The three-dimensional, dynamic/thermodynamic ice-sheet model SICOPOLIS (SImulation COde for POLythermal Ice Sheets) is applied to the ISMIP HEINO (Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project–Heinrich Event INtercOmparison) set-up. ISMIP HEINO has been designed to study large-scale ice-sheet instabilities, similar to those of the Laurentide ice sheet which are likely the cause of Heinrich events, on a simplified geometry which consists of a flat square with 4000 km side length. This square contains an area which resembles Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait, on which rapid sediment sliding can occur. The ice sheet is built up over 200 ka by assuming a temporally constant glacial climate. For the standard set-up of ISMIP HEINO, we obtain an oscillatory behaviour of the ice sheet with a main period of approx. 7.5 ka. One cycle consists of a gradual growth phase, followed by a massive surge through "Hudson Bay" and "Hudson Strait" owing to rapid sediment sliding on a molten bed. The occurrence of internal oscillations is robust against moderate variations of the surface boundary conditions and the strength of the sediment sliding. These findings support the idea of a free oscillatory mechanism as the main cause for large-scale ice-sheet surges. key words: ice sheet, Heinrich event, instability, surge, model intercomparison


Modern currency boards are not necessarily precluded from financing government spending and may feature only partial foreign reserve backing. The potential dangers are highlighted by the Cook Islands case, where accelerating rates of currency issuance, combined with rising government budget deficits, led to a crisis of confidence in 1994. It is unlikely that the seigniorage gained from the short-lived currency board experiment outweighed the costs associated with the swings in policy. In the end, delayed fiscal retrenchment was accompanied by an abrupt contraction in the money supply as the local currency was withdrawn in 1995 and full dollarization re-established. A country that is willing to give up an independent monetary policy always has the option of simply adopting an established foreign currency (such as the U.S. dollar) as the local circulating medium and "dollarizing" the economy. This practice ordinarily offers no scope for government revenue from money creation, however, leaving all such "seigniorage" revenue to accrue abroad. An "orthodox" currency board, limited to issuing domestic notes and coins that are fully backed by holdings of a foreign reserve currency, still prohibits independent monetary policy but does allow for seigniorage revenue earned through investing the foreign reserve holdings in interest-bearing paper like U.S. Treasury bills. The implementation of such an orthodox currency board can allow even very small economies to enjoy seigniorage revenue without compromising the discipline afforded through being linked to the chosen foreign currency. (1) A case in point is St. Helena's currency board arrangement with the pound sterling that was launched in 1976 (Hanke and Sekerke 2003). Not all currency boards operate in such an orthodox fashion, however. Many modern currency boards, as with Argentina's April 1991-January 2002 experience, have expanded functions that may include acting as a lender of last resort, regulating commercial banks, and financing government spending--while not always requiring 100 percent foreign reserve coverage (see, for example, Hanke 2002, Schuler 2005). Deviations from orthodoxy do not necessarily imply economic disruption. For example, the Republic of Ireland continued to enjoy almost identical price trends to those of the United Kingdom over the 1928-79 period--with the one-to-one exchange rate between the Irish pound and the pound sterling maintained throughout--even after the monetary authority's functions expanded well beyond those of an orthodox currency board (Honohan 1997). A less narrowly confined role for the monetary authority, however, means that in times of crisis there is at least some scope for currency emission serving as an escape valve. In the Cook Islands case, money finance of the government's budget deficits, aided by reduced reserve backing for the Cook Islands dollar, allowed fiscal retrenchment to be delayed in the early 1990s. The lowered reserve backing meant that the discipline exerted by an orthodox currency board no longer prevailed in the Cook Islands case. The ultimate price of the increased monetary flexibility was a loss of confidence in the over-issued local money that forced the government to abandon the currency board entirely and restore full dollarization of the economy in 1995. This, in turn, entailed a sudden, and substantial, monetary contraction that exacerbated the economic downturn and demonstrates that the dangers of choosing a currency board instead of full dollarization are not limited to a possible loss of discipline. The adjustment costs involved in abandoning the currency board need to be considered as well, and the Cook Islands experience may well support the case for full dollarization as a better option for other small nations in the Pacific and elsewhere. (2) Overview of the Cook Islands Case The Cook Islands is a self-governing country in the South Pacific with the local government, and most financial activity, centered on the island of Rarotonga. …


In late 20th c. the rapidly developing information technologies and internet communications fostered the growth of electronic commerce. It became not only possible to place orders for goods and services by internet – orders and services could be delivered or provided within cyberspace. To promote electronic commerce, it is necessary to have a server linked up to internet, and a web site. Such services may be rendered by internet service providers from whom legal entities rent a server; on the other hand, the company itself may run a server securing its functioning on the grounds of property right. The institution of permanent establishment and the related concept of determination of legal jurisdiction represent one of many bases for the setting up of corresponding relations between the enterprise and the foreign state in which the former has started its economic and commercial operations in order to avoid double taxation. On such grounds bilateral or even multilateral agreements giving the right to collect taxes to one or other party are signed. Compared to electronic commerce, the said institution was set up much earlier, so the greater part of international agreements for the avoidance of double taxation do not provide that the concept of permanent establishment should cover also a server by means of which the enterprise carries out its economic and commercial operations. The only linkage relating the company with the foreign state may represent a server linked up to internet, and a corresponding web site located within it. Companies wishing to sell their goods abroad do not need to have separate office accommodation located in that state. However such corporate representation in another country raises problems related to the definition of permanent establishment. Consequently, it is necessary to establish the legal status of server located in the foreign country to which the company seeking to pursue its economic and commercial operations is about to move it. It is also necessary to define the criteria on the grounds of which the server might be treated as a permanent establishment. The above-mentioned problems are investigated on the basis of agreements for the avoidance of double taxation, law, the Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as well as on opinions given by experts from the said organisation. The article specifies the criteria to be met by the server, so that it could be recognised as a permanent establishment; it also outlines the treatment of server-web site relation framed on the grounds of recommendations coming from the above-mentioned organisation. The article also defines the status of internet service provider as an independent agent whose services are used by a foreign state company pursuing its electronic commerce operations.


To study the ozone spatial and temporal evolution in the atmosphere, lidar systems have proved to be adequate but have remained complex. We define in this paper the main characteristics of a UVDIAL system for ground based and airborne ozone measurements in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere both for daytime and nighttime operation. A multiwavelength lidar system using either Rayleigh/Mie signals or the Raman nitrogen signal, is discussed as a way to efficiently correct the ozone measurements from the systematic bias due to aerosol and other interference gases (i.e. SO(2)) in the lower troposphere. Two types of lasers (solid state and excimer) are compared, as both lasers are suitable for long term field operation and airborne use.


We compare frequency doubling of broadband light in a single nonlinear crystal with doubling in five crystals with intercrystal temporal walk-off compensation and with doubling in five crystals adjusted for offset phase-matching frequencies. Using a plane-wave dispersive numerical model of frequency doubling, we study the bandwidth of the second harmonic and the conversion efficiency as functions of crystal length and fundamental irradiance. For low irradiance, the offset phase-matching arrangement has lower efficiency than a single crystal of the same total length but gives a broader second-harmonic bandwidth. The walk-off-compensated arrangement gives both higher conversion efficiency and broader bandwidth than a single crystal. At high irradiance, both multicrystal arrangements improve on the single-crystal efficiency while maintaining a broad bandwidth.


Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a genetic disease caused by mutations in either TSC1 or TSC2 tumor suppressor genes. TSC1 and TSC2 (also known as hamartin and tuberin, respectively) form a functional complex and negatively regulate cell growth by inhibiting protein synthesis. 14-3-3 binds to TSC2 and may inhibit TSC2 function. We have reported previously that phosphorylation of serine 1210 (Ser1210) in TSC2 is essential for 14-3-3 binding. Here we show that serum and anisomycin enhance the interaction between TSC2 and 14-3-3 by stimulating phosphorylation of Ser1210. Activation of p38 MAP kinase (p38) is essential for the stimulating effect of serum and anisomycin although p38 is not directly responsible for the phosphorylation of Ser1210 in TSC2. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrate that the p38-activated kinase MK2 (also known as MAPKAPK2) is directly responsible for the phosphorylation of Ser1210. Our data show that anisomycin stimulates phosphorylation of Ser1210 of TSC2 via the p38-MK2 kinase cascade. Phosphorylation of TSC2 by MK2 creates a 14-3-3 binding site and thus regulates the cellular function of the TSC2 tumor suppressor protein.


A compressive split-Hopkinson pressure bar is used to investigate the dynamic deformation behaviour, fracture characteristics and microstructural evolution of high-strength weldable aluminum scandium (Al-Sc) alloy at strain rates ranging from 1.3 x 10 3 s -1 to 5.9 x 10 3 s -1 under room temperature conditions. The stress-strain curves reveal that the dynamic mechanical behaviour response of the Al-Sc alloy is highly sensitive to both the strain and the strain rate. As the strain rate increases, the flow stress, work hardening rate and strain rate sensitivity all increase, but the fracture strain and activation volume decrease. The Zerilli-Armstrong FCC constitutive model is applied to describe the high strain rate plastic behaviour of the Al-Sc alloy. A good agreement is found between the predicted flow response and the actual response at all values of the applied strain rate. The Al-Sc alloy specimens fracture primarily as a result of a localised shearing effect. Scanning electron microscopy observations indicate that the fracture features are characterised by a transgranular dimple-like structure. The density and depth of the dimples decrease with increasing strain rate. Transmission electron microscopy observations reveal the presence of Al 3 Sc particles in the matrix and at the grain boundaries. These particles prevent dislocation motion and therefore prompt a significant strengthening effect. The microstructural observations also reveal that the dislocation density and degree of dislocation tangling increase with increasing strain rate. The variations observed in the dislocation cell structure reflect differing degrees of strain rate sensitivity and activation volume and are found to be consistent with the observed stress-strain response of the Al-Sc alloy.


The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a candidate technology for a medium-sized telescope within the Cherenkov Telescope Array, the next generation ground based observatory for very high energy gamma ray astronomy. The SCT uses a novel two-mirror design and is expected to yield improvements in field of view and image resolution compared to traditional Cherenkov telescopes based on single-mirror-dish optics. To match the improved optical resolution, challenging requirements of high channel count and density at low power consumption must be overcome by the camera. The prototype camera, currently commissioned and tested on the prototype SCT, has been developed based on millimeter scale SiPM pixels and a custom high density digitizer ASIC, TARGET, to provide 1600 pixels spanning a 2.7 degree field of view while being able to sample nanosecond photon pulses. It is mechanically designed to allow for an upgrade to 11,328 pixels covering a field of view of 8 degrees and demonstrating the full potential of the technology. The camera was installed on the telescope in 2018. We will present its design and performance including first light data.


Can Google applications really become an alternative to the venerable Microsoft Office suite? Conventional wisdom may say no, but practical wisdom says otherwise. Right now, 100,000 small businesses are currently running trials of Google office applications. So are large corporations such as General Electric and Proctor & Gamble. "Google Apps Hacks" gets you in on the action with several ingenious ways to push Google's web, mobile, and desktop apps to the limit. The scores of clever hacks and workarounds in this book help you get more than the obvious out of a whole host of Google's web-based applications for word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint-style presentations, email, calendar, and more by giving you ways to exploit the suite's unique network functionality.You get plenty of ways to tinker with: Google documents - share and edit documents with others in real time, view them on the run with Google Docs mobile service, and use Google Notebook for web research; Google Spreadsheets - add real-time data to spreadsheets, and generate charts and tables you can embed in web pages; Google presentations - view them on a mobile phone and save them as video; Gmail - send email to and from a mobile phone, adjust Gmail's layout with a style sheet, and a lot more; iGoogle - create your own gadgets, program a screenscraper, add Flash games, and more; Google calendar - add web content events, public calendars, and your Outlook Calendar to this application; Google Reader; Google Maps; Google Earth; and Google SketchUp: the new 3D modeling software tool; Picasa; YouTube; and, Google Video - discover new ways to customize and use these media management apps. In addition, "Google Apps Hacks" outlines ways you can create a simple web site with nothing but Google tools, including Page Creator, Blogger, Google Analytics, and content from other Google apps. This amazing collection just might convince you that Microsoft Office is not the last word in business applications.


We present a method for automated generation of building layouts for computer graphics applications. Our approach is motivated by the layout design process developed in architecture. Given a set of high-level requirements, an architectural program is synthesized using a Bayesian network trained on real-world data. The architectural program is realized in a set of floor plans, obtained through stochastic optimization. The floor plans are used to construct a complete three-dimensional building with internal structure. We demonstrate a variety of computer-generated buildings produced by the presented approach.


In 1994, Congress passed 42 U.S.C. §14141, a statute authorizing the Attorney General to seek equitable relief against local and state police agencies that are engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional misconduct. Although police departments in some of the nation's largest cities have now undergone this sort of structural reform litigation, there has been little empirical research on the topic. Drawing on original interviews, court documents, statistical data, and media reports, this Article describes the federal government's use of structural reform litigation in American police departments and theorizes on its effectiveness. It argues that structural reform litigation is uniquely effective at combating misconduct in police departments. It forces local municipalities to prioritize investments into police misconduct regulations. It utilizes external monitoring to ensure that frontline officers substantively comply with top-down mandates. And it provides police executives with legal cover to implement wide-ranging reforms aimed at curbing misconduct. Although expensive, structural reform litigation may ultimately pay for itself through reducing a police department's civil liability. But structural reform litigation is far from a perfect regulatory mechanism. Successful organizational reform requires continual support from municipal leaders, dedication by executives within the targeted agency, and buy-in by frontline officers. This suggests that structural reform litigation alone is insufficient to transform a law enforcement agency. The financial burden of structural reform litigation falls on local police agencies over a relatively short period of time. Additional questions remain about whether targeted agencies will sustain reforms after federal intervention ends and about whether this type of federal intervention makes officers less aggressive. This Article concludes by showing how the lessons from structural reform litigation can inform future legal regulations of law enforcement.


We describe an implementation of a sizable subset of OpenMP on networks of workstations (NOWs). By extending the availability of OpenMP to NOWs, we overcome one of its primary drawbacks compared to MPI, namely lack of portability to environments other than hardware shared memory machines. In order to support OpenMP execution on NOWs, our compiler targets a software distributed shared memory system (DSM) which provides multi-threaded execution and memory consistency. This paper presents two contributions. First, we identify two aspects of the current OpenMP standard that make an implementation on NOWs hard, and suggest simple modifications to the standard that remedy the situation. These problems reflect differences in memory architecture between software and hardware shared memory and the high cost of synchronization on NOWs. Second, we present performance results of a prototype implementation of an OpenMP subset on a NOW, and compare them with hand-coded software DSM and MPI results for the same applications on the same platform. We use five applications (ASCI Sweep3d, NAS 3D- FFT, SPLASH-2 Water, QSORT, and TSP) exhibiting various styles of parallelization, including pipelined execution, data parallelism, coarse-grained parallelism, and task queues. The measurements show little difference between OpenMP and hand-coded software DSM, but both are still lagging behind MPI. Further work will concentrate on compiler optimization to reduce these differences.


A method is presented for the direct measurement of the internal quantum efficiency in light emitting diodes (LEDs), based on the ratio of the measured external quantum efficiency and the calculated light extraction efficiency. The external quantum efficiency is measured from a single facet of the device in a simple, well-defined geometry, for which the light extraction efficiency can be calculated with good accuracy. In the proposed method, all LED facets are coated with highly absorbing material which suppresses any light that is not directly emitted into a small aperture on the top facet of the LED. We present a full wave optical model for a multilayer LED structure, from which we derive and validate an approximate model to easily calculate the extraction efficiency through the top facet of the LED. Because a current spreading electrode, often metallic, is required for uniform injection, we show that its impact on the extraction efficiency can be simply modeled through a separate transmission function calculated from the complex index of refraction of the electrode material. The various assumptions made to justify the direct emission model through a single facet (absence of photon backscatter, no photon recycling, simplified device layer model) are discussed and evaluated. The model is applied to a specific GaN LED structure. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3549730]


MASP-2 and C1s are serine proteases of the lectin and classical complement pathways, respectively. As executioners of complement, their role in cleaving their substrates C4 and C2 is imperative to both innate and adaptive immunity, resulting in the formation of the key complement C3 convertase, C4bC2a. The dysregulated activation of these complement pathways has been shown to contribute to a number of diseases, thus there is the need to develop therapeutic molecules to control such proteases. Knowledge of the precise molecular mechanism whereby the proteases interact with their substrates will be key to the development of such therapeautic molecules. The proteases have similar domain structures and share 38% sequence identity, but the molecular interaction of the two proteases with their substrate C4 is quite unique. It has been shown in previous studies that MASP-2 cleaves C4 with high efficiency, while in comparison, C1s is significantly slower, with many studies indicating that the CCP domains of MASP-2 and C1s play a role in these differences. It has been suggested that the CCP domains are the location of an exosite, a site distant from the active site, which assists in correct conformational placement of the substrate C4 for efficient cleavage. This study has investigated the contribution of each domain of the catalytic region of the enzymes, CCP1, CCP2 and SP, to the binding and cleavage of C4. The work was carried out using a range of binding and cleavage assays, including measurement of affinity using an ELISA, catalytic efficiency by determining EC50 values, as well as kinetic assays and analytical affinity chromatography.


Wikipedia is often presented within a foreshortened or idealized history of encyclopedia-making. Here we challenge this viewpoint by contextualizing Wikipedia and its modes of production on a broad temporal scale. Drawing on examples from Roman antiquity onward, but focusing on the years since 1700, we identify three forms of encyclopedic production: compulsive collection, stigmergic accumulation, and corporate production. While each could be characterized as a discrete period, we point out the existence of significant overlaps in time as well as with the production of Wikipedia today. Our analysis explores the relation of editors, their collaborators, and their modes of composition with respect to changing notions of authorship and originality. Ultimately, we hope our contribution will help scholars avoid ahistorical claims about Wikipedia, identify historical cases germane to the social scientist's concerns, and show that contemporary questions about Wikipedia have a lifespan exceeding the past decade.


Wellness and healthcare are central to the lives of all people, young or old, healthy or ill, rich or poor. New computing and behavioral research can lead to transformative changes in the cost-effective delivery of quality and personalized healthcare. Also beyond the daily practice of healthcare and wellbeing, basic information technology research can provide the foundations for new directions in the clinical sciences via tools and analyses that identify subtle but important causal signals in the fusing of clinical, behavioral, environmental and genetic data. In this paper we describe a system that analyzes images from the laparoscopic videos. It indicates the possibility of an injury to the cystic artery by automatically detecting the proximity of the surgical instruments with respect to the cystic artery. The system uses machine learning algorithm to classify images and warn surgeons against probable unsafe actions.


ABSTRACT The standard Tobit model is constructed under the assumption of a normal distribution and has been widely applied in econometrics. Atypical/extreme data have a harmful effect on the maximum likelihood estimates of the standard Tobit model parameters. Then, we need to count with diagnostic tools to evaluate the effect of extreme data. If they are detected, we must have available a Tobit model that is robust to this type of data. The family of elliptically contoured distributions has the Laplace, logistic, normal and Student-t cases as some of its members. This family has been largely used for providing generalizations of models based on the normal distribution, with excellent practical results. In particular, because the Student-t distribution has an additional parameter, we can adjust the kurtosis of the data, providing robust estimates against extreme data. We propose a methodology based on a generalization of the standard Tobit model with errors following elliptical distributions. Diagnostics in the Tobit model with elliptical errors are developed. We derive residuals and global/local influence methods considering several perturbation schemes. This is important because different diagnostic methods can detect different atypical data. We implement the proposed methodology in an R package. We illustrate the methodology with real-world econometrical data by using the R package, which shows its potential applications. The Tobit model based on the Student-t distribution with a small quantity of degrees of freedom displays an excellent performance reducing the influence of extreme cases in the maximum likelihood estimates in the application presented. It provides new empirical evidence on the capabilities of the Student-t distribution for accommodation of atypical data.


BACKGROUND
The percentage of newly qualified doctors in the UK who want a career in general practice declined substantially in the 1990s. The English Department of Health expects that half of all doctors will become GPs.

AIM
To report on choices for general practice made by doctors who qualified in 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2009.

DESIGN AND SETTING
A structured, closed questionnaire about future career intentions, sent to all UK medical graduates.

METHOD
Questionnaires sent 1 year after qualification (all cohorts) and 3 years after (all except 2008 and 2009).

RESULTS
Percentages of doctors who expressed an unreserved first choice for general practice in the first year after qualification, in the successive five cohorts, were 22.2%, 20.2%, 23.2%, 21.3%, and 20.4%. Percentages who expressed any choice for general practice - whether first, second or third - were 46.5%, 43.4%, 52.6%, 49.5%, and 49.9%. Three years after qualification, an unreserved first choice was expressed, in successive cohorts, by 27.9%, 26.1%, and 35.1%. Doctors from newly established English medical schools showed the highest levels of choice for general practice.

CONCLUSION
The percentage of doctors, in their first post-qualification year, whose first choice of eventual career was general practice has not changed much in recent years. By year 3 after qualification, this preference has increased in recent years. At years 1 and 3, the overall first choice for general practice is considerably lower than the required 50%, but varies substantially by medical school. In depth studies of why this is so are needed.


A prelude to radical reform Executive summary There are many reasons for aligning the main rate of corporation tax with the basic rate of income tax (currently 20 per cent). Any one of these reasons alone would be sufficient to justify reform. Together they make an overwhelming case: The tax bias against equity causes companies to leverage more than they would prefer if decisions were not distorted. This issue was identified in the recent ICB report. The tax bias against equity distorts investors' decisions. Lower rates of corporation tax (whether or not tied to the basic rate of income tax) would reduce taxes paid by investors which has direct advantages for pension funds, beneficiaries of unit trusts etc., as well as indirect effects in making the economy more capital intensive in an environment in which capital mobility is sensitive to international corporation tax rates. Aligning the main rate of corporation tax would significantly reduce tax compliance costs and reduce the size of the tax code. Unlike some of the changes in the 2011 budget, this would actually involve an area of taxation that affects large numbers of individuals and companies. Given the government's plans to reduce the rate of corporation tax and given the dynamic benefits from its reduction, tying the corporation tax rate to the basic rate of income tax would not have substantial revenue implications. After two decades of ever-increasing complexity in the tax system – a level of complexity that has made the system incoherent – tying the main rate of corporation tax to the basic rate of income tax would be a strong signal that the government wanted to make the UK tax system simpler and more coherent. In the long term, there should be radical reform of the corporation tax system which might involve abolishing the tax altogether.


Security challenges are still among the biggest obstacles when considering the adoption of cloud services. This triggered a lot of research activities, resulting in a quantity of proposals targeting the various cloud security threats. Alongside with these security issues, the cloud paradigm comes with a new set of unique features, which open the path toward novel security approaches, techniques, and architectures. This paper provides a survey on the achievable security merits by making use of multiple distinct clouds simultaneously. Various distinct architectures are introduced and discussed according to their security and privacy capabilities and prospects.


AMOS has developed a hybrid active optics system that combines hydraulic and pneumatic properties of actuators to support a 4-m primary mirror. The mirror is intended to be used in the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST, formerly the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope) that will be installed by the National Solar Observatory (NSO) atop the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii. The mirror support design is driven by the needs of (1) minimizing the support-induced mirror distortions under telescope operating conditions, (2) shaping the mirror surface to the desired profile, and (3) providing a high stiffness against wind loads. In order to fulfill these requirements, AMOS proposes an innovative support design that consist of 118 axial actuators and 24 lateral actuators. The axial support is based on coupled hydraulic and pneumatic actuators. The hydraulic part is a passive system whose main function is to support the mirror weight with a high stiffness. The pneumatic part is actively controlled so as to compensate for low-order wavefront aberrations that are generated by the mirror support itself or by any other elements in the telescope optical chain. The performances of the support and its adequacy with the requirements are assessed with the help of a comprehensive analysis loop involving finite-element, thermal and optical modellings.


This paper examines whether different approaches for estimating the technical efficiency of a primary healthcare centre —PHC— can have significantly different results. Although effective regulation demands the development of measures for establishing good operation levels, few studies have compared results from a data envelopment analysis —DEA— and stochastic frontier analysis —SFA—in a PHC. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have used Chilean nationwide data. Efficiency refers to the relation between the number of output units per input unit. Effectiveness evaluates the outcome of medical care and can be influenced by efficiency. The data that were used in this study came from 259 Chilean municipalities. We included two outputs – medical and check-up visits – and three inputs – staff, general service and drugs expenses. For the DEA, we used a variable return to scale output-oriented model. Before applying the SFA, a principal component analysis —PCA— combined the two outputs. The results were similar for both methods: the SFA efficiency averages were 70.89% and 65.83% and the DEA averages were 68.37% and 54.46% for the urban and rural municipalities, respectively. In addition to defining a frontier of "best practice", this study merged the PCA with the SFA to form an innovative approach to combining outputs.


International trade had over recent years become more efficient and importers have looked for ways to keep costs down while maintaining quality. The European Union provides incentives to importers to trade internationally with lesser developed countries by reducing the entrance tariff to the EU. It provides a preferential trade agreement in the form of generalised system of preferences. However, there are many imports into the EU that qualify for the preference but importers are not registering these goods for preference so that there is under-utilization of the preferences available. While there are many studies of the generalised system of preference and the benefits that the preference provides to the exporter, along with its effects on the exporter's economy, there are few studies of the effect on importers and how they apply the preferences. This paper explores the issues that importers face when wanting to import from Lesser Developed economies. It establishes why importers are not using preferences to the full potential. Senior management in ten European Companies were interviewed to understand the problems they face when importing from non-EU countries.


Within the English Channel, the common cuttlefish Sepia officinalis is a semelparous species for which a 2-year life cycle was exclusively described in the 1980s. In the 1990s, new research indicated that whilst a 2-year life cycle was still evident for females and the large majority of males, a small proportion of males were actually maturing at only 1 year of age. Since 1980, the interest of French and UK fishers for this resource has increased and it is nowadays one of the most important demersal species of the area and is considered to be fully exploited. From the start of the 20th century, fishing effort and sea surface temperatures have increased in the English Channel and have probably impacted the life history traits of S. officinalis. A 2-year sampling programme was undertaken at French landing sites of the English Channel during the reproduction season in 2010 and 2011 to estimate if the proportion of 1-year-old mature animals has changed. Age determination was carried out by coupling polymodal decomposition and lipofuscin measurement. Size-at-maturity for each year and each sex was estimated by fitting a binomial error GLM. Results highlight that a variable percentage of males and females belonging to the first cohort are mature and that size-at-maturity was lower than that observed in the 1990s. Finally, different parameters, such as temperature and fishing pressure are explored to discuss changes in life history traits suggesting that cuttlefish could be an indicator of the temperature regime shift in the English Channel.


SubmissionCSM 2018 Melanie Friedman, SPT and Dr. Kayla Smith, PT, DSc, OCS, COMT Title Manual physical therapy and cervical joint position training for cervicogenic dizziness following whiplash-associated disorder: A case report Background and Purpose Whiplash is defined as an acceleration-deceleration injury to the neck, which may lead to a variety of immediate and/or prolonged symptoms collectively known as whiplash-associated disorder (WAD). Cervicogenic dizziness is one possible sequalae that may arise from dysfunction within the structures of the cervical spine, disrupting the flow of sensory and proprioceptive feedback. The purpose of this case report is to demonstrate the efficacy of combining manual physical therapy and cervical joint position training on a patient with cervicogenic dizziness status-post motor vehicle accident (MVA). Case Description A 28-year-old female with a history of MVA and chief complaint of a one-month history of progressive increase in left-sided headache and dizziness was referred to physical therapy from her primary care physician with a diagnosis of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV). Physical therapy evaluation revealed impairments including joint mobility deficits, cervical joint position sense error, muscle imbalances and decreased neuromotor control. Functional limitations included difficulty with looking up and down, working on the computer, and carrying her child. At the time of initial evaluation, the frequency of symptoms was reported as a minimum of four days a week, for 75% of the day. The patient was seen two times per week for three weeks for a total of six sessions. Interventions included manual therapy, cervical joint proprioception training, cervico-scapular stabilization, and therapeutic exercise including a home exercise program. Outcomes Numerical Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) values improved from 5/10 to 0/10, Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) scores significantly improved from 32/100 to 2/100, and Cervical Joint Position Error decreased to below the meaningful error value at the time of discharge. The patient reported no headaches or dizziness for ten days prior to discharge and denied limitations in function. Discussion This case report supports the use of physical therapy intervention, including cervical joint position training and manual physical therapy, in the treatment of a patient status-post MVA with cervicogenic dizziness.


Arabic is a language of rich and complex morphology. The nature and peculiarity of Arabic make its morphological and phonological rules confusing for second language learners (SLLs). The conjugation of Arabic verbs is central to the formulation of an Arabic sentence because of its richness of form and meaning. In this research, we address issues related to the morphological analysis of ill-formed Arabic verbs in order to identify the source of errors and provide an informative feedback to SLLs of Arabic. The edit distance and constraint relaxation techniques are used to demonstrate the capability of the proposed system in generating all possible analyses of erroneous Arabic verbs written by SLLs. Filtering mechanisms are applied to exclude the irrelevant constructions and determine the target stem which is used as the base for constructing the feedback to the learner. The proposed system has been developed and effectively evaluated using real test data. It achieved satisfactory results in terms of the recall rate.


Abstract. Modelling has been used in the study of volcanic systems for more than 100 years, building upon the approach first applied by Sir James Hall in 1815. Informed by observations of volcanological phenomena in nature, including eye-witness accounts of eruptions, geophysical or geodetic monitoring of active volcanoes, and geological analysis of ancient deposits, laboratory and numerical models have been used to describe and quantify volcanic and magmatic processes that span orders of magnitudes of time and space. We review the use of laboratory and numerical modelling in volcanological research, focussing on sub-surface and eruptive processes including the accretion and evolution of magma chambers, the propagation of sheet intrusions, the development of volcanic flows (lava flows, pyroclastic density currents, and lahars), volcanic plume formation, and ash dispersal. When first introduced into volcanology, laboratory experiments and numerical simulations marked a transition in approach from broadly qualitative to increasingly quantitative research. These methods are now widely used in volcanology to describe the physical and chemical behaviours that govern volcanic and magmatic systems. Creating simplified models of highly dynamical systems enables volcanologists to simulate and potentially predict the nature and impact of future eruptions. These tools have provided significant insights into many aspects of the volcanic plumbing system and eruptive processes. The largest scientific advances in volcanology have come from a multidisciplinary approach, applying developments in diverse fields such as engineering and computer science to study magmatic and volcanic phenomena. A global effort in the integration of laboratory and numerical volcano modelling is now required to tackle key problems in volcanology and points towards the importance of benchmarking exercises and the need for protocols to be developed so that models are routinely tested against real world data.


Segmentation of optic disk (OD) from retinal images is a crucial task for early detection of many eye diseases, including glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. The main goal of this research is to facilitate early diagnosis of certain pathologies via fully automated segmentation of the OD from retinal images. We propose a deep learning-based technique to delineate the boundary of OD from retinal images of patients with diabetic retinopathy and diabetic macular edema. In our method, we first localized OD within a region of interest (ROI) using random forest (RF). The RF is an ensemble algorithm, which trains and combines multiple decision trees to produce a highly accurate classifier. We then used a convolutional neural network (CNN) based model to segment OD from chosen ROIs in the retinal images. The developed algorithm has been validated on 480,249 image patches extracted from 49 images of public Indian diabetic retinopathy image dataset (IDRiD). This dataset includes images with large variability in terms of the spatial location of OD and presence of other eye lesions that resemble the contrast of OD. Validation metrics including average of Dice and Jaccard indexes (DI and JI), Hausdorff distance (HD), and absolute surface difference (ASD) were reported as 82.62 ± 11.07%, 71.78 ± 14.87%, 13.19 ± 10.90 mm, and 22.74 ± 19.78%, respectively. As compared to other alternative methods, such as K-nearest neighbors (KNN), deformable models, graph-cuts, and image thresholding, our method yielded higher accuracy for OD segmentation in comparison to manual expert delineation. The algorithm-generated results demonstrate the usefulness of our proposed method for automated segmentation of OD from retinal images.


In few-shot classification, we are interested in learning algorithms that train a classifier from only a handful of labeled examples. Recent progress in few-shot classification has featured meta-learning, in which a parameterized model for a learning algorithm is defined and trained on episodes representing different classification problems, each with a small labeled training set and its corresponding test set. In this work, we advance this few-shot classification paradigm towards a scenario where unlabeled examples are also available within each episode. We consider two situations: one where all unlabeled examples are assumed to belong to the same set of classes as the labeled examples of the episode, as well as the more challenging situation where examples from other distractor classes are also provided. To address this paradigm, we propose novel extensions of Prototypical Networks (Snell et al., 2017) that are augmented with the ability to use unlabeled examples when producing prototypes. These models are trained in an end-to-end way on episodes, to learn to leverage the unlabeled examples successfully. We evaluate these methods on versions of the Omniglot and miniImageNet benchmarks, adapted to this new framework augmented with unlabeled examples. We also propose a new split of ImageNet, consisting of a large set of classes, with a hierarchical structure. Our experiments confirm that our Prototypical Networks can learn to improve their predictions due to unlabeled examples, much like a semi-supervised algorithm would.


While still relatively few in number compared to traditional nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the rise of social enterprises represents a possible disruption of not only existing models of doing business but also areas of law that in many respects have seen little fundamental change for decades. One such area is domestic tax law, where social enterprises currently find themselves subject to the rules of for-profit activities and entities. Here, both scholars and policymakers are beginning to ask whether it is either necessary or desirable to modify existing tax provisions to better accommodate social enterprise: that is, whether to create a distinct tax space for social enterprise.

This chapter considers some of the initial answers to this question and places them within a larger, tax theory framework in order to advance consideration of this emerging issue. As preliminary matters, I first consider how best to define the term "social enterprise" for purposes of addressing this issue and then describe some of the existing and proposed tax law provisions specifically relating to social enterprises. I dedicate the remainder of the chapter to exploring whether a high-level, theoretical consideration of possible tax provisions focused on such enterprises provides any insight into what provisions may be worth pursuing. Relying primarily on a tax subsidy approach, I conclude that while tax law could be used to incentivize investment in, commitment by, or selection of legal form by social enterprises, limited data and uncertain prospects for designing specific tax provisions that would be likely to achieve the desired goals caution against significant changes at the federal level at this time. Instead, I recommend pursuing experimentation at the state and local level with such provisions to help determine how best to achieve these goals through tax law.


My research develops a sociological framework for exploring the structural constraints on the Europeanisation of British politics. I examine the history of Britain's relationship to the European Community/European Union (EC/EU) from the immediate post-war period up until 1994 in terms of the politics of modernisation. I discuss forms of political and economic modernisation and argue that we can use broad conceptions of these processes to establish the underlying structural tensions within the relationship between the British state and European integration. I maintain that Britain has not followed the same pattern of political and economic development associated with modem Europe and has been historically constituted as a vehicle for global economic modernisation. This has placed the British state at odds with the organisation of Europe as a political and economic space. This structural problem emerges in the practices and struggles of political elites over the role of 'Europe' within a post-imperial Britain. I examine the chronic failure of elites to legitimate and establish a coherent strategy for European integration within the recent trajectory of the British state. British elites understandings of the role of European integration for domestic political modernisation have been flawed. I propose that this has been compounded by the ideological construction of 'Europe' as ' other' within populist political projects of British exceptionalism that emerged out of a post-imperial crisis. This culminated in the Thatcherite re-assertion of British exceptionalism in relation to the second wave of European integration, igniting tensions in Britain's relationship with the EC/EU that became fully manifest during the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. I explore in some detail the extensive attack by a Eurosceptic movement on the Major government that undermined the attempt of the governing elites to accommodate Britain to a second wave of integration. This reassertion of Britain's difference from Europe during the 1990s had long term implications for both the Conservative and New Labour governments. It is, therefore, apparent that the British contestation over 'Europe' is structurally reproducing Britain's distinctive relationship to the process of European integration.


RATIONALE
Cough can be assessed with visual analog scales (VAS), health status measures, and 24-hour cough frequency monitors (CF(24)). Evidence for their measurement properties in acute cough caused by upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) and longitudinal data is limited.

OBJECTIVES
To assess cough longitudinally in URTI with subjective and objective outcome measures and determine sample size for future studies.

METHODS
Thirty-three previously healthy subjects with URTI completed cough VAS, Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ-acute), and CF(24) monitoring (Leicester Cough Monitor) on three occasions, 4 days apart. Changes in subjects' condition were assessed with a global rating of change questionnaire. The potential for baseline first-hour cough frequency (CF(1)), VAS, and LCQ to identify low CF(24) was assessed.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Mean ± SD duration of cough at visit 1 was 4.1 ± 2.5 days. Geometric mean ± log SD baseline CF(24) and median (interquartile range) cough bouts were high (14.9 ± 0.4 coughs/h and 85 [39-195] bouts/24 h). Health status was severely impaired. There was a significant reduction in CF(24) and VAS, and improvement in LCQ, from visits 1-3. At visit 3, CF(24) remained above normal limits in 52% of subjects. The smallest changes in CF(24), LCQ, and VAS that subjects perceived important were 54%, 2- and 17-mm change from baseline, respectively. The sample sizes required for parallel group studies to detect these changes are 27, 51, and 25 subjects per group, respectively. CF(1) (<20.5 coughs/h) was predictive of low CF(24).

CONCLUSIONS
CF(24), VAS, and LCQ are responsive outcome tools for the assessment of acute cough. The smallest change in cough frequency perceived important by subjects is 54%. The sample sizes required for future studies are modest and achievable.


Automatic detection and recognition of traffic signs plays a crucial role in management of the traffic-sign inventory. It provides an accurate and timely way to manage traffic-sign inventory with a minimal human effort. In the computer vision community, the recognition and detection of traffic signs are a well-researched problem. A vast majority of existing approaches perform well on traffic signs needed for advanced driver-assistance and autonomous systems. However, this represents a relatively small number of all traffic signs (around 50 categories out of several hundred) and performance on the remaining set of traffic signs, which are required to eliminate the manual labor in traffic-sign inventory management, remains an open question. In this paper, we address the issue of detecting and recognizing a large number of traffic-sign categories suitable for automating traffic-sign inventory management. We adopt a convolutional neural network (CNN) approach, the mask R-CNN, to address the full pipeline of detection and recognition with automatic end-to-end learning. We propose several improvements that are evaluated on the detection of traffic signs and result in an improved overall performance. This approach is applied to detection of 200 traffic-sign categories represented in our novel dataset. The results are reported on highly challenging traffic-sign categories that have not yet been considered in previous works. We provide comprehensive analysis of the deep learning method for the detection of traffic signs with a large intra-category appearance variation and show below 3% error rates with the proposed approach, which is sufficient for deployment in practical applications of the traffic-sign inventory management.


Chlorine-based disinfection agents are known to favor the production of disinfection by-products (DBPs), whose concentrations are restricted by international guidelines to ensure a safe consumption of drinking water. Hence, it is important to understand the behavior of DBPs within water distribution networks (WDNs) to avoid users' exposure to concentrations higher than guideline values. The build-up in chlorate concentration resulting from chlorinated disinfectants is here simulated with the EPANET 2.0 software for one benchmark WDN serving about 130,000 inhabitants. Chlorate generation was accounted by means of an empirical model, considering different boundary conditions (physicochemical features of raw water, disinfectant dose). The gathered results indicate that increases in chlorate concentration within the considered WDN are narrow. Chlorate neo-formation in the WDN is, however, strictly related to the initial amount of chlorate released by the water treatment plant, i.e., to the input value in the WDN. If chlorate concentration in treatment plants is kept below 700 μg/L (i.e., World Health Organization guideline), depending on the mixing conditions in tanks, the simulation results referred to the considered WDN show that the DBP build-up within the network is limited (in any case lower than 5–7% of the threshold value).


The Pea Ridge iron oxide-apatite (IOA) deposit is one of the major rhyolite-hosted magnetite deposits of the St. Francois Mountains terrane, which is located within the Mesoproterozoic (1.5–1.3 Ga) Granite-Rhyolite province in the U.S. Midcontinent. Precise and accurate determination of the timing and duration of oreforming processes in this deposit is crucial for understanding its origin and placing it within a deposit-scale and regional geologic context. Apatite and monazite, well-established U-Pb mineral geochronometers, are abundant in the Pea Ridge orebody. However, the potential presence of multiple generations of dateable minerals, processes of dissolution-reprecipitation, and occurrence of micrometer-sized intergrowths and inclusions complicate measurements and interpretations of the geochronological results. Here, we employ a combination of several techniques, including ID-TIMS and high spatial resolution geochronology of apatite and monazite using LA-SC-ICPMS and SHRIMP, and Pb isotope geochemistry of pyrite and magnetite to obtain the first direct age constraints on the formation and alteration history of the Pea Ridge IOA deposit. The oldest apatite TIMS 207 Pb*/ 206 Pb* dates are 1471 ± 1 and 1468 ± 1 Ma, slightly younger than (but within error of) the ~1474 to ~1473 Ma U-Pb zircon ages of the host rhyolites. Dating of apatite and monazite inclusions within apatite provides evidence for at least one younger metasomatic event at ~1.44 Ga, and possibly multiple superimposed metasomatic events between 1.47 and 1.44 Ga. Lead isotop analyses of pyrite show extremely radiogenic 206 Pb/ 204 Pb ratios up to ~80 unsupported by in situ U decay. This excess radiogenic Pb in pyrite may have been derived from the spatially associated apatite as apatite recrystallized several tens of million years after its formation. The low initial 206 Pb/ 204 Pb ratio of ~16.5 and 207 Pb/ 204 Pb ratio of ~15.4 for individual magnetite grains indicate closed U-Pb system behavior in this mineral and are consistent with derivation of the Pb from a mantle-like source.


Adeno-associated virus is an integrating DNA parvovirus with the potential to be an important vehicle for somatic gene therapy. A potential barrier, however, is the low transduction efficiencies of recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors. We show in this report that adenovirus dramatically enhances rAAV transduction in vitro in a way that is dependent on expression of early region 1 and 4 (E1 and E4, respectively) genes and directly proportional to the appearance of double-stranded replicative forms of the rAAV genome. Expression of the open reading frame 6 protein from E4 in the absence of E1 accomplished a similar but attenuated effect. The helper activity of adenovirus E1 and E4 for rAAV gene transfer was similarly demonstrated in vivo by using murine models of liver- and lung-directed gene therapy. Our data indicate that conversion of a single-stranded rAAV genome to a duplex intermediate limits transduction and usefulness for gene therapy.


Trends in BMI values are estimated by centiles of the US adult population by birth cohorts 1886-1986 stratified by ethnicity. The highest centile increased by some 18 to 22 units in the course of the century while the lowest ones increased by merely 1 to 3 units. Hence, the BMI distribution became increasingly right skewed as the distance between the centiles became increasingly larger. The rate of change of BMI centile curves varied considerably over time. The BMI of white men and women experienced upsurges after the two World Wars and downswings during the Great Depression and again after 1970. However, among blacks the pattern is different during the first half of the century with men's rate of increase in BMI values decreasing substantially and that of females remaining unchanged at a relatively high level until the Second World War. However, after the war the rate of change of BMI values of blacks resembled that of the whites with an accelerating phase followed by a slow down around the 1970s. In sum, the creeping nature of the obesity epidemic is evident, as the technological and lifestyle changes of the 20th century affected various segments of the population quite differently.


The flexibility of dynamically typed languages such as JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and Scheme comes at the cost of run-time type checks. Some of these checks can be eliminated via control-flow analysis. However, traditional control-flow analysis (CFA) is not ideal for this task as it ignores flow-sensitive information that can be gained from dynamic type predicates, such as JavaScript's instanceof and Scheme's pair?, and from type-restricted operators, such as Scheme's car. Yet, adding flow-sensitivity to a traditional CFA worsens the already significant compile-time cost of traditional CFA. This makes it unsuitable for use in just-in-time compilers.
In response, this dissertation presents a fast, flow-sensitive type-recovery algorithm based on the linear-time, flow-insensitive sub-0CFA. The algorithm has been implemented as an experimental optimization into Chez Scheme compiler, where it has proven to be effective, justifying the elimination of about 60% of run-time type checks in a large set of bench-marks. The algorithm processes on average over 100,000 lines of code per second and scales well asymptotically, running in only O(n log n) time. This compile-time performance and scalability is achieved through a novel combination of data structures and algorithms.


Finding the best national strategy to prevent or delay a country from acquiring nuclear weapons continues to be a critical issue for U.S. policy makers. In this paper, we build on previous work to develop a model that addresses this question. This model identifies the strategy that minimizes the disutility of the overall cost of the strategy and the cost of the consequences resulting from the strategy. We illustrate the insights that the model provides with a case study of Iran's nuclear weapons program.


The award-winning Danish director Susanne Bier has become increasingly known for her generic innovations and industrial fluidity, moving confidently between cinema and television at a time where the scarcity of women directors has become a subject of major critical and popular attention. Refocus: The Films of Susanne Bier is a dynamic, scholarly engagement with Bier's work, and a timely consideration of her impressive authorial achievements. Featuring essays from both recognised and up-and-coming scholars in Scandinavian, transnational and feminist film and media studies, this book also includes an original interview with Bier, addressing some of the provocative readings of her films advanced by the volume's contributors.


We demonstrate a 40 Gbit/s silicon Mach-Zehnder optical modulator driven by a differential voltage of 0.36 Vpp. The energy efficiency is as low as 32.4 fJ/bit which is near the power efficiency of the ring modulator. We analyze the relationship between the electrical bandwidth and the electro-optical (EO) bandwidth based on the electrical S parameter measurement. Because of the nonlinear response, the electro-optical bandwidths in the small-signal tests are is slightly different when the modulator is biased at different transmission points. But the EO response is much different when the optical phase change is large enough to cover the nonlinear and linear regions at the same time. The nonlinearity can greatly improve the EO response in large-signal test. In our experiment, the rise/fall (20%-80%) time decreases from 13 ps to 10 ps as the driving amplitude increases from 5 V to 6 V under the same reverse bias of 3 V.


This paper provides an overview of the effect of what we might call the "corpus revolution" on Late Modern English (LModE) studies, transforming it from the "Cinderella" of historical linguistic study to the exciting and innovative field that it is today. In acknowledging what has been gained from this turn to corpora, it also discusses whether this is restricting the kinds of research questions being asked and the fields in which research takes place. More specifically, it demonstrates how phonology, which used to dominate historical language studies, has been sidelined due to the lack of searchable corpora or databases of phonological evidence from the LModE period. Finally, it outlines how a corpus of LModE phonology might be created.


We examined the role of deictic (i.e., point) and symbolic (i.e., imagistic) gestures in advanced Spanish-English second-language learners to determine whether the role of gestures is consistent with that of intermediate second-language learners (i.e., Gullberg, 1998). Participants (10 L1 Spanish and 10 L1 English) watched two short cartoons and re-told the stories in both of their languages to native-speaking listeners who had never seen the film. Gestures were coded and analyzed in relation to word types from the verbal narratives. We found that participants used more deictic gestures in their second language, similar to the trend noted in previous research. Contrary to research with low or intermediate proficiency participants, however, symbolic gestures did not appear related to proficiency. Possible reasons for the differences in gesture use by proficiency are discussed.


Current mobile middleware is designed according to a 'one-size-fits-all' paradigm, which lacks the flexibility for customization and adaptation to different situations, and does not support user-centered application scenarios well. In this paper we describe an ongoing intelligent mobile middleware research project called PLIMM that focuses on user-centered application scenarios. PLIMM is designed based on software product line ideas which make it possible for specialized customization and optimization for different purposes and hardware/software platforms. To enable intelligence, the middleware needs access to a range of context models. We model these contexts with OWL, focusing on user-centered concepts. The basic building block of PLIMM is the enhanced BDI agent where OWL context ontology logic reasoning will add indirect beliefs to the belief sets. Our approach also addresses the handling of ontology evolutions resulting from the timely adaptation of ontology to changes and the consistent propagation of these changes to all related artifacts, using Frame based product line configuration techniques.


We present a novel system for generic object class detection. In contrast to most existing systems which focus on a single viewpoint or aspect, our approach can detect object instances from arbitrary viewpoints. This is achieved by combining the Implicit Shape Model for object class detection proposed by Leibe and Schiele with the multi-view specific object recognition system of Ferrari et al. After learning single-view codebooks, these are interconnected by so-called activation links, obtained through multi-view region tracks across different training views of individual object instances. During recognition, these integrated codebooks work together to determine the location and pose of the object. Experimental results demonstrate the viability of the approach and compare it to a bank of independent single-view detectors


BACKGROUND
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a significant cause of mortality and disability in children. Intracranial pressure monitoring (ICPM) and craniotomy/craniectomy (CRANI) may affect outcomes. Sources of variability in the use of these interventions remain incompletely understood.

OBJECTIVE
To analyze sources of variability in the use of ICPM and CRANI.

METHODS
Retrospective cross-sectional study of patients with moderate/severe pediatric TBI with the use of data submitted to the American College of Surgeons National Trauma Databank.

RESULTS
We analyzed data from 7140 children at 156 US hospitals during 7 continuous years. Of the children, 27.4% had ICPM, whereas 11.7% had a CRANI. Infants had lower rates of ICPM and CRANI than older children. A lower rate of ICPM was observed among children hospitalized at combined pediatric/adult trauma centers than among children treated at adult-only trauma centers (relative risk = 0.80; 95% confidence interval 0.66-0.97). For ICPM and CRANI, 18.5% and 11.6%, respectively, of residual model variance was explained by between-hospital variation in care delivery, but almost no correlation was observed between within-hospital tendency toward performing these procedures.

CONCLUSION
Infants received less ICPM than older children, and children hospitalized at pediatric trauma centers received less ICPM than children at adult-only trauma centers. In addition, significant between-hospital variability existed in the delivery of ICPM and CRANI to children with moderate-severe TBI.


Assessing the world's progress against poverty calls for frequent and careful measurements, using household surveys and price data. Fortunately, the task of measuring poverty is becoming easier, and the results are probably getting more accurate over time. The best data for assessing progress against poverty come from surveys of the living standards of nationally representative samples of households. In the past 25 years there has been enormous progress in designing, implementing, and processing such surveys for developing countries, thanks in large part to the efforts of national statistics agencies throughout the world and the support of the donor community and international development agencies. These data provide key information about global and regional progress in alleviating poverty. Moreover, new data on poverty in rural versus urban areas offer empirical evidence on how rapidly poverty is urbanizing in the developing world (see Box 1).


Very large corpora of properly processed textual materials are uncommon but they can provide important resources for language modeling in natural language processing, ranging from speech processing and text input to automatic IR and patent translation. However, when properly cultivated in spatial-temporal terms, they can foster innovative knowledge discovery in database applications by functioning as monitoring corpus and enhance the human centered communication environment by allowing more substantive introspection and comparison of linguistic and social-cultural developments of the relevant speech communities. This paper discusses how the gigantic synchronous and homothematic corpus of Chinese, LIVAC, can contribute to the monitoring the linguistic homogeneity and heterogeneity diachronically and synchronically. After processing media texts of more than 400 million Chinese characters over 16 years, LIVAC has yielded a lexical corpus of 1.5 million words. This paper examines some aspects of the nature and extent of lexical and morphological divergence and convergence in the Chinese language of Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing. Additional discussions cover creation and relexification of neologisms, categorial fluidity and the associated challenges to terminology standardization, such as renditions of non-Chinese personal names. This paper also explores how the associated socio-cultural developments can be fruitfully monitored by means of this unique spatial-temporal corpus.


Giving good presentations is not just common sense. Cognitive neuroscientist Stephen M. Kosslyn shows how to make presentations work better based on how our brains work. Where many books focus on how to create a first draft, Better PowerPoint gives you quick steps to improve one you already have. BL 8 key rules that are easy to remember and use BL Clear principles about how to design effective slides based on well-established scientific data BL Quick steps to sharpen and strengthen your presentation BL Easy-to-use checklists guide you through each aspect of your presentation BL Chapters are structured to help you prioritize the most effective edits BL Memorable examples and illustrations to show what works, and what doesn't BL Lessons in what to fix can also help you create better first drafts faster. If you have a PowerPoint presentation that is not giving you the results you want, take advantage of what scientific research can tell you about how your audience is seeing and thinking about what you have to say.


Despite the efforts and strategies geared towards women in realizing property rights in terms of empowerment, participation and decision making in the global context today many African societies are still characterized by social economic and political inequalities between men and women. This situation is worse in Tanzania rural areas where women land rights are violated as result of culture being regarded as a daily routine that provide the basis and ways in which land is owned and distributed.This study focuses on women and land ownership rights. An attempt has been made to examine the contexts in which the state laws and policies give women rights to own land. With a special use of Rights based Approaches and feminist perspectives in particular WDC. The study has articulated some reasons as to why women land rights are not fully realized at a village and clan level in Moshi Rural in Tanzania.A qualitative research methodology is the main tool for generating research materials during the research process. Emphasis in this is laid on research interviews, field observation and a study of secondary research sources has also been used in situations where it is preferred.The study has examined the ways in which land rights for women are offered and practiced at the local level. In this regard, it is revealed that women"s land rights are facing many challenges which are grounded in culture in the way power relations, participation and empowerment is shaped. Moreover, it is revealed that Land Laws for women which are defined by the statutory laws are facing contradictions with customary laws something which has created conflict and tension with land rights for women. In this way it has been observed that, the duty holders for rights play a limited role in helping women to realize their rights.In addition, the task for promoting land rights in terms of advocacy and legal aid provision for women which is largely done by NGOs is facing some problems in terms of coverage. The study finds that, NGOs are town oriented while many problems for women"s land rights rife in rural areas. This situation has made many women to have limited knowledge about these NGOs and their activities.Moreover, the study reveals that land is the powerful means of livelihood provisions for women hence denial for women land rights has a profound impacts for their lives. For example lack for women land rights could make women to find it difficult to get food, settlement, credit and many other live necessities. This has increased the level of poverty on the part of women.With respect to remedy the challenges and difficulties faced by women in land ownership rights, an immediate law and policy reforms pertaining land rights have been suggested, with an effort to sensitize the society about these reforms. These could go hand in hand with effective implementation of reformed laws to be practiced both at national and local level.


Developmental maturation of K transport and Na+-K+-adenosinetriphosphatase (ATPase) function in the choroid plexus (CP) was investigated in infant rats. K fluxes (86Rb), Na+-K+-ATPase enzyme activities, and [3H]ouabain binding were measured in isolated, lateral CPs removed from anesthetized Sprague-Dawley rats of several ages ranging from 1 day to 6 wk. Morphological integrity of incubated tissue was confirmed by electron microscopy. CP epithelia accumulated K at a lower level during the 1st wk after birth (40 nmol/mg wet wt) compared with CP from rats aged 11-28 days (56 nmol/mg wet wt). However, efflux curves and efflux rate coefficients among the age groups were similar. Both Na+-K+-ATPase activity in CP tissue homogenates and [3H]ouabain binding to isolated CP began to increase between age 10 and 14 days. It is concluded that CP Na+-K+-ATPase has limited capacity in the lateral CP of neonatal rats but that this important transport function matures rapidly in the 1st 2-3 wk after birth.


We are studying a form of holographic data storage with phase conjugation, and we compensated for hologram distortion due to shrinkage of photopolymer materials in the holographic medium by controlling the wavefront of the reference beam. When a high NA lens and narrow angle interval of angle multiplexing are employed to obtain a high data recording density, some wavefronts cause interpage crosstalk on the reconstructed image. We tried to determine the moving range of actuators in a deformable mirror for controlling the wavefront. As a result, we found that the distortion in the hologram could be compensated while avoiding interpage crosstalk and that the bit error rates of the reproduced data could be decreased. We also found that the optimized wavefront could compensate for distortions in several neighboring data pages. This method can ensure a high data recording density in holographic data storage.


The aim of part one of the study was to describe the experiences of patients living with the urinary catheter from a literature study of existing research studies. Databases such as CINAHL, Medline, and PsyINFO were used in searching for the documents of which ten articles were found to be relevant in relation to the aim of the study. It was found that most of the studies were carried out in New York. Hence there was a need for other researches to be done in other communities. The aim of the empirical study was to describe the lived experiences of patients with long term indwelling urinary catheter in Cameroon. A purposive sample of six subjects with ages ranging from 34-78 yrs from Mbingo baptist hospital living with the indwelling urinary catheter were included in the study with the duration of living with the urinary catheter ranging from 3months –2,1/2 yrs. The data collection method was a face-to-face interview between the author and the participants that lasted from 30-1hr, which were audiotape and transcribed from Pidgin to English by means of the content analytic method. Themes such as, communication gap, financial difficulties, loss of ones dignity, pain, the device being important and unimportant, the device a 'killer', hindrance to daily activities, and consciousness of the proper functioning of the urinary catheter. From the interview with the participants with the long term indwelling urinary catheter, participants faced a lot of difficulties and even during their meetings with the healthcare professional, which showed lack of understanding between the participants and the healthcare professionals. Interview with the participants showed that for proper functioning of the catheter to be achieved care was emphasized on the drainage tube and clamp. Health care professional should be conscious of the fact that communication should be a two way process and that it should involve all the parties who are involve. There is also the need for the health care professionals to educate the patients according to their individual needs.


This Article argues that multinational corporations have acquired the power to create primary rules of international law, at stark cost to the state's regulatory autonomy. It is widely recognized that states have granted private business corporations significant capacities to act on the international stage, including the capacity to bear international legal rights and even to directly enforce their rights through compulsory international adjudication. But what has gone relatively unnoticed is the corporation's emergent capacity to directly and formally author its international legal rights, by agreement with sovereign states, via an "internationalized" power of contract. This Article explains how this power of contract amounts to something more than a mere commercial power to engage foreign sovereigns in private legal agreements. It represents no less than the capacity to author meaningful and enforceable international legal norms, with priority over the domestic law of the state party – facially limited to the economic sphere, but with dramatic ripples throughout all domains of public life. I argue that this power arises out of the confluence of three seemingly disparate doctrinal shifts in international investment law and human rights jurisprudence, concerning: the legal status of state contracts; the theory of transnational property; and the law of corporate nationality. Finally, I turn a critical eye to these developments, drawing theoretical insights from domestic private law and public international law. I conclude that international legal doctrine has gone too far in empowering multinationals against the state, while remaining too hesitant to demand any form of corporate accountability.


Supply voltages and threshold voltages continue t o be aggressively scaled down in order t o obtain power reduction, performance improvement, and increasing integration density. This leads to leakage current becoming a much more significant component of power than it has been in the past. We have previously shown that substantial leakage reduction can be achieved in single Vt circuits by turning off stitcks of transistors. A theoretical model was also derived which predicts the quiescent leakage current and the idle time required to reach quiescent levels. In this report, we will review the leakage estimation model, outline a method for evaluating the leakage assocated with an input vector, and use the model to identify inputs which minimize leakage in a variety of test cases.


Hair cortisol is a novel marker to measure long-term secretion cortisol free from many methodological caveats associated with other matrices such as plasma, saliva, urine, milk and faeces. For decades hair analysis has been successfully used in forensic science and toxicology to evaluate the exposure to exogenous substances and assess endogenous steroid hormones. Evaluation of cortisol in hair matrix began about a decade ago and have over the past five years had a remarkable development by advancing knowledge and affirming this method as a new and efficient way to study the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity over a long time period. In farm animals, certain environmental or management conditions can potentially activate the HPA axis. Given the importance of cortisol in monitoring the HPA axis activity, a first approach has involved the study on the distribution of hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) in healthy dairy cows showing a physiological range of variation of this hormone. Moreover, HCC have been significantly influenced also by changes in environmental conditions and a significant positive correlation was detected between HCC and cows clinically or physiologically compromised suggesting that these cows were subjected to repeated HPA axis activation. Additionally, Crossbreed F1 heifers showed significantly lower HCC compared to pure animals and a breed influence has been seen also on the HPA axis activity stimulated by an environmental change showing thus a higher level of resilience and a better adaptability to the environment of certain genotypes. Hair proved to be an excellent matrix also in the study of the activation of the HPA axis during the perinatal period. The use of hair analysis in research holds great promise to significantly enhance current understanding on the role of HPA axis over a long period of time.


Antennas installed in modern cars are often highly integrated. In such cases, the entire vehicle is contributing to the radiated field, in particular at lower frequencies such as VHF. The complete characterization of the full vehicle is thus typically required. For frequencies down to 70 MHz, a widely accepted and cost effective solution is a multi-probe spherical Near Field (NF) system in which the scanning area is truncated below the horizon to minimize system dimensions. In order to emulate a proper freespace condition in the lower hemisphere, the ground floor is covered with absorbing material [1]. The partial NF acquisition of such systems leads to truncation errors if standard Near Field to Far Field (NF/FF) transformation is applied [2-3]. The mitigation of truncation error in general measurement scenarios by different post-processing techniques are described in the literature [4-9]. In this contribution, the mitigation capabilities of two techniques are investigated by experiment for an automotive scenario for the first time. The measurements have been performed on a 1:12 scaled vehicle-mounted antenna in a full-sphere multi-probe system. The scaled system and vehicle is representative of a real size system in the frequency range 70–400 MHz. Both truncated and full 3D measurements are performed for comparison.


It is demonstrated, using transportation theory, that controlled selection can be used to solve the following sampling problem. Sample units are to be selected with probability proportional to size for two designs, both one unit per stratum, denoted as D1 and D2, with generally different stratifications. The goal of the problem is to simultaneously select the sample units for the two designs in a manner which maximizes the expected number of units that are in both samples. The procedure differs from previous overlap procedures in that it yields a better overlap, but is only applicable when the two samples can be selected simultaneously. An important special case occurs when the probability of selection for each unit in D1 does not exceed its probability of selection in D2. The procedure can then guarantee that the D1 sample units are a subset of the D2 sample units. A proposed, but since canceled, expansion of the Current Population Survey, which is discussed, would have been a potential application of this special case. Variance formulas for estimators of total under the controlled selection procedure are also presented. In addition, it is demonstrated that the procedure can easily be modified to minimize expected overlap instead of maximizing it.


Growth hormone (GH) can oppose the catabolic effects of glucocorticoids. However, both hormones have adverse effects on carbohydrate metabolism. Here we examined the interactive effects of GH and the glucocorticoid methylprednisolone (MP) on glucose tolerance, insulin resistance and [3H]2,6-deoxyglucose uptake of peripheral tissues in rats. Female Wistar rats received either saline, GH (2.7 mg/kg), MP (5.0 mg/kg) or GH+MP. After 7 days treatment, animals were subjected to an i.v. glucose tolerance test. In a second experiment, animals treated as above were anesthetized and injected with human insulin (0.5 U/kg), [3H]2,6-deoxyglucose (500 microCi/kg), and [14C]mannitol (25 microCi/kg), to estimate insulin resistance and [3H]2,6-deoxyglucose uptake in fat and muscle. Weight gain in controls was 7.6+/-1.7 g, while GH treatment increased the mean body weight by 18.7+/-2.2 g (P<0.0002) and MP inhibited weight gain down to 0.0+/-1.0 g (P<0.004). This drop in weight gain was reversed back to normal when GH was given in combination with MP. After a glucose tolerance test no significant differences in glucose area under the curve were detected when comparing individual groups with the control group, but samples taken just before this test revealed that basal insulin was significantly elevated in the group treated with GH (174+/-27 pM, P<0.008), or GH+MP (209+/-21 pM, P<0.004), when compared with controls (107+/-17 pM). MP alone had no effect (122+/-19, P<0.3). After an i.v. bolus of insulin the group receiving GH+MP had a significantly (P<0.007) higher level of circulating glucose compared with controls (6.5+/-0.3 mM vs 4.4+/-0.7 mM). Despite this, there were no differences in peripheral glucose uptake between the two groups. In conclusion this study shows that a combined administration of GH and MP decreases the potency by which insulin decreases circulating glucose levels, but that peripheral tissues are not primarily involved in this insulin resistance.


Artificial diamond used as raw material for tool implements is mostly synthesized by the flux method. The final products of the synthetic reaction contain various kinds of impurities, such as ceramic brick, unreacted graphite and fluxes of Ni and Fe. In operation plants, the impurities are removed by chemical means. Residual fluxes are removed by dissolving with aqua regia, unreacted graphite with perchloric acid, and ceramic brick by sodium hydroxide fusing. As such methods for removing impurities are expensive and harmful to the environment, it is essential to establish more economical, safer and more efficient methods; froth flotation being one example of such attempts.As part of the studies on the applicability of flotation to the removal of the impurities from the synthesized diamond products, flotation behaviors of unreacted graphite and synthesized diamond in the presence of depressants were investigated. Firstly, a series of flotation tests was conducted on raw synthesized diamond in order to determine the optimum conditions for removing unreacted graphite using sodium silicate, sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium pyrophosphate as depressants. When kerosene or Aerofloat #25 was used as a collector, both sodium silicate and sodium pyrophosphate were effective to depress the floatability of the synthesized diamond, but the depressing effect of sodium hexametaphosphate was more inferior than the above two because of less hydrolysis. Secondly, to assess the efficacy of separation flotation of the 1 to 1 mixture of the unreacted graphite and synthesized diamond, a series of flotation tests was carried out using sodium pyrophosphate and sodium hexametaphosphate as depressants and kerosene as a collector. It was found that these depressants were effective in separating the unreacted graphite from the synthesized diamond in an alkaline region of around pH 9.


In a national context where the language rights of indigenous people have been recognized constitutionally since 2003, we deal with the following questions: How can bilingual education programmes in Mexico be clearly defined and applied? And what exactly are the final objectives of a bilingual education programme? We shall address the issue of the potential forms and contents of bilingual education from the standpoint of our experience working with schoolteachers, in co-participative educational workshops in two multilingual areas in Central and South-Eastern Mexico, from 2009 to 2012. Indeed, the multidimensional use of native languages and knowledge through workshops held in a number of Mexican languages, in which the participants produce texts and drawings in their own languages, directly raises pedagogical issues on language planning in the classroom. The dominant model for bilingual and intercultural education (BIE) in Mexico today corresponds to that of incorporation through subtractive bilingualism: teaching in the native language, switching then to Spanish in order to teach the official pedagogical contents, and in detriment of language and culture specificities. Our work suggests that BIE could represent a constructive, empowering alternative adaptable to local community contexts.


Auditing profession is facing challenges on several levels, namely the absence of confidence of the financial community of the reports prepared by them because such  reports do not meet the requirements  the  and only focus on the interests of the owners, which led to frequent financial crises in the business environment.This research aims at identifying the factors that help to bridge the gap between auditors' expectations and requirements of the financial community at the Kingdom of Bahrain. Therefore, to achieve the goal of this study, a questionnaire has been designed and distributed to the parties related to bridging the gap between auditors and the financial communityTo test the probabilities of the research, analytic descriptive statistics has been used. The study has concluded that the orientation of financial reports to make balance between the common interests for the parties shall help to bridge the gap between auditors and financial community and enhance the confidence between them. The statistical study has proved that there is statistical relation between auditors' reports and the requirement of the financial community which affects the expectations gap between them then recommendations were suggested to reform this fault. Keywords : Bridging, Expectations Gap, Auditors Reports, Requirements, Financial Community


Our recent study showed that monocrotophos (MCP) pesticide disrupted the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis in male goldfish (Carassius auratus); however, the effects of MCP on the thyroid system in female goldfish are remain unclear. In the present study, plasma thyroid hormone (TH) and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels were evaluated in female goldfish exposed to 0.01, 0.10, and 1.00 mg/L of 40% MCP-based pesticide for 21 days in a semi-static exposure system. Expression profiles of HPT axis-responsive genes, including transthyretin (ttr), deiodinases (d1, d2, and d3), tshβ, thyrotropin-releasing hormone (trh), and corticotrophin-releasing hormone (crh), were determined. The results indicated that MCP decreased the plasma levels of total 3,3′,5-triiodo-l-thyronine (TT3) and the ratio of TT3 to total 3,3′,5,5′-l-thyroxine (TT4), and induced alternative expression of TH-related genes. Exposure to 0.01 and 0.10 mg/L MCP pesticide resulted in the up-regulation of ttr mRNA. The reduction of plasma TT3 levels was partly attributed to an increase in the metabolism of T3 in the liver, as revealed by the highly elevated hepatic d1 and d3 mRNA levels in the MCP treatment groups, and the expression of hepatic d3 showed a negative correlation with the plasma TT3/TT4 levels in females. Moreover, the plasma TSH levels were lower in females exposed to 0.01 and 0.10 mg/L MCP pesticide, whereas the up-regulation of tshβ mRNA levels was compensated by the decreased plasma TT3 levels. These results indicated that MCP had the potential to influence several pathways of HPT axis homeostasis in female goldfish.


The biochemical properties of a purified enzyme of a new alkalophillic endo-1,4-beta-xylanase gene, KRICT PX2 (GU967374), which was isolated from Paenibacillus sp. HPL-002 (KCTC11410BP) and expressed in E. coli, were investigated. The specific activity of the purified xylanase was 51.26 μmol/min/mg proteins. The Km and Vmax values of the protein for birch wood xylan were also verified to have 0.061 μM and 55.3 μmol/min/mg proteins, respectively. The optimum pH and temperature for the activity of the enzyme were pH 8~9 and 50oC, respectively, and, the activity was stably maintained at 40oC. Most metallic salts, ethylenediamine tetra-acetic acid, 2-mercaptoethanol, phenylmethane-sulphonyl fluoride, and furfural, have no impact on the enzyme's activity at 1 mM. The simulated 3-D structure of this xylanase is similar to Xyn10B from Paenibacillus barcinonensis. Further research on the degradation of different-origin xylans and enzyme production will be necessary for practical applications.


B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) level is known to increase in patients with rheumatic mitral stenosis. In this systematic review, we aimed to discuss the possible association between plasma BNP level and the success rate of percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy. PubMed and Scopus databases were searched systematically, using the following key terms: "B-type natriuretic peptide" OR "BNP" AND "percutaneous transvenous mitral commissurotomy" OR "percutaneous transluminal mitral commissurotomy" OR "PTMC" OR "percutaneous balloon mitral valvotomy" OR "PBMV". The title, keywords and abstract of relevant articles were searched thoroughly. Among 27 articles found in these databases, 18 studies were excluded during different stages of article selection, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 333 patients were evaluated in the selected studies. Overall, 75 and 191 cases were male and female, respectively. Sex ratio was not specified in two studies, evaluating a total of 67 patients. The obtained results showed that BNP level may decrease after a successful PTMC. Furthermore, post-operative plasma levels of BNP and N-terminal proBNP could be considered as predictors of the success rate of PTMC. Based on the results reported in the evaluated articles, there may be an association between post-operative plasma levels of BNP family and the success rate of PTMC.


We provide a quantum description of X waves by considering two different kinds of quantum states of the electromagnetic field whose field amplitude expectation value coincides with a propagation-invariant solution of the Maxwell equation. The difference between the two states is of pure quantum mechanical origin since they are internally entangled and disentangled and can be generated by different linear or nonlinear processes.


Objective Breast feeding may contribute to neurological development and hence mental health. However, associations from Western populations are unclear, and most likely confounded by socioeconomic position (SEP), making evidence from other sociocultural settings valuable. We examined whether breast feeding was associated with early adolescent emotional and behavioural problems, self-esteem and depressive symptoms in a non-Western developed setting, where socioeconomic patterning of breast feeding differs from but other postnatal characteristics are similar to Western settings. Design The adjusted associations of breast feeding with emotional and behavioural problems assessed from parent-reported Rutter z-score at ∼11 years (n=5598, 67% follow-up), self-reported self-esteem z-score at ∼11 years (n=6937, 84%) and depressive symptoms assessed from self-reported Patient Health Questionnaire-9 z-score at ∼13 years (n=5797, 70%) were examined using multivariable linear regression in a population-representative Hong Kong Chinese birth cohort, 'Children of 1997'. Results Mothers from families with higher education tended to start but not sustain breast feeding, whereas migrant mothers tended to start and sustain breast feeding. Breast feeding for 3+ months had mostly null associations with Rutter score, self-esteem or depressive symptoms adjusted for sex, age, survey mode, SEP, parents' age, birth weight-for-gestational age, birth order and secondhand smoke exposure, although partial breast feeding for any length of time or exclusive breast feeding for <3 months was associated with poorer behaviour (higher Rutter z-score (0.10, 95% CI 0.05 to 0.16)) and lower self-esteem (−0.09, 95% CI −0.14 to −0.04). Conclusions In a non-Western developed setting, breast feeding was inconsistently associated with several early adolescent mental health measures suggesting a reflection of setting specific unmeasured confounding.


The numerical analysis of finite planar metal-insulator-metal waveguide structures using the transfer-matrix formalism reveals both bound and leaky surface plasmon (SP) modes. The dispersion relations, propagation lengths and confinement factors of these SP modes are presented. The highest energy SP mode consists of non-radiative (bound) and radiative (leaky) portions separated by a spectral gap. The leaky regime is further divided into antenna and reactive mode regions. The antenna mode may be used for both free-space coupling and beam steering devices.


The definitive lay reader's account of the Everests of mathematics--the seven unsolved problems that definethe state of the art in contemporary math. In 2000, the Clay Foundation of Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced a historic competition: whoever could solve any of seven extraordinarily difficult mathematical problems, and have the solution acknowledged as correct by the experts, would receive USD1 million in prize money. There was some precedent for doing this: in 1900 David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians of his day, proposed twenty-three problems, now known as the Hilbert Problems, that set much of the agenda for mathematics in the twentieth century. The Millennium Problems are likely to acquire similar stature, and their solution (or lack of one) is likely to play a strong role in determining the course of mathematics in the current century. Keith Devlin, renowned expositor of mathematics, tells here what the seven problems are, how they came about, and what they mean for math and science. These problems are the brass rings held out to today's mathematicians, glittering and just out of reach. In the hands of Keith Devlin, "the Math Guy" from NPR's "Weekend Edition," each Millennium Problem becomes a fascinating window onto the deepest and toughest questions in the field. For mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and everyone else with an interest in mathematics' cutting edge, The Millennium Problems is the definitive account of a subject that will have a very long shelf life.