With recent progress in computing, algorithmics and telecommunications, 3D models are increasingly used in various multimedia applications. Examples include visualization, gaming, entertainment and virtual reality. In the multimedia domain 3D models have been traditionally represented as polygonal meshes. This piecewise planar representation can be thought of as the analogy of bitmap images for 3D surfaces. As bitmap images, they enjoy great flexibility and are particularly well suited to describing information captured from the real world, through, for instance, scanning processes. They suffer, however, from the same shortcomings, namely limited resolution and large storage size. The compression of polygonal meshes has been a very active field of research in the last decade and rather efficient compression algorithms have been proposed in the literature that greatly mitigate the high storage costs. However, such a low level description of a 3D shape has a bounded performance. More efficient compression should be reachable through the use of higher level primitives. This idea has been explored to a great extent in the context of model based coding of visual information. In such an approach, when compressing the visual information a higher level representation (e.g., 3D model of a talking head) is obtained through analysis methods. This can be seen as an inverse projection problem. Once this task is fullled, the resulting parameters of the model are coded instead of the original information. It is believed that if the analysis module is efficient enough, the total cost of coding (in a rate distortion sense) will be greatly reduced. The relatively poor performance and high complexity of currently available analysis methods (except for specific cases where a priori knowledge about the nature of the objects is available), has refrained a large deployment of coding techniques based on such an approach. Progress in computer graphics has however changed this situation. In fact, nowadays, an increasing number of pictures, video and 3D content are generated by synthesis processing rather than coming from a capture device such as a camera or a scanner. This means that the underlying model in the synthesis stage can be used for their efficient coding without the need for a complex analysis module. In other words it would be a mistake to attempt to compress a low level description (e.g., a polygonal mesh) when a higher level one is available from the synthesis process (e.g., a parametric surface). This is, however, what is usually done in the multimedia domain, where higher level 3D model descriptions are converted to polygonal meshes, if anything by the lack of standard coded formats for the former. On a parallel but related path, the way we consume audio-visual information is changing. As opposed to recent past and a large part of today's applications, interactivity is becoming a key element in the way we consume information. In the context of interest in this dissertation, this means that when coding visual information (an image or a video for instance), previously obvious considerations such as decision on sampling parameters are not so obvious anymore. In fact, as in an interactive environment the effective display resolution can be controlled by the user through zooming, there is no clear optimal setting for the sampling period. This means that because of interactivity, the representation used to code the scene should allow the display of objects in a variety of resolutions, and ideally up to infinity. One way to resolve this problem would be by extensive over-sampling. But this approach is unrealistic and too expensive to implement in many situations. The alternative would be to use a resolution independent representation. In the realm of 3D modeling, such representations are usually available when the models are created by an artist on a computer. The scope of this dissertation is precisely the compression of 3D models in higher level forms. The direct coding in such a form should yield improved rate-distortion performance while providing a large degree of resolution independence. There has not been, so far, any major attempt to efficiently compress these representations, such as parametric surfaces. This thesis proposes a solution to overcome this gap. A variety of higher level 3D representations exist, of which parametric surfaces are a popular choice among designers. Within parametric surfaces, Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) enjoy great popularity as a wide range of NURBS based modeling tools are readily available. Recently, NURBS has been included in the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) and its next generation descendant eXtensible 3D (X3D). The nice properties of NURBS and their widespread use has lead us to choose them as the form we use for the coded representation. The primary goal of this dissertation is the definition of a system for coding 3D NURBS models with guaranteed distortion. The basis of the system is entropy coded differential pulse coded modulation (DPCM). In the case of NURBS, guaranteeing the distortion is not trivial, as some of its parameters (e.g., knots) have a complicated influence on the overall surface distortion. To this end, a detailed distortion analysis is performed. In particular, previously unknown relations between the distortion of knots and the resulting surface distortion are demonstrated. Compression efficiency is pursued at every stage and simple yet efficient entropy coder realizations are defined. The special case of degenerate and closed surfaces with duplicate control points is addressed and an efficient yet simple coding is proposed to compress the duplicate relationships. Encoder aspects are also analyzed. Optimal predictors are found that perform well across a wide class of models. Simplification techniques are also considered for improved compression efficiency at negligible distortion cost. Transmission over error prone channels is also considered and an error resilient extension defined. The data stream is partitioned by independently coding small groups of surfaces and inserting the necessary resynchronization markers. Simple strategies for achieving the desired level of protection are proposed. The same extension also serves the purpose of random access and on-the-fly reordering of the data stream.


AIm: Seizures are a frequent complication in patients who undergo neurosurgery, and can complicate the post-operative course and deteriorate patients' quality of life. Evidence on the prophylactic anticonvulsant therapy after craniotomy is still lacking. mATeRIAL and meTHods: We undertook an observational longitudinal study following neurosurgical supratentorial interventions, to evaluate seizures onset or persistence, and differences in effectiveness between conventional and newer AEDs. ResuLTs: A total of 100 consecutive subjects were enrolled. Each patient underwent a neurosurgical treatment by craniotomy. Pre-operative seizures occurred in 33% patients, early seizures in 13%. Late seizures occurred in 46 patients. At baseline (1 month after surgery) and during follow up the main therapeutic regimen was monotherapy. At last follow up adjustment of antiepileptic regimen or AED dosage had rendered 27 subjects seizure free. People taking newer AEDs at baseline maintain the same antiepileptic regimen more often than patients taking conventional AEDs; late seizures tended to have a higher incidence in the latter group. Adverse events from baseline AEDs were reported by 17% of patients. CoNCLusIoN: In this study population late postsurgical seizures had a remarkable occurrence. Newer AEDs were continued more often than conventional AEDs, with a better tolerability but no significant differences in late seizures incidence.


Infertility is defined as failure to conceive during one year of unprotected frequent intercourse. Leading causes of infertility include tubal disease, ovulatory disorders, uterine or cervical factors, endometriosis and male factor infertility. A laparoscope is a thin fiber optic telescope that is inserted into the abdomen usually through the belly button. The fiber optics allow a light to used to see inside the abdomen. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) gas is placed into the abdomen prior to inserting the laparoscope. Generally, laparoscopy should be reserved for couples who have already completed a more basic infertility evaluation including assessing for ovulation, ovarian reserve, ultrasound and hysterosalpingogram for the female and semen analysis for the male. Laparoscopy can help physicians diagnose many gynecological problems including endometriosis, uterine fibroids and other structural abnormalities, ovarian cysts, adhesions (scar tissue), and ectopic pregnancy. Robotic assisted laparoscopic surgery (RAL) is a more recent development and a form of operative laparoscopy. In RAL, the instruments and telescope are very similar to conventional laparoscopy, but they are attached to a robot which in turn is controlled by the surgeon who is seated at a viewing console. Women who have been diagnosed with endometriosis are more likely to experience infertility, and observational studies have shown that the monthly probability of pregnancy in women with endometriosis is about half of the probability in normal women. In spite of this well-documented association, a true cause and effect relationship has not been established. Laparoscopy is used world-wide to investigate infertility. It is an essential part of full assessment and treatment of infertility. It provides direct visualization of the pelvic organs, ovarian and tubal status and can elucidate the site of tubal obstruction. It has got an advantage of direct visualization of the pelvic organs and the peri-tubal status resulting in greater information as compared to hysterosalpingography and ultrasonography. The advance in instrument technology has made this procedure more productive and less hazardous. Laparoscopy is the most dependable tool to investigate pelvic pathology. The role of laparoscopy in diagnosis of infertility both primary as well as secondary is established beyond any doubt. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/birdem.v2i2.12324 (Birdem Med J 2012; 2(2): 99-103)


The primary aim of this feasibility study was to determine if caregivers (n = 5) were willing and able to use Caring~Web©, a Web-based intervention for support, from their home Internet connection for 3 months. The caregivers' perceived health and satisfaction with caring, as well as the care recipients' use of healthcare services, were recorded. The experience of caring (problems and successes) was examined. Data were collected via weekly online surveys and e-mail discussions. Descriptive analyses revealed that the 3 caregivers who completed the study were satisfied with Caring~Web©. Caregivers rated their health as average to excellent and their satisfaction with caring as good. Care recipients averaged 6 calls/visits to a medical office with one emergency room visit and subsequent hospitalization. Major problems for the caregivers included dealing with medical conditions about which they lacked knowledge. Content analysis of the e-mail discussions revealed that subjects sought information about medical conditions related to caring for the survivor of the stroke. Major successes for the caregivers involved communicating effectively with the care recipient and returning to everyday life with family and friends.


This paper describes challenges of urban transportation and one of the cost effective approach to intelligently manage the public transpiration in the city. The GPS based urban transportation management system in which the fleet tracking using GPS & GSM/GPRS technology and public information system unit mounted at bus. The real-time co-ordinates help to guide the onboard commuter to destination. The unit mounted on bus sends the data using GSM/GPRS module to central monitoring system & displays it on City Map. This application is easy to deploy and provide effective management tool to urban transportation authorities for optimal utilization of present resources for improvements in term of load management, optimal route designing & real-time monitoring and control of the fleet.


The paper presents a method for designing approximately linear-phase 2-D IIR filters using LS error criterion. The filter design problem is transformed into an equivalent optimization problem. The stability constraints are explicitly included into this problem. A hybrid approach for solving the considered optimization problem is proposed. In the first step, a genetic algorithm is applied. The final point from the genetic algorithm is used as the starting point for a local optimization method. The application of the GA ensures that the obtained solution is not trapped at a local minimum. Using a local optimization method in the second step results in improving the speed of convergence. Two design examples are given to illustrate the proposed technique.


Accounting for climate change, GCM-based projections and their uncertainty are relevant to study potential impacts on hydrological regimes as well as to analyze, operate, and design water infrastructure. Traditionally, several downscaled and/or bias-corrected GCM projections are individually or jointly used to map the raw GCMs' changes to local stations and evaluate uncertainty. However, the preservation of GCMs' statistical attributes is by no means guaranteed, and thus alternative methods to cope with this issue are needed. This work develops an ensemble technique for the unbiased mapping of GCM changes to local stations, which preserves local climate variability and the GCMs' statistics. In the approach, trend percentiles are extracted from the GCMs to represent the range of future long-term climate conditions to which local climatic variability is added. The approach is compared against a method in which each GCM is individually used to build future climatic scenarios from which percentiles are computed. Both approaches were compared to study future precipitation conditions in three Chilean basins under future climate projections based on 45 GCM runs under the RCP8.5 scenario. Overall, the approaches produce very similar results, even if a few trend percentiles are adopted in the GCM preanalysis. In fact, using 5–10 percentiles produces a mean absolute difference of 0.4% in the estimation of the probabilities of consecutive years under different precipitation thresholds, which is ~60% less than the error obtained using the median trend. Thus, the approach successfully preserves the GCM's statistical attributes while incorporating the range of projected climates.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the safety and tolerability of aripiprazole adjunctive to standard antidepressant therapy (ADT) for patients with major depressive disorder (DSM-IV-TR criteria).

METHOD
Data from 2 identical studies of aripiprazole augmentation (8 weeks of prospective ADT treatment followed by 6 weeks of randomized double-blind adjunctive treatment) were pooled. The incidence of treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) and weight, electrocardiogram (ECG), and laboratory measurements were assessed during the 6-week phase, including time course, severity, resolution, and predictors. The studies were conducted from June 2004 to April 2006 and September 2004 to December 2006.

RESULTS
The safety analysis included 737 outpatients (aripiprazole, n = 371; placebo, n = 366). The majority of patients completed the trials (aripiprazole, 86%; placebo, 88%). Common TEAEs (≥ 5% and twice the placebo rate) with aripiprazole were akathisia (25%), restlessness (12%), insomnia (8%), fatigue (8%), blurred vision (6%), and constipation (5%). Most TEAEs were of mild to moderate severity (aripiprazole, 89%; placebo, 95%). TEAE rates in the aripiprazole and placebo groups were not affected by ADT, age, or gender. Discontinuation due to TEAEs was low (aripiprazole, 3%; placebo, 1%). Mean weight change was higher with aripiprazole versus placebo (1.73 kg vs 0.38 kg, P < .001). At endpoint, clinical laboratory parameters, vital signs, and ECG indices (including QT(c) interval) were similar between groups. Akathisia with aripiprazole generally occurred in the first 3 weeks (76%), was of mild to moderate severity (92%), and led to discontinuation in 3 patients (0.8%). Within the aripiprazole group, age (18-40 years) was the only positive predictor for akathisia.

CONCLUSIONS
In this short-term post hoc analysis, aripiprazole as augmentation to ADT demonstrated a safety and tolerability profile similar to that in monotherapy studies in other psychiatric populations. Controlled long-term safety and efficacy data of aripiprazole as adjunctive to ADT are warranted.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifiers: NCT00095823 (CN138-139) and NCT00095758 (CN138-163).


The impact of a solid object on a free liquid surface is quite complex. This problem has challenged researchers for centuries and remains of interest today. Recently Duez et al. [1] published experimental results on the splash when a solid sphere enters a liquid. Surprisingly, a small change in the surface chemistry of the object can turn a big splash into an inconspicuous disappearance and vice versa. We study this problem by solving the Navier-Stokes together with the Cahn-Hilliard equations, [2, 3], which allows us to simulate the motion of a free air-water surface in detail, in the presence of surface tension and dynamic wetting. Quantitative computational modeling of dynamic wetting is difficult in itself, but here the use of this tool allows us to study in detail how the wetting properties determine whether a splash appears or not. Our simulated results are compared with the experiments of Duez et al.Copyright © 2008 by ASME


The poliheuristic theory of decision (PH) is placed in its proper historical context through a brief diachronic overview of the evolution of the foreign policy decision-making tradition from Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin to the present. The PH program is examined and contextualized in synchronic fashion via juxtaposition with three parallel lines of theoretical and empirical foreign policy decision-making research: cognitive institutionalism, problem representation, and decision units. These approaches are found to exhibit different methodological strengths and weaknesses and to emphasize different aspects of the decision-making process. Substantial complementarities exist, suggesting that the potential for synergy and cross-fertilization is great.


This paper provides an extensive literature review and analyses some open issues in the measurement of inflation that can only be explored in depth using micro price data. It builds on the analysis done in the context of the ECB's strategy review, which pointed at directions for improvement of the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), including better quantification of potential biases. Two such biases are the substitution bias and the quality adjustment bias. Most analyses of substitution bias rest on the concept of the cost of living, positing that preferences are stable, homogeneous and homothetic. Consumer behaviour is characterised by preference shifts and heterogeneity, which influence the measurement of the cost of living and substitution bias. Climate change may make the impact of preference shifts particularly relevant as it causes the introduction of new varieties of "green" goods and services (zero-kilometre food, sustainable tourism) and a shift from "brown" to "green" products. Furthermore, PRISMA data show that consumption baskets and thus inflation vary across income classes (e.g. higher-income households tend to buy more expensive goods), pointing to non-homotheticity of preferences. When preferences are heterogeneous and/or non-homothetic, it is important to monitor different experiences of inflation across classes of consumers/citizens. This is particularly important when very large relative price changes affect items that enter the consumption baskets of the rich and the poor, the young and the old, in very different proportions. Another open area of analysis concerns the impact of quality adjustment on measured inflation. Evidence based on web-scraped prices shows that the various implicit quality adjustment methods can produce widely varying inflation trends when product churn is fast. In the euro area specifically, using different quality adjustment methods can be an overlooked source of divergent inflation trends in sub-categories, and, if pervasive, shows up in overall measured inflation divergence across countries.


The Senate of the University of Queensland is pleased to present the van Niel International Prize for Studies in Bacterial Systematics for the triennium 2011-2014 to Dr Nikos C. Kyrpides in recognition of the contributions made to the field of bacterial systematics. The award established by Professor V. B. D. Skerman of the University of Queensland honours the contribution of scholarship in the field of microbiology by Professor Cornelis Bernardus van Niel.


CHARACTERIZATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF A PROPELLER TEST STAND Colin Bruce Leighton Benjamin Old Dominion University, 2019 Director: Dr. Drew Landman In recent history, there has been a rapid rise in the use of drones, and they are expanding in popularity each year. The widespread use and future capabilities of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will call for increased study and classification of propellers to maximize their performance. As a result, it is necessary to have continuity in the development, maximization, and optimization of propeller test stand's capability to collect accurate and precise measurements. It is of significant advantage to have the capability of accurately characterizing a propeller based on its thrust and torque. In this study, a propeller test stand was improved with specifically designed features in order to obtain a system with high repeatability and defined prediction bounds. The improvements to the propeller test stand were confirmed at Old Dominion University (ODU) LowSpeed Wind Tunnel using a Design of Experiments (DOE) approach in order to observe the accuracy, repeatability of measurements, and required a mathematical model for aerodynamic characterization. 12x8, 14x12, and 17x12 APC Thin Electric propellers were chosen for comparisons to published data. In addition to these propellers, further experimentation was done on two aluminum fabricated propellers created at ODU, one of a conventional design and the other of a new design with swept blades. The performance data of these propellers were obtained with an emphasis being taken on detailed performance comparisons. Results obtained revealed information that warrants further experimentation with swept designed propellers versus straight blade propellers for application to UAVs. The results of this research showed significant improvement in the propeller test stand and its ability to repeat data with high accuracy and precision in order to predict a propeller's efficiency.


This thesis examines the effectiveness of China's economic activities in North Korea in terms of resolving China's domestic non-traditional security problems. It studies the implementation of China's foreign economic policy towards North Korea. The thesis uses qualitative research methodology to study the economic activities launched after 2002 near the Sino-DPRK border and in North Korean ocean territory. It hypothesises that the commercialisation of China's foreign economic policy towards North Korea is driven by actors below the state in order to resolve their socio-economic problems at the sub-state level. This policy-transition from original pro-aid economic policy to North Korea also has important implications for the regional order in Northeast Asia. These implications include advancing the economic reform process in North Korea, worsening the relationship between China and South Korea, and reducing the effectiveness of the international effort to denuclearise North Korea. The specific non-traditional security problems which have driven three major sectors of China's economic activities in North Korea, i.e. mineral resource and energy sector, fishery industry sector and cross-border activities sector, include issues such as environment pollution, resource scarcity, labor shortage and cultural decline that diverge from the China's strategic targets to Korea Peninsular. This thesis explores the link between high and low politics in the implementation stage of Chinese foreign policy through the relatively active role of actors below the state in Sino-DPRK economic cooperation and their impacts at the regional level after 2002 in contrast to the previous dominant role of central government in this field.


The perceived value of interprofessional collaboration, in the provision of services, has continued to be prominent in the United Kingdom's contemporary health and social care policy, however, there has been limited empirical evidence of how the interpersonal elements of this are created and sustained within operational teams.

This qualitative research provides important insight into the experiences of National Health Service (NHS) staff working in the specialist area of Intermediate Care. It ascertains their perception of the presence of interprofessional collaboration within their respective services, the impact that this had on the staff within them and the factors that had affected its evolution.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken during 2014 and 2015 to collect and analyse data from clinical staff working in five intermediate care services and a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach was utilised to abstract themes from the data obtained.

The findings offer an original contribution to knowledge through determining that the presence of adversity in the workplace was a significant factor in creating and sustaining interprofessional collaboration within the services in this study. A strong, collective identity for their respective social groups was formulated by the participants through situated learning, with a greater emphasis placed on interpersonal relationships, rather than interprofessional competencies.

Theorising the findings, the participants interacted in their contextualised settings, communicating with each other to attain and maintain consensus, applying coping strategies to manage the internal and external stressors affecting them. By working dynamically in this way, consistency of meanings, behaviours and culture were negotiated, offering an assurance of stability and order within settings that were frequently affected by change. These four components were labelled the 4Cs of Interprofessional Collaboration.

The strength of these components was evident, even though an exercise to explore the constituent elements of the participants' services discovered that all of the participants perceived the construction of their respective services differently, reinforcing the presence of subjective, multiple realities.

The results of this study offer an improved recognition that creating and sustaining interprofessional collaboration is a process in constant flux to manage the internal and external stressors affecting it. It requires proactive action, mutual engagement, "Facilitating Interaction" and negotiation between individuals, to develop shared mental models.

Participants worked flexibly within defined parameters of practice maintaining Dynamic Consistency in order to achieve this.


Patients deprived of visual experience during infancy by dense bilateral congenital cataracts later show marked deficits in the perception of global motion (dorsal visual stream) and global form (ventral visual stream). We expected that they would also show marked deficits in sensitivity to biological motion, which is normally processed in the superior temporal sulcus via input from both the dorsal and ventral streams. When tested on the same day for sensitivity to biological motion and to global motion at two speeds (4 and 18° s(-1)), patients, as expected, displayed a large deficit in processing global motion at both speeds. Surprisingly, they performed normally in discriminating biological motion from scrambled displays, tolerating as much noise as their age-matched controls. Networks bypassing damaged portions of the dorsal and the ventral streams must mediate the spared sensitivity to biological motion after early visual deprivation.


The article emphasises the importance of the grammaticality of legal language. The fluency and grammaticality of legal language mostly depends on clarity, precision, unambiguity and regularity of legal terms. Author is also analysing the situation in Lithuanian legal terminology and discussing the vocabularies of terms published during last ten years. There is no vocabulary of Lithuanian legal terms, however a part of defined legal terms may be found in the non–specialised dictionary of contemporary Lithuanian or in the dictionary of international terms if such terms are international. However these dictionaries are designed for ordinary speakers and definitions of legal terms may be lacking of scientific background or regularity. The conclusion is made that the multi–lingual vocabulary of legal terms may be undertaken to prepare on the base of the "Vocabulary of Legal Terms" by A. Ţiurlys. The vocabulary of legal terms may be undertaken to prepare on the base of the dictionaries of contemporary Lithuanian, the dictionaries of international terms and the "Dictionary of Definitions used in the Laws of the Republic of Lithuania" by R. Mockevicius.


The Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) for the Sentinel-5 Precursor mission operating the TROPOMI instrument is currently being developed at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen. The PDGS covers the functions of payload data acquisition, level 0 to level 2 near real-time and offline processing, re-processing, short- and long-term archiving, product quality and service
monitoring. A major challenge in the PDGS development is the handling of high data rates for processing, transmission and archiving, and the integration of several different processing systems. This contribution describes the Sentinel-5 Precursor PDGS concept and architecture, gives an overview on the system requirements and presents the current PDGS development status. The ESA Sentinel-5 Precursor to be launched in March 2015 is an important mission for the continuous operational remote sensing of the atmosphere filling the gap between the ENVISAT era and the GMES Sentinel 5 mission.


Apoptotic and neurogenic events in the adult hippocampus are hypothesized to play a role in cognitive responses to new contexts. Corticosteroid-mediated stress responses and other neural processes invoked by substantially novel contextual changes may regulate these processes. Using elementary three-layer neural networks that learn by incremental synaptic plasticity, we explored whether the cognitive effects of differential regimens of neuronal turnover depend on the environmental context in terms of the degree of novelty in the new information to be learned. In adult networks that had achieved mature synaptic connectivity upon prior learning of the Roman alphabet, imposition of apoptosis/neurogenesis before learning increasingly novel information (alternate Roman < Russian < Hebrew) reveals optimality of informatic cost benefits when rates of turnover are geared in proportion to the degree of novelty. These findings predict that flexible control of rates of apoptosis-neurogenesis within plastic, mature neural systems optimizes learning attributes under varying degrees of contextual change, and that failures in this regulation may define a role for adult hippocampal neurogenesis in novelty- and stress-responsive psychiatric disorders.


This thesis addresses two broad aims. Firstly it attempts to construct a typology of glass vessel types used in England in the sixteenth century. There is no comprehensive guide to the glass from this period commonly found in archaeological contexts and this thesis goes some of the way to redressing this imbalance. Secondly this research undertakes a preliminary investigation of the social context of the glass. It attempts to ascertain what cultural value it would have had within the sixteenth century and this is achieved by examination of its context in archaeological excavations. For the purpose of this thesis glass from five urban centres in the south east of England are examined, these being Southampton, Winchester, Oxford, Northampton and Colchester. Several groups of glass from each town are taken from sites with good contexts and are examined not only in isolation but also in consideration of the site as a whole. This approach allows the construction of a typology of vessel types based upon the glass found at these five centres. This covers almost all of the most commonly found vessel forms and includes a variety of imported vessels as well. The establishment of this initial typology provides a framework onto which further research can be based. It is the first stage in the greater understanding of the chronology and development of vessel forms in the sixteenth century. Finally this thesis examines the wider cultural context of the glass. The types of vessels made in glass are explored and a predominance of vessels associated with liquids noted. Variations between the form of the vessel and type of glass used to make it are observed. The deposition of groups of drinking vessels, apparently in good condition, are considered whilst conclusions concerning the general increase in the occurrence of glass from around 1550 onwards are discussed. Finally comparisons concerning social theory and dining are contrasted with the material found from the study sites.


ABSTRACT Coyotes (Canis latrans) are an opportunistic predator that have adapted to many human-modified environments. Conflicts between coyotes and humans are an increasing concern for managers in urban areas. We examined the spatial and temporal utilization and availability of natural and human-associated food for coyotes in the Chicago metropolitan area, Illinois, USA. We collected 1429 coyote scats from May 2000 to December 2002, and conducted prey surveys in 2002, in 4 sites that varied in their degree of urban development. Dominant food items included small rodents, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), fruit, eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) and birds. Their availability and occurrence in scats varied among sites and seasons. The occurrence of human-associated food items, which was only found in significant amounts in the most developed site, varied seasonally (2–25%). Because coyotes in less-developed areas had lower dietary diversity, these coyotes may have to venture into developed areas when there is a decline in the abundance of major prey species for that specific area.


The range of usable information for public policy is complex and distributed but policy debate is still dominated by instrumental and centralised information constructed and controlled by functional and managerial experts - the creed of expertise. In recent years other types of 'usable' knowledge has begun to flow back into policy streams and in particular local knowledge (sometimes called community knowledge) is staging a major revival. This inductive knowledge is now being merged with the deductive paradigms of new public management.

In the first section I illustrate the key features of expert-based knowledge and how it pervades our thinking about how policy happens and the valued content of policy. Then I outline the types of usable information that flows into government and therefore constitutes the basic building blocks for knowledge. Finally, I drill down to expand on the idea of community knowledge and illustrate what it actually looks like.


In this work, a new CMOS based grounded voltage controlled positive resistor (GVCPR) with one control voltage is proposed. The proposed GVCPR employs only five CMOS transistors, one operated in triode region and others operated in saturation region or OFF. One of the main properties of the proposed GVCPR is its ultra low power consumption; however, a single active component matching condition is needed. A number of SPICE simulation results using IBM 0.13 μm SIGE013 level-7 CMOS process parameters such as its performance analysis and verification in tunable voltage-mode first-order all-pass filter and high-Q & high-gain voltage-mode multiple-feedback second-order band-pass filter are included to confirm the theory. The superior performance of the proposed GVCPR is also proven by numeric Figure of Merit calculation. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.20.7.8023


The paper by Vanneste et al. (2011) addresses the very intriguing issue of the brain source for tinnitus generation. For those of us who consider subjectivity to be the ultimate question of science (given that all of the rest of science is fully dependent on such brain activity), tinnitus is indeed of extraordinary significance. One does not wish such inner sound on anyone and, given its persistent nature, abhorring it should be the rule. However, for those wanting a glimpse into the physical nature of subjectivity, tinnitus is riveting. Tinnitus may be considered a member of a very significant brain activity class, along with deduction, inspiration, dreaming and brooding, in the sense that they are all intrinsically generated functional states, with clear subjective content, not requiring sustaining sensory input. As opposed to the other mentioned intrinsic subjective conditions, tinnitus is, however, omnipresent and thus an odious event. Its functional relatives, visual hallucinations in psychosis, central pain and a host of other neuropsychiatric ailments, do represent a class. We have addressed them as 'thalamocortical dysrhythmias' (TCDs) (Llinás et al., 1999). These events have the following in common: positive and negative sensory ⁄ motor components, a resilient nature, the fact that they disappear during sleep, and the fact that they present unambiguous markers by their electrical signature. Thus, in the case of tinnitus, persistent sound (positive symptom) that can be masked with other sound and the often-accompanying deafness (negative symptoms) represent well the functional phenotype. Beyond diagnostics and therapeutics, TCDs represent one of the truly remarkable neuroscience events that our brains can experience. They present us with petrified sensations and autonomous ever-present movements (e.g. tremor and rigidity) unreferenced to the external world. As such, they constitute a window into the otherwise transient and evanescent nature of brain activity. In the case of tinnitus subjectivity, it presents us with ever-lasting notes or hisses that can be analyzed, quantified and localized (Llinás et al., 2005). With these introductory remarks out of the way, let us consider the implications of the Vanneste et al. (2011) paper. Our colleagues have dug deep into the understanding of tinnitus. Whereas, to most neuroscientists, the subjective represents only neocortical activity, the present paper addresses other aspects that relate beyond the sensation itself, into the memory of its persistence and the affective resonance that it develops with time. Much of the suffering in tinnitus is related to the chronic, unforgiving nature of the ailment. The authors deal well with the possible correlates that support such chronicity, the 'it will remain for the rest of your life' aspect, 'unless medical intervention can exert its therapeutic bliss'. The authors have published a well-designed, significant paper. Unilateral left-sided narrow-band tinnitus is an excellent patient choice, as is differentiating between acute and chronic ailments. The message is clear and very significant – long-term tinnitus is accompanied by an overall reduction in theta, alpha and gamma resonance. There is, however, a clear increase in the specific gamma component between parahippocampal cortex and auditory cortex, as well as between primary and secondary auditory cortex projecting to ipsilateral insula and the contralateral prefrontal cortex. Thus, the basic hypothesis presents long-term tinnitus as the remembered past. This is an interesting thought, although somewhat on the cortical chauvinistic side for a thalamocortical chauvinist such as myself. Clearly, however, this work is an unambiguous step in the correct direction, pointing the way towards more to come.


When Jake Stevens goes to work for some months in Ireland, he feels happy. He loves travelling, and talking about his job - making computer games for BananaTech in America. 'Your new game's going to be the best thing at the Irish Computer Games Show!' people at BananaTech Ireland tell him. But living with a noisy parrot isn't easy, and when Jake asks the most beautiful girl at work out to dinner, she says 'no'. Then someone steals Jake's game the night before the show. Who - or what - can help him to get it back?


Introduction The opioid epidemic has been linked to several other health problems, but its impact on headache disorders has not been well studied. We performed a population-based study looking at the prevalence of opioid use in headache disorders and its impact on outcomes compared to non-abusers with headaches. Methodology We performed a cross-sectional analysis of the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (years 2008-2014) in adults hospitalized for primary headache disorders (migraine, tension-type headache [TTH], and cluster headache [CH]) using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes. We performed weighted analyses using the chi-square test, Student's t-test, and Cochran-Armitage trend test. Multivariate survey logistic regression analysis with weighted algorithm modelling was performed to evaluate morbidity, disability, and discharge disposition. Among US hospitalizations during 2013-2014, regression analysis was performed to evaluate the odds of having opioid abuse among headache disorders. Results A total of 5,627,936 headache hospitalizations were present between 2008 and 2014 of which 3,098,542 (55.06%), 113,332 (2.01%), 26,572 (0.47%) were related to migraine, TTH, and CH, respectively. Of these headache hospitalizations, 128,383 (2.28%) patients had abused opioids. There was a significant increase in the prevalence trend of opioid abuse among patients with headache disorders from 2008 to 2014. The prevalence of migraine (63.54% vs. 54.86%), TTH (2.29% vs. 2.01%), and CH (0.59% vs. 0.47%) was also higher among opioid abusers than non-abusers (p<0.0001). Opioid abusers with headaches were more likely to be younger (43 years old vs. 50 years old), men (30.17% vs. 24.78%), white (80.83% vs. 73.29%), Medicaid recipients (30.15% vs. 17.03%), and emergency admissions (85.4% vs. 78.51%) as compared to opioid non-abusers with headaches (p<0.0001). Opioid abusers with headaches had higher prevalence and odds of morbidity (4.06% vs. 3.70%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 1.48; 95% CI: 1.39-1.59), severe disability (28.14% vs. 22.43%; aOR: 1.58; 95% CI: 1.53-1.63), and discharge to non-home location (17.13% vs. 18.41%; aOR: 1.35; 95% CI: 1.30-1.40) as compared to non-abusers. US hospitalizations in years 2013-2014 showed the migraine (OR: 1.61; 95% CI: 1.57-1.66), TTH (OR: 1.43; 95% CI: 1.22-1.66), and CH (OR: 1.34; 95% CI: 1.01-1.78) were linked with opioid abuse. Conclusion Through this study, we found that the prevalence of migraine, TTH, and CH was higher in opioid abusers than non-abusers. Opioid abusers with primary headache disorders had higher odds of morbidity, severe disability, and discharge to non-home location as compared to non-abusers.


The present thesis is devoted to the dynamics in open or closed many-body bosonic systems, with the use of beyond mean-field methods. In the first part, inspired by the state-of-the-art experiments, we study the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensation which is loaded in an optical lattice with localized loss channels for the atoms. We prove that the particular form of the dissipation can help us to control the many-body dynamics. The loss allows the local manipulation of the system's coherence properties and creates attractive fixed points in the classical (mean-field) phase space. We predict the dynamical creation of stable nonlinear structures like discrete bright and dark solitons. Furthermore, for specific initial states, the systems produces highly entangled and long-living states, which are of high relevance for practical applications. The first part of this thesis ends with the study of non-equilibrium bosonic transport across optical one-dimensional lattices. In the second part, we present techniques for bosonic many-body systems which are based on path integrals. We analyze the Bose-Einstein condensation phenomenon by using tools from quantum information theory and field theory. Finally, we introduce a coherent state path integral formalism in the continuum, which allows us the systematic development of approximate methods for the study of bosons in optical lattices.


In this paper we tackle a fundamental and long-time challenge in urban geography, to uncover a functionally differentiated global city network. To this day, the empirical investigation of a global multifunctional city network remains a challenge given the scarcity of appropriate relational and multifunctional data sources. To overcome this research gap, we present an interdisciplinary network modelling approach that integrates methods from geographic information science with social network analysis, including automated semantic analyses.We apply our modelling framework to a globally available, user-generated database (ie, Wikipedia), still underutilized in urban geography and planning research. The proposed visual analytical investigation of the multifunctional world city network also includes a systematic evaluation to assess the robustness of the proposed approach, and the adequacy of crowd-sourced databases for scientific uses. By example, we discuss economical and political relations of a latent multifunctional global city network which we uncovered with our data-driven approach. Our results not only empirically replicate previously well-established world city network theory, but also generate new research questions about multiple functions of cities, as hypothesized in world city network research. Furthermore, we showcase the potential of coupling text-based user-generated data analysis with geovisual analytics for scientific investigations in urban studies.


The present paper reports theoretical and computational study of interaction of a shockwave with a boundary layer. This type of shockwave boundary layer interaction describes a shockwave interaction with a boundary layer induced by another shockwave. Geometrical shock dynamics is used for theoretical analysis of the shockwave and boundary layer interaction. This paper gives a general understanding of the aerodynamic processes that occur in and around SBLIs, concentrating as much as possible on the physics of these flows. Aerodynamic loads are estimated to explain which factors determine their structure under a variety of circumstances and also show how they impact on other parts of their flowfield, influencing parameters such as the drag, the surface flux distributions, and the overall body flow. The data show that weak shock waves induce an unsteady pressure distribution that can be predicted quite well, while stronger shock waves cause complex frequency-dependent distributions due to flow separation. It demonstrates how the present state of our understanding has resulted through contributions from computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Because of their significance for many practical applications, SBLIs are the focus of numerous studies spanning several decades. Hence, there is a considerable body of literature on the subject.


Purpose of reviewHereditary spastic paraplegias are a genetically heterogeneous group of diseases. Recent advances concerning their nosology and molecular bases have greatly improved the genetic diagnosis of these diseases, with implications for genetic counselling. The recent identification of new genes and loci, however, has blurred the distinction between hereditary spastic paraplegias and other entities, such as cerebellar ataxias or leucodystrophies. Cerebral MRI and the familial history of each patient with spastic paraplegia are the minimal clinical elements needed to orient genetic testing. Recent findingsFor SPG4, the gene most frequently involved in hereditary spastic paraplegias, a novel mutational mechanism was described, which allows detection of an increased number of cases. In autosomal recessive forms, mutations in the recently identified SPG11 gene seem to account for a majority of the complex forms of the disease with atrophy of the corpus callosum. In addition, the SACS gene has been implicated in an increasing number of cases of various origins. SummaryGenetic testing is progressively more complex and clinical and other information concerning the phenotype is now crucial for choosing an appropriate genetic testing procedure for each patient.


Very little is known about molecular evolution in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Given the potentially important role that introns play in directing transcription and the posttranscriptional control of gene expression, we compare rates of intron/gain loss and intronic substitution in P. falciparum and the rodent malaria P. y. yoelii in both orthologous and duplicate genes. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that intron gain/loss and protein evolution is accelerated in duplicate genes versus orthologous genes in both parasites using the genome sequence of both species. We find that duplicate genes in both P. falciparum and P. y. yoelii exhibit a dramatic acceleration of both intron gain/loss and protein evolution in comparison with orthologs, suggesting increased directional and/or relaxed selection in duplicate genes. Further, we find that rates of intron gain/loss and protein evolution are weakly coupled in orthologs but not paralogs, supporting the hypothesis that selection acts on genes as functionally integrated units after speciation but not necessarily after gene duplication. In contrast, we find that rates of nucleotide substitution do not differ significantly between intronic sites and synonymous sites among duplicate genes, implying that a large fraction of intronic sites in Plasmodium evolve under little or no selective constraint.


This report represents our experience with 522 consecutive patients with acute myocardial infarction admitted directly to the Duke Coronary Care Unit. Fifty items of information were used to characterize the patients, their hospital course and follow-up. Serious complications included death, ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation, second- or third-degree heart block, pulmonary edema, cardiogenic shock, persistent sinus tachycardia or hypotension, atrial flutter or fibrillation, and extension of infarction. Forty-nine percent of the patients (252 of 522) experienced a serious complication. All patients who experienced any serious complications had at least one of the above during the first four days of hospitalization. Patients who survived through day 4 were subgrouped on the basis of the occurrence (complicated) or lack of occurrence (uncomplicated) of the above on day 5. Complicated patients had a subsequent hospital mortality of 14% and an incidence of late serious complications of 51%. Patients who were uncomplicated through day 4 had a subsequent hospital mortality of zero and an incidence of late serious complications of zero. These data suggest that it would be feasible and ethically justified to conduct a prospective clinical trial of early discharge (7th day) in patients who meet the above criteria for uncomplicated. The potential economic savings through earlier discharge in uncomplicated patients are of major significance.


An Analysis of the Structure and Dynamics of Inner Core Precipitation Features in a Tropical Cyclone Anthony C. Didlake, Jr. Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Professor Robert A. Houze, Jr. Department of Atmospheric Sciences Airborne Doppler radar observations of the stationary rainband complex and secondary eyewall in Hurricane Rita (2005) were analyzed to better understand the inner-core dynamics of tropical cyclones. In the upwind end of the rainband complex, convective cells displayed kinematic structures that varied with radius. Cells at smaller radii contained a low-level tangential jet constrained in altitude largely by tangential acceleration due to angular momentum conservation, while cells at larger radii contained a low-level and/or midlevel jet determined jointly by angular momentum conservation and vertical advection. These variations are attributable to vortex-scale dynamics in which convective buoyancy (associated with vertical advection) and vertical shear of the radial wind (associated with angular momentum conservation) change with radius. With jets constrained to low altitudes, inner cells are more likely to increase low-level convergence and amplify convection, possibly influencing the formation of a secondary eyewall. In the downwind end of the rainband complex, collapsing convective cells formed a mesoscale stratiform rainband that contained rising radial outflow within the stratiform cloud layer. Below the cloud layer, descending radial inflow was driven by horizontal buoyancy gradients, and thus horizontal vorticity generation, introduced by regions of sublimational and melting cooling. This inflow advected higher angular momentum inward, which resulted in the development of a midlevel tangential jet and broadening of the tangential wind field. This circulation may have also contributed to ventilation of the eyewall as inflow of low-entropy air continued past the rainband in both the boundary layer and midlevels. The stationary rainband complex soon evolved into a secondary eyewall, consisting of a ring of heavy precipitation outside the pre-existing eyewall. Enhanced radial outflow was located just above the boundary layer which modified the deeper overturning circulation of the secondary eyewall. This outflow was associated with a low-level tangential wind maximum which was strongly supergradient, mimicking the low-level circulation of the primary eyewall. Axisymmetric and asymmetric processes contributed comparably to strengthening the secondary eyewall tangential wind maximum. The evolution of these inner-core features likely played an important role in modifying the structure and intensity of the total vortex.


In situ time-lapse optical microscopy was used to examine the microstructural corrosion mechanisms in three zinc-magnesium-aluminium (ZMA) alloy coated steels immersed in 1% NaCl pH 7. Preferential corrosion of MgZn(2) lamellae within the eutectic phases was observed in all the ZMA alloys followed by subsequent dissolution of Zn rich phases. The total extent and rate of corrosion, measured using time-lapse image analysis and scanning vibrating electrode technique (SVET) estimated mass loss, decreased as Mg and Al alloying additions were increased up to a level of 3 wt% Mg and 3.7 wt% Al. This was probably due to the increased presence of MgO and Al(2)O(3) at the alloy surface retarding the kinetics of cathodic oxygen reduction. The addition of 1 × 10(-2) mol dm(-3) Na(3)PO(4) to 1% NaCl pH 7 had a dramatic influence on the corrosion mechanism for a ZMA with passivation of anodic sites through phosphate precipitation observed using time-lapse image analysis. Intriguing rapid precipitation of filamentous phosphate was also observed and it is postulated that these filaments nucleate and grow due to super saturation effects. Polarisation experiments showed that the addition of 1 × 10(-2) mol dm(-3) Na(3)PO(4) to the 1% NaCl electrolyte promoted an anodic shift of 50 mV in open circuit potential for the ZMA alloy with a reduction in anodic current of 2.5 orders of magnitude suggesting that it was acting primarily as an anodic inhibitor supporting the inferences from the time-lapse investigations. These phosphate additions resulted in a 98% reduction in estimated mass loss as measured by SVET demonstrating the effectiveness of phosphate inhibitors for this alloy system.


The effective surface area of drug particle is increased by a reduction in the particle size. Since dissolution takes place at the surface of the solute, the larger the surface area, the further rapid is the rate of drug dissolution. Ketoprofen     is class II type drug according to (Biopharmaceutics Classification System BCS) with low solubility and high permeability. The aim of this investigation was to increase the solubility and hence the dissolution rate by the preparation of ketoprofen     nanosuspension using solvent evaporation method. Materials like PVP K30, poloxamer 188, HPMC E5, HPMC E15, HPMC E50, Tween 80 were used as stabilizers in perpetration of different formulas of Ketoprofen     nanosuspensions. These formulas were evaluated for particle size, entrapment efficiency of drug (EE), effect of stabilizer type, effect of stabilizer concentration and in-vitro dissolution studies. All of the prepared Ketoprofen     nanosuspensions formulas showed a particle size result within Nano range. The average particle size of Ketoprofen     nanosuspensions formulas was observed from 9.4 nm to 997 nm. Entrapment efficiency was ranged from 79.23% to 95.41 %. The in vitro dissolution studies showed a significant (p<0.01) enhancement in dissolution rate of nanosuspension formulas compared to pure drug (drug alone) and physical mixture (drug and stabilizer). The results indicate the suitability of solvent evaporation method for Ketoprofen with improved in vitro dissolution rate and thus perhaps enhance fast onset of action for drug.


Relevant to students, academics and practitioners across the globe, this original volume highlights contemporary issues associated with assisted reproduction and embryology and critically analyzes the law surrounding human reproduction in the light of case law and technological developments since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFE Act) Act was passed in 1990.

Tackling issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, the authors identify and evaluate areas that have provoked intense public and academic debate as well as those where further or renewed regulation is needed. Focusing primarily on the legal and ethical issues involved in regulating this area in the UK, which is at the forefront of developing legislation in this area, this book has international relevance as many countries have used the UK as a model for their own legislation.

This text is suitable for a broad range of readers, including legal academics, law students and practitioners interested in the areas of medical/healthcare law and ethics, bioethics and moral philosophy, family law, sociology and reproductive medicine and genetics.


Protocols structure interactions among communicating agents. A commitment machine models a protocol in terms of how the commitments of the various parties evolve. Commitment machines thus support flexible behavior while providing a meaningful basis for compliance with a protocol. Unfortunately, current formulations of commitment machines are not sufficiently general or rigorous.

This paper develops generalized commitment machines (GCMs) whose elements are described generically in terms of inferences, and whose computations are infinite (thus supporting nonterminating protocols). This paper shows how a GCM can be understood as a nondeterministic Buchi automaton (BA), whose acceptance condition accommodates infinite as well as finite executions.

Deterministic BA are readily emulated by conventional software, e.g., a script running in a Web browser. In general, nondeterministic BA may have no equivalent deterministic BA. However, under well-motivated technical conditions, a GCM yields a deterministic Buchi automaton that, although not necessarily equivalent in automata theory terms, is sound (produces only computations allowed by the GCM) and complete (produces the effect of any computation allowed by the GCM).


Ultra-Fast ASP.NET presents a practical approach to building fast and scalable web sites using ASP.NET and SQL Server. In addition to a wealth of tips, tricks and secrets, you'll find advice and code examples for all tiers of your application, including the client, caching, IIS 7, ASP.NET, threads, session state, SQL Server, Analysis Services, infrastructure and operations. By applying the ultra-fast approach to your projects, youll squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your code and infrastructuregiving your site unrivaled speed. The approach is mostly prescriptive; rather than drowning you in options, the book presents and explains specific high-impact recommendations and demonstrates them with detailed examples. Using this knowledge, you will soon be building high-performance web sites that scale easily as your site grows. What youll learn A way of thinking about performance issues that will help you obtain real results. How to apply key principles that will help you build ultra-fast and ultra-scalable web sites. How to use the ultra-fast approach to be fast in multiple dimensions. Youll have not only fast pages but also fast changes, fast fixes, fast deployments and more. Techniques that are being used by some of the world's largest web sites. How to structure your HTML and CSS to create pages that load ultra-fast. Tips for using Silverlight, Ajax and IIS 7 to improve the performance of your site. How to use comprehensive caching at all tiers to deliver content faster. Why you should avoid traditional session state and how to make the best use of cookies. Tips and tricks for optimizing your ASP.NET and SQL Server code for performance and scalability. How to use Analysis Services to offload your relational database. Why many sites that serve individual pages quickly are not scalable. How to avoid common pitfalls that can have an adverse impact on your sites performance, both now and as it grows. How to apply an end-to-end systems-based approach to web site performance and scalability, which includes everything from the browser and the network to caching, back-end operations, hardware infrastructure, and your software development process. Who is this book for? This book will be useful for intermediate to advanced developers and architects who want to improve the performance of their ASP.NET-based web sites. Some knowledge of ASP.NET, SQL Server, and IIS is assumed. Example code is provided in C#. Experienced web developers who have recently moved from Java or PHP to .NET will find lots of valuable and interesting information. This book will also be useful for non-developers who have a technical interest in what makes a web site fast. In particular, if youre involved with web site operations, testing, or management, you will discover many of the principals and issues that your development teams should be addressing, along with demonstrations that help drive the points home.


Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) ranges from steatosis and hepatic insulin resistance to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis. NAFLD is now considered as the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome, and both are triggered by mechanisms including inflammation, lipid overload and oxidative stress in adipose tissue and liver. Despite accumulation of numerous data on NAFLD physiopathology, therapeutic modulation of the pathways involved appear insufficiently efficient or associated with serious adverse effects. The increased prevalence of NAFLD and metabolic syndrome during the last decades was associated with deep modifications of dietary habits, especially increased fat intakes. Recent literature provides clues of increased saturated (SFA) and n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) as well as reduced n-3 PUFA in the diet of NAFLD and NASH patients. Indeed, strong data support the detrimental role of high SFA and n-6/n-3 ratio as well as low monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and n-3 PUFA on metabolic parameters, which are ameliorated by administration of n-3 PUFA and MUFA. Despite governments and health associations having revised their recommendations for n-3 PUFA intakes upward during the last decade, those are still inferior to levels proved of therapeutic efficiency and are still not reached in the general population. This short review discusses these issues and provides consequent pragmatic suggestions for enhanced dietary measures for prevention of NAFLD and metabolic syndrome in the general population.


Traditionally, the development of investment strategies has required domain-specific knowledge and access to restricted datasets. Hence, the majority of data scientists do not research investment opportunities because they lack one or both of these requirements. In this article, the authors discuss the merits of tournaments as a crowdsourcing paradigm for investment research. Tournaments can overcome these research barriers, hence enabling the wide population of data scientists to contribute to the development of investment strategies. TOPICS: Simulations, big data/machine learning Key Findings • There are several barriers to the development of investment strategies: domain-specific knowledge barrier, budgetary constraints and confidentiality restrictions, inability to monetize the value of data, and backtest overfitting. • Tournaments offer a solution for overcoming the barriers associated with developing investment strategies. • The modern investment process the authors suggest allows data scientists without an investment background to contribute forecasts to a systematic asset manager. • This does not mean that tournaments obviate the need for financial expertise. On the contrary, deep financial expertise is required to cast the problem crowdsourced through the tournament.


Abstract. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas produced in wetland
environments via microbial action in anaerobic conditions. If the location and extent of
wetlands are unknown, such as for the Earth many millions of years in the past, a model
of wetland fraction is required in order to calculate methane emissions and thus help
reduce uncertainty in the understanding of past warm greenhouse climates. Here we present
an algorithm for predicting inundated wetland fraction for use in calculating wetland
methane emission fluxes in deep-time paleoclimate simulations. For each grid cell in a
given paleoclimate simulation, the algorithm determines the wetland fraction predicted by
a nearest-neighbour search of modern-day data in a space described by a set of
environmental, climate and vegetation variables. To explore this approach, we first test
it for a modern-day climate with variables obtained from observations and then for an
Eocene climate with variables derived from a fully coupled global climate model
(HadCM3BL-M2.2; Valdes et al., 2017). Two independent dynamic vegetation models were used
to provide two sets of equivalent vegetation variables which yielded two different
wetland predictions. As a first test, the method, using both vegetation models,
satisfactorily reproduces modern day wetland fraction at a course grid resolution, similar to those used in
paleoclimate simulations. We then applied the method to an early Eocene climate, testing
its outputs against the locations of Eocene coal deposits. We predict global mean monthly
wetland fraction area for the early Eocene of 8×106 to 10×106 km2 with a
corresponding total annual methane flux of 656 to 909 Tg CH4 yr−1,
depending on which of the two different dynamic global vegetation models are used to
model wetland fraction and methane emission rates. Both values are significantly higher
than estimates for the modern day of 4×106 km2 and around
190 Tg CH4 yr−1 (Poulter et al., 2017; Melton et al., 2013).


We develop and demonstrate an efficient, simple fiber optic link for K-band through millimeter-wave signal relay and downconversion. The link uses optical phase modulation to simplify the transmitter and re-modulates the optical carrier with a local oscillator (LO) tone in the receiver, eliminating the need for a second frequency or phase-coherent optical heterodyne source. An optical notch filter in the receiver removes the carrier to allow direct detection of the intermediate frequency (IF). A 30 GHz signal is downconverted to a 140 MHz IF, with a measured noise figure (NF) of 32.5 dB, thirdorder spur-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 112 dB/Hz2/3, and only 3.5 dB RF conversion loss with 10mA of received DC photocurrent. A 10MBaud 64-QAM signal at 30 GHz is also passed through the link; the IF output has no measureable degradation in error vector magnitude (EVM) from the back-to-back, all-electrical case.


Fenestration design can greatly affect the energy requirements for space conditioning and electric lighting in buildings. The net annual effect greatly depends on the effectiveness of daylight utilization with specific results being a complex function of the interaction among building design features, building operating characteristics, and climate. The object of this study was to isolate the energy effects of fenestration and electric lighting design, quantify these effects, and develop simplified analysis tools for compliance use in the building envelopes section of ASHRAE/IES Standard 90. Envelope thermal conductivity, fenestration design, and electric lighting characteristics are parametrically varied through a wide range of values and in a diversity of climates. For these parametric variations, annual energy consumption is calculated with the DOE-2.1B energy analysis program. The numerical results are collected and stored on tape. From this data base statistical analysis is performed using multiple regression techniques leading to simplified correlation expressions characterize annual energy performance trends for cooling, heating, and cooling peak so that users can easily ascertain the energy implications of design options for fenestration, daylighting, and electric lighting.


In this paper we describe a method to monitor for a difference in the ionospheric delay observed by a ground station of a Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) and an airborne user. In case of detection the affected satellite can be excluded or a switch to an ionospheric free processing mode can be triggered. As it is not possible to estimate the absolute ionospheric delay at the ground station from the transmitted corrections directly, we compare a pseudo-ionospheric delay estimate from the corrections with an ionospheric estimate after removing biases. We then show the performance of the proposed monitoring architecture in flight trials from our GBAS test environment for different scenarios. In order to obtain results for a full constellation we considered an L1/L2 dual frequency combination where the expected noise and multipath is larger than in the L1/L5 case which will be used in an operational GBAS. Results show that even with the larger test statistic and in the single constellation case the monitor is feasible and provides good results. Furthermore, we also show results using the available L5/E5a signals collected during flight tests. Also in this case the performance is good and the threshold was not exceeded despite the low threshold of the monitor due to the marginal geometry. In order to test the reaction of the monitor to ionospheric gradients we injected a simulated error into the airborne measurements. As the monitoring threshold depends on the satellite geometry we show some exemplary results of the impact of different gradient slopes on the test statistic of the affected satellites.


The use of cold-formed steel (CFS) is becoming popular in residential and commercial building as a cost-effective alternative to traditional wood materials. CFS provides high strength-to-weight ratio, resulting in permitting lighter structure and longer spans. If proper design considerations are not made, this longer span and lighter structure can result in vibration serviceability issues that may affect building occupant comfort. The available design methods to calculate the dynamic properties of floor systems (i.e. Canadian Wood Council Method, CWC; Applied Design Council Design Method, ATC; and Eurocode, EC5) are used for the design of light-frame timber-based systems, CFS C-shape joists, and structural steel and concrete floor systems. The applicability of such methods to I-shape CFS joists is as yet unavailable. In addition, the North American Code for Cold-formed Steel structural Members (CSA-S136-07) provides specifications of ultimate and serviceability limit state design of C-shape joists rather than I-shape joists. As such, this research was divided into three parts. Part 1 presented the results of laboratory and field study on the vibration of a recently developed CFS I-shape joist called "iSPAN." The main objective of the first part was to understand the dynamic characteristics of iSPAN floor system, recommend an adequate model for predicting the dynamic response and modal properties of floor systems, and correlate its results with engineered wood I-joists in order to aid the design process. Part 2 presented comparison between the experimental findings and available code provisions for the design of CFS joists at ultimate and serviceability limit states. The effect of web utility holes was also considered on the dynamic properties, and ultimate strength of iSPAN joists. Part 3 presented a finite-element modeling and its verification with the experimental findings of the tested samples. Also, part 3 extended the finite element modelling to analyse I- and C-shape CFS joists to determine their ultimate strength and serviceability, with and without the presence of utility holes in the webs. Since CSA-S137-07 does not provide design provisions for the edge-stiffened (i.e. lipped) holes, a practical-design-oriented parametric study, using the finite-element modelling, was conducted on CFS I- and C-shape members with circular, slotted and tri-slotted, edge-stiffened, holes under flexural loading. The optimized profile of the edge-stiffened holes was obtained using the elastic-buckling analysis. The post-buckling finite-element analysis was then utilized to determine member flexural strength as affected by utility hole geometry and web depth. Results showed that the edge-stiffened holes can significantly improve the flexural strength of CFS joists. The data generated from the parametric study was used to develop new design provisions to predict the flexural strength of such joists with the presence of edge-stiffened holes.


The Cypriot Greek variety (CG), spoken in the island of Cyprus, is relatively distinct from Standard Greek (SG) in all linguistic domains and, especially, in the area of pronunciation. Youth language, within the Greek-Cypriot context, is an area of study that has, until recently, received little attention. Tsiplakou (2004) makes reference to the emergence of a new slang among young Greek-Cypriots, influenced by new comedy series, in which the actors make extensive use of 'exaggeratedly peasant' CG. As these comedy series become increasingly popular, the use of marked regional features becomes evident in the speech style of young Greek-Cypriots. A preliminary study has also revealed that marked CG linguistic features are equally evident in the online interactions of young internet users (Themistocleous 2005). In this study, I examine the use of CG phonological elements in a corpus of messages collected from channel #Cyprus, of Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It is demonstrated that young Greek-Cypriots use language in creative ways, in order to represent in writing phonological features, typical of their informal speech.


Borders are geo-spatial phenomena which including different dimensions. So, research and scientific work in the field of border studies for being accurate and acceptable should be done in such a way those different dimensions of border studies have considered. The problem is that only some dimensions have been considered and not others which would provide reduction of the credibility and effectiveness of the studies. The first step in the study of border can be considered basic dimensions of the border. So, this study has been completed by analytical and descriptive study and by using content analysis and data library with the aim of achieving basic dimensions of border studies. The results indicate that the dimensions discussed in border studies derived from theories, views and border articles are at least 55, which can be divided in the form of eight; geographical, political-sovereignty, defense-security, socio-cultural, economic, legal, geopolitical and technological. These dimensions and indexes by T-test have been evaluated and approved and their ranking is as follows; securitydefense have the highest score and technological the lowest score. On the other hand it should be noted with regard to the nature of the bilateral border; these eight basic dimensions of border must be considered on both sides of the border and studied until scientific studies and researches have the necessary performance.


Evaporation from four cropping systems, i.e . willow, spruce, grass ley and barley, was compared in this simulation study. The physically based soil model had previously been used to simulate a wide variety of soil-plant systems. Climatic data obtained over six years from two stations in southern Sweden were used as model input. The stand parameters were mostly taken from the literature. The mean seasonal "crop coefficient" for the period from April through October, defined as the relation between the potential transpiration calculated by the Penman-Monteith (1965) formula and the Penman (1948) estimate, E to , was about the same for willow and spruce (0.9), but was lower for grass ley (0.7) and barley (0. 4). Seasonal evaporation was highest for spruce (516 mm), slightly lower for willow (497 mm), and much lower for grass ley (419 mm) and barley (347 mm). Total evaporation and transpiration decreased linearly with the precipitation deficit, P E to , indicating reduced transpiration for all six years at the east coast and two years at the west coast. The difference in total evaporation between the trees (willow, spruce) and grasses (grass ley, barley) was most pronounced during growing seasons with a precipitation excess, P > E to , and decreased linearly with the precipitation deficit to near zero at a deficit of 350 mm. Runoff increased with the precipitation excess, but for willow and spruce it was generally equal to or less than the excess. For the grass ley and barley, runoff exceeded the precipitation excess, P - E to , by about 150 mm on a yearly basis.


Crises under capitalism, as historical analysis proves, tend to entail a transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy. Inequalities between poor and wealthy, between people of color and white people, between North and South and between genders are increasing. Most scholars will agree that this is also happening on a global level as a consequence of the handling of the covid-19 pandemic. However, there is a lot of disagreement regarding the evaluation of workers' resistance. Some observe a global increase in workers' struggles since the pandemic took hold in March 2020, some deny it, and others, maybe most, pay little attention to workers' struggles. The differing points of view also go back to diverging positions on the importance of class, labor and workers' organization. This article outlines the dimensions of the class war from above, provides an initial overview and systematization of the workers' struggles, discusses the transformative power of workers' struggles and presents a preliminary evaluation.


The majority of previous research .conducted on sex work has reflected and reinforced popular cultural constructions of sex work. This present study examines alternative constructions of sex work from the viewpoint of sex workers themselves using the discourse analytic method developed by Potter and Wetherell (1987) and Parker ( 1992). Nine female sex workers were interviewed on a wide variety of relevant topics. The analysis revealed that five distinct discourses were used to construct sex work. These included construction of the dissociation of the self; clients as being everyday types of men who were further constructed as being wounded, as having a higher sexual drive than women and of sometimes being friends and lovers; the 'whore stigma'; sex-as-work and sex work as valuable. In general, these discourses presented positive and powerful ways of talking about the sex work industry. Participants recognised the stereotypical and stigmatic ways that they were constructed in social discourse and actively concentrated on resisting such language about sex work. The participant's alternative constructions of sex work generally functioned to justify sex work as being valid work. The results of this study have relevance for other socially marginalised groups in society, which are confronted by prejudice, stigmatisation, and oppression.


The government has recently raised the issue of differential rates of participation in higher education. The overall aim of this paper is to present an example of the kind of detailed research necessary to identify factors associated with low rates of participation in higher education by some groups of young people. A number of studies have suggested that in addition to educational attainment, issues such as social class, gender and parental education also influence a young person's likelihood of entering higher education. In this paper we undertake exploratory analysis of a series of nationally representative data and through statistical modelling we then identify the factors that influence a young person's chances of entry into higher education and participating on a degree level course. Through sample enumeration, an innovative statistical methodology, we were then able to quantify the substantive effects of these factors. We found that net of educational attainment a number of factors (e.g. gender and social background variables) influence the likelihood of a young person entering higher education and participating on a degree level course. In addition our analysis highlights the interwoven effects of parental education and schooling and we discuss the complex nature of the effects of ethnicity.


Today visual search tools are being used by children in Canada and Mongolia, and college students in the US. These diverse users each have their own needs, expectations, and uses for visual search and the results of such searches. This panel will address issues relating to visual search in diverse environments with various ages of users. The technologies studied are the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL), the children's portal, History Trek, and three web search engines (one visual–KartOO, one hybrid–Quintura, and one text-based--Google). Panelists will discuss users that range from children of ages 8 to 12, to college students and working adults in Canada, Germany, Honduras, Mongolia, New Zealand, and the United States.

Title: Visual Search Can Lead to Cultural Understanding

Author: Allison Druin


In the thesis, we explore reasoning about and handling of algebraic effects. Those are computational effects, which admit a representation by an equational theory. Their examples include exceptions, nondeterminism, interactive input and output, state, and their combinations. In the first part of the thesis, we propose a logic for algebraic effects. We begin by introducing the a-calculus, which is a minimal equational logic with the purpose of exposing distinct features of algebraic effects. Next, we give a powerful logic, which builds on results of the a-calculus. The types and terms of the logic are the ones of Levy's call-by-push-value framework, while the reasoning rules are the standard ones of a classical multi-sorted first-order logic with predicates, extended with predicate fixed points and two principles that describe the universality of free models of the theory representing the effects at hand. Afterwards, we show the use of the logic in reasoning about properties of effectful programs, and in the translation of Moggi's computational λ-calculus, Hennessy-Milner logic, and Moggi's refinement of Pitts's evaluation logic. In the second part of the thesis, we introduce handlers of algebraic effects. Those not only provide an algebraic treatment of exception handlers, but generalise them to arbitrary algebraic effects. Each such handler corresponds to a model of the theory representing the effects, while the handling construct is interpreted by the homomorphism induced by the universal property of the free model. We use handlers to describe many previously unrelated concepts from both theory and practice, for example CSS renaming and hiding, stream redirection, timeout, and rollback.


Abstract A new stenasellid isopod is described from Tashan Cave, Khuzestan Province, south-west Iran, belonging to the genus Stenasellus Dollfus, 1897. The first recorded species of Stenasellidae from Iran, Stenasellus tashanicus sp. n., is diagnosed by the presence of antennae with a minute squama bearing paired, long, robust setae; a maxilliped endite with six coupling hooks; and slender appendix masculina with an acute apex. A revised generic diagnosis is provided with a key to the six known western Asian Stenasellus species.


This journal issue comprises reports concerning program evaluations of key national home visitation models. No single evaluation can answer all the questions of interest about a program, nor is any evaluation perfect, which means that readers must carefully weigh the intended purpose of the evaluation and the evaluation's strengths and weaknesses before deciding what conclusions can credibly be drawn from its results. This article begins with a discussion of the role of evaluation both in improving programs and in determining program effects. The choices required to craft a strong and methodologically rigorous evaluation are described: what outcomes to measure and how; what methods to use in designing the evaluation and building a comparison group; how many participants to enroll; and how to devise a strong plan for data analysis involving subgroups of the enrolled families. The article then discusses additional factors policymakers and practitioners should consider when interpreting the results of home visiting evaluations: attrition, the policy and functional importance of the outcomes, and the likely generalizability of the results to other communities or other populations. The evaluations that appear in this journal issue are used as examples throughout the article, and the measures that were used in those evaluations are summarized. The evaluations included in this journal issue have both strengths and weaknesses but are probably among the better evaluations in the home visiting field.


"Mass torts" appeared in the legal spotlight over the last couple of decades due to special, legal and non-legal, circumstances. Closely afterwards, the US Bankruptcy Code widened the definition of claims, intending to make it as broad as possible. Latent tort injuries, those who were not to appear until after the resolution of the bankruptcy case, were now susceptible of being interpreted as claims. As a result interested parties seeking to invest in the troubled business couldn't accurately evaluate what the potential cost of the successor liability doctrine might be and even people not yet injured could be potentially involved in a bankruptcy proceeding, regardless of being unaware of it. This note intends to shed light over the inescapable upper limit of recovery presented by the debtor's assets in addressing the "futures problem" in bankruptcy and the social welfare diminution of excluding them.


The purpose of this study is to determine women's perceptions and choices of different categories of occupations and the reasons for such choices. Since the installation of the first democratic post apartheid government in South Africa, national policy has advanced women's rights. Affirmative action has opened up opportunities previously closed to women, but there is little research documenting changes in career trends. The influence of race, gender, social and political changes on perceptions and choices of occupations of women in the country is not known. This study has focused on African and Indian females in the 15 to 60 age range in the greater Durban area. Women born between 1940 and 1985 have experience of the preand post apartheid era, and therefore changes in perceptions and choices could be investigated. A survey questionnaire was administered to 390 female learners in seven former Indian schools. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 African and Indian women; six daughters in non traditional occupations and six mothers in traditional occupations. The results from the survey and interviews suggest that women have a strong sense of empowerment and do not regard gender as a barrier to occupational choices. A limited number of occupations were categorized as suitable for men only, while the majority were deemed suitable for both men and women. Survey data indicated that African learners were more conservative in their choices than Indian learners. Interviews with the older women however, revealed that African women were more positive about opportunities open to them in the new South Africa. Detailed family profiles suggest that socio economic factors rather than parental influence, impacted on decision-making patterns. The unique experiences of women in this country, who have been subject to political and social pressures of the apartheid policy and the rapid change of the post apartheid era, must be documented before any theoretical positions can be articulated about the career development of South African women. This study has contributed to research on the career development of women by providing some insight into how a sector of African and Indian women perceive and categorize occupations. KEY TERMS: Women; occupational perceptions; choices; determinants. T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S


We describe a mobile instant messaging system, MIM, designed for mobile environments. During the design of mobile applications, several new problems and possibilities have to be considered that do not exist with applications targeted at desktop PCs. One example of an application not designed for a mobile environment is the current, very popular, instant messaging, typified by systems such as ICQ, AIM and MSN Messenger. We describe why current systems are not suitable in a mobile environment, and present our architecture for a new system, MIM, and show various implementations for different mobile devices such as PDAs, wearable computers and mobile phones.


BACKGROUND
According to social-cognitive theory (SCT), self-efficacy affects health behavior both directly and indirectly by influencing how individuals perceive their environment. This study examines whether perceptions of home and school environment mediate the association between self-efficacy and physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior in adolescent girls.

METHODS
Baseline data from the Nutrition and Enjoyable Activity for Teen Girls (NEAT) was used for this study. Grade 8 female students (n = 357) were recruited from 12 secondary schools located in low-income communities in the Hunter Region, New South Wales, Australia. PA was assessed using accelerometers, and sedentary behavior by self-report and accelerometers. Self-reported measures were used for perceived home and school environment and self-efficacy. Multilevel regression models were calculated to determine if the perceived environment mediated the relationship between self-efficacy with both PA and sedentary behavior.

RESULTS
The perceptions of the school and home environment did not mediate the relationship between PA self-efficacy and PA behavior or sedentary behavior.

CONCLUSION
The mediated models were not supported for PA or sedentary behavior. However, other results of this paper may be helpful for future theory development and practice. More research is needed to understand behaviors in unique populations such as this.


This paper presents a method for grasp evaluation. It is based on the ability of the grasp to reject disturbance forces. The procedure takes the geometry of object into account, and it is also possible to incorporate task-oriented information. The evaluation criterion is formulated as a min-max optimization problem, for which an efficient algorithm is proposed and analyzed. The result of this algorithm is independent of scale and choice of reference frame, and can easily be visualized as a surface in the force space. The method is illustrated with several examples.


Resolution of Sepsis-Associated Acute Kidney Injury: Association with Emergency Department Fluid Management Patterns Kristina H. Mitchell, MD Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Noel S. Weiss, MD DrPH, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health Background: Sepsis is the most common cause of acute kidney injury (AKI). AKI is associated with poor outcomes including progression to chronic kidney disease, increased intensive care unit and hospital length of stay, and mortality. Recent evidence suggests that trajectory of AKI (duration and resolution/persistence), rather than KDIGO stage, is associated with these poor outcomes. Fluid management decisions made during early resuscitation have the potential to improve AKI trajectory in patients with sepsis. Objective: To examine the association between emergency department (ED) fluid management patterns and AKI resolution in a cohort of ED patients with septic shock. Methods: Retrospective cohort study of 292 patients with septic shock identified in the ED at an academic county hospital in Seattle, WA from 2009 -2015. Multivariable relative risk regression was used to examine the association between two exposures; 1) total resuscitation volume administered in the ED and 2) total volume of Lactated Ringer's solution administered in the ED, and the outcome of unresolved AKI at the earliest of death, discharge, or hospital day 5. Measurements and Main Results: Two-hundred six patients (71%) had sepsis-associated AKI and 83 (28%) had unresolved AKI. Patients with unresolved AKI were older, had more comorbidities, and were more severely ill. Mortality during the first 5 hospital days was more common among patients with unresolved AKI (34%) than those with resolved AKI (<1%) or no AKI (<1%). There was a trend toward decreased risk of unresolved AKI in patients receiving larger total ED resuscitation volumes. Each liter of Lactated Ringer's solution administered in the ED was associated with a 24% decreased relative risk of unresolved AKI (95%CI 5%-39%, P=0.02). Conclusions: In this cohort, increased volume of Lactated Ringer's solution in the ED was independently associated with decreased risk of unresolved AKI. This result supports the need for randomized trials comparing ED resuscitation with 0.9% saline to balanced crystalloid in patients with septic shock.


Purpose

As peer support services have become increasingly used in mental health settings as a recovery-oriented practice, so has the body of published research on this approach to care. The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on the current evidence base for peer support for adults with mental illness in two domains: mental health and recovery, and physical health and wellness.

Design/methodology/approach

To provide a robust, non-redundant, and up-to-date review, first the authors searched for meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Second, the authors found individual studies not included in any of the reviews.

Findings

Peer services are generally equally effective to services provided by non-peer paraprofessionals on traditional clinical outcomes. Although some studies found peer services to be effective at reducing hospitalization rates and symptom severity, as a whole, the current evidence base is confounded by heterogeneity in programmatic characteristics and methodological shortcomings. On the other hand, the evidence is stronger for peer support services having more of a positive impact on levels of hope, empowerment, and quality of life.

Research limitations/implications

In addition to the need for further high-quality research on peer support in mental and physical health domains, the authors also question whether measures of hope, empowerment, and integration into the community are more relevant to recovery than traditional clinical outcomes.

Originality/value

This paper provides an original, robust, and up-to-date review of the evidence for peer services.


The classic trade-off between exploration and exploitation in organizational learning has attracted vigorous attention by researchers over the last two decades. Despite this attention, however, the question of how firms can better maintain the balance of exploration and exploitation remains unresolved. Drawing on a wide range of research on population and organization structure, we argue that an organization divided into semi-isolated subgroups may help strike this balance. We simulate such an organization, systematically varying the interaction pattern between individuals to explore how the degree of subgroup isolation and intergroup connectivity influences organizational learning. We also test this model with a range of contingency variables highlighted in the management research. We find that moderate levels of cross-group linking lead to the highest equilibrium performance by enabling superior ideas to diffuse across groups without reducing organizational diversity too quickly. This finding is remarkably resilient to a wide range of variance in factors such as problem complexity, environmental dynamism, and personnel turnover.