Title of Dissertation: INCREASING BLACK STUDENT PARTICIPATION AND ACHIEVEMENT IN ADVANCED PLACEMENT COURSES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO SCHOOLS Saroja R. Ringo, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Dissertation Directed By: Professor Linda Valli College of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction Equal educational opportunity, especially as it pertains to Black Americans, has a long ideological history in the United States. As part of that history, the achievement gap has currently taken center stage in mainstream discussions about K-12 education in this country. This study focuses on the implications of the achievement gap for Black students' participation and achievement in Advanced Placement classes. Participation and success in AP courses is privileged in the college admissions process and students who perform well on AP exams are more likely to be accepted by institutions of higher education and to be better prepared for the rigors of college coursework. In high schools across the country, administrators are engaged in reform efforts to narrow the AP gap and ensure that all students have equitable opportunities to access higher education. The existing literature suggests that addressing the Black-White AP gap requires deliberate, collaborative action on the part of school-personnel and students' families. This involves the development of productive teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships based on high expectations and care. This qualitative study employs comparative case study methodology to investigate what two schools in a large, diverse, suburban school district are doing to 1) increase the participation of Black students in AP classes, and 2) support the academic achievement of Black students in AP classes. At each school, administrators, school counselors, AP teachers, Black AP students, and their parents were interviewed to develop understandings of the programs, processes, and practices aimed at addressing the Black-White AP gap as well as the various perceptions of each group. As these findings indicate, school-district accountability pressures influence school-level reform efforts. In one school, increased pressures to meet accountability demands contributed to the creation of an accountability culture. At the other, characterized by a culture of achievement, there was less intense pressure from the school-district. Despite the varying accountability demands from the school-district, the climate at each school was influenced similarly by issues of race, which was a salient factor in relationships between White AP teachers and Black AP students and their parents. INCREASING BLACK STUDENT PARTICIPATION AND ACHIEVEMENT IN ADVANCED PLACEMENT COURSES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO SCHOOLS


Disturbances are important for renewal of North American forests. Here we summarize more than 180 site years of eddy covariance measurements of carbon dioxide flux made at forest chronosequences in North America. The disturbances included stand-replacing fire (Alaska, Arizona, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) and harvest (British Columbia, Florida, New Brunswick, Oregon, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Wisconsin) events, insect infestations (gypsy moth, forest tent caterpillar, and mountain pine beetle), Hurricane Wilma, and silvicultural thinning (Arizona, California, and New Brunswick). Net ecosystem production (NEP) showed a carbon loss from all ecosystems following a stand-replacing disturbance, becoming a carbon sink by 20 years for all ecosystems and by 10 years for most. Maximum carbon losses following disturbance (g C m−2y−1) ranged from 1270 in Florida to 200 in boreal ecosystems. Similarly, for forests less than 100 years old, maximum uptake (g C m−2y−1) was 1180 in Florida mangroves and 210 in boreal ecosystems. More temperate forests had intermediate fluxes. Boreal ecosystems were relatively time invariant after 20 years, whereas western ecosystems tended to increase in carbon gain over time. This was driven mostly by gross photosynthetic production (GPP) because total ecosystem respiration (ER) and heterotrophic respiration were relatively invariant with age. GPP/ER was as low as 0.2 immediately following stand-replacing disturbance reaching a constant value of 1.2 after 20 years. NEP following insect defoliations and silvicultural thinning showed lesser changes than stand-replacing events, with decreases in the year of disturbance followed by rapid recovery. NEP decreased in a mangrove ecosystem following Hurricane Wilma because of a decrease in GPP and an increase in ER.


This technical report is an appendix to Eisner (1996): it gives superior experimental results that were reported only in the talk version of that paper, with details of how the results were obtained. Eisner (1996) trained three probability models on a small set of about 4,000 conjunction-free, dependencygrammar parses derived from the Wall Street Journal section of the Penn Treebank, and then evaluated the models on a held-out test set, using a novel O(n 3 ) parsing algorithm. The present paper describes some details of the experiments and repeats them with a larger training set of 25,000 sentences. As reported at the talk, the more extensive training yields greatly improved performance, cutting in half the error rate of Eisner (1996). Nearly half the sentences are parsed with no misattachments; two-thirds of sentences are parsed with at most one misattachment. Of the models described in the original paper, the best score is obtained with the generative "model C," which attaches 87–88% of all words to the correct parent. However, better models are also explored, in particular, two simple variants on the comprehension "model B." The better of these has an attachment accuracy of 90%, and (unlike model C) tags words more accurately than the comparable trigram tagger. If tags are roughly known in advance, search error is all but eliminated and the new model attains an attachment accuracy of 93%. We find that the parser of Collins (1996), when combined with a highlytrained tagger, also achieves 93% when trained and tested on the same sentences. We briefly discuss the similarities and differences between Collins's model and ours, pointing out the strengths of each and noting that these strengths could be combined for either dependency parsing or phrase-structure parsing.


Abstract This study evaluates three agricultural nonpoint pollution abatement policies: regulating the spatial pattern of agricultural activities, ambient tax, and abatement tax/subsidy. All three policies incorporate spatial characteristics of agricultural emission loading and movement for an agricultural watershed in the Midwest. The effects of spatial variation in natural conditions and landscape features on agricultural emissions and crop yield are evaluated using a newly developed biophysical simulation model and experimental data. While the policies are equally cost effective in reducing agricultural nonpoint source pollution, their implementation feasibility is quite different.


The Web contains a vast amount of information on an abundance of topics, much of which is encoded as structured data indexed by local databases. However, these databases are rarely interconnected and information reuse across sites is limited. Semantic Web standards offer a possible solution in the form of an agreed-upon data model and set of syntaxes, as well as metalanguages for publishing schema-level information, offering a highly-interoperable means of publishing and interlinking structured data on the Web. Thanks to the Linked Data community, an unprecedented lode of such data has now been published on the Web—by individuals, academia, communities, corporations and governmental organisations alike—on a medley of often overlapping topics. This new publishing paradigm has opened up a range of new and interesting research topics with respect to how this emergent "Web of Data" can be harnessed and exploited by consumers. Indeed, although Semantic Web standards theoretically enable a high level of interoperability, heterogeneity still poses a significant obstacle when consuming this information: in particular, publishers may describe analogous information using different terminology, or may assign different identifiers to the same referents. Consumers must also overcome the classical challenges of processing Web data sourced from multitudinous and unvetted providers: primarily, scalability and noise. In this thesis, we look at tackling the problem of heterogeneity with respect to consuming large-scale corpora of Linked Data aggregated from millions of sources on the Web. As such, we design bespoke algorithms— in particular, based on the Semantic Web standards and traditional Information Retrieval techniques—which leverage the declarative schemata (a.k.a. terminology) and various statistical measures to help smooth out the heterogeneity of such Linked Data corpora in a scalable and robust manner. All of our methods are distributed over a cluster of commodity hardware, which typically allows for enhancing performance and/or scale by adding more machines. We first present a distributed crawler for collecting a generic Linked Data corpus from millions of sources; we perform an open crawl to acquire an evaluation corpus for our thesis, consisting of 1.118 billion facts of information collected from 3.985 million individual documents hosted by 783 different domains. Thereafter, we present our distributed algorithm for performing a links-based analysis of the data-sources (documents) comprising the corpus, where the resultant ranks are used in subsequent chapters as an indication of the importance and trustworthiness of the information they contain. Next, we look at custom techniques for performing rule-based materialisation, leveraging RDFS and OWL semantics to infer new information, often using mappings—provided by the publishers themselves—to translate between different terminologies. Thereafter, we present a formal framework for incorporating metainformation—relating to trust, provenance and data-quality—into this inferencing procedure; in particular, we derive and track ranking values for facts based on the sources they originate from, later using them to repair identified noise (logical inconsistencies) in the data. Finally, we look at two methods for consolidating coreferent identifiers in the corpus, and we present an approach for discovering and repairing incorrect coreference through analysis of inconsistencies. Throughout the thesis, we empirically demonstrate our methods against our real-world Linked Data corpus, and on a cluster of nine machines.


Isidore of Seville's Chronica Maiora was written in two redactions in early seventh century and reveals a great deal about the political, religious and intellectual history of late antique and early medieval Spain. a comparative analysis of the different versions demonstrates the author in action, responding to a range of contemporary stimuli. On a series of levels, the changing form and contents of the chronicle can be mapped against a rapidly changing religious and political background to provide valuable historical data and insights into the working methods and intellectual world of the most important author of early medieval Spain. This article offers a brief introduction to the text and its context of production before presenting an English translation of the two redactions of the text.


Mobile app development best practices suggest that developers obtain opt-in consent from users prior to accessing potentially sensitive information on the phone. We study challenges that mobile application developers have with meeting such requirements, and highlight the promise of using new automated, static analysis-based solutions that identify and insert missing prompts in order to guard otherwise unprotected resource accesses. We find evidence that third-party libraries, incorporated by developers across the mobile industry, may access privacy-sensitive resources without seeking consent or even against the user's choice. Based on insights from real examples, we develop the theoretical underpinning of the problem of mediating resource accesses in mobile applications. We design and implement a graph-theoretic algorithm to place mediation prompts that protect every resource access, while avoiding repetitive prompting and prompting in background tasks or third-party libraries.

We demonstrate the viability of our approach by analyzing 100 apps, averaging 7.3 MB in size and consisting of dozens of DLLs. Our approach scales well: once an app is represented in the form of a graph, the remaining static analysis takes under a second on average. Overall, our strategy succeeds in about 95% of all unique cases.


This 2004 book reconfigures the basic problem of Christian thinking - 'How can human discourse refer meaningfully to a transcendent God?' - as a twofold demand for integrity: integrity of reason and integrity of transcendence. Centring around a provocative yet penetratingly faithful re-reading of Kant's empirical realism, and drawing on an impelling confluence of contemporary thinkers (including MacKinnon, Bonhoeffer, Marion, Putnam, Nagel) Paul D. Janz argues that theology's 'referent' must be located within present empirical reality. Rigorously reasoned yet refreshingly accessible throughout, this book provides an important, attentively informed alternative to the growing trends toward obscurantism, radicalization and anti-reason in many recent assessments of theological cognition, while remaining equally alert to the hazards of traditional metaphysics. In the book's culmination, epistemology and Christology converge around problems of noetic authority and orthodoxy with a kind of innovation, depth and straightforwardness that readers of theology at all levels of philosophical acquaintance will find illuminating.


Snow accumulation rate is an important parameter in determining the mass balance of polar ice sheets. Accumulation rate is currently determined by analyzing ice cores and snow pits. Inadequate sampling of the spatial variations in the ice sheet accumulation has resulted in accumulation rate uncertainties as large as 24%. We designed and developed a 600-900-MHz airborne radar system for high-resolution mapping of the near-surface internal layers for estimating the accumulation rate of polar ice sheets. Our radar system can provide improved spatial and temporal coverage by mapping a continuous profile of the isochronous layers in the ice sheet. During the 2002 field season in Greenland, we successfully mapped the near-surface layers to a depth of 200 m in the dry-snow zone, 120 m in the percolation zone, and 20 m in the melt zone. We determined the water equivalent accumulation rate at the NASA-U/spl I.bar/1 site to be 34.9/spl plusmn/5.1 cm/year from 1964 to 1992. This is in close agreement with the ice-core derived accumulation rate of 34.6 cm/year for the same period.


Visitor profiling has been increasingly recognized as an important tourism marketing tool in the advent of smart tourism. There is a substantial body of literature relating to tourism market segmentation and visitor profiles. However, most of them focus on psychographic and behavioral factors. Seldom research has addressed the visitor profile based on actual expenditure during the visit. In this study, we explored the expenditure-based profile of Macao visitors using a randomly sampled dataset from a large-scale visitor profile survey supported by Macao Government Tourist Office. Utilizing self-reported actual expenditure data from 3577 visitors, we extracted six expenditure clusters of Macao visitors using a k-means clustering with silhouette analysis. The six clusters, i.e., entertainment, gambling, cuisine, shopping, both cuisine & shopping, and transit, have significant differences in expenditure preferences and expenditure levels. We also analyzed the demographic and behavior profile for each cluster. Our findings shed light on developing customized marketing strategies to the profile of each distinct expenditure cluster of Macao visitors.


For the Russian Service Case of GSE FM ENVISAT ASAR APP data (HH/HV, swath 7) were used during the first two years. For optimal SAR based forest cover mapping a well suited SAR data set is required. Thus emphasis is put on the analysis of ASAR time series throughout the seasons. The investigation comprises for each image of the time series the analysis of the signatures of the relevant land cover classes and their separability. For forthcoming GSE FM service production PALSAR L-band data will be introduced. L-band data can be assumed to complement the data input and afford an improved forest cover mapping whilst the costly manual classification refinement effort is minimised. Various PALSAR products will be analysed regarding their suitability for forest map production. Regarding the separability of forest and non-forest, different PALSAR acquisition modes as well as winter coherence images have been investigated.


We explore how the opt-out movement has responded to the combination of a stringent federal policy with weak and often variable implementation among the states. Gaps between federal expectations and states' understandings of just how to make NCLB's demands a reality have created policy ambiguity. Parents who oppose standardized testing have recognized the resulting tensions and oversights in state education systems as a policy vacuum rife with opportunities for resistance. We examine how parents have exploited policy ambiguity through creating contested spaces—places of agency in stringent policy environments in which grassroots can question policy authority and take action. We conclude by considering whether these contested spaces are sustainable and whether the policy outcomes generated in contested spaces are reasonably equitable.


TBP-1/Tat-Binding Protein 1 (also named Rpt-5, S6a or PSMC3) is a multifunctional protein, originally identified as a regulator of HIV-1-Tat mediated transcription.
It is an AAA-ATPase component of the 19S regulative subunit of the proteasome and, as other members of this protein family, fulfils different cellular functions including proteolysis and transcriptional regulation. Consistent with the role in protein destruction, TBP-1 has been shown to enhance the ubiquitin ligase function of the VHL (Von-Hippel-Landau) tumour suppressor toward Hif1α and to be involved in the degradation of Fra-1 (Fos related antigen -1), both overexpressed in a variety of human cancers. Moreover, TBP-1 binds to and stabilizes the p14ARF human oncosuppressor, likely avoiding its entrance into the proteasome and increasing its anti-oncogenic functions.
Intriguingly, TBP-1 overexpression can inhibit cell proliferation in a different celllular contexts suggesting that it may function as a negative regulator of cell proliferation. Infact, inhibition of the oncogenic phenotype of erb-B transformed cells was accompanied by an increase of TBP-1 intracellular levels and, accordingly, its overexpression in erb-B transformed cells strongly inhibited tumour formation in athymic mice.
The results presented here demonstrate that stable reduction of TBP-1 intracellular levels increases cell proliferation, renders cells able to grow also in absence of serum, and increases resistance to serum-deprivation induced apoptosis of primary human fibroblasts immortalized by h-TERT expression. Moreover, TBP-1 silencing determines the activation of the Akt/PKB serin-threonin kinase, one of the major transducers of growth signals mediating proliferative and pro-survival effects. TBP-1 itself turned out to be a downstream target of Akt/PKB and MDM2, a known Akt target, plays a major role in this regulation. Altogether, these results suggest the existence of a negative feedback loop involving Akt/PKB that might act as a sensor to modulate TBP-1 levels in proliferating cells.


In studies of the population dynamics of parasitic sea lice and the implications of out- breaks for salmon farms, several types of mathematical models have been implemented. Delay differential equation models describe the temporal dynamics of average adult lice densities over many farm sites. In contrast, larval transport models consider the relative densities of lice at farm sites by modelling larval movements between them but do not account for temporal dynamics or feedbacks created by reproduction. Finally, several recent studies have investigated spatiotempo- ral variation in site lice abundances using statistical models and distance-based proxies for con- nectivity. We developed a model which integrates connectivity estimates from larval transport models into the delay differential equation framework. This allows representation of sea lice developmental stages, dispersal between sites, and the impact of management actions. Even with identical external infection rates, lice abundances differ dramatically between farms over a pro- duction cycle (dependent on oceanographic conditions and resulting between-farm connectivity). Once infected, lice dynamics are dominated by site reproduction and subsequent dispersal. Lice control decreases actual lice abundances and also reduces variation in abundance between sites (within each simulation) and between simulation runs. Control at sites with the highest magnitude of incoming connections, computed directly from connectivity modelling, had the greatest impact on lice abundances across all sites. Connectivity metrics may therefore be a reasonable approxi- mation of the effectiveness of management practices at particular sites. However, the model also provides new opportunities for investigation and prediction of lice abundances in interconnected systems with spatially varying infection and management.


Surveillance and monitoring of viral pathogens circulating in humans and wildlife, together with the identification of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), are critical for the prediction of future disease outbreaks and epidemics at an early stage. It is advisable to sample a broad range of vertebrates and invertebrates at different temporospatial levels on a regular basis to detect possible candidate viruses at their natural source. However, virus surveillance systems can be expensive, costly in terms of finances and resources and inadequate for sampling sufficient numbers of different host species over space and time. Recent publications have presented the concept of a new virus surveillance system, coining the terms "flying biological syringes", "xenosurveillance" and "vector-enabled metagenomics". According to these novel and promising surveillance approaches, viral metagenomics on engorged mosquitoes might reflect the viral diversity of numerous mammals, birds and humans, combined in the mosquitoes' blood meal during feeding on the host. In this review article, we summarize the literature on vector-enabled metagenomics (VEM) techniques and its application in disease surveillance in humans. Furthermore, we highlight the combination of VEM and "invertebrate-derived DNA" (iDNA) analysis to identify the host DNA within the mosquito midgut.


Prefabrication has evolved in depth and breadth from its beginnings, bringing many of the advantages of industrialisation to construction, while solving some of the problems that arose in the early years. Today prefabrication, compared to traditional construction methods, and concrete as a material, feature a number of beneficial characteristics. Precast elements are factory made products. The only way to industrialise the construction industry is to shift work from temporary construction sites to modern permanent facilities. Factory
production entails rational and efficient manufacturing processes, skilled workers, systematisation of repetitive tasks, and lower labour costs per m² as a result of automated production. Factory products are process-based and lean manufacturing principles are deployed. Automation is gradually being implemented in factories and is already in place in areas such as the preparation of reinforcing steel, mould assembly, concrete casting, and surface finishing on architectural concrete. And other stages in the process are sure to follow. As prefabrication makes optimal use of materials, its potential for savings is much greater than in cast-in-situ construction. Structural performance and durability are also enhanced through design, modern manufacturing equipment and carefully planned working procedures. The environmental burden of prefabrication is mainly the burden caused by the raw materials of concrete (especially production of cement and steel). The environmental burden caused by raw materials is approximately three times larger than that caused by the production process of the elements, as indicated by the examples of environmental product declarations. Also thermal inertia of heavy materials is well known for both in warm and cold climates. Most
people have experienced the comfort of coming into a comparatively cool stone building on a hot day in a warm climate. In precast structures several systems have been developed using this characteristic. As there is a Fib Bulletin under preparation in Commission 6 Prefabrication, by the Task Group 6.3 Sustainability, in which both authors are members, the conclusions of this document will be presented including a proposal for an evaluation model that can be applied to precast structures.


Ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are of interest for hot section components of gas turbine engines due to their low weight and favorable thermal properties. To implement this advanced composite in a gas turbine engine, characterizing the influence of CMC's surface topology on heat transfer and cooling performance is critical. However, very few published studies have reported the flow and heat transfer effects caused by this unique surface topology. This study is an experimental and computational investigation to evaluate the effect of weave orientations, relevant to CMC surfaces, on the resulting pressure loss and convective heat transfer within an internal channel. The weave pattern was additively manufactured as the walls of a scaled-up coupon containing a single channel. For each of the three weave orientations, bulk pressure losses and convective heat transfer coefficients were measured over a range of Reynolds numbers.
 Scaling the pressure losses in terms of a friction factor and convective heat transfer coefficients in terms of a Nusselt number showed the importance of choosing the appropriate definition of the hydraulic diameter, which was particularly important for the friction factor. A coupon having one wall with the weave surface increased pressure loss and heat transfer compared to a smooth wall with the largest increases occurring when the CMC weave strands were perpendicular to the flow. Friction factor augmentations were much higher than heat transfer augmentations. When adding the weave to a second channel wall, pressure loss and heat transfer were further increased. Orienting the CMC strands perpendicular to the flow consistently showed the largest augmentations in heat transfer over a smooth channel, but at a much higher pressure loss penalty than that seen with the CMC strands parallel to the flow.


This article focuses on the optionality of the definite determiner and its effects on the range of interpretations available for singular noun phrases in Hebrew. Three factors contribute to the interpretation of singular nouns in this language: (i) predicate type : kind- and/or object-selecting; (ii) context : episodic or generic; and (iii) syntactic position . I argue that bare singulars in Hebrew can be both kind-referring and indefinites. As kind-referring, they are interpretable through a system of type-shifting operators (Chierchia 1998); as indefinites, they are interpretable via choice functions. The definite determiner is shown to introduce a massifying function or a singularity presupposition, depending on context.


This thesis explores Robert Schumann's influence on the two very different versions of Johannes Brahms' Piano Trio in B major, Op. 8 – the first version of 1854 and the revised version of 1889 (or Op. 8a and Op. 8b, respectively) – by establishing a biographical and compositional relationship with Schumann's Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 63 (1847), with particular reference to his writings. This comparative study firstly examines Schumann's important contribution to the piano trio genre and the musical aesthetics inherent in his work. His impact on the genesis of Brahms' Op. 8a beyond the biographical is considered in depth here for the first time in a scholarly study. By identifying Schumann's compositional methods from his middle-late period and his musical aesthetics as manifested in relevant compositions, my hypothesis argues that the young Brahms modeled his Op. 8a on Schumann's Op. 63; it also suggests a parallel performing tradition between the two works.

 In contrast to the continuing musicological enquiries concerning the two versions of Op. 8, performers have paid little attention to Op. 8a owing to a number of misconceptions. The reconstruction of a performing tradition of the first version did not get under way until the 1980s, when the first recording appeared. Although it would seem reasonable to seek clues as to its interpretation from the performing tradition of Brahms' Op. 8b, the more widely known version, my hypothesis instead seeks to align Brahms' Op. 8a with Schumann's seminal work in the same genre, while also reframing Op. 8b in this context.

 The notion of the 'Schumannesque' with respect to the composer's middle-late period will be examined, alongside a set of musical aesthetics based on Schumann's early Davidsbundler ideology. The ways in which these issues relate to Brahms' Op. 8a are reflected in my proposed
performance guidelines for the work, which are substantiated through methods of practice-based
research.


Dædalus Winter 2010 The global nuclear order is changing, but where is it headed? Will the expected expansion of nuclear power in many regions around the world lead to increased dangers of nuclear terrorism and increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation? As we noted in our introduction in volume 1,1 the common answer provided by the diverse international group of contributors to this twovolume special issue of Dædalus is that it depends: it depends on how quickly and how widely nuclear power spreads to new countries; it depends on the domestic political and governance characteristics of the new nuclear power states; it depends on whether terrorists' plans to attack nuclear sites or steal nuclear materials succeed or fail; and, crucially, it depends on the steps taken by the international community to improve the safety mechanisms, physical protection standards, and nonproliferation safeguards that make up the tapestry of agreements that we call the nonproliferation regime. Our colleagues have laid out a rich menu of steps that could strengthen the nonproliferation regime. We hope that governments around the world will listen to the ideas offered by these scholars, industry leaders, and former of1⁄2cials about how best to gain the bene1⁄2ts of nuclear energy while minimizing the security risks that are inherent in the spread of nuclear power. But we know from studying the history of nuclear power and proliferation that not all good ideas are adopted over time, and that wise policies and potential constructive compromises among conflicting interests do not always triumph. Our crystal ball is not clear enough to predict with con1⁄2dence whether the global nuclear future will be characterized by peace and prosperity or by conflict and destruction. But we do believe that the choices made in the coming few years will be crucial in determining whether the world can have more nuclear power without more nuclear weapons dangers in the future. Here we 1⁄2rst briefly outline 1⁄2ve major security challenges posed by the potential expansion and spread of nuclear power. Second, we discuss the major players whose decisions and interactions will determine which policies are adopted and which are rejected as the international community seeks solutions to these 1⁄2ve security challenges. Finally, we sketch a number of alternative nuclear futures to demonstrate the truly Steven E. Miller & Scott D. Sagan


We studied life‐history characteristics of 22 genetically distinct Daphnia hyalina 3 galeata clonal lineages isolated from samples taken at different depths in the Schöhsee Lake (Germany) in the presence and absence of fish kairomones. Substantial genetic variability was observed for all traits investigated. The presence of fish kairomones had a significant effect on all traits except relative length of the tail spine and age at maturity. All genotypes (clones) had a significantly smaller size at maturity and produced smaller offspring in the presence of fish kairomones, an observation that is consistent with the hypothesis of an adaptive response. Overall, reproductive output was less for fish‐induced animals, but the effect was relatively small for the size of the first clutch and for the intrinsic rate of increase compared to the differences observed for size of the second and subsequent clutches. Adult body size was related to habitat selection behavior. Clones established from animals that were caught in the epilimnion during the day and early in the evening (termed "risk‐tolerant" [RT] depth selection behavior) were found to be smaller, both in the absence and presence of fish kairomones, than clones isolated from the hypolimnion (termed "risk‐averse" [RA] depth selection behavior). This relationship suggests a coadaptation between size‐related life‐history traits and habitat selection (depth selection) in zooplankton. There were no significant differences in the shifts in life‐history characteristics between clones exhibiting RT and RA depth selection behavior in response to the presence of fish kairomones.


Investment and financing aspects of club houses remains understudied in hospitality literature. Clubs, while most are nonprofit organizations, operate under similar principles as do investorowned organizations. To maximize social benefits for their 'owners' clubs must undertake investments effectively to ensure provision of quality products and services. This paper analyzes renovation investments in club houses using a combination of continuous and discrete regression processes. Key findings suggest that renovation expenses of the sample were influenced more by the amount of secure and unsecured loan than by the equity financing of such investments. Renovation investments were also associated with higher sales turnover and with a smaller link to return on assets. The size of club membership was found to be the predominant characteristics associated with the size of renovation expenses.


Spending on big-time college athletics is often justified on the grounds that athletic success attracts students and raises donations. Testing this claim has proven difficult because success is not randomly assigned. We exploit data on bookmaker spreads to estimate the probability of winning each game for college football teams. We then condition on these probabilities using a propensity score design to estimate the effects of winning on donations, applications, and enrollment. The resulting estimates represent causal effects under the assumption that, conditional on bookmaker spreads, winning is uncorrelated with potential outcomes. Two complications arise in our design. First, team wins evolve dynamically throughout the season. Second, winning a game early in the season reveals that a team is better than anticipated and thus increases expected season wins by more than one-for-one. We address these complications by combining an instrumental variables-type estimator with the propensity score design. We find that winning reduces acceptance rates and increases donations, applications, academic reputation, in-state enrollment, and incoming SAT scores.


OBJECTIVES
This study investigated the relationships between work demands, chronic medical and musculoskeletal conditions, aging, and the ability to remain on the job in a longitudinal study of 979 construction roofers between the ages of 40 and 59 years.

METHODS
In a phone interview at baseline and 1 year later, the participants were asked about the presence of medical conditions and musculoskeletal disorders, work limitations and work accommodations, and social and economic functioning.

RESULTS
Among the workers for whom a musculoskeletal disorder was their most serious condition at baseline, 8% left roofing due to a health condition during the first year of follow-up. A comparison between those who left and those who stayed identified older age and lower physical functioning as statistically significant predictors of leaving the trade. Workers with a musculoskeletal disorder and who, in the baseline interview, reported receiving some type of job accommodation for their musculoskeletal disorder had an odds ratio of 0.24 (P=0.07) for leaving work by the time of the 1-year follow-up when compared with workers with a musculoskeletal disorder and no job accommodation. The workers with three or more work limitations were also more likely to leave roofing, but this association disappeared after adjustment for other factors.

CONCLUSIONS
Musculoskeletal conditions among roofers are strongly associated with work limitation, missed work, and reduced physical functioning, factors that are predictive of premature departure from the workforce. Job accommodation was provided for 31% of the roofers with a musculoskeletal disorder, and it was associated with a reduced likelihood of subsequently leaving roofing for health-related reasons.


For the last couple of years, during hours not spent blogging, I served as the editor-in-chief of the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Microbiology. If this sounds like a large undertaking, it is. The work consists of nearly 300 entries compiled into six volumes that weigh in toto close to 50 lbs! Fortunately for those with weak backs, this edition will also be available electronically. My contribution to this project was reduced to human dimensions because practically all the work was done by an editorial board consisting of some terrific microbiologists. They chose the authors and edited the manuscripts. To see for yourself how distinguished these people are, go to bit.ly/1XxWlGy. Did I critically read each entry from start to finish? Not on your life! (However, my curiosity was sufficiently piqued that I scanned—or more—each entry). Most of what I did was to cheer editors and authors along. I wasn't always good at this, but finally this Gargantuan creature emerged from its womb, hale and well.


A music mashup combines audio elements from two or more songs to create a new work. To reduce the time and effort required to make them, researchers have developed algorithms that predict the compatibility of audio elements. Prior work has focused on mixing unaltered excerpts, but advances in source separation enable the creation of mashups from isolated stems (e.g., vocals, drums, bass, etc.). In this work, we take advantage of separated stems not just for creating mashups, but for training a model that predicts the mutual compatibility of groups of excerpts, using self-supervised and semi-supervised methods. Specifically, we first produce a random mashup creation pipeline that combines stem tracks obtained via source separation, with key and tempo automatically adjusted to match, since these are prerequisites for high-quality mashups. To train a model to predict compatibility, we use stem tracks obtained from the same song as positive examples, and random combinations of stems with key and/or tempo unadjusted as negative examples. To improve the model and use more data, we also train on "average" examples: random combinations with matching key and tempo, where we treat them as unlabeled data as their true compatibility is unknown. To determine whether the combined signal or the set of stem signals is more indicative of the quality of the result, we experiment on two model architectures and train them using semi-supervised learning technique. Finally, we conduct objective and subjective evaluations of the system, comparing them to a standard rule-based system.


The exposure of exponentially grown Escherichia coli K12 to 52 degrees C for 30 min in Tris/Mg2+ buffer resulted in a considerable loss of viability when plated on tryptone agar. When such heated bacteria were held at 37 degrees C for 2 h in tryptone broth before plating on tryptone agar, there was a significant increase in viability. Thus, heat damage was repaired in tryptone broth but not on tryptone agar. Recovery was greater in tryptone broth than in synthetic medium. In tryptone broth, recA or polA mutants also recovered but a lex mutant did not. As a result of heating, the sensitivity of bacteria to ultraviolet radiation (u.v.), to mitomycin C and to plating on high salt medium was enhanced. After incubation for 2 h in tryptone broth at 37 degrees C, the bacteria regained their resistance to u.v. and mitomycin C and tolerance to high salt medium. Recovery of viability required RNA and protein synthesis, whereas recovery of u.v. resistance did not require protein synthesis. Heating for 30 min inhibited the release of acid-soluble material from DNA in all strains of E. coli used.


Sea snakes are widespread and conspicuous inhabitants of shallow waters in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. They are agile top predators and possess extremely potent venom, but they are still susceptible to predation by large fish, e.g. sharks, and other vertebrates. We describe how crevice-probing and temporarily non-vigilant Yellow-lipped Sea Kraits Laticauda colubrina twist the tail around their length axis so that the tail tip's lateral aspect corresponds to the dorsal view of the head. In doing so, coloration and pattern in combination with tail movement and posture make the tail appear very similar to the (non-visible and foraging) head. We examined 98 Laticauda spp. sea snakes in three major museum collections and reviewed the literature to assess the generality and implications of our field observations. This leads us to hypothesize that a combination of: (i) head and tail being similarly coloured and patterned, and (ii) the tail being motioned to resemble the head, is a hitherto overlooked mimetic and 'prophylactic' anti-predator adaptation in the L. colubrina complex, and possibly in other species of sea snake. We propose this is a concerted behavioural–morphological adaptation, and we briefly speculate about its possible fitness trade-offs as well as its origin. Explicit and testable predictions derived from the hypothesis are presented.


Background: Software defect prediction has been an active area of research for the last few decades. Many models have been developed with aim to find locations in code likely to contain defects. As of yet, these prediction models are of limited use and rarely used in the software industry. Problem: Current modelling techniques are too coarse grained and fail in finding some defects. Most of the prediction models do not look for targeted defect characteristics, but rather treat them as a black box and homogeneous. No study has investigated in greater detail how well certain defect characteristics work with different prediction modelling techniques. Methodology: This PhD will address three major tasks. First, the relation among software defects, prediction models and static code metrics will be analysed. Second, the possibility of a mapping function between prediction models and defect characteristics shall be investigated. Third, an optimised ensemble model that searches for targeted defects will be developed. Contribution: A few contributions will yield from this work. Characteristics of defects will be identified, allowing other researchers to build on this work to produce more efficient prediction models in future. New modelling techniques that better suit state-of-the-art knowledge in defect prediction shall be designed. Such prediction models should be transformed in a tool that can be used by our industrial collaborator in the real industry environment.


We explore the social psychological processes through which fan-based experiences become situated in fans' larger life narratives. Drawing on original survey data with long-term U.S. soap opera fans, we examine how the psychological mechanism of autobiographical reasoning functions in fans' construction of self-narratives over time. The case study presented here is a subset of a larger investigation into the age-related structure of fans' activities, identities, and interpretive capacities. Situated at the intersections of gerontological (life span/life course) theory and contemporary fan studies, our project mines relatively uninvestigated theoretical terrain. We conclude with a brief discussion of implications for future fan studies.


Changes in cellular microtubule organization often accompany developmental progression. In the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo, the centrosome, which is attached to the nucleus via ZYG-12, organizes the microtubule network. In this study, we investigate ZYG-12 function and microtubule organization before embryo formation in the gonad. Surprisingly, ZYG-12 is dispensable for centrosome attachment in the germline. However, ZYG-12–mediated recruitment of dynein to the nuclear envelope is required to maintain microtubule organization, membrane architecture, and nuclear positioning within the syncytial gonad. We examined γ-tubulin localization and microtubule regrowth after depolymerization to identify sites of nucleation in germ cells. γ-Tubulin localizes to the plasma membrane in addition to the centrosome, and regrowth initiates at both sites. Because we do not observe organized microtubules around zyg-12(ct350) mutant nuclei with attached centrosomes, we propose that gonad architecture, including membrane and nuclear positioning, is determined by microtubule nucleation at the plasma membrane combined with tension on the microtubules by dynein anchored at the nucleus by ZYG-12.


The work described in this thesis focusses on designing and building two novel physical devices in a robotic arm structure. The arm is intended for human-robot interaction in the domestic assistive robotics area. The first device aims at helping to ensure the safety of the human user. It acts as a mechanical fuse and disconnects the robotic arm link from its motor in case of collision. The device behaves in a rigid manner in normal operational times and in a compliant manner in case of potentially harmful collisions: it relies on a variable compliance. The second device is the end-effector of the robotic arm. It is a novel grasping device that aims at accommodating varying object shapes. This is achieved by the structure of the grasping device that is a soft structure with a compliant and a rigid phase. Its completely soft structure is able to mould to the object's shape in the compliant phase, while the rigid phase allows holding the object in a stable way.

In this study, variable compliance is defined as a physical structure's change from a compliant to a rigid behaviour and vice versa. Due to its versatility and effectiveness, variable compliance has become the founding block of the design of the two devices in the robot arm physical structure. The novelty of the employment of variable compliance in this thesis resides in its use in both rigid and soft devices in order to help ensure both safety and adaptable grasping in one integrated physical structure, the robot arm.

The safety device has been designed, modelled, produced, tested and physically embedded in the robot arm system. Compared to previous work in this field, the feature described in this thesis' work has a major advantage: its torque threshold can be actively regulated depending on the operational situation. The threshold torque is best described by an exponential curve in the mathematical model while it is best fit by a second order equation in the experimental data. The mismatch is more considerable for high values of threshold torque. However, both curves reflect that threshold torque magnitude increases by increasing the setting of the device. Testing of both the passive decoupling and active threshold torque regulation show that both are successfully obtained. The second novel feature of the robot arm is the soft grasping device inspired by hydrostatic skeletons. Its ability to passively adapts to complex shapes objects, reduces the complexity of the grasping action control. This gripper is low-cost, soft, cable-driven and it features no stiff sections. Its versatility, variable compliance and stable grasp are shown in several experiments. A model of the forward kinematics of the system is derived from observation of its bending behaviour.

Variable compliance has shown to be a very relevant principle for the design and implementation of a robotic arm aimed at safely interacting with human users and that can reduce grasp control complexity by passively adapting to the object's shape.


A recessive Arabidopsis mutation, carbohydrate accumulation mutant1 (cam1), which maps to position 22.8 on chromosome 3, was identified by screening leaves of ethyl methanesulfonate-mutagenized M2 plants stained with iodine for altered starch content. Increased starch content in leaves of the cam1 mutant was observed at the onset of flowering. This mutant also had a delayed floral initiation phenotype with more rosette leaves than the parental line. In addition, activities of several enzymes associated with starch metabolism were altered in the cam1 mutant. The late-flowering mutant gigantea (gi) also manifested an elevated starch level in leaves. However, not all late-flowering mutants had increased leaf starch content. Double mutants cam1 adg1 (for ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase), cam1 pgm (for phosphoglucomutase), and gi pgm had no observable starch in leaves but showed the late-flowering phenotype, demonstrating that the elevated starch content is not the cause of late floral initiation. The pleiotropic effects of cam1 and gi suggest that they may play regulatory roles in starch metabolism and floral initiation. These data suggest that starch accumulation and floral initiation may share a common regulatory pathway.


Emergence of sensor networks for data-procurement in wide-ranging applications, including defense, medical, environmental and structural health monitoring, has led to development of low-power miniature devices employing radio frequency (RF) communications. In contrast to RF, optical devices are smaller and consume less power; reflection, diffraction, and scattering from aerosols help distribute signal over large areas; and optical wireless provides freedom from interference and eavesdropping within an opaque enclosure. Optics can accommodate high-bandwidth transmission of multimedia in aircrafts, where RF is shunned due to interference with control signals. These motivate use of optical wireless as a mode of communication in sensor networks. We have set up and experimented on an infrared laser transceiver test-bed with ceiling used as reflector to establish an intensity-modulated/direct-detected (IM/DD) link. Frequency measurements are conducted to characterize the link up to 1 GHz, and are transformed to obtain impulse responses and eye diagrams. These experimental findings demonstrate the capability of indoor optical wireless links of delivering 1 gigabit per second and beyond, without intersymbol interference. Thus, a broadband infrastructure can be deployed allowing high-quality audio-visual data communication among sensor nodes.


Social Media has altered the way in which people interact, collaborate and communicate. In particular, social network sites (SNS) have grown tremendously popular and are creating new forms of Web use. The social interactive nature of SNS enables people to share cultural tastes and content across the Web. Cultural goods are hedonic experiential goods and are used in SNS as a means of acquiring and maintaining friendship networks amongst other purposes. Music, in particular, is discussed, shared, and sampled across SNS. The objective of this research is to understand the impact of social networking software on the consumption of cultural goods. Specifically we investigate the affect the functional affordances of SNS have on the consumption tasks for discovering cultural goods (music). This research-in-progress paper defines SNS, outlines the key affordances of SNS, and describes the nature of cultural goods consumption. This is followed by a description of the research objectives, proposed research model, and planned activities for the next stage of the research project.


A new European Union (EU) clean air strategy is being prepared and proposals for emission reduction commitments for each member state have been announced. The list of pollutants in the revised NEC directive now includes fine particles (PM2.5) and also black carbon is mentioned, although without tangible ambition levels for emission cuts. For the above emissions, residential wood combustion (RWC) is the major source that is not currently regulated by EU level legislation and also national legislation is scarce. The proposed Ecodesign directive for small-scale wood combustion appliances is designed to address the issue. This study estimates the impacts of such legislation to the Finnish appliance stock and for reducing national RWC emissions by the year 2030. Ecodesign will only affect new appliances on the market and due to the long lifetime of commonly used stoves in Finland, there is a notable lag between the legislation entering into force and achieving visible results in emission reduction. In a studied baseline scenario, the implementation of Ecodesign from the start of 2022 will produce 6% reductions to PM2.5 emissions and 4% reductions to black carbon emissions. Although it is a step in the right direction, it takes a long time for the legislation to have notable effects on emissions, and it also doesn't address the single most important appliance type in Finland –sauna stoves. This means that additional measures are needed to reduce emissions in this sector.


Abstract In this study, we examine the impact of community social capital on asymmetric cost behaviour. Community social capital captures the strength of social norms and the density of social networks in a region. As such, it is a socio-economic factor that might affect managerial resource adjustment decisions via different channels. We find that firms headquartered in U.S. counties with high social capital exhibit significantly less asymmetry in cost behaviour. Community social capital restrains managers from taking opportunistic resource adjustment decisions that would induce cost stickiness. This is in line with our additional finding, that cooperative norms acting in an ethical manner are the dominant channel for our setting, by which community social capital affects cost behaviour. Our results corroborate the important role of managerial discretion in cost behaviour and make a significant contribution in understanding how local environmental factors explain differences in firms' sticky cost behaviour.


Because of their broadband luminescence, TM-ion-doped materials are of high interest for applications as tunable and short-pulse lasers. Systems with a d1 electron configuration possess only one excited 3d level and excited-state absorption into higher-lying 3d levels is impossible. One of these d1 systems, Ti:sapphire has become the most successful tunable and short-pulse laser system to date. Mn6+ is a promising d1 ion for a tunable laser system. In BaSO4, near-infrared emission from Mn6+ was observed. The room-temperature stimulated-emission cross section is larger than the excited-state-absorption cross section in the spectral range 920-1600 nm [1], i.e., as a laser material BaSO4:Mn6+ can offer a broad tuning range.
 Here we report on the first epitaxial growth of Mn6+-doped BaSO4 layers. Growth techniques such as the melt growth fail, because barium sulphate has a phase transition at 1090°C and exhibits thermal decomposition at 1590°C. Therefore, we grew BaSO4 substrate crystals by the flux method. The Mn6+ ions tend to reduce to Mn5+ at T  620°C. We used a CsCl-KCl-NaCl solvent [2] for the LPE of BaSO4:Mn6+. This solvent has a low solidification temperature of 480°C and the growth process could be performed at temperatures well below 620°C. The nominal Mn6+ concentration was up to 0.8 mol%. High quality, lack of large-size inclusions, and low defect concentration were achieved. These Mn6+-doped BaSO4 layers were investigated spectroscopically by absorption, emission, and luminescence-excitation measurements at room temperature. Excitation at 800 nm leads to broadband Mn6+ emission between 850 and 1600 nm. Currently, we investigate the lasing potential of our BaSO4:Mn6+ layers.
[1] T.C. Brunold, H.U. Gudel, S. Kuck, G. Huber, JOSA B 14, 2373 (1997).
[2] D. Ehrentraut, M. Pollnau, J. Cryst. Growth 234, 533 (2002).


The article discusses Irish-Americans' journeys to Ireland in contemporary movies. In the movies Ireland literally enables: the journey affords couples, enlightens characters, and brings families together. Although the narratives at times self-consciously address stereotypes and cliches, Ireland's beautiful scenery and charming people serve as a retreat from the American city and its postmodern vexations. Conflicts within contemporary US-American society are thus resolved by appropriating Irishness and ethnicity. By recurring to stereotypes about Irishness, the movies present the homeland as an alternative and corrective to the daily strife of modern life in the US. The protagonists' identity crises are solved through contact with the Irish community or research into family history; and women find their role by embracing Irish traditionalism and finding an Irish husband. The movies thus illustrate the interdependence of discourses on gender, national identity, and ethnicity.


Generation of both scalar and vector hollow beams was demonstrated by using a mirror with a low-reflectivity spot to suppress the oscillation of lower order transverse modes. As scalar beams, several hollow Laguerre-Gaussian beams have been observed from a side-pumped Nd:yttrium aluminum garnet laser cavity. The intensity profiles were in an excellent agreement with theoretical ones. The phase front variation around the optical axis was verified to be spiral. Furthermore, both Laguerre-Gaussian and Bessel-Gaussian vector beams have been also observed from the identical cavity. In addition to the verification of intensity profiles, polarization pattern measurement confirmed that the beams had revolving polarization distributions along the azimuthal direction as theoretically predicted.


ABSTRACT
BackgroundHospital length of stay (LOS) is a widely used measure for assessing cross-jurisdiction health system performance and informs resource allocation decisions. However, the accuracy of existing LOS risk adjustment models are limited, because they are mostly derived from administrative data, which mostly contain clinical/diagnostic information but lack detailed information on relevant demographic, socio-economic (SES), and self-reported health-related quality of life (HRQOL) risk factors, which have been shown to improve the accuracy of LOS risk adjustment models. The study investigates the relative contribution of demographic, socio-economic, and health status risk factors derived through data linkage in improving the accuracy of LOS risk adjustment models.
MethodsPopulation-based data on 8000 individuals hospitalized for coronary heart disease were obtained from Alberta Provincial Project on Outcomes Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH) registry and linked to Alberta Discharge Abstract Database (DAD). SES was measured using multi-domain measure of SES derived from area-level census information, while the health-related quality of life outcome was measured using the Seattle Angina Questionnaire. LOS risk adjustment model based on hierarchical logistic regression models was developed to assess relative impact of each SES measure and HRQOL measure improving the predictive accuracy of LOS adjustment models. The relative impact of each predictor was assessed by its adjusted odds ratio (OR) and improvement over the predictive accuracy of a reference model that included patients' clinical risk factors only.
ResultMore than 80% of the hospitalized individuals had prolonged LOS more than 10 days. The HRQOL and single-domain measures of SES had significant impact in accurately predicting LOS. But the inclusion of the multi-domain measure SES did not significantly improve the accuracy of LOS risk adjustment models
ConclusionUsing large population-based Canadian data, our study suggests that the inclusion of patients' SES and health status information through data linkage can improve the accuracy of LOS risk adjustment models. The development of more accurate risk adjustment models can aid the identification of individuals at risk of prolonged LOS and comparison of health system performance across several cross-jurisdictions.


In 2012, Canada's refugee system underwent a significant transformation. Throughout the period of reform, refugee advocates, researchers and support workers expressed concern that the changes would individually and cumulatively exacerbate existing access to justice deficits for refugee claimants. Drawing on experience from the authors' involvement with the University of Ottawa Refugee Assistance Project, as well as dedicated supplementary research, this paper begins by outlining a social context conception of access to justice and then explores how access to justice issues were considered as part of the refugee system reform process, including what deficits experts foresaw arising as a result of that reform. The paper then details institutional responses to the new system, before providing insights on the access to justice deficits experts indicated refugees were actually experiencing two years after implementation of key reforms. This analysis draws on a variety of primary and secondary sources, including an actual claimant file which is used to both explore key access to justice concerns and illustrate the vital importance of more in-depth study in this area.


A trope of international law scholarship is that the United States is an "exceptionalist" nation, one that takes a distinctive (frequently hostile, unilateralist, or hypocritical) stance toward international law. However, all major powers are similarly "exceptionalist," in the sense that they take distinctive approaches to international law that reflect their values and interests. We illustrate these arguments with discussions of China, the European Union, and the United States. Charges of international-law exceptionalism betray an undefended assumption that one particular view of international law (for scholars, usually the European view) is universally valid.


Currently, there are a variety of concerns about the future of bouldering, a form of rock climbing, at the Niagara Glen Nature Reserve near Niagara Falls, Ontario due to environmental impacts at the site. The purpose of this study was to describe the perceptions ofbouldering participants toward sustainable bouldering practices at the Niagara Glen. The methodological framework for this study was based on action research, which attempts to solve specific problems through having people in a community study, discuss, and act on those problems. Five separate focus group interviews elicited data from nineteen men and seven women, while there were twenty one men and ten women observed through participant observations at the Niagara Glen. Analysis was conducted through coding processes where data were compared repeatedly and then organized into themes. From the open coding process, two main themes were identified and interpreted as 1) Barriers to Sustainable Bouldering at the Niagara Glen Nature Reserve, and 2) Environmental and Social Role and Responsibility ofBouldering Participants at the Niagara Glen. The implications ofthe findings include a variety of recommendations for the bouldering community and the Niagara Parks Commission to consider for future collaborative planning. Some of these recommendations include more open communication between all stakeholders at the Glen, additional leadership from local climbing access coalitions and the Niagara Parks Commission, and greater implementation of minimum impact practices from the bouldering community. Additionally, these implications are discussed through a three-part framework based on a conceptual intersection of sense of place, community empowerment, and sustainable recreational use as a way to potentially unify the bouldering community's voice and vision toward sustainable practice.


This MPhil focused on optimisation of graphene synthesis and device fabrication via Chemical Vapour Deposition. The primary aim of this work was to determine an optimal process for the fabrication of graphene tunnelling devices. Using analytical techniques to determine the quality of graphene samples after each step in the fabrication methodology under development, insights from these results could be used to develop a procedure which affords graphene devices with improved sheet resistivity, defect density, surface roughness, monolayer coverage and continuity. The optimised method which is proposed in this MPhil is aimed specifically for use in the synthesis of graphene electrodes for tunnelling heterostructure fabrication. High resolution Raman mapping of graphene grown Copper seed substrates showed drastic variation in graphene quality across areas corresponding to different Copper miller surface terminations. Further Raman, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and electrical measurements were performed to investigate graphene quality degradation upon wet-transfer of graphene onto Silicon substrates, which showed that the formation of graphene wrinkles during wet transfer is primarily responsible for the degradation of graphene quality during this step. AFM studies were also performed to determine an optimal annealing process to remove Polymer residues from graphene post-transfer. The sheet resistivity of graphene devices fabricated via the proposed methodology is up to ~3 fold lower than that of commercially available graphene, furthermore graphene wrinkle formation may be avoided improving sample continuity and decreasing surface roughness.


To improve the personal mobility, safety, and environmental impact of passenger travel and to strengthen regional and national economies, planners, governments, and transportation companies throughout the world have been building high-speed rail (HSR) systems for more than half a century. Although many early systems were principally government projects, public–private partnerships are increasingly being used to design, build, operate, and maintain these HSR networks. However, engaging the private sector requires a clear understanding of the potential profit-ability of such a system. A key question affecting this understanding is the configuration of the line in terms of its length, number and location of stations, and ultimate alignment. A computer model was developed; it used station, route, and system data to determine the most profitable routes based on the proposed stations. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine which variables had the greatest impact on the costs and returns of an HSR route. The sensitivity analysis led to the division of the design variables into three categories based on their impact on profitability. Variables that were found to have a major influence were project concession period, ridership, fare, annual fare increase, train set availability, cost of building on a viaduct, and land value increase. Categorizing the design variables allows the model to be used more efficiently in a multiphase approach that reduces the time and resources required to assess potential HSR lines.


Product-line architectures, i.e. a software architecture and component set shared by a family of products, represents a promising approach to achieving reuse of software. Several companies are initiating or have recently adopted a product-line architecture. However, little experience is available with respect to the evolution of the products, the software components and the software architecture. Due to the higher level of interdependency between the various software assets, software evolution is a more complex process. We identified characterization of software product lines based on dimensions of primary assets, views on the organization and on assets life cycle stages and after that introduced categorizations of the evolution of the requirements, the software architecture and the software components. Our work is focused on analyzing different ways of managing modifications during architecture evolution.


We are proud to organize the first FabLearn conference in the Netherlands where many maker education initiatives are shared in masterclasses and on a fair. As early as 2007, the first maker initiatives started in the Netherlands and making keeps gaining momentum in education. As new parties are embracing maker education – its teaching principles as well as the innovative making technologies – it is a good moment to make up a balance of what has been achieved so far and to discuss where maker education could go. The research papers enable us to systematically reflect on the Dutch makers education experiences. The six papers brought together at the FabLearn Netherlands 2018 conference give a broad picture of maker education in the Netherlands. Some are written by insiders of the maker movement and others are written from the perspective of design and technology education. In this tradition, making and prototyping is seen as a crucial element and vital to the learning of young people. For a complete picture, contributions from arts education are necessary as well, however, research in this area is still scarce. The papers describe various maker initiatives in primary, secondary and higher education and in libraries, however, many of them describe initiatives in primary education. Each paper has its own focus, and together they show what has been achieved in maker education in the Netherlands, and they highlight issues and new approaches that will forward learning through making in an even better way than before.


Endocrinology - as only HARRISON'S can cover it. A Doody's Core Title for 2015. Featuring a superb compilation of chapters on endocrinology that appear in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, Eighteenth Edition, this concise, full-color clinical companion delivers the latest knowledge in the field backed by the scientific rigor and authority that have defined Harrison's. You will find content from renowned editors and contributors in a carry-anywhere presentation that is ideal for the classroom, clinic, ward, or exam/certification preparation. Features: an organization that reflects the physiologic roots of endocrinology: Pituitary, Thyroid, and Adrenal Disorders; Reproductive Endocrinology; Diabetes Mellitus, Obesity, Lipoprotein Metabolism; Disorders Affecting Multiple Endocrine Systems; and Disorders of Bone and Calcium Metabolism; an important introduction that uses numerous examples of translational research to link genetics, cell biology, and physiology with pathophysiology and treatment; integration of pathophysiology with clinical management; 108 high-yield questions and answers drawn from Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine Self-Assessment and Board Review, 18e; updates and new developments since the publication of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 18e; 29 chapters written by physicians who are recognized experts in the field of endocrinology; and, Helpful appendix of laboratory values of clinical importance.


As with the traditional formation of customary international law more generally, one might frame a case for norms of consultation with Indigenous peoples in terms of state practice and opinio juris, and some have done so in at least partial ways. This chapter focuses, rather, on what has arguably become the most significant post-DRIP comment on consultation, that issued by Special Rapporteur James Anaya in his second report to the United Nations Human Rights Council as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People. As Part II of the chapter will show in the context of a larger description of the report, the Special Rapporteur's Report actually tends to eschew reference to the traditional customary international law arguments. Part III will consider the claim that the Report manifests a significant fracturing around the legitimate formation of customary international law, with the possibility of something other than state practice and opinio juris more appropriately grounding customary international law formation in some contexts. Part IV argues that the norm formation in this instance paradoxically reflects both an interesting transformation in the role of non-state actors in law formation within the global legal order and reinforcement of more traditional state-centred law formation.This is a pre-print version of a chapter in, "International Law In the New Age of Globalization", (Andrew Byrnes, Mika Hayashi & Christopher Michaelsen eds., 2013), and the published version should be consulted and cited as the official version.


When Henry David Thoreau died in 1862, friends and admirers remembered him as an eccentric man whose outer life was continuously fed by deeper spiritual currents. But scholars have since focused almost exclusively on Thoreau's literary, political, and scientific contributions. This book offers the first in-depth study of Thoreau's religious thought and experience. In it Alan D. Hodder recovers the lost spiritual dimension of the writer's life, revealing a deeply religious man who, despite his rejection of organised religion, possessed a rich inner life, characterised by a sort of personal, experiential, nature-centered, and eclectic spirituality that finds wider expression in America today. At the heart of Thoreau's life were episodes of exhilaration in nature that he commonly referred to as his ecstasies. Hodder explores these representations of ecstasy throughout Thoreau's writings, from the riverside reflections of his first book through Walden and the later journals, when he conceived of his journal writing as a spiritual discipline in itself and a kind of forum in which to cultivate experiences of contemplative non-attachment. In doing so, Hodder restores to our understanding the deeper spiritual dimension of Thoreau's life to which his writings everywhere bear witness.


The research examines organisational learning (OL) and knowledge management (KM) literature about public and private sector project based companies' learning from construction projects through new knowledge generation. Research explores "Company X's" aim for continuous improvement through lessons learned initiative's implementation. "Company X's" initiative consists of two processes, lessons learned collection (LLCP) and lessons learned application. The research examines the LLCP through a cultural and structural perspective. The research value is in its contribution towards better understanding of the organisational learning in public sector project based companies in Ireland, given that the majority of scholars examine private sector companies refer with location in Asia, the United Kingdom and the US (Rashman, Whithers and Harley, 2009).

The research uses a qualitative research method, employing a holistic, single design, case study. Two data collection methods are used to increase the research construct validity (Yin, 2014) i.e. documentation and face-to face interviews that are semi-structured and non-standardised.

The research results indicate, that "Company X" learned through the use of the organisational learning values, which are embedded in its culture. The matrix structure of "Company X" is a barrier to learning from projects due to dual reporting. The LLCP atmosphere is improved due to the neutral facilitator involvement. Further improvement is needed to enhance the LLCP storing and sharing activities.


A systematic method of design for asynchronous sequential circuits using Logic Cell Arrays such as XILINX 2000 or 3000 series is presented. In this method each state is represented by a separate flip-flop whose clock signal is generated locally. State machines of considerable size can be accommodated on a single chip and in most applications the outputs are readily available on the chip without the need for external decoding of the states. Problems of races and hazards, commonly associated with asynchronous circuits, are eliminated. The method is applied to the design of a VME Bus Requester and the use of CAD packages to simulate such designs are discussed. >


The goal of this study is to deliver both an in-depth comprehensive analysis of the current state of IPv6 adoption and an assessment of the quality of services over the IPv6 Internet. Our assessment comprises an examination of eight data sets used to produce a comprehensive picture of IPv6 adoption across 12 metrics. We assessed the quality of services over the IPv6 Internet using eight globally distributed monitoring agents to compare the HTTP load times to targeted websites over IPv6 and IPv4. The results of our analysis confirm the findings of previous studies showing that IPv6 is in an accelerating adoption phase and that the IPv6 Internet is maturing in its ability to deliver quality of services on a par to IPv4. The long anticipated exhaustion of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) IPv4 global address pool occurred in February of 2011. Since that time, four of the five regional Internet registries (RIRs) have also exhausted their IPv4 address pools, leaving the African Network Information Centre as the only RIR with a pool of IPv4 addresses remaining for general allocation. As the availability of IPv4 addresses continues to diminish, the adoption and use of IPv6 is rapidly increasing. However, the quality of IPv6 deployments and implementations is not always equal, which can cause user experiences over the IPv6 Internet to suffer. For this reason, ongoing monitoring and measurement are essential to provide a comprehensive picture of IPv6 adoption and to evaluate the quality of services over IPv6.


Honey, which has many positive health effects, is fondly consumed in our country and in the world. Although honey is considered to be a micro-organism-free food because of its antimicrobial and bacteriostatic effects, studies refute this idea. In addition to primary contamination, personnel, tools and equipment used in beekeeping and honey production is a potential source of secondary contamination. In addition, honey, which can carry many microorganisms as a result of cross-contamination, is among the important foods and can threat public health. Therefore, it is thought that screening of pathogens that may be present in honey would contribute to the studies. Due to the geographical location, the diversity of climate and vegetation, Turkey is located in the upper row of honey producting countries. In this study, 900 samples examined in Kırklareli province in Northern Marmara Region. Kırklareli region has been chosen as the research area since it is considered as an important province in honey production and is a border province located in the industrial zone. The aim of the study was to investigate the presence of parasitological, bacterial, fungal and viral parameters which are important for the quality of the consumer, bee, larvae, colony and honey. According to the obtained data, positive results were found in many parameters and statistically significant results were obtained.


In this discussion paper, I review a number of common misconceptions about the phonological deficit theory (PDH) of dyslexia. These include the common but mistaken idea that the PDH is simply about phonemic awareness (PA), and, consequently, is a circular "pseudo"-explanation or epiphenomenon of reading difficulties. I argue that PA is only the "tip of the phonological iceberg" and that "deeper" spoken-language phonological impairments among dyslexics appear well before the onset of reading and even at birth. Furthermore, not even reading-specific expressions of phonological deficits—PA or pseudoword naming, can be considered circular if we clearly distinguish between reading proper—real meaning-bearing words, or real text, and the mechanisms (subskills) of reading development (such as phonological recoding). I also explain why an understanding of what constitutes an efficient writing system explains why phonology is necessarily a major source of variability in reading ability and hence a core deficit (or at least one core deficit) among struggling readers whether dyslexic or non-dyslexic. I also address the misguided notion that the PDH has now fallen out of favor because most dyslexia researchers have (largely) ceased studying phonological processing. I emphasize that acceptance of the PDH does not imply repudiation of other non-phonological hypotheses because the PDH does not claim to account for all the variance in reading ability/disability. Finally, I ask where neurobiology enters the picture and suggest that researchers need to exercise more caution in drawing their conclusions.


Special issue editorial: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline the articles presented in the Special Issue on the topic of "Marketing and flexibility", and to discuss key issues associated with major debates relating to flexibility in order to position the articles within a wider context and highlight some key issues for further research. Design/methodology/approach – Themes in prior research relating to "Marketing and flexibility" are documented and the growth of research interest into strategic flexibility is tabulated. The contributions of each article are briefly discussed. Findings – There has been a steady growth of research interest into flexibility. To provide an example of this growth, the increase in the number of articles published on the topic of strategic flexibility in scholarly journals is highlighted over a 20-year period. Key issues in prior research such as alternative definitions and the different postulated relationships between market orientation and strategic flexibility are revealed, as are issues for future research. Originality/value – Key issues relating to research into flexibility for marketing scholars are revealed.


We study motion of current-carrying string loops in the field of braneworld spherically symmetric black holes and naked singularities. The spacetime is described by the Reissner-Nordstrom geometry with tidal charge b reflecting the non-local tidal effects coming from the external dimension; both positive and negative values of the spacetime parameter b are considered. We restrict attention to the axisymmetric motion of string loops when the motion can be fully governed by an appropriately defined effective potential related to the energy and angular momentum of the string loops. In dependence on these two constants of the motion, the string loops can be captured, trapped, or can escape to infinity. In close vicinity of stable equilibrium points at the centre of trapped states the motion is regular. We describe how it is transformed to chaotic motion with growing energy of the string loop. In the field of naked singularities the trapped states located off the equatorial plane of the system exist and trajectories unable to cross the equatorial plane occur, contrary to the trajectories in the field of black holes where crossing the equatorial plane is always admitted. We concentrate our attention to the so called transmutation effect when the string loops are accelerated in the deep gravitational field near the black hole or naked singularity by transforming the oscillatory energy to the energy of the transitional motion. We demonstrate that the influence of the tidal charge can be substantial especially in the naked singularity spacetimes with b > 1 where the acceleration to ultrarelativistic velocities with Lorentz factor γ ~ 100 can be reached, being more than one order higher in comparison with those obtained in the black hole spacetimes.


Traffic congestion is a major operational problem for freeways in Washington State. Recent studies have estimated that more than 50 percent of freeway congestion is caused by traffic incidents. To help the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) identify effective countermeasures against such congestion-inducing incidents, a thorough understanding of travel delays caused by incidents is essential. By using traffic data extracted from archived loop detector measurements and incident log data recorded by the WSDOT Incident Response (IR) team, this research project developed a new algorithm for quantifying travel delays produced by different incident categories. The algorithm applies a modified deterministic queuing theory to estimate incident-induced delay by using 1-minute aggregated loop detector data. Incident-induced delay refers to the difference between the total delay and the recurrent travel delay at the time and location influenced by the incident. The uniqueness of the delay calculation in this study is the use of a dynamic traffic-volume-based background profile, which is considered a more accurate representation of prevailing traffic conditions. According to the test results, the proposed algorithm can provide good estimates for incident-induced delay and capture the evolution of freeway traffic flow during incident duration. Because actual traffic data measured by loop detectors were used in this study to compute vehicle arrival and departure rates for delay calculations, the estimated incident-induced delay should be very close to the reality. Additionally, the proposed algorithm was implemented in the Advanced Roadway Incident Analyzer (ARIA) system. ARIA is a database-driven computer system that automates all the computational processes. More accurate incident delay information will help WSDOT improve its understanding of congestion-inducing incidents and select more effective countermeasures against incident-related traffic congestion on freeways.


The power of modern computing technology makes data gathering and storage easier. This leads to create new range of problems and challenges for data analysis. In this study a proposed approach based on clustering techniques for outlier detection is presented. At first EM-Cluster algorithm is performed to identify the missing values through which small clusters are formed. Then univariate outlier detection method is applied to identify outliers. The proposed approach gave effective results within optimum time and space when applied to synthetic data set.


The B-cell mitogens lipopolysaccharide (LPS), Nocardia water-soluble mitogen (NWSM), and dextran sulfate (DxS) react with different subpopulations of B lymphocytes. Selective in vitro killing of cells responding to either LPS or NWSM has little effect on the in vitro response to the other mitogen, although the response to DxS is reduced in both cases. If, after selective in vitro killing, cells are injected into irradiated mice for 2-3 wk before measuring their in vitro mitogen responses, the same specificity pattern is seen. Thus, one is dealing with different B-cell subpopulations rather than different stages of maturation of a single population. Treatment with various alloantisera and complement before measuring the mitogen response to LPS and NWSM shows that (a) whereas all LPS response cells carry surface Ig, a subpopulation of NWSM responsive cells does not; (b) both LPS- and NWSM- responsive cells carry I-A antigens but might not I-E or I-J antigens; (c) all LPS-responsive cells carry I-C antigens, whereas approximately 25% of NWSM responsive cells do not: (d) there is a subpopulation of NWSM-responsive cells carrying neither surface Ig nor I-C antigens and resistant to anti-theta treatment.


This thesis is concerned with the design of digital technologies, particularly digital interpretation, to reveal the natural world and support human connection to natural places. The natural world is under an accelerating threat as a result of human behaviour and increased technology use is perceived to be part of the problem. Some philosophers have made a connection between the design of technology and the behavioural and attitudinal tendencies elicited through the use of technology. Whether or not this is true it is an interesting area of research. The research project described explores the use of criticism of technology, taken from a selection of critical theory writings, as a design lens to inform design process and the design of digital artefacts for use in nature. The research draws heavily on the work of Heidegger, Borgmann and Feenberg to inform the design lens. The first phase of the research involved drawing out design criteria from the critiques of technology. The next phase of the research which drew on Reflective Practice and Research through Design, applied the design lens to a prototype design which was intended to be used to build connection with a woodland area. The subsequent research involved a longterm collaboration with gardeners and volunteers at the Walled Kitchen Garden in Clumber Park, a National Trust property in Nottinghamshire. The research explored the use of the design principles drawn from critical theory to create and evaluate digital interpretation for the garden. The open and reflective research approach allowed for the evolution of new research questions through the process. This led to additional questions about sustaining digital interpretation and designing for active engagement. The findings suggest that the designs produced using the lens drawn from critical theory are distinct and contextually relevant designs that have a 'family resemblance'. The research shows that the design principles drawn from critical theory resulted in an embedded, design process that was highly responsive to context. One of the contributions of the research is a set of recommendations to be considered when designing digital interpretation for organisations with an interest in environmental issues. The research also results in tentative contributions towards a digital nature strand for the primary school curriculum involving cross-curricular, multi-sensory and multi-dimensional activities to build connection to natural environments.


A method is proposed for recursive computation of the propagation of forecasting error covariances where the forecast is derived from a nonlinear state space model of water quality dynamics. This particular method, based on the idea of an extended Kalman filtering algorithm, is more commonly applied to the problem of real-time state and parameter estimation and to the problem of model calibration. This paper exploits that connection in order to stress the close relationship between model calibration and the use of models for forecasting the future behavior of a system. It is argued that the analyst is frequently unaware of the levels of uncertainty in a calibrated water quality model; nor is it obvious how this uncertainty is distributed among the individual relationships that make up the model. Such uncertainty in the model, i.e., the model parameter estimation errors, has a significant effect on the confidence that can be assigned to model-based forecasts. A partitioned form of the algorithm is presented. This not only permits a considerable saving in computational effort but it also provides useful insight into the way in which the various sources of uncertainty propagate forward in time with the forecast.


This paper models an energy tax reform process out of a status quo and towards environmentally related excises, distinguishing between uniform and non-uniform tax components, positive and normative tax structures, and adopting a non- Ramsey specification. The model is implemented for Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, and a rebalancing of fuel taxes is found where gasoline and diesel are the main drivers, due in part to higher estimates of the environmental costs of diesel relative to gasoline than those found in Parry and Strand (2010) for Chile. Environmental (mostly local) gains of the reform are significant, while fiscal impacts are positive and large. They do not, however, include double dividend effects because of price increases in widespread energy inputs triggered by the reform exercise. The tax reform has a positive distributive impact in Uruguay, while large pre-existing price distortions tend to produce negative impacts in Argentina and Bolivia.


Objective. To test the effectiveness of adding a narrative leaflet to the current information material delivered by the NHS English colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programme on reducing socioeconomic inequalities in uptake. Participants. 150,417 adults (59–74 years) routinely invited to complete the guaiac Faecal Occult Blood test (gFOBt) in March 2013. Design. A cluster randomised controlled trial (ISRCTN74121020) to compare uptake between two arms. The control arm received the standard NHS CRC screening information material (SI) and the intervention arm received the standard information plus a supplementary narrative leaflet, which had previously been shown to increase screening intentions (SI + N). Between group comparisons were made for uptake overall and across socioeconomic status (SES). Results. Uptake was 57.7% and did not differ significantly between the two trial arms (SI: 58.5%; SI + N: 56.7%; odds ratio = 0.93; 95% confidence interval: 0.81–1.06; p = 0.27). There was no interaction between group and SES quintile (p = 0.44). Conclusions. Adding a narrative leaflet to existing information materials does not reduce the SES gradient in uptake. Despite the benefits of using a pragmatic trial design, the need to add to, rather than replace, existing information may have limited the true value of an evidence-based intervention on behaviour.


We propose EndoScope, a software monitoring framework that allows users to pose declarative queries that monitor the state and performance of running programs. Unlike most existing monitoring tools, EndoScope is acquisitional, meaning that it only instruments the portions of the program that need to be monitored to answer queries. The use of a high level declarative language allows EndoScope to search for efficient physical instantiations of queries by applying a suite of optimizations, including control flow graph analysis, and traditional database query optimization techniques, such as predicate pushdown and join optimization, to minimize the number of program instrumentation points and overhead to the monitored program. Furthermore, a flexible, high level language and the ability to attach to running programs enable developers to build various program analysis and monitoring applications beyond traditional software profilers with EndoScope. We describe a prototype implementation of the EndoScope framework and a simple profiler for Java programs implemented with EndoScope. We show results from using our profiler on a collection of real-world programs, including a TPC-C implementation using the Derby database and the petstore application running on top of Tomcat application server. Our results show the benefit of our optimization framework and demonstrate that our declarative, acquisitional approach can yield program instrumentation overheads that are dramatically lower than conventional profiling tools (for example, when profiling the Derby Database running TPC-C, our system's overhead ranges from 1% to about 25%, whereas the fastest existing profiler we measured imposes a minimum overhead of about 30%.)


The term land has a very complex concept. It is this reason that some people called it as a double Dutch language. The demand for land stock derives first from the need for agricultural goods and housing, which is essentially a demand for land services. Many well known writers who were live at different times and place had described the importance of land very well. This is why, many countries and governments decide as the land to be as government property. It is this true that the government of Ethiopia publicized the urban land is the state property by declaring through the proclamation of 721/2011 Urban land policy. When we came to its implementation, however, may not as good as it was expected. Such as: setting price, affordability systems, monitoring and controlling mechanisms, etc. So, as a researcher, I want to deal with this situation by comparing the implementation practice and the policy sayings. This study had employed qualitative research design; internet based data collection mechanism; qualitative or word mouth method of analysis. I finally, by this study after all got results like: there are different experiences which are practiced by different countries; there are differences in designing, tenure admitting and holding system, price specification and land and property ,market system, as well as implementations of urban land lease policy among countries; though, there is no one consensus on the government or state ownership on urban land tenure type in the Ethiopian context, perhaps especially in the Addis Ababa Context; it is based on different and very crucial assumptions which have legal, social, and economic rationales in adopting the current Ethiopian Urban land lease policy; etc. standing from these findings, I recommends that: I can say or recommend that the urban land lease policy is the best and likely be pretty policy choices of cities like it what happen to the current situation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In addition to that, I would likely recommend as it is better or pretty good for governments or for countries themselves if and only if they can follow or adopted the land lease policy tenure system than other tenure types, perhaps especially from the private tenure land policy type.