. With IKE_INTERMEDIATE we showcase this approach on a recently proposed extension that significantly changes the protocol's state machine.


Municipal bonds (munis) are issued by states, cities, or other local government agencies. They may be general obligations of the issuer or secured by specified revenues, like fees paid by tollway users. The interest on municipal bonds is usually exempt from federal income taxes. Investors have long regarded these bonds as a relatively safe investment. Not coincidentally, holdings of municipal securities (or munis) have been heavily concentrated among household investors, who own about two-thirds of the $2.9 trillion market.


Background The drug supply chain is a cross-disciplinary process involving numerous actors. This can create difficulties in attempts to successfully analyse and manage its execution. Objective To produce a tool allowing easy evaluation and optimisation of the hospital drug supply chain. Material and methods A supervised Bayesian network was built to model a hospital drug supply chain. Two learning patterns were used: literature and experimental data. The network was tested by using data separate from the data used for its construction. Two hundred scenarios were simulated to evaluate the impact of organisational modalities. Results The model estimates a need for 3·2 clinical pharmacists per 100 patients. The model gave an appropriate estimation of technician workforce of three hospital pharmacies and showed that one of them was understaffed. Simulations showed that a unit-dose drug distribution system and prescription analysis seem to have comparable impact on quality index, with a maximum increase of 28 for unit-dose drug distribution and 25 for prescription control (depending on control methods, the increase in quality varies between 31 and 89). In addition, changing from a global to a unit-dose distribution system results in an increase of 14 % in the hospital pharmacy's payroll whereas changing from no prescription control to the daily control of 100 % of prescriptions leads to a rise of 218 % in the pharmacy's wage bill. Conclusions The Bayesian approach appears to be a valuable decision tool to gauge the influence of organisational changes on care quality.


When Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses was published in 1988, the book both garnered praise and stirred a political controversy. Yet it did not invent anything as it relied on the very well documented 'Satanic Verses incident'. Addressing this infamous historical episode, Shahab Ahmed's work investigates how different interpretive methodologies can quarrel over what constitutes truth and how to make a truth-‐claim.


Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Cigarette smoke includes thousands of chemicals that are harmful and cause tobacco-related diseases. To date, the causality between human exposure to specific compounds and the harmful effects is unknown. A first step in closing the gap in knowledge has been measuring smoking topography, or how the smoker smokes the cigarette (puffs, puff volume, and duration). However, current gold-standard approaches to smoking topography involve expensive, bulky, and obtrusive sensor devices, creating unnatural smoking behavior and preventing their potential for real-time interventions in the wild. Although motion-based wearable sensors and their corresponding machine-learned models have shown promise in unobtrusively tracking smoking gestures, they are notorious for confounding smoking with other similar hand-to-mouth gestures such as eating and drinking. In this paper, we present SmokeMon, a chest-worn thermal-sensing wearable system that can capture spatial, temporal, and thermal information around the wearer and cigarette all day to unobtrusively and passively detect smoking events. We also developed a deep learning–based framework to extract puffs and smoking topography. We evaluate SmokeMon in both controlled and free-living experiments with a total of 19 participants, more than 110 hours of data, and 115 smoking sessions achieving an F1-score of 0.9 for puff detection in the laboratory and 0.8 in the wild. By providing SmokeMon as an open platform, we provide measurement of smoking topography in free-living settings to enable testing of smoking topography in the real world, with potential to facilitate timely smoking cessation interventions.


The therapeutic efficacy and toxicity of a high-dose (25 mg/kg) mefloquine regimen (M25) and the currently recommended regimen of 15 mg/kg (M15) were compared in 199 patients with acute falciparum malaria in an area with deteriorating multidrug resistance on the Thai-Burmese border. The clinical and parasitologic responses were significantly more rapid with M25. The incidence of treatment failures by day 7-9 was 7% for M15 and 1% for M25 (P = .03) and had increased to 40% and 9%, respectively, by day 28 (P < .0001). Overall failure rates were highest in children (P = .02). Parasite clearance times were a good predictor of the therapeutic response; all patients with parasitemia persisting > 5 days after treatment experienced subsequent recrudescence. Side effects were dose-related and included dizziness, anorexia, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. Although vomiting < 1 h after treatment was more likely in young children, children overall tolerated mefloquine better than adults, and men better than women. The optimum treatment dose of mefloquine in this area is 25 mg/kg.


A random variable (r.v.) X is said to follow Benford's law if log(X) is uniform mod 1. Many experimental data sets prove to follow an approximate version of it, and so do many mathematical series and continuous random variables. This phenomenon received some interest, and several explanations have been put forward. Most of them focus on specific data, depending on strong assumptions, often linked with the log function.
Some authors hinted - implicitly - that the two most important characteristics of a random variable when it comes to Benford are regularity and scatter.
In a first part, we prove two theorems, making up a formal version of this intuition: scattered and regular r.v.'s do approximately follow Benford's law. The proofs only need simple mathematical tools, making the analysis easy. Previous explanations thus become corollaries of a more general and simpler one.
These results suggest that Benford's law does not depend on properties linked with the log function. We thus propose and test a general version of the Benford's law. The success of these tests may be viewed as an a posteriori validation of the analysis formulated in the first part.


During migration, birds are often forced to cross ecological barriers, facing challenges due to scarcity of resources and suitable habitats. While crossing such barriers, birds are expected to adjust their behaviour to reduce time, energy expenditure and associated risks. We studied the crossing of the Sahara Desert by the Great White Pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus), a large wetland‐specialist. We focused on decisions made by migrating pelicans along different parts of the southbound autumn migration, their response to local environmental conditions and the implications for time and energy optimizations. We compared the observed pelicans' migration routes with simulated 'direct‐pass' (shortest, mostly across the desert) and 'corridor‐pass' (along the Nile River) routes, and used GPS, body acceleration and atmospheric modelling to compare flight behaviour along the Nile River versus the desert. The observed route was significantly shorter and faster than the simulated corridor‐pass route and not significantly different from the simulated direct‐pass one. Daily flights over the desert were longer than along the Nile River, with flying time extending to late hours of the day despite unfavourable atmospheric conditions for soaring–gliding flight. Moreover, the pelicans' behavioural response to atmospheric conditions changed according to the landscape over which they flew. Overall, the pelicans showed stronger behavioural adjustments to atmospheric conditions over the desert than along the Nile River. Our findings suggest that migrating pelicans primarily acted as time minimizers while crossing the Sahara Desert, whereas energetic optimization was only considered when it did not substantially compromise time optimization. The pelicans took the almost shortest possible route, only following the Nile River along its south‐oriented parts, and frequently staged overnight in the desert far from water, despite being large, wet‐habitat specialists. Correspondingly, their behavioural response to atmospheric conditions changed according to the landscape over which they were flying, switching between time (over the desert) and energy (over the Nile River) optimization strategies. Our results suggest that the interaction between landscape and atmospheric conditions depict a flexible, yet primarily time‐dominated, migration optimization strategy. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.


We use a new longitudinal data set of more than 15,000 Chinese manufacturing plants to show that the direct and indirect effects of foreign direct investment on measured firm level productivity depend on a number of firm specific features and institutional factors. We find that domestic firms engaged in a joint-venture with a foreign partner are on average more productive, as well as exporting plants and plants located in special economic zones. In addition, domestic firms benefit from horizontal spillovers from foreign firms on average. However, these spillovers depend on the structure and origin of ownership as well as on specific characteristics of the special economic zones. First, spillovers are less likely to occur from fully foreign owned firms than from joint-ventures. Second, spillovers from foreign direct investment originating from oversees Chinese (Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) are stronger than from the rest of the world. Third, spillovers are higher in the special economic zone aimed at attracting foreign capital to fasten the development of China's own high tech industries.


We present the adopted motion control schemes of a novel current collector manipulator to be mounted beneath a heavy hybrid electric vehicle to collect electric power from road embedded power lines. We describe our approach of power line detection and tracking based on an array of inductive proximity sensors. The emphasis is on the adopted motion control logic for sequential and closed loop motions to detect and track the power line respectively. We implement the sliding mode control approach for the closed loop control scheme as straightforward solution given the binary nature of the inductive proximity sensors being used. The overall architecture of the entire motion control system is presented. Finally, the implementation of the entire control logic in a form of a state machine is discussed.


Abstract Does crime respond to changes in the minimum wage? A growing body of empirical evidence indicates that increases in the minimum wage have a displacement effect on low-skilled workers. Economic reasoning provides the possibility that disemployment may cause youth to substitute from legal work to crime. However, there is also the countervailing effect of a higher wage raising the opportunity cost of crime for those who remain employed. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort to measure the effect of increases in the minimum wage on self-reported criminal activity and examine employment–crime substitution. Exploiting changes in state and federal minimum wage laws from 1997 to 2010, we find that workers who are affected by a change in the minimum wage are more likely to commit crime, become idle, and lose employment. Individuals experiencing a binding minimum wage change were more likely to commit crime and work only part time. Analyzing heterogeneity shows those with past criminal connections are especially likely to see decreased employment and increased crime following a policy change, suggesting that reduced employment effects dominate any wage effects. The findings have implications for policy regarding both the low-wage labor market and efforts to deter criminal activity.


Administrative law is out of touch with forms of public administration developed since the Progressive and New Deal eras. It is strongly influenced by bureaucratic conceptions of administration that see (1) legitimacy in terms of prior authorization; (2) organization as a balance of stable rules and unaccountable discretion, and (3) error detection as a reactive, complaint-driven process. Yet, many public programs developed since the 1970s strive to establish post-bureaucratic or performance-based forms of administration that view (1) legitimacy in terms of exposure to public oversight; (2) administration as a matter of comprehensive but flexible planning, and (3) error detection as proactive. I illustrate the dominance of the latter style of organization in major contemporary regulatory and social welfare regimes. I also show that, while the administrative law of the casebooks and treatises ineffectively addresses key issues of accountability presented by the newer regimes, a parallel law of public administration has emerged in recurring provisions of modern regulatory and welfare statutes, in executive-branch initiatives, and in the activities of courts in institutional reform cases. This "noncanonical" administrative law is more attuned to performance-based organization. Canonical doctrine could improve by accommodating this alternative conception of organization.


This paper analyzes whether national laws acknowledge indigenous peoples and other rural communities in 100 countries as owners of waters that arise within their lands. Results derive from information collected by LandMark to score the legal status of community land tenure. Findings are positive; half of all countries recognize communities as lawful possessors of water on their lands. Three quarters permit communities to manage the distribution and use of water on their lands. While 71 percent of countries declare water to be a public resource, this belies the substantial existence of privately owned water. In 29 percent of countries, private water is an identified legal category, and in many other countries obtainable rights to water are sufficiently substantial to imply lawful possession. Communities are beneficiaries mainly where customary rights are accorded status as property rights, or where ownership of public lands and water are devolved to rural collectives. However, opposite trends of nationalization and regulation of water suggest that while legal recognition of community land ownership may rise in the future, this will not necessarily include waters on the land. Irrespective of tenure, rural communities in 72 of 77 countries (93.5 percent) are legally assured access to water for domestic purposes. This is consistent with the rising definition of safe drinking water as a human right, although access does not necessarily come free of cost.


ABSTRACT Unwanted sexual incidents on university campuses pose significant public health and safety risks for students. This study explored survivors' perspectives on secondary prevention of campus sexual assault and effective strategies for intervention programs for unwanted sexual incidents in university settings. Twenty-seven student survivors of unwanted sexual experiences participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis and a constructionist perspective. The findings were contextualized using the ecological model. Barriers to reporting included concerns about one's story not being believed, personal minimization of the incident, belief that no action will be taken after reporting, confidentiality concerns, and other perceived costs of reporting. Survivors provided valuable insight on potentially effective prevention and intervention strategies to address the problem of unwanted sexual incidents on university campuses. These findings may be useful for prevention and intervention policies and programs in university settings and for providers who assist survivors of unwanted sexual experiences.


Question Classification, i.e., putting the questions into several semantic categories, is very important for question answering. This paper introduces a new application of using subtree mining for question classification problem. First, we formulate this problem as classifying a tree to a certain label among a set of labels. We then present a use of subtrees in the forest created by the training data to the tree classification problem in which maximum entropy and a boosting model are used as classifiers. Experiments on standard question classification data show that the uses of subtrees along with either maximum entropy or boosting models are promising. The results indicate that our method achieves a comparable or even better performance than kernel methods and also improves testing efficiency.


Bilinguals often report that they feel like a different person in their two languages. In the words of one bilingual in Koven's book, "When I speak Portuguese, automatically, I'm in a different world…it's a different color." Although testimonials like this abound in everyday conversation among bilinguals, there has been scant systematic investigation of this intriguing phenomenon. Focusing on French-Portuguese bilinguals, the adult children of Portuguese migrants in France, this book provides an empirically grounded, theoretical account of how the same speakers enact, experience, and are perceived by others to have different identities in their two languages. This book explores bilinguals' experiences and expressions of identity in multicultural, multilingual contexts. It is distinctive in its integration of multiple levels of analysis to address the relationships between language and identity. Koven links detailed attention to discourse form, to participants' multiple interpretations how such forms become signs of identity, and to the broader macrosociolinguistic contexts that structure participants' access to those signs. The study of how bilinguals perform and experience different identities in their two languages sheds light on the more general role of linguistic and cultural forms in local experiences and expressions of identity.


The genus Trichoderma contains a few species of soil fungi that received extensive academic and applied research. These species have been used successfully for industrial and commercial applications including biopesticides. Trichoderma species isolated from Qatar had showed thermotolerance and preference of high pH (El Badawy et al, 2016). To reveal the extent of Trichoderma species in Qatar, initial survey was carried out by isolating that fungi from samples collected from two experimental and two commercial farms. Then their antagonism against Rhizoctonia sp were evaluated. Further in order to determine the biodiversity in one location, a detailed survey was conducted by isolating Trichoderma species from 16 soil samples obtained from a single plot of 1000 m2 located in one of the experimental farms. These isolates were evaluated for their potential to grow on pH 8 under 4 temperature regimes. The initial survey revealed the presence of Trichoderma (5 isolates) in all locations. The isolates differed in their morphology and antagonism against 5 isolates of Rhizoctonia sp isolated from one of the research farm. The two Trichoderma isolates from the same farms were more effective than the other three. This superiority in antagonism may reflect the coevolution of the two genera in the soil of this farm. In the detailed survey, it was remarkable to isolate three Trichoderma species (6 isolates) from the single plot. Four of the isolates were belong to one species (T. longibrachiatum). Morphological and molecular variations were observed within this species. One of the four isolates showed different colony color and conidial color than the rest. The same isolate showed a few differences at the molecular level. The sequence of the ITS rDNA (508 bp) showed substitution of 20 nucleotides (15 single, one of 2 and one of 3 nucleotides) All the three species isolates gave reasonable growth measured as dry weight even at 35 °C. There were significant differences between species in their optimum temperature which range between 25 and 30 °C. This study showed the abundant presence of the Trichoderma species in Qatari soils that could sustain and survive conditions of arid regions or the fluctuating temperature rising due to global warming. The presence of diversity between and within species will allow screening and selecting Qatari isolates with desirable characters as bio-pesticide for arid climate. Acknowledgment: This paper is funded partially by NPRP –EP grant# [NPRP-EPX– 014-4-001] from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.


On 26 July 1953, a group opposing the regime of General Fulgencio Batista, led by Fidel Castro, made an abortive attempt to storm the Montecada barracks at Santiago de Cuba. Castro was captured and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In May 1955 he was released under a general amnesty; he left Cuba and emigrated to Mexico.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the prevalence of mouth breathing among children aged 3 to 9 years living in the urban districts of the town of Abaeté, MG, Brazil.

METHODS
This study assesses a representative, randomized sample of the town's population (23,596 inhabitants). Children were selected by lots according to a random number table until 370 had been enrolled; this number had been determined by statistical calculation. A protocol for anamnesis and clinical assessment of the patients was specially developed for this project, since no preexisting instruments could be found in the literature that had been validated and were appropriate for the purpose. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 10.5.

RESULTS
The prevalence of mouth breathing was found to be 55%, or 204 children.

CONCLUSION
Further studies are needed to validate a questionnaire for the clinical diagnosis of mouth breathers at the primary care level.


Treatment of trichuriasis with single dose of albendazole or mebendazole gives low cure rate (CR). The purpose of this study aimed to know the effectiveness of double doses 500 mg mebendazole againts soil transmitted helminths (STH) infection in children aged 2-15 years. This study used a pre post design, conducted on July 2016-February 2017 in Perobatang village, Southwest Sumba. Effectiveness is assessed from CR and egg reduction rate (ERR). Stool samples were examined microscopically with Kato-Katz method. In total of 89 subjects, prevalence of STH, Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura infections were 79.8%, 46.1% and 76.4%. After administration of double dose 500 mg mebendazole the prevalence decresed to 39.3%, 2.2%, 39.3%. CR of A.lumbricoides was 95.1% and T.trichiura was 48.5% while ERR of each infection was 97.98% and 69.73%. There were significant difference in prevalence and ERR before and after treatment (p<0.001). In conclusions double doses 500 mg mebendazole was effective in treating A.lumbricoides but was not for T.trichiura. However, CR and ERR of double dose 500 mg mebendazole againts T.trichiura are higher than single doses.


This essay argues that certain modern architectural styles, particularly Art Deco, can be understood both as the imposition of power by the colonizer and the demonstration of resistance of the colonized in early-twentieth-century Hong Kong. The study also demonstrates that these buildings are not passive objects but rather subjects that are able to consume the dominating culture to self-fashion and self-represent. Using postcolonial theory, this critical historiography adopts a three-tiered methodology. First, the essay reveals how the architecture formed an interaction between the patron, architect, and the audience, highlighting their interconnected relationships in identity formation. Secondly, the essay will problematize the architectural style, revealing self-fashioning and self-representing of different identities. Third, the essay will critique the dynamics between the dominated-subjugated in colonial Hong Kong. The paper concludes that modes of resistance and empowerment can be identified in the colonial built environment of the period.


Issues involving chronic disease prevention and management (CDPM) are prevalent in today's aging society, and suggestions for improvement are essential to treat this patient demographic effectively. This article addresses the use of wearable devices for the medical community to improve CDPM by relying on the accumulation of micro data. For the patient, we recognize that these devices can be an effective tool to facilitate real-time monitoring of their vital signs and activity levels. With real-time monitoring and earlier responses, individuals can benefit by preventing, delaying or reducing exacerbations of chronic diseases. Use of these devices also has great benefit to the person and has the potential to decrease the individual's emergency room visits, hospital admissions and re-admissions. As patients and their healthcare providers work together to identify cumulative trends in their micro data, transitions in care planning will be enhanced, further contributing to improved chronic disease management.


Study Design. Prospective, randomized, controlled, multicenter clinical trial. Objective. To compare outcomes of cervical disc arthroplasty with those of anterior cervical decompression and fusion (ACDF) in a Chinese population. Summary of Background Data. Cervical disc arthroplasty has been found to be superior to ACDF for maintaining range of motion (ROM) at the index spinal segment and possibly will avoid abnormal stress to adjacent segments. Methods. A total of 120 patients from 3 large hospitals in China were randomly assigned to treatment with cervical disc arthroplasty (n = 60) using the BRYAN prosthesis or ACDF (n = 60) and were observed postoperatively for 24 months. Results. The 2 groups had similar preoperative demographics and baseline characteristics including ROM, neck disability index, and visual analogue scale for neck and arm pain. The total disc replacement (TDR) group had a significantly longer operation time than the ACDF group (P < 0.001). Outcome data obtained after 24 months revealed a significant difference between the groups in mean change from baseline in ROM at the index level (P < 0.001); ROM was maintained in the TDR group but reduced in the ACDF group. There were no significant between-group differences in the baseline changes in neck disability index or visual analogue scale scores for pain. One patient in the TDR group and 4 patients in the ACDF group required reoperations. Conclusion. At 24 months after surgery, the cervical disc prosthesis yielded good clinical results while maintaining ROM at the index level. Cervical disc arthroplasty appears to be a viable alternative to ACDF.


Noise exposure causes auditory nerve (AN) degeneration and hearing deficiency, though the proximal biological consequences are not entirely understood. Most AN fibers and spiral ganglion neurons are ensheathed by myelinating glia that provide insulation and ensure rapid transmission of nerve impulses from the cochlea to the brain. Here we show that noise exposure administered to mice of either sex rapidly affects myelinating glial cells, causing molecular and cellular consequences that precede nerve degeneration. This response is characterized by demyelination, inflammation, and widespread expression changes in myelin-related genes, including the RNA splicing regulator Quaking (QKI) and numerous QKI target genes. Analysis of mice deficient in QKI revealed that QKI production in cochlear glial cells is essential for proper myelination of spiral ganglion neurons and AN fibers, and for normal hearing. Our findings implicate QKI dysregulation as a critical early component in the noise response, influencing cochlear glia function that leads to AN demyelination and, ultimately, to hearing deficiency. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Auditory glia cells ensheath a majority of spiral ganglion neurons with myelin, protect auditory neurons, and allow for fast conduction of electrical impulses along the auditory nerve. Here we show that noise exposure causes glial dysfunction leading to myelin abnormality and altered expression of numerous genes in the auditory nerve, including QKI, a gene implicated in regulating myelination. Study of a conditional mouse model that specifically depleted QKI in glia showed that QKI deficiency alone was sufficient to elicit myelin-related abnormality and auditory functional declines. These results establish QKI as a key molecular target in the noise response and a causative agent in hearing loss.


Data compression is the process of representing information in a compact form, in order to reduce the storage requirements and, hence, communication bandwidth. It has been one of the critical enabling technologies for the ongoing digital multimedia revolution for decades. In the variable-length encoding (VLE) compression method, most frequently occurring symbols are replaced by codes with shorter lengths. As it is a common strategy in many compression applications, efficient parallel implementations of VLE are very desirable. In this paper we present CUVLE, a GPU implementation of VLE on CUDA. Our approach is on average more than 20 and 2 times faster than the corresponding CPU serial implementation and the only known state-of-the-art GPU implementation, respectively.


Abstract—Quantifying carbon stock losses after wildfire events is challenging due to the lack of detailed information before and after the disturbance. We propose to use the extensive Western FIA database (including periodic and annual inventories) to recreate preand post-fire conditions to better estimate actual carbon losses. Methods include using remeasurement date where available, growth models for forecasting and backcasting, and wildfire data and mapping from the United States Geological Survey. We will discuss the results and provide specific examples to demonstrate the proposed modeling system.


Eight species of the genus Notosemus Forster, 1869 (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) are reported, three of which are new to science: N. albimaculatus Sheng & Sun, sp. nov. and N. planus Sheng & Sun, sp. nov., both collected from Xizang Autonomous Region, SW China, and N. wugongicus Sheng & Sun, sp. nov., collected from Jiangxi Province, S China. One new record for China, N. bohemani (Wesmael, 1855), was reared from Zeiraphera griseana (Hubner, 1789) (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae), a leaf pest of Larix principis-rupprechtii Mayr. (Pinaceae) in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, NW China. A key to the species of the genus Notosemus is provided.


Single-molecule localization (SML) is a powerful tool to overcome the diffraction limit in optical imaging, because the fluorescence emitted by single molecules can be observed with nanometer accuracy when the optical background and associated noise are made sufficiently small. Random adsorbed SML has been successfully demonstrated for superresolution imaging on metal surfaces. To optimize the random adsorbed SML, we developed a new illumination method based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The enhancement of the fluorescence signal and the reduction of background noise were achieved simultaneously. A high localization resolution of 15 nm was demonstrated with this new SPR illumination system.


The number of available cloud services has recently grown considerably. Therefore, consumers demand new methods for choosing the appropriate cloud services for their needs, whereas providers require dedicated ways to correctly elicit requirements from very heterogeneous consumers. In this poster, we present the StakeCloud community platform. This will act as a cloud resources marketplace, allowing consumers to input their needs and providing them with matching cloud services. Moreover, in case the needs are not met, they can be communicated as new requirements to cloud providers. Our solution will enable easier resource identification and requirements communication in cloud systems, thus supporting both consumers and providers.


The holotype of the Late Jurassic sauropod dinosaur Seismosaurus hallorum consists of part of the thoracic and caudal vertebrae, most of the sacrum and pelvis, some ribs and chevrons and an incomplete femur. Reexamination of the holotype indicates that Seismosaurus hallorum differs little from Diplodocus, and none of the
morphological differences are significant enough to justify a separate genus. Particularly important to this conclusion has been careful re-examination and further preparation of the ischium of the S. hallorum holotype, which indicates that the distal, hook-like process originally described was actually the tip of a vertebral neural spine and sandstone matrix adhering to the ischium. We consider Seismosaurus to be a junior subjective synonym of Diplodocus. We suggest that Diplodocus hallorum is also a junior subjective synonym of D. longus, but a careful taxonomic revision of the species of Diplodocus is needed to verify this suggestion.


A survey of anguilliform African clariids from the Lower Guinea indicated the existence of four species, of which two are new to science. Thirty morphometric features as well as several meristic and descriptive characters have been studied on 174 specimens. Channallabes ogooensis n. sp. is recognized by the combination of distinct serrations on the posterior edge of the pectoral spine, 84-97 vertebrae, 100-113 and 85-102 dorsal and anal fin rays, a pale spot on the skull roof between the anterior and posterior fontanel, absence of an epiotic, skull moderately reduced in size, sphenotic and pterotic showing plate-like outgrowths and the posterior border of mesethmoid indented, making the anterior part of the anterior fontanel situated within the mesethmoid. Channallabes teugelsi n. sp. is recognized by the combination of serrations only on the anterior edge of the pectoral spine, 70-82 vertebrae, 99-109 and 90-100 dorsal and anal fin rays and a clear, pale spot on the skull roof between the anterior and posterior fontanel. The three anguilliform genera Channallabes, Gymnallabes and Clariallabes are diagnosed and two anguilliform species are reassigned. A revised key to all African clariid genera is provided.


A model was previously developed (Biofuel Energy Systems Simulator; https://www.bess.unl.edu) to predict greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and net energy yield when ethanol is produced from corn. The model also predicts feedlot cattle, dairy cattle, and swine performance and feed replacement value of ethanol coproducts. Updated equations that predict performance of feedlot cattle fed 0 to 40% of dietary DM as corn wet (WDGS), modified (MDGS), or dry (DDGS) distillers grains plus solubles replacing dry-rolled and high-moisture corn were developed and incorporated into the model. Equations were derived from pen-level performance for 20 finishing studies evaluating WDGS, 4 evaluating MDGS, and 4 evaluating DDGS conducted at the University of Nebraska. Feeding value of WDGS was 145 to 131% of corn replaced when included at 20 to 40% of diet DM due to a quadratic (P < 0.01) increase in G:F. The feeding value of MDGS was 124 to 117% with a quadratic (P < 0.01) increase in G:F and 112 to 110% for DDGS with a linear (P < 0.01) increase in G:F. Midwest corn-ethanol-livestock life cycle GHG reduction relative to gasoline (97.7 g CO2 equivalent/MJ of ethanol) was 61 to 57% when WDGS was fed to feedlot cattle for 20 to 40% diet inclusion. Feeding MDGS and DDGS to feedlot cattle reduced GHG emissions from the corn-ethanol-cattle system by 53 to 50% and 46 to 41%, respectively. Feeding WDGS to feed-lot cattle was the optimum feed use of distillers grains plus solubles based on feeding performance and GHG reduction.


AbstractNephrolithiasis is highly prevalent and has been associated with vascular diseases such as cardiovascular events. Few studies have comprehensively associated renal stones with stroke.This study explored whether patients with renal stones were at a higher stroke risk than those without renal stones. A national insurance claim dataset of 22 million enrollees in Taiwan was used to identify 53,659 patients with renal stones, and 214,107 were selected as age-, sex-, and comorbidity-matched controls for a 13-year follow-up.The relative stroke risk for the RS cohort was 1.06-fold higher than that for the non-RS group (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.01–1.11). Age-specific analysis revealed that the adjusted stroke risk for the RS cohort increased as age decreased, with the highest risk of 1.47-fold (95% CI = 1.10–1.96) in patients aged 20 to 34 years, followed by a 1.12-fold risk (95% CI = 1.00–1.25) in patients aged 35 to 50 years. Sex-specific analysis clarified that women in the RS group had a 1.12-fold stroke risk compared with women in the non-RS group (95% CI = 1.03–1.21). Patients who had undergone >4 surgeries had up to 42.5-fold higher risk of stroke (95% CI = 33.8–53.4).The study utilized the national database and demonstrated that patients, particularly women and the younger population, with nephrolithiasis have an increased risk of ischemic stroke development. Patients treated with medication or through surgery for RSs showed steady and higher risks of stroke than those without surgical or medical intervention.


Ancient mass extinction events such as the end-Permian and
 end-Triassic crises provide analogues for multistressor global change of
ocean warming, pH reduction, and deoxygenation. Organism physiology
is hypothesized to be a key trait influencing vulnerability to these
stressors, but it is not certain how physiology predicts survival over
evolutionary time scales and when organisms are faced with opposing
or synergistic stressors. Fishes (bony fishes and chondrichthyan
fishes) are active organisms with high aerobic scope for thermal tolerance
and well-developed acid-base regulation, traits that should
confer resilience to global change. To test this, we compiled a database
of fossil marine fish occurrences to quantify extinction rates during
background and mass extinctions from the Permian through Early
Jurassic, using maximum likelihood estimation to compare extinction
trajectories with marine invertebrates. Our results show that fewer
chondrichthyan fishes underwent extinction than marine invertebrates
during the end-Permian crisis. End-Triassic chondrichthyan extinction
rates also were not elevated above background levels. In contrast,
bony fishes underwent an end-Triassic extinction comparable to that
of marine invertebrates. The differing responses of these two groups
imply that a more active physiology can be advantageous during global
change, although not uniformly. Permian–Triassic chondrichthyan
fishes may have had broader environmental tolerances, facilitating
survival. Alternatively, the larger offspring size of chondrichthyan
fishes may provide greater energy reserves to offset the demands of
warming and acidification. Although more active organisms have adult
adaptations for thermal tolerance and pH regulation, some may nevertheless
be susceptible to global change during early life stages.


Citrus aurantium (bitter orange) is a plant belonging to the family Rutaceae, The most important biologically active constituents of the C. aurantium fruits are phenethylamine alkaloids octopamine, synephrine, tyramine, N-methyltyramine and hordenine. It is rich in vitamin C, flavonoids and volatile oil. Synephrine is a primary synthesis compound with pharmacological activities such as vasoconstriction, elevation of blood pressure and relaxation of bronchial muscle. whose fruit extracts have been used for the treatment of various diseases such as gastrointestinal disorders, insomnia, head aches, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, antiseptic, anti-oxidant, antispasmodic, aromatic, astringent, carminative, digestive, sedative, stimulant, stomachic and tonic and by research novel use is found in obesity and related risks even life threatening are continuously increasing through out world in all age groups. Many marketed formulations claim to possess antiobesity actions, but still many herbs which have claims to this need to be investigated and their claims to be authenticated. In recent era there is a great thrust on screening of herbal extracts and formulations for antiobesity action. In this article efforts have been taken to discuss the photochemistry, constituents, ethnobotany, pharmacology safety and toxicity of citrus plant. The motto is to discuss C. aurantium here more research attention should be given on this that would increase its use in various chronic and acute diseases

 Key words: Bitter orange, synephrine, obesity, thermogenesis, ethnobotany.


The combination of hybrid systems and fuzzy multiple model systems is described. Further, a hierarchical identification of the resulting fuzzy switched hybrid system is outlined. The behavior of the discrete component is identified by black box fuzzy clustering and subsequent parameter identification taking into account some prior-knowledge about the discrete states. The identification of the continuous models for each discrete state is done based on local linear fuzzy models.


Speech which explores style and substance in British mid-century architectural discourse. Shortly after the Second World War the Architectural Review launched its wide-reaching Townscape campaign. Townscape lasted into the 1970s and involved hundreds of contributors who collectively published over 1,000 instalments related to the campaign. Townscape ran parallel to the rise to pre-eminence of the AR itself, which in the post-war era had become famous for its novel graphic presentation, unique editorial line and quality of contributing authors. Beginning with a series of articles in the 1930s, the AR problematised the deleterious effects of the sprawling modernisation of Britain's rural and urban areas and pitched Townscape as a moderate alternative between (a still unpopular) international modernism and the wave of stylistic revivalisms that had emerged between the wars. It was hoped that a reformed modernism could be married to informal picturesque planning to provide what the AR's editors termed a "humanized townscape". By the early-1950s the range of themes championed by the AR had coalesced into the central polemic of Townscape, creating a comprehensive and highly visual approach to urban design.


This paper discusses Kamusi Pre:D, a system to improve translation by disambiguating word senses in a source document with reference to a large concept-based lexicon that is aligned by sense across numerous languages. Currently under active development, the program prompts users to select the intended meaning when polysemous terms occur, and gives the user the option to select multiword expressions instead of individual words when the MWE occurs as a lexicalized dictionary entry. The disambiguated text is then automatically matched to sense-specific translation equivalents that have been aligned across languages. Pre:D is intended to integrate with existing translation tools, but greatly improve accuracy by involving human intelligence in vocabulary selection, both through manual document review of ambiguous terms and by reference to the underlying curated multilingual Kamusi dictionary data. Pre:D will aid accurate vocabulary translation among a wide range of language pairs, most currently unserved, and offer significant advantages in time, effort, and quality for multilingual translation projects by disambiguating a document one time for concepts that can be rendered appropriately across numerous languages.


Despite substantial research on visual function among older drivers, there is a paucity of research on how age-related changes in visual search patterns and other functional abilities impact on driver behaviour. This study investigated visual search, cognitive performance and driving performance of younger (25-35 years) and older drivers (65-75 years) in a high-level driving simulator. Participants completed two simulated test drives, incorporating complex and hazardous events. Driving measures included speed and braking and steering responses. Data from a FaceLAB eye tracking system was linked with the driving scenario to provide information on time to fixation and fixation duration for critical stimuli and events in the driving environment. Overall, the findings indicated that older drivers travelled at slower speeds and were more variable in their travel speed than younger drivers. Older drivers detected hazards later than younger drivers and differed in the proportion of time looking at hazards, the road ahead, peripheral areas and the speedometer. The relationship between visual search strategies, driving performance and a range of cognitive measures was also explored. The study provided a useful model for evaluating visual strategies and potential interventions for drivers with vision impairment.


Abstract To determine if primary care physicians have been adhering to guidelines set forth by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Expert Panel Report Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma, the author gauged the use of peak flow meters in a hospital family training program. Specifically investigated were the physicians' response to results from the peak flow meters and their prescribing practices regarding the beclomethasone dipropionate metered-dose inhaler. Overall, the use of peak flow meters among the 20 patients included in this study averaged 70%, up from 10% in earlier studies. Similarly, 45% of these patients received prescriptions for beclomethasone metered-dose inhalers with spacer devices. Although these results appear to indicate that physicians are following the aforementioned guidelines, the author cautions that the peak expiratory flow rate measurement is not a perfect indication of asthma severity. Likewise, the spacer devices are not indicated for all patients with asthma who are taking inhaled corticosteroids. Finally, the author emphasizes that anti-inflammatory agents should be effectively used when indicated.


The onset of COVID-19 and cancellation of collegiate sports may have exacerbated student-athletes' psychological distress. Within a national sample of collegiate athletes (N = 5,755; 66.7% women), we determined how gender and race related to rates of depression, stress, and counseling use at the beginning of the pandemic (April/May 2020). Overall, 26.5% (n = 1,526) and 10.6% (n = 612) endorsed clinical levels of depression and stress, respectively; 25.1% (n = 1,443) and 69.7% (n = 4,014) reported subclinical levels. Few athletes (2.3%–17.1%) reported counseling use before or after the onset of COVID-19; those who did reported higher levels of depression and stress than those who never sought services. The female athletes reported higher rates of depression, stress, and counseling use than the male athletes. There were no race effects. Athletic departments must address their student-athletes' psychological distress by facilitating a higher use of mental health services.


Within the complex field of political communication in early modern Europe, merchants were quick to grasp the crucial importance of accurate and up-to-date information for their own affairs, and some were keen to extrapolate their commercial acumen to the realm of the state. In maritime republics such as Venice and the Dutch Republic, trade and navigation had been on the political agenda for many years, often thanks to the efforts of officeholders with a mercantile background. From the late sixteenth century onwards, however, when international trade was increasingly viewed as crucial to the wealth and power of states, commercial knowledge became an object of desire and debate throughout Europe for merchants and rulers alike. As rulers' decisions were increasingly driven by empirical political knowledge, studying their interaction with traders can throw light upon the nature and role of mercantile expertise in politics. Why did rulers heed and even implement the propositions of commercial experts? Which strategies did the latter use to get close to power? How important was their personal reputation? Although the fragmentary nature of the evidence precludes simple answers to these questions, studying the case of Willem Usselincx (1567-1647) may bring us closer to solving them. The chapter discusses how did this spiritual father of the Dutch West India Company and well-informed political outsider, become an advisor to the leaders of the Dutch Republic tried to trade his commercial expertise for power.


Humanity has experienced an explosion of anti-humanism in the form of authoritarian capitalism, postmodern filter bubbles, and global problems. Marxist/Socialist Humanism is the proper answer to the deep crisis of humanity. In this context, this article asks 'How can Cornel West's works inform a contemporary Marxist humanist theory of society?' Taking West's works as a starting point, what are the key elements of a Marxist humanist theory of society? Cornel West is one of the leading critical intellectuals today. His work has fused anti-racist theory, Black Liberation Theology, Marxist theory, pragmatism, and existentialism. This article especially focuses on West's understanding of humanism and culture. It shows how his works and praxis can inform the reinvigoration of Marxist Humanism in the age of authoritarian capitalism as a socialist response. West's thought can and should also inform the analysis of alienation, exploitation, domination, culture, the public sphere, the critique of ideology, and popular culture.


Many computer vision tasks can be formulated as labeling problems. The desired solution is often a spatially smooth labeling where label transitions are aligned with color edges of the input image. We show that such solutions can be efficiently achieved by smoothing the label costs with a very fast edge-preserving filter. In this paper, we propose a generic and simple framework comprising three steps: 1) constructing a cost volume, 2) fast cost volume filtering, and 3) Winner-Takes-All label selection. Our main contribution is to show that with such a simple framework state-of-the-art results can be achieved for several computer vision applications. In particular, we achieve 1) disparity maps in real time whose quality exceeds those of all other fast (local) approaches on the Middlebury stereo benchmark, and 2) optical flow fields which contain very fine structures as well as large displacements. To demonstrate robustness, the few parameters of our framework are set to nearly identical values for both applications. Also, competitive results for interactive image segmentation are presented. With this work, we hope to inspire other researchers to leverage this framework to other application areas.


INTRODUCTION
DRD4 Exon III Variable Number of Tandem Repeat (VNTR) variation was found to interact with bupropion to influence prospective smoking abstinence, in a recently published longitudinal analyses of N = 331 individuals from a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of bupropion and intensive cognitive-behavioral mood management therapy.

METHODS
We used univariate, multivariate, and longitudinal logistic regression to evaluate gene, treatment, time, and interaction effects on point prevalence and continuous abstinence at end of treatment, 6 months, and 12 months, respectively, in N = 416 European ancestry participants in a double-blind pharmacogenetic efficacy trial randomizing participants to active or placebo bupropion. Participants received 10 weeks of pharmacotherapy and 7 sessions of behavioral therapy, with a target quit date 2 weeks after initiating both therapies. VNTR genotypes were coded with the long allele dominant resulting in 4 analysis categories. Covariates included demographics, dependence measures, depressive symptoms, and genetic ancestry. We also performed genotype-stratified secondary analyses.

RESULTS
We observed significant effects of time in longitudinal analyses of both abstinence outcomes, of treatment in individuals with VNTR long allele genotypes for both abstinence outcomes, and of covariates in some analyses. We observed non-significantly larger differences in active versus placebo effect sizes in individuals with VNTR long allele genotypes than in individuals without the VNTR long allele, in the directions previously reported.

CONCLUSIONS
VNTR by treatment interaction differences between these and previous analyses may be attributable to insufficient size of the replication sample. Analyses of multiple randomized clinical trials will enable identification and validation of factors mediating treatment response.


In this paper and attached video, we present a third-generation expert system named Knowledge Amplification by Structured Expert Randomization (KASER) for which a patent has been filed by the U.S. Navy's SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego, CA (SSC SD). KASER is a creative expert system. It is capable of deductive, inductive, and mixed derivations. Its qualitative creativity is realized by using a tree-search mechanism. The system achieves creative reasoning by using a declarative representation of knowledge consisting of object trees and inheritance. KASER computes with words and phrases. It possesses a capability for metaphor-based explanations. This capability is useful in explaining its creative suggestions and serves to augment the capabilities provided by the explanation subsystems of conventional expert systems. KASER also exhibits an accelerated capability to learn. However, this capability depends on the particulars of the selected application domain. For example, application domains such as the game of chess exhibit a high degree of geometric symmetry. Conversely, application domains such as the game of craps played with two dice exhibit no predictable pattern, unless the dice are loaded. More generally, we say that domains whose informative content can be compressed to a significant degree without loss (or with relatively little loss) are symmetric. Incompressible domains are said to be asymmetric or random. The measure of symmetry plus the measure of randomness must always sum to unity.


Mechanics is the science of studying energy and forces, and their effects on matter. It involves mechanisms, kinematics, cross sections, and transport. Radiation mechanism describes how various types of radiation interact with different targets (atoms and nuclei). The book addresses the above four aspects of radiation mechanics integrating these aspects of radiation behavior in a single treatise under the framework of radiation mechanics. It covers all aspects of radiation mechanics. It helps non-nuclear graduates readily familiarize themselves with radiation. It integrates and coordinates mechanisms, kinematics, cross sections and transport in one volume. It features end of each chapter problems to further assist students in understanding the underlying concepts. Use of computations and Internet resources are included in the problems.


Persistent contrails are an important climate impact of aviation which could potentially be reduced by re-routing aircraft to avoid contrailing; however this generally increases both the flight length and its corresponding CO 2 ?> emissions. Here, we provide a simple framework to assess the trade-off between the climate impact of CO 2 ?> emissions and contrails for a single flight, in terms of the absolute global warming potential and absolute global temperature potential metrics for time horizons of 20, 50 and 100 years. We use the framework to illustrate the maximum extra distance (with no altitude changes) that can be added to a flight and still reduce its overall climate impact. Small aircraft can fly up to four times further to avoid contrailing than large aircraft. The results have a strong dependence on the applied metric and time horizon. Applying a conservative estimate of the uncertainty in the contrail radiative forcing and climate efficacy leads to a factor of 20 difference in the maximum extra distance that could be flown to avoid a contrail. The impact of re-routing on other climatically-important aviation emissions could also be considered in this framework.


Title of Document: MODELING NITROGEN, PHOSPHORUS AND WATER DYNAMICS IN GREENHOUSE AND NURSERY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS John Christopher Majsztrik, Ph.D., 2011 Directed By: Dr. John D. Lea-Cox, Plant Science and Landscape Architecture Nutrient and sediment runoff from the six states and Washington, DC that form the Chesapeake Bay watershed is a major cause of environmental degradation in the Bay and its tributaries. Agriculture contributes a substantial portion of these non-point source loads that reach the Bay from its tributaries. Research in this area has traditionally focused on agronomic farm contributions, with limited research on the nursery and greenhouse industry. This research presents the first known attempt to model operationspecific information, validated by published research data, where multiple variables are assessed simultaneously. This research provides growers and researchers with a tool to assess and understand the cultural and environmental impact of current practices, and predict the impact of improving those practices. Separate models were developed for greenhouse, container-nursery and field-nursery operations, since specific production variables and management practices vary. Each model allows for simple entry of production input variables, which interface with the Stella modeling layer. Each model was first calibrated with one published research study, and subsequently validated with another peer-reviewed study, with multiple independent runs for each model. Validation results for all three models showed consistent agreement between model outputs and published results, increasing confidence that models accurately process all input data. Validated models were then used to run a number of what-if scenarios, based upon a database of production practices that was gathered from 48 nursery and greenhouse operations in Maryland. This database provided a detailed analysis of current practices in Maryland, and adds significantly to our understanding of various operational practices in these horticultural industries. Results of the what-if scenarios highlighted model sensitivities and provided answers to hypotheses developed from the analysis of the management database. Some model functions, such as denitrification, would greatly benefit from additional research and further model modification. Models were designed to be easily adapted to local conditions for use throughout the U.S. and potentially other


We address the problem of improving variable-length-to-fixed-length codes (VF codes). A VF code that we deal here with is an encoding scheme that parses an input text into variable length substrings and then assigns a fixed length codeword to each parsed substring. VF codes have favourable properties for fast decoding and fast compressed pattern matching, but they are worse in compression ratio than the latest compression methods. The compression ratio of a VF code depends on the parse tree used as a dictionary. To gain a better compression ratio we present several improvement methods for constructing parse trees. All of them are heuristical solutions since it is intractable to construct the optimal parse tree. We compared our methods with the previous VF codes, and showed experimentally that their compression ratios reach to the level of state-of-the-art compression methods.


Understanding the scaling properties of soil spatial variability is important for managing natural resources and protecting our environment. Our objective was to present methodology that has been used or has the potential to be used in spatial scaling of soil properties. The spectral and wavelet analyses were presented and illustrated using the soil hydraulic conductivity and other basic soil physical properties collected along a transect in Saskatchewan, Canada. We introduced periodogram, spectral analysis, simple squared coherency, and multiple coherency analyses as the frequency domain tools. For the wavelet analysis, the wavelet transform, cross wavelet spectrum, and simple wavelet coherency analysis were introduced. Detailed procedures and precautions for these analyses were also presented. The significance tests for different analyses were discussed and multiple testing for the wavelet analysis was introduced.