Abstract Hybridity has emerged recently as a key response in International Relations and peace studies to the crisis of liberal peace. Attributing the failures of liberal peacebuilding to a lack of legitimacy deriving from uncompromising efforts to impose a rigid market democratic state model on diverse populations emerging from conflict, the hybrid peace approach locates the possibility of a 'radical', post-liberal, and emancipatory peace in the agency of the local and the everyday and 'hybrid' formations of international/liberal and local/non-liberal institutions, practices, and values. However, this article argues, hybrid peace, emerging as an attempt to resolve a problem of difference and alterity specific to the context in which the crisis of liberal peacebuilding manifests, is a problem-solving tool for the encompassment and folding into globalising liberal order of cultural, political, and social orders perceived as radically different and obstructionist to its expansion. Deployed at the very point this expansion is beset by resistance and crisis, hybrid peace reproduces the liberal peace's logics of inclusion and exclusion, and through a reconfiguration of the international interface with resistant 'local' orders, intensifies the governmental and biopolitical reach of liberal peace for their containment, transformation, and assimilation.


This master's thesis deals with the construction of sexual harassment in American online tabloids and quality newspapers. Ten texts of relatively the same length, 5 articles from tabloids and 5 articles from quality newspapers, have been selected for analysis, which was based on the methods of discourse analysis. The thesis deals with ideational and interpersonal metafunctions of language in the selected texts. In connection with this, the thesis examines how victims and perpetrators of sexual harassment are described and classified, and which kinds of sexual harassment are mentioned in the texts. This master's thesis also analyzed external voices included in the texts (heteroglossia). Findings from tabloids have been compared with findings from quality newspapers. The results have shown that perpetrators were judged negatively for their harassment in both kinds of newspapers, while victims were judged for their lack of strength and competence. As expected, victims were referred to more frequently than perpetrators. Physical harassment was the center of focus in tabloids, while in quality newspapers the reference to verbal harassment was made more often.


No single study on the topic of sexual dysfunction leapt from the podium as a breakthrough at this year's AUA annual meeting, but a number of studies offered valuable observations about various aspects of sexual function/dysfunction. Among these were studies showing that the degree of personal involvement in restoring sexual function after radical prostatectomy correlates with the degree of success, said John Mulcahy, MD, PhD, professor of urology, Indiana University Medical Center, Indianapolis. Also, research showed that erectile dysfunction can be associated with metabolic disorders and heart disease, and when prescriptions with level 1 interactions overlap, they are often for sildenafil citrate (Viagra) and nitrates.


Data collected by fisheries observers aboard U.S. pelagic longline vessels were examined to quantify and describe elasmobranch bycatch off the southeastern U.S. coast (lat. 22°–35°N, long. 71°–82°W). From 1992 to 2000, 961 individual longline hauls were observed, during which 4,612 elasmobranchs (15% of the total catch) were documented. Of the 22 elasmobranch species observed, silky sharks, Carcharhinus falciformis, were numerically dominant (31.4% of the elasmobranch catch). The catch status of the animals (alive or dead) when the gear was retrieved varied widely depending on the species, with high mortalities seen for the commonly caught silky and night, C. signatus, sharks and low mortalities for rays (Dasyatidae and Mobulidae), blue, Prionace glauca; and tiger, Galeocerdo cuvier; sharks. Discard percentages also varied, ranging from low discards (27.6%) for shortfin mako, Isurus oxyrinchus, to high discards for blue (99.8%), tiger (98.5%), and rays (100%). Mean fork lengths indicated the majority of the observed by-catch — regardless of species — was immature, and significant quarterly variation in fork length was found for several species including silky; dusky, C. obscurus; night; scalloped hammerhead, Sphyrna lewini; oceanic whitetip, C. longimanus; and sandbar, C. plumbeus; sharks. While sex ratios overall were relatively even, blue, tiger, and scalloped hammerhead shark catches were heavily dominated by females. Bootstrap methods were used to generate yearly mean catch rates (catch per unit effort) and 95% confidence limits; catch rates were generally variable for most species, although regression analysis indicated significant trends for night, oceanic whitetip, and sandbar sharks. Analysis of variance indicated significant catch rate differences among quarters for silky, dusky, night, blue, oceanic whitetip, sandbar, and shortfin mako sharks.


While presenting the proposals of the pedagogical knowledge of the contents and the pedagogical action, Shulman did not set out in his theory the possible relations between them. Willing to analyze such relations, this essay put these two core themes in Shulman studies side by side and supported by other investigations that address these themes, tried to find out how they may inter-relate in the initial teacher training. The analyzed information allow to infer that both proposals keep a strict, reciprocal and almost interdependent relation between them, so that they permeate themselves, and complete and make efforts to each other in the common sense to transform the contents knowledge of the future teachers into teachable knowledge to pupils. The consideration of these questions by the training programs and its implementation through pedagogical practices and their reflections can potentially integrate these elements and qualify the initial training of future teachers.


The advent of personal communication systems within the last decade has depended upon the utilization of advanced digital schemes for source and channel coding and for modulation. The inherent digital nature of the communications processing has allowed the convenient incorporation of cryptographic techniques to implement security in these communications systems. There are various security requirements, of both the service provider and the mobile subscriber, which may be provided for in a personal communications system. Such security provisions include the privacy of user data, the authentication of communicating parties, the provision for data integrity, and the provision for both location confidentiality and party anonymity. This thesis is concerned with an investigation of the private-key and public-key cryptographic techniques pertinent to the security requirements of personal communication systems and an analysis of the security provisions of Second-Generation personal communication systems is presented. Particular attention has been paid to the properties of the cryptographic protocols which have been employed in current Second-Generation systems. It has been found that certain security-related protocols implemented in the Second-Generation systems have specific weaknesses. A theoretical evaluation of these protocols has been performed using formal analysis techniques and certain assumptions made during the development of the systems are shown to contribute to the security weaknesses. Various attack scenarios which exploit these protocol weaknesses are presented. The Fiat-Sharmir zero-knowledge cryptosystem is presented as an example of how asymmetric algorithm cryptography may be employed as part of an improved security solution. Various modifications to this cryptosystem have been evaluated and their critical parameters are shown to be capable of being optimized to suit a particular applications. The implementation of such a system using current smart card technology has been evaluated.


Abstract We test whether adverse childhood experiences – exposure to parental maltreatment and its indirect effect on health – are associated with age 30 personality traits. We use rich longitudinal data from a large, representative cohort of young US Americans and exploit the differences across siblings to control for the confounding influences of shared environmental and genetic factors. We find that maltreatment experiences are significantly and robustly associated with neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, but not with agreeableness and extraversion. High levels of neuroticism are linked to sexual abuse and neglect; low levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience are linked to parental neglect. The estimated associations are significantly reduced in magnitude when controlling for physical or mental health, suggesting that adolescent health could be one important pathway via which maltreatment affects adulthood personality. Maltreatment experiences, in combination with their health effects, explain a significant fraction of the relationship between adulthood conscientiousness and earnings or human capital. Our findings provide a possible explanation for why personality traits are important predictors of adulthood labor market outcomes.


Preliminary evidence indicates that although there have been attempts to ensure continuity across the primary-secondary transition (Tobell, 2003), discontinuities remain and that there is a "hiatus in progression" (Galton et al., 2000). For pupils the transition to secondary school is a time of change leaving their small familiar primary school and entering a large unfamiliar secondary school. This thesis presents pupils' expectations and experiences of the primary-secondary transition, across the curriculum and specifically with regards to Physical Education (PE). The primary-secondary transition with regards to PE is marked by significant changes in resource provision, and a mode of delivery from (mainly) non-specialist teachers to subject specialists (Capel and Piotrowski, 2000). As an exploratory case study, an ethnographic approach was adopted with "pupil-voice" a distinctive and central feature. Two phases of fieldwork were conducted. The first phase examined Year 6 (aged 10-11) pupils' expectations of the primary-secondary transition at Urban Primary and tracked these pupils into City Comprehensive to explore their experiences (June-October 2011). The second phase of fieldwork examined the particularities of the transition concerned with PE. Once more, expectations of Year 6 pupils at Urban Primary were explored and tracked into City Comprehensive (June-October, 2012). Thematic inductive analysis was conducted and there were four super-ordinate findings which relate to: pupils' perceptions of the process of transition across the curriculum and with regards to PE; the notion of "being good enough"; social implications of transition; concept of "growing up"; teachers and teaching. Findings suggest that these factors contribute to a discontinuous experience for pupils during transition. Future research directions point towards a focus on academia across transition and a consideration of the development in physical competence within primary school settings. Throughout this thesis reflexivity and reflection were used to provide an insight into the research journey as part of the doctoral apprenticeship.Thesis completed in 2014.


Background: Bone screws are crucial elements in treating many types of open/closed fractures and arthroplasties in different joints in the body. The life time of many plates used in the fracture treatment are dependent on the screws function. The fracture of screws at any point of their lifetime will cause failure of the treatment for that specific pathology. This may lead to increase risk of new surgeries, osteomyelitis and less commonly septic arthritis. These complications not only have a negative impact on patient's quality of life, increase comorbidity and mortality but also increase health care cost significantly. Method: We study the lifetime of bone joint screws made up of biostable (polysulfone) and biosorbable (poly-lactide-co-glycolide) polymer composite materials. The lifetime estimations under in vitro conditions were calculated based on extremely small sample size. A computational intelligent model has been developed to estimate the lifetimes, which is superior to least square and real-coded Genetic Algorithm methods, specifically, for a small sample size of data. Retrospectively, 76 X-rays with screw fracture indication (37 polysulfon screws and 39 poly-lactide- co-glycolide screws) constitute the sample size in this study. The funding sources were provided by the office of research services at Ryerson University. Results: The proposed model is a robust method because it does not converge to a local optimum, and also it does not need the use of differential calculus facilitating the computational implementation. The findings make a significant contribution to reliability of composite implants. Conclusion: The application of this model for two types of composite materials used for bone joint screws proves that polysulfone screws lifetime is better than that of poly-lactide-co-glycolide screws. Therefore, using the polysulfone screws could decrease the health related complications such as new surgeries and osteomyelitis.


The safe and economical design of new, innovative nuclear reactors will require uncertainty reduction in basic nuclear data that are input to simulations used during reactor design. These data uncertainties propagate to uncertainties in design responses, which in turn require the reactor designer to incorporate additional safety margins into the design, often increasing the cost of the reactor. Therefore, basic nuclear data need to be improved, and this is accomplished through experimentation, which is often done using cold critical experiments. Considering the high cost of nuclear experiments, it is desired to have an optimized experiment that will provide the experimental data needed for maximum uncertainty reduction in the design responses. However, the optimization of the experiment is coupled to the reactor design itself because with reduced uncertainty in the design responses the reactor design can be re-optimized. It is thus desired to find the experiment design that gives the most optimized reactor design. Solution of this nested optimization problem is made possible by the use of the simulated annealing algorithm. Cost values for experiment design specifications and reactor design specifications are estimated and used to compute a total savings by comparing the a posteriori reactor cost to the a priori cost accounting for the offsetting cost of the experiment. This was done for the Argonne National Laboratory-developed Advanced Burner Test Reactor design concept employing a modified Zero Power Physics Reactor as the experimental facility.


Donald Trump's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 is without precedent in U.S. political history. Beginning with announcement of his candidacy in June 2015 the billionaire businessman's generic attacks on the veniality and incompetence of politicians and federal leaders, and assertions about building a wall on the Mexican border filled the news media. By July his poll ratings moved ahead of a large and well-credentialed field of candidates. In November a series of events and statements about Muslims and Syrian refugees aroused outrage among newspaper editors and influential political columnists. But the continued rise of Trump's poll ratings confounded earlier predictions that his campaign would falter. His support among Republican voters was confirmed by an overwhelming victory in the New Hampshire primary in early February 2016. Analysis of Trump's books, political history, and campaign detail leads to several conclusions. 1) Trump drew on principles described in his earlier books and TV experience to develop strategies to counter the image of his earlier support for Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton. 2) He projected extreme positions as a deliberate tactic to gain media coverage while conveying a tough conservative image. 3) I agree with New York Magazine writer Frank Rich that Trump "made a monkey of pundits and pollsters". His campaign also unmasked the superficiality and conflicting behavior of leading news media whose editors and writers disparaged or condemned Trump while articles on him filled their pages, helping implement strategies that took him to the top. 4) His lack of ideological persuasions has helped him identify and speak bluntly about issues normally glossed over. If Trump becomes the Republican nominee questions include whether he has strategies to offset the negative image created by his rude behavior in the primary campaign, and, if successful, whether his ego would allow him to effectively employ his skills and energy to solve the nation's problems.


In The Production of Space (1991), Henri Lefebvre acknowledges the impact of production, consumption, and multiplicity of authorship in the built environment. He asserts that cities, buildings, and interiors are hybrid productions mobilized not only by designers, but also through cultural traditions, social practices, and autonomous interventions. By reframing the design of the built environment with the inverse—the quotidian impact of people reshaping space—Lefebvre celebrates the commonplace and unschooled actions that cities, buildings, and interiors receive apart from the top–down hand of designers. He fixes his gaze on the lives of buildings and interiors well beyond the moment of their completion. Working in a manner similar to geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, and historic preservationists, how can interior designers, architects, and planners cultivate a design culture that embraces and advocates for diverse modes of spatial occupancy? How might interior design practices promote, rather than subvert, these influences to recast spatial obsolescence toward higher performance futures? How might interior design engage a more organic mode of practice? For immigrants, refugees, and underrepresented persons, establishing a rooted narrative often begins within building interiors. Such interventions are primarily introduced as spatial, temporal, and adaptive gestures that reveal enduring values, perceptions, practices, and methods of production. This paper posits that obsolete buildings of American suburbia offer clues to an alternative future. It examines how incrementally adapted shopping malls allow immigrant and underrepresented communities to seek socioeconomic freedom via cultural practices and mercantilism. These adapted commercial interior environments demonstrate how historically marginalized communities have found safe spaces to forge identities. Two sites—one in Houston and the other in Cleveland—speculate on the transcontinental extent of retail obsolescence and shopping mall adaptation. Case studies are used to demonstrate how commercial interiors often migrate toward futures that markedly contrast with their original design intentions.


As part of the recruitment efforts for the National Institutes of Health Tissue Plasminogen Activator Pilot Study, public education and awareness campaigns were conducted to encourage early hospital arrival. We evaluated the change in arrival times during the course of the study for all stroke patients, including those who were not entered into study. Methods Data were gathered on all patients presenting within 24 hours of stroke onset to all of the study hospitals. Coincident with the start of the study, educational and promotional programs, which stressed signs and symptoms of stroke and the need to call 911, were presented to physicians, paramedical personnel, and the public. The study was divided into four quartiles to analyze differences in time to hospital arrival and use of 911. Results Of 2099 patients screened, time data were available on 1116. During the course of the study, the mean time from symptom onset to hospital arrival declined significantly (3.2 hours versus 1.5 hours). Patients arrived for treatment sooner at community hospitals than at university/teaching hospitals. The use of 911 increased from 39% in the first quartile of the study to 60% in the fourth quartile. This was a consistent finding in all study sites. Increased use of 911 was seen almost exclusively in patients with nonhemorrhagic stroke. Conclusions Times from stroke onset to hospital arrival decreased significantly during the course of the National Institutes of Health Tissue Plasminogen Activator Pilot Study. Significantly increased use of 911 was the likely major explanation for the shortened arrival times. The decrease in arrival times may be a consequence of the public and professional education programs conducted at all study sites.


The report on which this brief is based synthesizes the research evidence about the impact of community schools on student and school outcomes. Its aim is to support and inform school, community, district, and state leaders as they consider, propose, or implement community schools as a strategy for providing equitable, high-quality education to all young people. We conclude that well-implemented community schools lead to improvement in student and school outcomes and contribute to meeting the educational needs of low-achieving students in highpoverty schools, and sufficient research exists to meet the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) standard for an evidence-based intervention.


Objective: Mental health is often stigmatized in Asia, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is portrayed negatively in the media. The objective of this short report is to obtain an insight on Asian countries' perception on Electroconvulsive Therapy, mainly through the media. Methods: Several online movie databases were searched, with emphasis on Asian movies' portrayal of Electroconvulsive Therapy. Results: Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) was portrayed in 9 television programme, 4 in films and 2 on Youtube. All patients (15) had no proper information given on possible side effects and consent not taken in all of them. 5 patients (33%) were tortured via ECT, 3(20%) of them had, ECT for Schizophrenia. In all scenes (15/15, 100%) ECT were given without general anaesthesia and the patients were fully awake. Basic monitoring (2/15, 13%) was performed, and all patients had no oxygenation. Tonic Clonic seizures were visible because all patients received no muscle relaxant. Bilateral electrode's placements (13/15, 87%) were common. One (6.6%) patient had a trilateral electrode placement. Most patients (9/15, 60%) received one shock, 4 patients (27%) received 2 shocks. One patient (6.6%) received 3 and 1 patient (6.6%) 4 shocks. 100% of patients were in obvious discomfort and ECT was portrayed as barbaric. There was no death depicted post ECT. Conclusion: ECT is under portrayed in the Asian media. Only the Indian and Pakistani medium broached the subject. In the majority of the scenes, ECT was portrayed negatively. This shows a total lack of knowledge of ECT among the Asian population. Alarmingly, ECT was used as a torture device in 5 mediums. This only adds to the stigma of ECT in Asia. More needs to be done to correct the misconceptions of ECT in Asia. ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 18 (2): July – December 2017: XX XX.


Following on from the companion study (Johnson et al., 2005a), a photochemical tra-jectory model (PTM) has been used to simulate the chemical composition of organic aerosol for selected events during the 2003 TORCH (Tropospheric Organic Chemistry Experiment) field campaign. The PTM incorporates the speciated emissions of 124 5 non-methane anthropogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC) and three representative biogenic VOC, a highly-detailed representation of the atmospheric degradation of these VOC, the emission of primary organic aerosol (POA) material and the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) material. SOA formation was represented by the transfer of semi-and non-volatile oxidation products from the gas-phase to a 10 condensed organic aerosol-phase, according to estimated thermodynamic equilibrium phase-partitioning characteristics for around 2000 reaction products. After significantly scaling all phase-partitioning coefficients, and assuming a persistent background organic aerosol (both required in order to match the observed organic aerosol loadings), the detailed chemical composition of the simulated SOA has been investigated in terms 15 of intermediate oxygenated species in the Master Chemical Mechanism, version 3.1 (MCM v3.1). For the various case studies considered, 90% of the simulated SOA mass comprises between ca. 70 and 100 multifunctional oxygenated species derived, in varying amounts, from the photooxidation of VOC of anthropogenic and biogenic origin. The anthropogenic contribution is dominated by aromatic hydrocarbons and the 20 biogenic contribution by α-and β-pinene (which also constitute surrogates for other emitted monoterpene species). Sensitivity in the simulated mass of SOA to changes in the emission rates of anthropogenic and biogenic VOC has also been investigated for 11 case study events, and the results have been compared to the detailed chemical composition data. The role of accretion chemistry in SOA formation, and its implica-25 tions for the results of the present investigation, is discussed.


Adenosine diphosphate ribosylation (ADP-ribosylation) is a widely occurring post-translational modification of proteins at nucleophilic side chains of amino acid residues, such as asparagine, glutamic acid, and arginine. Elucidation of the biological role of ADP-ribosylation events would benefit from the availability of well-defined ADP-ribosylated peptides. Main issues in the construction of synthetic ADP-ribosylated peptides involve the availability of protected ribosylated amino acids suitable for peptide synthesis, development of a protective group strategy for peptide fragments compatible with the integrity of the adenosine diphosphate moiety, and an efficient procedure for pyrophosphate formation. In this paper we present a first approach to the chemical synthesis of ADP-ribosylated peptides in solution and on solid support. We describe an efficient synthesis of suitably protected ribosylated asparagine and glutamine building blocks suitable for Fmoc-based peptide synthesis. We further demonstrate a successful application of these ribosylated amino acids in the assembly of three fully synthetic ADP-ribosylated peptides by solution and solid phase approaches.


When applied to mountain torrents, sediment transport formulae habitually overestimate the bedload by several orders of magnitude, even if they have been developed for steep slopes. The reason is that the influence of macro-roughness elements, such as large immobile boulders which have an impact on flow conditions, is not taken into account. Larger roughness elements induce an increased form drag, implying a lower shear stress available for sediment entrainment. Preliminary tests carried out in a laboratory flume with a slope of 6.7%, reveal that the surface occupied by boulders need to be considered in order to obtain a good estimation of the sediment discharge. With 15% of the surface occupied by boulders, the bedload is reduced by 61% compared to transport rate without boulders. The influence of the immobile boulders on flow conditions and sediment transport has been studied as a function of spatial density of the boulders. The results are discussed in comparison with existing empirical bedload transport formula.


This paper proposes a regional comparison of ex-post inequality of opportunity in France by measuring, within each region, the inequality between individuals exerting the same effort. According to the concept of equality of opportunity, inequalities due to factors for which the individual is not responsible are unfair and should be removed but inequalities due to factors for which the individual can be held responsible (effort) are fair and should be preserved. Therefore, our analysis defends a responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism whose aim is to show whether (1) regions reward equally effort, (2) inequality of opportunity is equally distributed among regions and (3) it is correlated with income inequality. In this paper, we use a direct measure of effort to measure ex-post inequality of opportunity across regions in France. To this end, we define a fair income that fulfills ex-post equality of opportunity requirements. Unfairness is measured by an unfair Gini based on the distance between the actual income and the fair income. Our findings reveal that regions display differences in the magnitude of ex- post inequality of opportunity and this is due to differences in reward schemes and differences in the impact of the non responsibility factors of income. As a consequence, this papers motivates decentralized policies to solve the problem of unequal opportunities in France. Finally, the positive correlation between income inequality and inequality of opportunity confirms previous results given in the literature.


To meet the environmental challenges of a warming planet and an increasingly complex, high tech economy, government must become smarter about how it makes policies and deploys its limited resources. It specifically needs to build a robust capacity to analyze large volumes of environmental and economic data by using machine-learning algorithms to improve regulatory oversight, monitoring, and decision-making. Three challenges can be expected to drive the need for algorithmic environmental governance: more problems, less funding, and growing public demands. This paper explains why algorithmic governance will prove pivotal in meeting these challenges, but it also presents four likely obstacles that environmental agencies will need to surmount if they are to take full advantage of big data and predictive analytics. First, agencies must invest in upgrading their information technology infrastructure to take advantage of computational advances. Relatively modest technology investments, if made wisely, could support the use of algorithmic tools that could yield substantial savings in other administrative costs. Second, agencies will need to confront emerging concerns about privacy, fairness, and transparency associated with its reliance on Big Data and algorithmic analyses. Third, government agencies will need to strengthen their human capital so that they have the personnel who understand how to use machine learning responsibly. Finally, to work well, algorithms will need clearly defined objectives. Environmental officials will need to continue to engage with elected officials, members of the public, environmental groups, and industry representatives to forge clarity and consistency over how various risk and regulatory objectives should be specified in machine learning tools. Overall, with thoughtful planning, adequate resources, and responsible management, governments should be able to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of the use of artificial intelligence to improve environmental sustainability. If policy makers and the public will recognize the need for smarter governance, they can then start to tackle obstacles that stand in its way and better position society for a more sustainable future.


This paper proposes a novel grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion approach where first the probabilistic relation between graphemes and phonemes is captured from acoustic data using Kullback-Leibler divergence based hidden Markov model (KL-HMM) system. Then, through a simple decoding framework the information in this probabilistic relation is integrated with the sequence information in the orthographic transcription of the word to infer the phoneme sequence. One of the main application of the proposed G2P approach is in the area of low linguistic resource based automatic speech recognition or text-to-speech systems. We demonstrate this potential through a simulation study where linguistic resources from one domain is used to create linguistic resources for a different domain.


AIMS
To explore the relationship between nurses' understanding of dignity and how it is enhanced and developed in their practice environment.

BACKGROUND
Dignity is a ubiquitous concept in an era of healthcare reform yet is referred to almost exclusively in terms of the quality of care delivered to support the experience of the patient rather than the caregivers engaged in the relationships of care. This article focuses on dignity in the professional life of nurses in aged care.

METHOD
This is part of a doctoral study of the implementation of a palliative approach in residential aged care using emancipatory practice development methodology. Constructions of dignity were co-created with participants through creative reflective activities and subsequently analysed using reflexive methods and data from other sources within the study.

RESULTS
Constructions of dignity and subsequent actions taken by nurses on their own behalf to articulate their experiences of transforming practice are interconnected with dignity enhancing relationships and emancipatory ways of working in practice development.

CONCLUSIONS
Dignity enhancing ways of working in an active learning group and workplace have been interlinked with actions that promote person-centredness in developing a palliative approach to care.


Environmental quality is a public good, potentially impacted by everybody. Individual level pro-environmental behavior affects environmental quality in the aggregate. Therefore, it is important to understand what causes individual's pro-environmental behaviors to change. We quantify the causal effect of one determinant, unemployment, using an EU-27 population representative Eurobarometer survey. Drawing on results from the theory of the private provision of public goods, and recognizing that unemployment decreases income and the opportunity cost of time, we formulate testable predictions that unemployment will decrease the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that require monetary contributions and increase the extent of pro-environmental behaviors that mainly require time/effort. Instrumental variables regressions provide empirical evidence to support these hypotheses. Changes in the unemployment rate within a sub-national region provide the exogenous variation needed to identify the causal effect. Several supplemental questions on the survey provide evidence that environmental issues lose saliency and economic issues gain saliency when one becomes unemployed, suggesting that interested parties may wish to emphasize cost savings of pro-environmental behavior rather than environmental benefits during times of increased unemployment.


This article describes the preparation and characterization of anticancer drug-loaded poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microparticles. PLGA microparticles loaded with doxorubicin HCl (DOX) were prepared via o/w emulsion solvent evaporation. The release characteristics, encapsulation efficiency, size, and morphology of the PLGA microparticles were also determined. A cytotoxicity test was performed by using Glioma RG2 cancer cells to investigate the cytotoxicity of DOX-loaded PLGA microparticles. The DOX-loaded PLGA microparticles had an average diameter of 500 \pm 9 nm. The DOX encapsulation efficiency and drug loading were 22.75% and 0.78%, respectively. DOX-loaded PLGA microparticles displayed a significant cytotoxicity toward the RG2 cells as compared to the unloaded PLGA


The improper aggregation of commodities can have important consequences when estimating a system of group demand equations. Generally, aggregates are created under the assumptions that intra-group preferences are homothetic and the consumer's utility function is weakly separable over some partition. These assumptions place severe restrictions on the model that can significantly impact parameter and elasticity estimates. An alternative to imposing weak separability is to employ the Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem, which requires the relative intra-group commodity prices to be independent of the group price index. This study compares the results of estimating a demand system for composite beef, pork, and poultry products under the assumptions of weak separability and the Generalized Composite Commodity Theorem. Another important issue related to aggregation is the specification of an appropriate group price index. Price indices consistent with linear homogeneous preferences (a subset of the homothetic class of preferences) and non-homothetic intra-group preferences are identified and it is shown that several of the commonly employed indices are biased in the absence of complete price data.


Abstract We study adjacency of equisingularity types of planar complex curve singularities in terms of their Enriques diagrams. The goal is, given two equisingularity types, to determine whether one of themis adjacent to the other. For linear adjacency a complete answer is obtained, whereas for arbitrary (analytic) adjacency a necessary condition and a sufficient condition are proved. We also obtain new examples of exceptional deformations, i.e, singular curves of type ${\mathcal{D}}'$ that can be deformed to a curve of type $\mathcal{D}$ without ${\mathcal{D}}'$ being adjacent to $\mathcal{D}$ .


Abstract Background Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) is a malignancy of mature T lymphocytes induced by human T-cell leukemia virus-1, and has a poor outcome. New molecular targets for the prevention and treatment of ATL are urgently needed. We previously reported that Sirtuin 1, a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+)-dependent histone/protein deacetylase, is highly expressed in primary acute-type ATL cells. NAD+ biosynthesis via nicotinamide phosphoribosyltransferase (NAMPT) modulates Sirtuin 1 activity. Here, we examined the expression and effects of inhibiting NAMPT, a rate-limiting. Methods Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from ATL patients were carried out in accordance with the guidelines of the Committees for Ethical Review of Research involving Human Subjects at Kagoshima University Hospital. Cell viability was evaluated in the S1T cell line derived from an ATL patient, MT-2 cell line derived from normal human leukocytes transformed by leukemic T-cells from an ATL patient, and primary ATL cells. Animal experiments were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee of Rakuno Gakuen University in accordance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Results Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from acute-type ATL patients expressed significantly higher NAMPT protein levels than cells from healthy controls. FK866, a NAMPT inhibitor, induced apoptosis in fresh ATL cells ex vivo and HTLV-1-infected T-cell lines in vitro, which was accompanied by NAD+ depletion, activation of caspases, DNA fragmentation, and disruption of mitochondrial transmembrane potential. A pan-caspase inhibitor failed to prevent the FK866-induced cell death, while FK866 increased endonuclease G, a caspase-independent cell death mediator. Intriguingly, FK866 activated autophagy, revealed by increased LC3-II protein levels and autophagic flux. Thus, FK866 simultaneously activated apoptosis and autophagy. Finally, FK866 treatment markedly decreased human ATL tumor xenograft growth in immunodeficient mice. Conclusions These results demonstrate that NAMPT inhibition induces autophagy and caspase-dependent and -independent cell death in ATL cells, suggesting a novel therapeutic strategy for patients with this fatal disease. Legal entity responsible for the study The authors. Funding Has not received any funding. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


This study is undertaken to understand the performance of managers in Life Assurance companies in Nairobi, Kenya. The study focused on the effect of manager's self-management on performance of life assurance companies. The study adopted a survey research design where the researcher utilised both primary data and secondary data. The sample was chosen through convenience sampling where data was collected from managers who were picked on their willingness and availability. The realised sample was 5 sales managers from 18 life assurance companies giving a total of 90 managers. The Study concludes that managing emotions through self-management is a critical element to manager's performance. The study is of use to stakeholders, public sector partners' government and anyone with an interest in the current and future skills of labour market issues facing the insurance industry.


Research conducted The phytohormone ethylene impacts secondary stem growth in plants by stimulating cambial activity, xylem development and fiber over vessel formation. Here we report the effect of ethylene on secondary cell wall formation and the molecular connection between ethylene signaling and wood formation. Methods We applied exogenous ethylene or its precursor 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) to wild type and ethylene insensitive hybrid aspen trees (Populus tremula x tremuloides) and studied secondary cell wall anatomy, chemistry and ultrastructure. We furthermore analyzed the transcriptome (RNA Seq) after ACC application to wild type and ethylene insensitive trees. Key results We demonstrate that ACC and ethylene induce gelatinous-layers (G-layers) and alter the fiber cell wall cellulose microfibril angle. G-layers are tertiary wall layers rich in cellulose, typically found in tension wood of aspen trees. A vast majority of transcripts affected by ACC are downstream of ethylene perception and include a large number of transcription factors (TFs). Motif-analyses reveal potential connections between ethylene TFs (ERFs, EIN3/EIL1) and wood formation. Conclusion G-layer formation upon ethylene application suggests that the increase in ethylene biosynthesis observed during tension wood formation is important for its formation. Ethylene-regulated TFs of the ERF and EIN3/EIL1 type could transmit the ethylene signal.


Escher is a declarative, general-purpose programming language which integrates the best features of both functional and logic programming languages. It has types and modules, higher-order and meta-programming facilities, and declarative input/output. Escher also has a collection of system modules, providing numerous operations on standard data types such as integers, lists, characters, strings, sets, and programs. The main design aim is to combine in a practical and comprehensive way the best ideas of existing functional and logic languages, such as Godel, Haskell, and $\lambda$Prolog. Indeed, Escher goes well beyond Godel in its ability to allow function definitions, its higher-order facilities, its improved handling of sets, and its declarative input/output. Escher also goes well beyond Haskell in its ability to run partly-instantiated predicate calls, a familiar feature of logic programming languages which provides a form of non-determinism, and its more flexible handling of equality. The language also has a clean semantics, its underlying logic being (an extension of) Church''s simple theory of types. This report is divided into two parts. The first part provides a tutorial introduction to Escher. In this part there are many example programs to illustrate the various language features. In particular, these example programs are meant to emphasize the significant practical advantages that come from integrating the best features of existing functional and logic languages. The second part contains a formal definition of the Escher language, including its syntax, semantics, and a description of its system modules. To make the report self-contained, an appendix summarizes the key aspects of the simple theory of types.


This study examined the characteristics of linkages between the Agricultural Development Programmes (ADPs) and Universities in South Eastern Nigeria. The study revealed that a web of relationships or linkages existed between the university and ADP staff, most of whom were males, well-qualified and experienced in research and extension activities. Funds for research were available to staff of both systems but mainly from personal and institutional sources. There was evidence of sufficient awareness of the major types of linkages used in sharing research knowledge. Also staff of both systems freely utilized and shared a number of linkage arrangements for their mutual research benefits. There is urgent need to beef up budgetary provisions for linkage activities to ensure increased collaboration and coordination of research efforts towards increased food production in the country. Agro-Science Vol. 4 (1) 2005: pp. 5-9


The researcher investigated the extent to which oral and written assessments or examinations are being run at Botho University. The investigation extracted the views of the students and also the lecturers on how the two modes of assessments are being implemented at the university. The researcher has tried to find out if either modes is the correct method to use considering that most students seem to be having problems with English as a secondary language, especially with written examination. The study investigates the advantages and disadvantages of either form of assessments and also tried to see how the advantages and disadvantages can be mitigated to come up with the best approach to assessments. The analysis may also impact on the way teaching can be delivered to obtain the best out of the students at Botho University. The study has highlighted work done by other international researchers in this topic and tried to compare with their findings. The results on oral versus written shows a 50% split on whether the two types of assessments are appropriate or not. About 65% of the teachers indicate that poor command of English affects either type of exams negatively, therefore the best approach would be to incorporate both types of assessments for the benefit of the different types of students.


In management practice, performance indicators are considered as a prerequisite to make informed decisions in line with the organization's goals. On the other hand, indicators summarizes compound phenomena in a few digits, which can induce to inadequate decisions, biased by information loss and conflicting values. Model driven approaches in enterprise engineering can be very effective to avoid these pitfalls, or to take it under control. For that reason, "performance modeling" has the numbers to play a primary role in the "model driven enterprise" scenario, together with process, information and other enterprise-related aspects. In this perspective, we propose a systematic review of the literature on performance modeling in order to retrieve, classify, and summarize existing research, identify the core authors and define areas and opportunities for future research.


Acquired inhibitors of coagulation causing bleeding manifestations are rare in children. They emerge, normally in the context of autoimmune diseases or drug ingestion, but transient and self-limiting cases can occur after viral infection. We describe, an otherwise healthy, 7-year-old girl who had gingival bleeding after a tooth extraction. The prothrombin time (PT) and the activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) were both prolonged with evidence of an immediate acting inhibitor (lupic anticoagulant). Further coagulation studies demonstrated prothrombin (FII) deficiency and prothrombin directed (FII) antibodies. The serological tests to detect an underlying autoimmune disease were all negative. The coagulation studies normalised alongside the disappearance of the antibody. This article presents lupus anticoagulant hypoprothrombinaemia syndrome (LAHS) as a rare case of acquired bleeding diathesis in childhood.


Understanding the controls on the size and shape of sandstone bodies deposited by fluvial systems is important in the reconstruction of ancient fluvial deposits and construction of quantitative reservoir models. Measurements and analyses of sandbodies from remotely sensed imagery have allowed quantification of width and length ratios of barforms in modern fluvial systems. For bank-attached bars the width:length ratios range between 0.12 and 0.47 (arithmetic mean: 0.25), for lateral bars between 0.19 and 0.42 (arithmetic mean: 0.30), for mid-channel bars between 0.09 and 0.49 (arithmetic mean: 0.28), and for point bars between 0.14 and 0.50 (arithmetic mean: 0.30). The majority of width:length ratios for all bar types range between 0.15 and 0.35. Examination of other parameters such as basin type, planform geometry, apparent stream width, river length, gradient over the investigated area, aggradational or degradational system, tectonic setting and climate do not significantly affect the width:length ratio. Therefore, the bar planform shape, the width:length ratio, can be considered to be scale invariant. The recognition that bar planform shape in fluvial systems is scale invariant will be useful in the construction of subsurface three-dimensional models of fluvial deposits with variable dimensions. Supplementary material: Data tables with information obtained for all of the rivers studied are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18745.


Study has shown that about half of the traffic signalized intersections in the United States need to be reoptimized. Even though many traffic signal control systems have been upgraded from pretimed controllers to actuated and adaptive controllers, traffic signal optimization software has not kept up with such advances. For example, existing commercial traffic signal timing optimization programs such as SYNCHRO and TRANSYT-7F do not optimize advanced controller settings (e.g., minimum green time, extension time, detector settings) available in modern traffic controllers. This deficiency is due partly to existing programs, which are based on macroscopic simulation tools that do not explicitly consider individual vehicular movements. To overcome such a shortcoming, a stochastic optimization method (SOM) was proposed and successfully applied to a few case studies. This study presents some enhancements made in the SOM and case study results from an arterial network consisting of 16 signalized intersections. The proposed method employs a distributed computing environment for faster computation time and uses a shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) for better optimization. The case study results showed that the proposed enhanced SOM method, called SFLASOM, improved total network travel times over field settings by 3.5% for midday times and 2.1% for p.m.-peak times. In addition, corridor travel times for both p.m.-peak and midday times were significantly improved.


We are refining a system for studying Collaborative Wellness (CW) developed by us for use in evaluating knowledge creation and information systems. CW is founded on reaching agreement between stakeholders on ways to address issues arising in complex environments and create the necessary knowledge to address these issues. Such a model is needed in the increasingly complex and dynamic environment now found in business and society. Creating, managing and disseminating knowledge is crucial to enabling organisations to adapt to change in their dynamic environments. Despite this, we found gaps in organisational knowledge creation theory for supporting fine grained studies of knowledge creation. The Collaborative Wellness System (CWS) is intended to address this situation. CWS treats collaborations of knowledge creators as social information systems. CWS has an adaptable framework of measures that may be deployed to suit the circumstances of a collaboration. The measures of CW record assessments of the usefulness of created knowledge relative to agreed stakeholder expectations. The system allows collaborative experiences to be shared and compared. CWS informs the development, application, tracking and refinement of improvements to existing information systems. The CWS presented in this paper has been validated in four case studies involving business and government agencies.


OBJECTIVE
The ideal small-caliber arterial graft remains elusive despite several decades of intense research. A novel approach to the development of small-caliber arterial prostheses with a biomimetic system for in vitro vessel culture has recently been described. In this study we examined the effects of culture time and tissue culture scaffolding on engineered vessel morphology and function and found that these parameters greatly influence the function of engineered vessels.

METHODS
This report describes the effects of culture time and scaffold type on vessel morphology, cellular differentiation, and vessel mechanical characteristics. Engineered vessels were cultured from bovine aortic smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and endothelial cells that were seeded onto biodegradable polymer scaffolds and cultured under physiologically pulsatile conditions. Engineered vessels were subjected to histologic, ultrastructural, immunocytochemical, and mechanical analyses.

RESULTS
Vessel morphology and mechanical characteristics improved as time in culture increased to 8 weeks. SMCs in the engineered vessel wall were organized into a highly lamellar structure, with cells separated by alternating layers of collagen fibrils. Polymer scaffold remnants were present in vessels cultured for 8 weeks, and SMCs that were in proximity to polymer remnants exhibited a dedifferentiated phenotype.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings aid in the systematic understanding of the effects of in vitro parameters on engineered vessels and will be useful for the translation of vessel culture techniques to human cells for the development of autologous human vascular grafts.


In the present work, three different techniques to separate ice-nucleating particles (INP) as well as ice particle residuals (IPR) from non-ice-active particles are compared. The Ice Selective Inlet (ISI) and the Ice Counterflow Virtual Impactor (Ice-CVI) sample ice particles from mixed-phase clouds and allow after evaporation in the instrument for the analysis of the residuals. The Fast Ice Nucleus Chamber (FINCH) coupled with the Ice Nuclei Pumped Counterflow Virtual Impactor (IN-PCVI) provides ice-activating conditions to aerosol particles and extracts the activated particles for analysis. The instruments were run during a joint field campaign which took place in January and February 2013 at the High Alpine Research Station Jungfraujoch (Switzerland). INP and IPR were analyzed offline by scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis to determine their size, chemical composition and mixing state. On-line analysis of the size and chemical composition of INP activated in FINCH was performed by laser ablation mass spectrometry. With all three INP/IPRseparation techniques high abundances (median 20–70 %) of instrumental contamination artifacts were observed (ISI: Si-O spheres, probably calibration aerosol; Ice-CVI: Al-O particles; FINCH + INPCVI: steel particles). After removal of the instrumental contamination particles, silicates, Ca-rich particles, carbonaceous material and metal oxides were the major INP/IPR particle types obtained by all three techniques. In addition, considerable amounts (median abundance mostly a few %) of soluble material (e.g., sea salt, sulfates) occurred. As these soluble particles are often not expected to act as INP/IPR, we consider them as potential measurement artifacts. Minor types of INP/IPR include soot and Pb-bearing particles. The Pb-bearing particles are mainly present as an internal mixture with other particle types. Most samples showed a maximum of the INP/IPR size distribution at 200 nm to 400 nm geometric diameter. In a few cases, a second super-micron maximum was identified. Soot/carbonaceous material and metal oxides were present mainly in the sub-micrometer range. Silicates and Ca-rich particles were mainly found with diameters above 1 μm (using ISI and FINCH), in contrast to the Ice-CVI which also sampled many submicron particles of both groups. Due to changing meteorological conditions, the INP/IPR composition was highly variable if different samples are compared. Thus, the observed discrepancies between the different separation techniques may partly result from the non-parallel sampling. The differences of the particle group relative number abundance as well as the mixing state of INP/IPR clearly demonstrate the need of further studies to better understand the influence of the separation techniques on the INP/IPR chemical composition. Also, it must be concluded that the abundance of contamination artifacts in the separated INP and IPR is generally large and should be corrected for, emphasizing the need for the accompanying chemical measurements. Thus, further work is needed to allow for routine operation of the three separation techniques investigated. Single-particle characterization of ice-nucleating particles and ice particle residuals sampled by three different techniques Annette Worringen (1,7) , Konrad Kandler (1) , Nathalie Benker (1) , Thomas Dirsch (1) , Stephan Mertes (2) , Ludwig Schenk (2) , Udo Kästner (2) , Fabian Frank (3) , Björn Nillius (3,*) , Ulrich Bundke (3,**) , Diana Rose (3) , Joachim Curtius (3) , Piotr Kupiszewski (4) , Ernest Weingartner (4,***) , Paul Vochezer (5) , Johannes Schneider (6) , Susan Schmidt (6) , Stephan Weinbruch (1) , Martin Ebert (1) (1) Institut für Angewandte Geowissenschaften, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstr. 9, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany (2) Leibniz-Institut für Troposphärenforschung, Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany (3) Institut für Atmosphäre und Umwelt, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Altenhöferallee 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany (4) Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland (5) Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, P.O. Box 3640, 76021 Karlsruhe Germany (6) Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie, Hahn-Meitner-Weg 1, 55128 Mainz, Germany (7) Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany (*) now at: Max-Planck-Institute für Chemie, Hahn-Meitner-Weg 1, 55128 Mainz, Germany (**) now at: Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, 52425 Juelich (***) now at: University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, School of Engineering, Institute of Aerosol and Sensor Technology, Klosterzelgstrasse 2, 5210 Windisch, Switzerland Correspondence to: Stephan Weinbruch (email@example.com)


The complex challenges of today's organizations are calling for a new kind of heroic leader. The unquestioned assumption that vision is a pre-requisite for successful change, and that leaders need to be visionaries who can show us the way, presumes the future is predictable, organizations are controllable, and that plans can be implemented. We argue these assumptions are responsible for the abysmal failure rate of organization change programs. In this paper we will describe how our ongoing study of newer change practices (Bushe & Marshak, 2009, 2014, 2015) leads us to argue that successful leadership in situations of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), which describe most transformational change scenarios, will require very different assumptions about organizing and leading from the prevailing " Performance Mindset " that emphasizes instrumental and measurable goal setting and achievement. Rather than identifying what the change will be, leaders need to identify and lead processes for engaging the necessary stakeholders in emergent change processes. To do that successfully requires a Generative Leader Mindset that acknowledges and works with the social construction of organizations. We identify seven assumptions we think underlie successful leadership practice in a VUCA world. The continuing emphasis on being a solitary, strategic thinker who can envision viable futures and the path to thos e futures does little to prepare today's leaders for the complex, ever-changing challenges they face. Instead, leaders need to be able to hold the space of complexity and uncertainty in ways that encourage and enable emergent and generative transformational change.


Perceived discrimination has consistently been shown to be associated with diminished mental health, but the psychological processes underlying this link are less well understood. The present series of four studies assessed the role of a history traumatic events in generating a proliferation of discrimination stressors and threat appraisals, which in turn predict psychological distress (depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms) (mediation model), or whether prior traumatic events sensitize group members, such that when they encounter discrimination, the link to stress-related symptoms is heightened (moderation model). Each of the studies assessed a different marginalized group in Canada, including Indigenous peoples, Blacks, Jews, and a diverse sample of women. Participants completed measures assessing history of traumatic events, perceived explicit and ambiguous discrimination, discrimination threat appraisals, and symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress. The four populations varied in their experiences, with Indigenous peoples encountering the highest levels of trauma, discrimination, and psychological distress symptoms. A mediated model was evident among Indigenous peoples and women, possibly reflecting the role of systemic processes that engender discrimination when traumatic events are experienced. There was evidence for a moderating role of a history of traumatic events on the relations between discrimination and depressive symptoms among Jewish and Black participants. Although the hypothesized synergistic effects of traumatic experiences were noted when assessing the relation between perceived discrimination and depressive symptoms among Jews, the presence of trauma blunted these relations among Blacks. The results suggest that trauma-informed approaches to addressing stress-related processes and psychological outcomes need to consider the unique social context of members of various socially marginalized groups.


Background and Purpose Tirilazad mesylate, a 21-amino-steroid, is a potent membrane lipid peroxidation inhibitor and free radical scavenger that has shown promise in animal models of focal cerebral ischemia. Safety in patients with acute ischemic stroke has not yet been established. Methods The study comprised a randomized (three drugs to one vehicle), vehicle-controlled, double-blind, sequential dose-escalation trial at five centers. Treatment was begun within 12 hours of stroke onset and was continued intravenously for 3 days. Results One hundred eleven patients (mean$$SD age, 66$$13 years; 56% male) were enrolled in three successive dosage tiers: 36 at 0.6 mg/kg per day, 35 at 2.0 mg/kg per day, and 40 at 6.0 mg/kg per day. Median time from stroke onset to treatment was 8.5 (range, 3 to 12) hours and was not significantly different among the groups. Tirilazad was well tolerated at all three doses, except for mild-to-moderate injection site irritation that occurred in both the tirilazad- and vehicle-treated groups. No significant differences in measures of either cardiac or hepatic toxicity were observed in this small sample. Imbalances in baseline medical and neurological condition made comparisons of outcome difficult. Although no evidence suggestive of tirilazad efficacy was apparent in this study, the trial was not designed to test for differences in outcome. Conclusions These observations suggest that intravenous tirilazad at doses of up to 6.0 mg/kg per day for 3 days is well tolerated in this population of predominantly elderly stroke patients. Larger studies with earlier treatment will be needed to demonstrate efficacy. (Stroke. 1994;25:418-423.)


Most of the unemployed in Indonesia are young and inexperienced, still live with their parents, and have at least 12 years of education. Starting with the premise that efforts to reduce unemployment should take into account the characteristics of the unemployed, we develop a model to look at the impact of different sectors and locations of economic growth on urban, rural, and national employment using a provincial level panel dataset. We find that increasing employment in rural and urban areas indeed requires different strategies. Services growth has the highest elasticity of employment in urban areas, while agriculture growth is still the best avenue to increase rural employment.


The novel, Great Expectation (1861) revolves around the universal theme of love and conflict, which influences the protagonist, Pip. Many critics have commented on the plot and background of the novel. The main aim of this study is to reveal various instances projecting kindness and sympathy in between the social conflict and social tension at the background of the novel "Great Expectation. The study will focus on the concept of kindness towards others which has been incorporated throughout the story of the novel between the narrator and the characters. Charles Dickens (1812- 1870) has shed light upon the theme of social mobility, manners, social injustice and prospect towards tangible reality. This study answers the question whether Dickens could be able to reflect the concept of kindness in the novel or not? Moreover, it will search whether the concept of kindness has been explored well in the story of the novel that it contains probable educational contents of kindness for research. To prove that, the article will explore various aspects of kindness, which has been observed during the course of the novel. The study would be based on qualitative research method from secondary resources. The aspect of kindness would be analyzed and highlighted through multiple scenes from the novel. The study would be concluded on the point where Dickens stresses on the dialect for up gradation of social status in Pip in order to establish himself as a desired partner of Estella despite having a social difference of class during the Victorian period.


The problem of generating random samples from large, complex sets is widespread across the sciences, where such samples provide one way to begin to learn about the sets' typical properties. However, when the samples generated are unexpectedly correlated or drawn from the wrong distribution, this can produce misleading conclusions. One way to generate random samples is with Markov chains, which are widely used but often applied without careful analysis of their mixing time, how long they must run for until they are guaranteed to produce good samples. We present new mixing time bounds for two sampling problems from discrete geometry: dyadic tilings, combinatorial structures with applications in machine learning and harmonic analysis, and 3-colorings on a grid, an instance of the celebrated antiferromagnetic Potts model from statistical physics. Both of these results required the development of new techniques.

In addition, we use Markov chains in a novel way to address research questions in programmable matter. Here, a main goal is to understand how simple computational elements can collectively accomplish complicated system-level goals. In an abstracted setting, we show that groups of particles executing our simple processes, based on Markov chains, can accomplish various tasks. This includes compression, a behavior exhibited by natural distributed systems such as fire ants and honey bees, and shortcut bridging, where the particles build bridges that optimize the same global trade-off as certain bridge-building ant colonies.

Throughout, a key ingredient is the interplay between global properties of Markov chains, including but not limited to mixing time, and their dependence on local moves, or Markov chain transitions that change only a small part of the configuration. We call the global behavior that arises out of these local moves and their probabilities emergent behavior. In addition to understanding the relationship between local moves and mixing times in order to give sampling guarantees, our work on programmable matter harnesses this interaction between local and emergent behavior in a novel way, to develop distributed algorithms.


This paper addresses the issue of hedging option positions when the underlying asset exhibits stochastic volatility. By parameterizing the volatility process as GARCH, and utilizing risk- neutral valuation, we estimate hedging parameters (delta and gamma) using Monte-Carlo simulation. We estimate hedging parameters for options on the Standard and Poor's 500 index, a bond futures index, a weighted foreign exchange rate index, and an oil futures index. We find that Black-Scholes and GARCH deltas are similar for all the options considered, while GARCH gammas are significantly higher than BS gammas for all options. For near the money options, GARCH gamma hedge ratios are higher than BS hedge ratios when hedging a long term option with a short term option. Away from the money, GARCH gamma hedge ratios are lower than BS.


RF/microwave tunable filters are widely employed in radar systems, measurement instruments, and communication systems. By using tunable filters, the frequency bandwidth is utilized effectively and the system cost and complexity is reduced. In the literature, various tuning techniques have been developed to construct tunable filters. Mechanical tuning, magnetic tuning, and electrical tuning are the most common. In terms of quality factor, power handling capability, and linearity, mechanical tuning is superior to the other two tuning techniques. Unfortunately, due to their bulky size, heavy weight, and low tuning speed, mechanically tunable filters have limited applications. MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology has the potential to produce highly miniaturized tunable filters; however, most of the MEMS tunable filters reported so far have a relatively low quality factor. The objective of the research described in this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of using MEMS technology to develop tunable filters with a high quality factor. The integration of MEMS tuning elements with a wide range of filter configurations is explored, from micromachined filters to traditional dielectric resonator filters, from planar filters to cavity filters. Both hybrid integration and monolithic integration approaches are carried out. To achieve tunability, MEMS tuning elements are embedded within RF and microwave filters. Tuning is accomplished by disturbing the electromagnetic fields of resonators with nearby MEMS tuning elements, which in turn change the resonant frequency of the resonators. First, the proposed tuning concept is experimentally demonstrated by integrating a surface micromachined planar filter with MEMS thermal actuators as the tuning elements. Then, a novel micromachined ridge waveguide filter embedded with similar MEMS tuning elements is proposed and constructed by using the EFABTM micromachining technique. A power handling analysis is performed for the newly devised 3D micromachined filter, and potential failure mechanisms such as air breakdown are identified. For the first time, a tunable dielectric resonator bandpass filter, incorporating vertical longthrow MEMS thermal actuators as tuning elements, is developed to achieve a wide tuning range, high quality factor, and large power handling capability. Several prototype tunable filter units are fabricated and tested. The experimental results reveal that the tunable filters maintain a relatively high quality factor value over a wide tuning range. iii In addition to the hybrid integration approach, a monolithic integration approach is investigated. A novel surface micromachining process is developed to allow monolithic integration of MEMS tuning elements into micromachined filters. Due to a stress mismatch, MEMS actuators fabricated by this process obtain a vertical deflection of several hundred microns, resulting in a wide tuning range. Various latching mechanisms are created, based on the micromachining processes that are used to fabricate the MEMS tuning elements. These out-of-plane latching mechanisms with multi-stable states have the potential to be adopted not only for tunable filter applications but also for switches and phase shifters.


Governor William Weld of Massachusetts catapulted to national attention when he took office in early 1991. Here was a Republican fiscal conservative taking charge of the most liberal state in the nation, replacing Michael Dukakis no less, and in sharp contrast to most other American governors, he was cleaning up the fiscal mess left by his predecessor through spending reductions rather than tax increases. Once touted as the "Great Libertarian Hope" because of his combination of fiscal conservatism and pro-choice, pro-gay-rights social liberalism, Mr. Weld has lost some of his luster among limited-government enthusiasts since he embraced a draconian recycling measure at odds with his libertarian principles, pushed for a state venture-capital fund that looks like a Massachusetts version of national industrial policy, and called for a number of new spending initiatives in his fiscal year 1994 budget. Even so, Governor Weld remains on everyone's list as a major contender for national Republican leadership in coming years, particularly if he is re-elected as governor in 1994 -- he has said he will not challenge Teddy Kennedy for the Senate that year. Re-election is not a shoo-in, because Bay State unemployment remains high, and because it is unlikely that the Massachusetts Democratic Party will be as divided in 1994 as it was in 1990 when many social liberals voted for Mr. Weld in protest against the Democratic candidate, Boston University president John Silber. But should the state economy pick up -- and economic growth is his top priority for the next two years -- the governor will be hard to beat in 1994. One potential opponent, Representative Joe Kennedy, already has bowed out of the race. To be considered seriously as a GOP presidential or vice- presidential candidate, Mr. Weld at some point will have to find an issue where he can win the enthusiastic support of social conservatives. Conservative evangelicals and Catholics are now distrustful of the Massachusetts governor because of his strongly articulated pro-choice and pro-gay-rights positions. He will have to attract them on something else if he aspires to lead his party nationally. In late January 1993, I talked with Governor Weld about his record in Massachusetts, the principles he has used to restore fiscal balance to state finances, his views of the future of the Republican Party, and his own priorities for coming years. - A.M. Policy Review: Inheriting a state fiscal crisis from Michael Dukakis, you became a national hero among taxpayer groups by balancing the 1991 and 1992 Massachusetts budgets through spending reduction, not tax increases. You even cut the personal income-tax rate from 6.25 percent to 5.95 percent. What principles guided your decisions about where to cut state spending? Weld: We had to cut spending almost everywhere, because when we came in we were one notch above junk-bond status in our bond rating. If we'd fallen one more notch, that would have been the governmental equivalent of bankruptcy. Every fiduciary would have had to sell all the Massachusetts paper it was holding because we would have been below investment grade. So the overwhelming need was to show the markets that we were serious about living within our means, which we had not been for the previous several years. The top priority was to get a grip on the accounts that were spinning most wildly out of control. One was welfare, where we reduced the caseload from 38,000 to 22,000 by purging able-bodied adults without children from the General Relief rolls and targeting aid to the elderly, the frail, and the handicapped -- people who, by anybody's estimation, need the help. Previously, if you were over 45, slightly obese, and without a stable work history, you would have qualified for full-time taxpayer support; that means I would have qualified for welfare under the old system. …


Digital watermarking is the technique which embeds an invisible signal including owner identification and copy control information into multimedia data such as audio, video, images, for copyright protection. This paper proposes a new watermarking technique which is appropriate for the MPEG-2 video coding system by extending the direct sequence spread spectrum. The proposed watermarking scheme in this paper minimizes the perceptual degradation of video quality, caused by the embedded watermark through controlling the strength and area of embedding with respect to the global and local characteristics of the video sequences. And this technique can also directly extract the embedded watermark from the watermarked MPEG-2 compressed video stream without using original video sequences. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is robust to various attacks to remove the embedded watermark and is feasible for real time system implementation.


This paper reflects on some significant trends and achievements in Information Systems (IS) theorizing in Australia. Important themes identified as typifying Australian eclecticism are (i) the influence of socio-technical thinking; (ii) design and action approaches; (iii) critical theory research; (iv) emphasis on theory and theoretical foundations; and (v) some unusual approaches to theory. These themes are seen as emerging from Australia's background as an isolated, distant country with a low population density, and its identification as a masculine, peaceful, democratic, and equalitarian society that is also multi-cultural and technologically advanced. The Australian IS community is seen to have some commonality with Scandinavia in that both are to some extent "outsiders" in comparison with more prominent and powerful research communities in Europe and North America. Value is seen in researchers in both Scandinavia and Australia being able to "think differently", taking lessons from a number of traditions and being willing to find a new path and pioneer


This study examines the public support determinants for the release of terrorists in exchange for a single captive soldier. A sample of 751 Israelis were presented a questionnaire, in which the exchange price was manipulated into two versions: one in which no specific prices were mentioned, and another which presented a context-specific prisoner exchange. The results show that respondents who answered the non-specific version displayed greater support than those presented with specific details. Additionally, we found that soldiers tended to support the exchange more than civilians, and women showed greater support as compared to men. Our findings provide considerable support for the effect of framing and provide further evidence that decision-makers as well as media experts can guide public opinion.


Crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) remains the material of choice for modern high voltage extruded cables possessing good thermal stability and excellent electrical properties. However, increasing pressure to limit the environmental effects of human activity and to promote recycling has forced researchers to look to new materials to replace XLPE in the medium to long term. Recently, a number of propylene based systems have been developed through copolymerization with novel catalyst systems which may offer novel alternatives to polyethylene. Such systems offer higher operating temperatures together with potentially desirable thermal, electrical and mechanical properties. In this paper we report on a range of propylene based materials and assess their suitability for cable applications through the use of thermal, mechanical and electrical testing. We supplement these tests with morphological investigations.


Markerless human motion capture has received much attention in computer vision and computer graphics communities. A hierarchical skeleton template is frequently used to model the human body in literature, because it simplifies markerless human motion capture as a problem of estimating the human body shape and joint angle parameters. The proposed work establishes a skeleton based markerless human motion capture framework, comprising of (1) an improved deformation skin model suitable for markerless motion capture while it is compliant with the computer animation standard, (2) image segmentation by using Gaussian mixture static background subtraction and (3) nonlinear dynamic temporal tracking with annealed particle filter. This framework is able to efficiently represent markerless human motion capture as an optimisation problem in the temporal domain and solve it by the classic optimisation scheme. Several experiments are used to illustrate its robustness and accuracy comparing with the existing approach.


Eritrean adolescent girls' migration to Khartoum exposes the interplay between aspiration and desire of becoming an adult linked to a specific geographical location, dreams of being else-where, impossibilities of returning, and realities of uncertainties and being-stuck inbetween. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Eritrean adolescent refugee girls and young women in Khartoum (2014–2016), who see Sudan as a transit place to an imagined 'better place' elsewhere. Aspirations and desires of moving elsewhere shape the experiences of and the different transitions associated with one's life course. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is of critical importance, where aspirations of being elsewhere and the impossibilities of achieving this goal shape the experiences of 'becoming an adult'. These transitions are also gendered, both in space and across spaces. Using insights from feminist narrative research, I examine how Eritrean refugee girls and young women narrate and experience migration, waiting and transitions in a transitory context of Khartoum. Through hope for mobility and the experience of waiting while faced with protracted uncertainty, I analyse how waithood, personhood and transition to adulthood are experienced.


An analytical model is developed to predict the residual flexural capacity of corroded RC members. This was established by first developing an analytical model to calculate the residual bond strength at steel-concrete interface. The bond model is then implemented within the framework of the moment resistance method, and a new strain compatibility analysis was developed: to account the analysis of a corroded reinforced concrete beam, to incorporate dependence of the bond response on the stress strain and damage state of the concrete and steel. Method for calculating flexural capacity of corroded RC beams is then proposed, which is based on flexural analysis of RC beams that considers the effect of bond degradation. The predicted results of these models correlated very well with results observed in various experimental studies. This indicates that those developed analytical models tend to estimate conservatively the residual bond strength and flexural capacity of corroded RC beams. .


The efficient use of future MPSoCs with 1000 or more processor cores requires new means of resource-aware programming to deal with increasing imperfections such as process variation, fault rates, aging effects, and power as well as thermal problems. In this paper, we apply a new approach called invasive computing that enables an application programmer to spread computations to processors deliberately and on purpose at certain points of the program. Such decisions can be made depending on the degree of application parallelism and the state of the underlying resources such as utilization, load, and temperature. The introduced programming constructs for resource-aware programming are embedded into the parallel computing language X10 as developed by IBM using a library-based approach. Moreover, we show how individual heterogeneous MPSoC architectures may be modeled for subsequent functional simulation by defining compute resources such as processors themselves by lightweight threads that are executed in parallel together with the application threads by the X10 run-time system. Thus, the state changes of each hardware resource may be simulated including temperature, aging, and other useful monitor functionality to provide a first high-level programming test-bed for invasive computing.


Analysis of a selected large-scale Philippine open pit copper operation's value chain, specifically the grade control aspect, was undertaken to assess the potential of enhancing its operating efficiency. Over 5,200 copper assays from blast holes were processed to determine the average grade continuity along three dimensions. Results indicated that modification of the existing sampling pattern of blast holes can translate to enhanced operating efficiency without losing operating effectiveness. This modified pattern is expected to translate to a 73% reduction in total variable costs mainly attributed to lower sampling and analytical costs. A trade-off equivalent to an insignificant 5% average increase in grade variability expressed in semi-variance is anticipated with the modified sampling pattern. Potential savings of PHP5.1 to PHP8.1 million annually is possible for a 42,000 to 60,000-tonne per day operation at a 2.14 waste:ore ratio. These results provide an insight into the potential savings that may be generated if applied to large-scale Philippine metallic mining projects currently operating or under development. Furthermore, the gains in operating efficiency can translate to enhanced revenues for government.


'Brexit and the City' reviews both the principal issues affecting the City of London following the Referendum vote to leave the EU and the key proposals that have been made for the City's future relationship with the EU. The latter are examined in the light of the European Commission's negotiating strategy and also what is needed to achieve the best possible outcome for the City and the UK economy.

The report concludes that Brexit is a golden opportunity for the City of London to escape the protectionist clutches of the EU in order to maintain its position as a World Financial Centre leading the new digital revolution of blockchain and fintech.

But to make the best of Brexit, the City needs to address the following issues. First, it should recognise that its place is to service the real financial needs of businesses and individuals in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world and that this is best done outside the EU which, because of its protectionism, its excessive regulation and the folly of the euro, is destroying growth and innovation in the EU member states.

Second, it should agree a 'consistent and forward-looking Brexit strategy' in order to secure a 'bold, bright, buccaneering post-Brexit future', as demanded by the Lord Mayor of London, Jeffrey Mountevans, at the City Banquet at Mansion House on 26 October 2016.

Third, it should build on the protections afforded by international law to counter the EU's demands that providers of financial services to EU citizens and companies need to be physically located in the EU to do business. It is just as absurd to expect the City of London to move to Paris or Frankfurt after Brexit as it is to expect the French wine industry or the German car industry to move to the UK. There is more investment banking expertise on the Isle of Dogs than in the whole of continental Europe put together.

Finally, it should aim to quickly recover the competitive edge that it has lost in recent years. The WTO has estimated that the City's share of China's imports of financial services (mainly insurance) was 3% in 2015, unchanged since 2011. Over the same period, the US share increased from 11% to 28%.


Background : Burns result in severe injuries that cause damage or loss of tissue due to contact with sources of heat resulting in injuries to all body systems. Injuries of the skin, which functions as a barrier to protect internal organs, may cause patients to experience damage to one's physical appearance and body image causing negative feelings that may lead to other problems such as psychopathology and symptoms of mental illness.
Method : A cross sectional study with consecutive sampling method of burn patients who were treated at the Plastic Surgery Outpatient Clinic and Burn Unit of RSCM was conducted between April-May 2017. Subjects were asked to fill in self-report questionnaires including patient identity form, SRQ-20 (cutoff point ≥6) for presence of psychopathology, and WHOQoL-BREF to obtain mean scores of quality of life that include four domains of physical, psychological, social, and environment assessment. Data collected was analyzed using correlation analysis.
Result : 56 burn patients were included in the study. 30.4% did not work and 48.2% had very low income per month. 67.9% patients experienced burns due to fire and 44.6% had burns 10-30% of the TBSA with a majority of patients (80.4%) experiencing a combination of second & third degree burns. Based on the analysis, 57.1% of patients had a form of psychopathology and low mean scores of quality life (physical domain 48.1, psychological domain 51.5). Significant negative correlations (p ≤ 0.05) were obtained between the psychological domain and symptoms of depression, anxiety, low energy; physical domain and low energy; and social domain with anxiety.
Conclusion: This study obtained significant results to identify the correlation between psychopathology and various domains of quality of life affected.


A holographic technique used to fabricate three-dimensional photonic crystals with a two-beam interference method is presented. In the optical setup of fabrication one beam is incident on the recording plate in the direction of the plate normal and the other beam with an angle to the normal. Three exposures were taken. Between each exposure, the recording plate was rotated 120 degrees on axis until three exposures were completed. Good three-dimensional lattice structures have been obtained. Theoretical analysis, computer simulations, and experimental results are presented.


Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) make road traffic safer and more efficient, but require the mobile networks to handle time-critical applications. While some applications may need new dedicated communications technologies such as IEEE 802.11p or 5G, other applications can use current cellular networks. This study evaluates the performance that connected vehicles can expect from existing networks, and estimates the potential gain of multi-access by simultaneously transmitting over several operators. We upload time-critical warning messages from buses in Sweden, and characterise transaction times and network availability. We conduct the experiments with different protocols: UDP, TCP, and HTTPS. Our results show that when using UDP, the median transaction time for sending a typical warning message is 135 ms. We also show that multi-access can bring this value down to 73 ms. For time-critical applications requiring transaction times under 200 ms, multi-access can increase availability of the network from to 57.4% to 92.0%.


Semerci, A., 2013. Determining the resource use efficiency in wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) production: A case study of Edirne Province – Turkey. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 19: 314-324 In this research, it is aimed to determine physical production inputs, which are used for wheat production, made in rain fed conditions in agricultural enterprises in Edirne, located in European Continent, Turkey, and to determine the resource use efficiency of previously mentioned activity. The data, used in this research were obtained from 90 agricultural enterprises in Edirne in 18 settlements, which have been marked through "Multi Stratified Random Sampling Method" by the means of questionnaire. In the enterprises analyzed, it was determined that in wheat production 21.70 kg seed, 55.32 kg chemical fertilizer and 87.31 cc pesticide were required for the yield about 405.64 kg da -1 . Determination coefficient equation (R 2 ), acquired by using CobbDouglas type production function, is 0.965 and because of functional analysis, there is an increasing return to scale (∑β i = 1.119). All of the variables in production equation are significant at 5% level and their elasticity coefficients have positive valence. In the end of the research, it is proved that land value and pesticide factors are used actively in wheat production. However, for higher yield, an increase in the quantity of seed and fertilizer is required.


Extracting information about the structure of biological tissue from static image data is a complex task which requires a series of computationally intensive operations. Here we present how the power of multi-core CPUs and massively parallel GPUs have been utilised to extract information about the shape, size and path followed by the mammalian oviduct, called the fallopian tube in humans, from histology images, to create a realistic 3D virtual organ for use in predictive computational models. Histology images from a mouse oviduct were processed, using a combination of GPU and multi-core CPU techniques, to identify the individual cross-sections and determine the 3D path that the tube follows through the tissue. This information was then related back to the histology images, linking the 2D cross-sections with their corresponding 3D position along the oviduct. Measurements were then taken from the images and used to computationally generate a series of linear 2D spline cross-sections for the length of the oviduct, which were bound to the 3D path of the tube using a novel particle system based technique that provides smooth resolution of self intersections and crossovers from adjacent sections. This results in a unique 3D model of the oviduct, which is based on measurements of histology slides and therefore grounded in reality. The GPU is used for the processor intensive operations of image processing and particle physics based simulations, significantly reducing the time required to generate a complete model. A set of models created using this technique is being used to investigate the influence that the 3D structure of the oviductal environment has on sperm transport and navigation.


Background Drug resistance to treatment of fascioliasis with triclabendazole (TCBZ) has emerged in Sohag Governorate, Egypt. Nitroxynil belongs to the halogenated phenol group of fasciolicides. It is highly active against adult liver flukes. A nitroxynil metabolite is produced in the liver parenchyma adding to its flukicidal activity and augmenting its efficacy against late immature flukes that migrate through the liver tissues. Treatment with nitroxynil may be an effective replacement for therapy with TCBZ in cases of resistance. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of nitroxynil in the treatment of fascioliasis by assessing its effect on teguments and durability of adult Fasciola gigantica and Fasciola hepatica worms. Materials and methods Infected cows were selected on the basis of clinical signs, and infection was confirmed by detection of Fasciola eggs in their stools. Nitroxynil was administered as recommended in two doses 15 days apart, and the animals were slaughtered 15 days after treatment. Fasciola worms collected from the bile ducts were identified and prepared for electron microscopy. Tegument changes were examined with scanning electron microscopy. Results The removed adult flukes of both species were moving sluggishly and appeared pale with no evidence of gut content. Scanning electron microscopy examination of these flukes revealed evidence of swelling of the tegument that showed regional variation in its severity. Loss of spines was also observed. Conclusion The present study demonstrated the flukicidal properties of nitroxynil, proving that the tegument is an important target for its action. Disruption of the fluke′s main line of defense allowed the drug access to other internal tissues, leading to more widespread damage. Nitroxynil may be successfully used for treatment in case of resistance to TCBZ.


Purpose

More than half of the Mexican population lives in poverty. While there are many studies about poverty in Mexico, there are very few about the dynamics of poverty. The purpose of this paper is to measure chronic and transient poverty in Mexico and to analyze its determinants.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the spells approach, a transition matrix was estimated and a multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate the effects of various socioeconomic and demographic variables upon the dynamics of poverty.

Findings

It was found that 36 percent of households are chronically poor and 64 percent are transiently poor. The results show that variables directly related to chronic poverty are belonging to an ethnic minority group, living in a rural area, a large family size, having a high percentage of older adults and children in the household and having a female household head. Having more education, having more assets, the age of the household head and having access to potable water and electricity in the household are variables positively related with the probability of escaping poverty.

Originality/value

To the authors knowledge, this is the first study on the dynamics of poverty using the spells approach for Mexico as a whole, not just for urban areas. The value of this work is that it estimates chronic and transitory poverty in Mexico as well as their possible determinants. The study findings can be used by the government to design and implement public policies to alleviate both chronic and transient poverty in Mexico.