Sepiolids are a lesser known group of cephalopods. This paper aims to increase knowledge of their distribution and abundance in the NE Mediterranean. A total of 3404 sepiolids were collected off the north-eastern coasts of Greece, between 17 and 400 m of depth, during four seasonal trawl surveys carried out from November 1992 to August-September 1993. Nine species were identified : Neorossia caroli, Rondeletiola minor, Rossia macrosoma, Sepietta neglecta, Sepietta oweniana, Sepiola affinis, Sepiola intermedia, Sepiola ligulata and Sepiola rondeleti. S. oweniana was the most abundant species among them, followed by R. minor, R. macrosoma and S. rondeleti. The results of multivariate analysis, based on Bray-Curtis similarity indices, showed the presence of three main groups : one related to the shallower hauls near the coast (<60m) where S. rondeleti and S. intermedia were more frequently caught, a second one consisting of hauls carried out at depths 55-105 m, in which S. oweniana was the dominant spe- cies, and a third one with deeper hauls characterised by the highest abundance of S. oweniana, R.. minor and R. macro- soma. Length frequencies and maturity stages are presented by season and sex for the four most abundant species. Seasonal changes in the bathymetric distribution of these species are also discussed in relation to their life cycle.


Foreign direct investment flows began to increase in the world since 1980s in parallel with the technological progress especially in transportation and communication, global competition and financial liberalization. Foreign direct investment inflows began to increase belatedly in Turkey in 2001 due to frequent economic and financial crises and political instability. This study examines the relationship between the sovereign credit ratings of Turkey and foreign direct investment inflows during the period from January 1995 to July 2013 in Turkey by using cointegration, VAR Granger causality, vector error correction model, vector autoregression and impulse-response analyses. We find that there is a positive relationship between foreign direct investment inflows and sovereign credit ratings and the sovereign credit rating by S&P is the predominant one on the foreign direct investment inflows. Moreover this study reveals that there is a two-way causality between sovereign credit ratings by S&P and Fitch and foreign direct investment inflows and a one way causality between sovereign credit ratings by Moody's and foreign direct investment inflows and a no causality between dummy variable which represents crises and the foreign direct investment inflows.


In 2015 the government of Indonesia planned the construction of 100 technology parks, spread over the whole of the country, of which 24 Marine and Fisheries Technology Parks (MFTP) were to be built in the period from 2015 - 2019. To establish a sustainable operation of the Tegal MFTP within four years the study evaluates the implementation of the MFTP in Tegal, Central Java Province, Indonesia, using a Project Cycle Management (PCM). The Tegal MFTP has been in operations since 2015. Comparing performance to targets over the first two years has called for improvements. In 2015 four incubator activities were started up at the MFTP. Unfortunately, all but one incubator was discontinued 2016. Based on PCM analysis suggestions to improve the operational sustainability of the MFTP are presented. The suggestions cover various aspects for improvement regarding the operations for the Tegal MFTP as well as for the new MFTPs, both for those starting operations now and those still in the planning. These aspects are a financial support approach, a MFTP administrational approach, an innovative technology approach, and an incubator services approach seeking to improve the satisfaction of the participants/tenants.


The 2013 Building Energy Efficiency Standards for Low-Rise Residential Buildings allow users to demonstrate compliance via two methods: performance or prescriptive. Prescriptive documentation requires analysis to be conducted by-hand while performance compliance utilizes computer modeling software to analyze trade-offs, and demonstrate compliance through alternative building design parameters. Typically computer demonstrated compliance via the performance method is the most popular choice because it allows for complex buildings to be analyzed using their actual metrics which results in a more accurate report of proposed energy consumption (Ross, 2016). This method however requires additional software outside of the tools that architects and designers are already utilizing to create their working designs and construction documents. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of both compliance methods and the three approved software packages and then compare and contrast one of the most popular BIM software package, Autodesk Revit, with the documentation required to demonstrate compliance with the Building Energy Efficiency standard to access whether the two could be integrated in future to create one platform for design, analytics and documentation.


This paper presents a semi-automated methodology for generating geometric proof problems of the kind found in a high-school curriculum. We formalize the notion of a geometry proof problem and describe an algorithm for generating such problems over a user-provided figure. Our experimental results indicate that our problem generation algorithm can effectively generate proof problems in elementary geometry. On a corpus of 110 figures taken from popular geometry textbooks, our system generated an average of about 443 problems per figure in an average time of 4.7 seconds per figure.


A Dickinson

Dr A Dickinson, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK; email@example.com

What is the experience of mealtimes for older inpatients?

Action research study using a qualitative, interpretative, inductive approach to explore the mealtime environment before (phase 1) and after (phase 3) facilitation of changes in staff practice (phase 2).

25-bed ward in the UK.

Purposive sample of older patients (6 in phase 1, 4 in phase 3) who had stabilised after an acute admission and needed complex nursing and medical care, and ward staff (19 in phase 1, 15 in phase 3), including healthcare assistants, nutrition assistants, qualified nursing staff, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists.

In phases 1 and 3, 6 mealtimes were observed (including breakfast, lunch, and supper), 3 focus groups were conducted with ward staff, and patients participated in semistructured interviews with staff nurses. Focus groups and interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, and analysed thematically. Data from phase 1 informed the focus of phase 2.

3 themes affected patients' experiences …


This paper investigates the economic returns to language skills and bilingualism. The analysis is staged in Kazakhstan, a multi-ethnic country with complex ethnic settlement patterns that has switched its official state language from Russian to Kazakh. Using two newly assembled data sets, we find negative returns to speaking Kazakh and a negative effect of bilingualism on earnings while Russian was the official state language in the 1990s. Surprisingly, the Kazakh language continues to yield a negative wage premium 13 years after it has been made official state language. While we do neither find evidence for an ethnically segmented labor market nor for reverse causality, the low economic value of the Kazakh language can be explained by the comparatively poor quality of schools with Kazakh as language of instruction. Based on PISA data, we illustrate that scholastic achievements are substantially lower for pupils taught in Kazakh, despite the official support for the titular language. Our results suggest that switching the official state language without appropriate investments in school resources is unlikely to cure the economic disadvantage of a previously marginalized language.


This paper evaluates the hypothesis that globalization has increased the role of international factors and decreased the role of domestic factors in the inflation process in industrial economies. Toward that end, we estimate standard Phillips curve inflation equations for 11 industrial countries and use these estimates to test several predictions of the globalization and inflation hypothesis. Our results provide little support for that hypothesis. First, the estimated effect of foreign output gaps on domestic consumer price inflation is generally insignificant and often of the wrong sign. Second, we find no evidence that the trend decline in the sensitivity of inflation to the domestic output gap observed in many countries owes to globalization. Finally, and most surprisingly, our econometric results indicate no increase over time in the responsiveness of inflation to import prices for most countries. However, even though we find no evidence that globalization is affecting the parameters of the inflation process, globalization may be helping to stabilize real GDP and hence inflation. Over time, the volatility of real GDP growth has declined by more than the volatility of domestic demand, suggesting that net exports increasingly are acting to buffer output from fluctuations in domestic demand.


The 1212 phase of Bi-based superconductor by theory has good properties in terms of
structure and transition temperature, as it is an adaptation of the Y123 system and the
Bi22 12 system. The new Bi1212 system with stoichiometries
(Bi0.2Pb0.6Mx)Sr2(Y0.3Ca0.7)Cu2.05O and
( B ~ ~ . ~ P ~ ~(, ~ ~~M. ,~) s~~a~ w ~he.re ~M =) C~d anud N~b, .x =~ 0, ~0.005, 0~.1, 0.15,
0.2,0.25 has been successfully synthesized and characterized by means of X-Ray
(powder) diffraction, scanning electron microscope, AC susceptibility and resistivity
measurements. For the composition of ( B ~ ~ , ~ P ~ ~ , ~ M ~ ) sth~e ~ ( Y ~ , above stated systematic examinations clarified the effect of Cd and Nb on Bi-1212 phase,
both as a substitution (0 < x i 0.2) and as an addition (x = 0.25). All samples were
prepared using solid-state reaction. These samples underwent sintering process at two
different temperatures, which were 960°C and 980°C, for a time duration of 2 hours and
10 hours. Then all the samples underwent heat treatment in flowing argon at 750°C for 10 hours. All the samples were orthorhombic with the space group Pmmm except the
compounds with composition ( ~ i ~ ~ ~ (~ ~b~~, ~~ ~ a~ ~dan,d ~~ ,) ~~ u~ ~) ( ~ i ~ ~ ~ (~ ~b~ ~, ~, ~~a ~~w.~hic~hd w)er~e suin~te~re~d. at~~ 96~0)°C0 f~o~r 2r, ho u~rs
were tetragonal with space group P4mmm. The X-ray diffraction pattern showed that all
samples were in mixed phase (12 12 and 221 2) with 12 12 acting as a dominant phase. All
as-prepared samples showed non-superconducting properties below 20 K, but after heat
treatment in flowing argon, some of them showed superconducting properties with the
highest transition temperature of Tc,ze,,=64 K and Tc, ,,,et=80 K obtained from Nb-doping
sample with x=0.2. The ac susceptibility studies showed that most of the superconducting
material exhibited weak grain conductivity. The surface morphology of most of the
samples observed from scanning electron microscope showed a layered-slab texture.


The present study investigated the assemblage of fish species in an intertidal mangrove forest during high tide in a macrotide region. We describe the seasonal changes in the fish assemblage composition in relation to biomass, density, and species number in tidal creeks of the Furo do Meio, Caete Estuary, Brazil. A total of 29 107 individuals of 49 species in 26 families were caught using a block net. Their total weight was 526 kg (total density 0.11 ind. m -2 and total biomass 2.1 g m -2 ). Analysis of the catch data showed that the number of species varied significantly between creeks, and that total fish biomass differed significantly between seasons. The densities and biomass of the 2 most important species, Cathorops pleurops and Colomesus psittacus, were significantly different between seasons. The densities and biomass of C. pleurops, Pterengraulis atherinoides, Pseudauchnipterus nodosus, and Stellifer naso showed significant temporal differences. Significant differences between creeks were observed in the density and biomass of Anchovia clupeoides and Rhinosardinia amazonica. The abundance-biomass comparison (ABC) plots for the fish fauna in the creeks of the Furo do Meio showed that the dominant species increased in number and weight at the beginning of the rainy season. As a result of increased rainfall in March and April, salinity declined to values between 6 and 8 psu. At that time, the dominant species made up more than 60% of the total biomass and density and Hill's index of diversity (N1) declined, whereas the number of species (NO) and evenness (E2) did not change. After April, rainfall decreased, and density and biomass returned to levels similar to those before the rainy season. The number of species and the density and biomass in the mangrove tidal creeks are compared with published data for other tropical and subtropical estuaries. Migration trends were inferred from the results of the seasonal fluctuations of density and biomass of the most important species in the Furo do Meio, and are compared with data from other studies in the main channel of the Caete Estuary.


Despite its short history, the use of Riemannian geometry in brain-computer interface (BCI) decoding is currently attracting increasing attention, due to accumulating documentation of its simplicity, accuracy, robustness and transfer learning capabilities, including the winning score obtained in five recent international predictive modeling BCI data competitions. The Riemannian framework is sharp from a mathematical perspective, yet in practice it is simple, both algorithmically and computationally. This allows the conception of online decoding machines suiting real-world operation in adverse conditions. We provide here a review on the use of Riemannian geometry for BCI and a primer on the classification frameworks based on it. While the theoretical research on Riemannian geometry is technical, our aim here is to show the appeal of the framework on an intuitive geometrical ground. In particular, we provide a rationale for its robustness and transfer learning capabilities and we elucidate the link between a simple Riemannian classifier and a state-of-the-art spatial filtering approach. We conclude by reporting details on the construction of data points to be manipulated in the Riemannian framework in the context of BCI and by providing links to available open-source Matlab and Python code libraries for designing BCI decoders.


With the emergence of Internet of Things that allows communications and local computations, and with the vision of Industry 4.0, a foreseeable transition is from centralized system planning and operation toward decentralization with interacting components and subsystems, e.g., self-optimizing factories. In this paper, a new "price-based" decomposition and coordination methodology is developed to efficiently coordinate subsystems such as machines and parts, which are described by Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulations, in a distributed and asynchronous way. To ensure low communication requirements, exchanges between the "coordinator" and subsystems are limited to "prices" (Lagrangian multipliers) broadcast by the coordinator, and to subsystem solutions sent to the coordinator. Asynchronous coordination, however, may lead to convergence difficulties since the order in which subsystem solutions arrive at the coordinator is not predefined as a result of uncertainties in communication and solving times. Under realistic assumptions of finite communication and solve times, convergence of our method is proved by innovatively extending Lyapunov Stability Theory. Numerical testing of generalized assignment problems through simulation demonstrates that the method converges fast and provides near-optimal results, paving the way for self-optimizing factories in the future.


Abstract. A fisheye lens is widely used to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image. It is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion. The distortion modeling and estimation of the fisheye lens are the crucial step for fisheye lens calibration and image rectification in computer vision and close-range photography. There are two kinds of distortion: radial and tangential distortion. Radial distortion is large for fisheye imaging and critical for the subsequent image processing. Although many researchers have developed calibration algorithms of radial distortion of fisheye lens, quantitative evaluation of the correction performance has remained a challenge. This is the first paper that intuitively and objectively evaluates the performance of five different calibration algorithms. Upto- date research on fisheye lens calibration is comprehensively reviewed to identify the research need. To differentiate their performance in terms of precision and ease-using, five methods are then tested using a diverse set of actual images of the checkerboard that are taken at Wuhan University, China under varying lighting conditions, shadows, and shooting angles. The method of rational function model, which was generally used for wide-angle lens correction, outperforms the other methods. However, the one parameter division model is easy for practical use without compromising too much the precision. The reason is that it depends on the linear structure in the image and requires no preceding calibration. It is a tradeoff between correction precision and ease-using. By critically assessing the strengths and limitations of the existing algorithms, the paper provides valuable insight and guideline for future practice and algorithm development that are important for fisheye lens calibration. It is promising for the optimal design of lens correction models that are suitable for the millions of portable imaging devices.


Divorce is a common and complex phenomenon with high social impact, especially when it involves pervasive conflict. This chapter discusses an analytic content-based framework for gaining an in-depth understanding of divorce. It considers seven inter- related dimensions: time, conflict, relationships, violence, systems, cooperation and communication. Each dimension can be further related to the exacerbating factors of addiction and psychiatric illness. This analytical method points the way to de- escalating domestic conflict and sometimes intimate violence after divorce by listen- ing to and properly interpreting the voices of children and parents. Partner violence and controlling behaviour before, during and after divorce can arise from the struggle of one partner to attack and diminish the other, or by both partners contending for power as the family breaks up. The resulting conflict can disrupt the parental partner- ship in ways that traumatize them and interfere with their children's right to grow up in safe surroundings, nurtured and guided by both parents. Social professionals who respond effectively are able to look beyond stereotypes to sense the unique and subtle patterns underlying the intense and persistent discord characteristic of high-conflict divorce. Only when the particular aspects of those patterns are understood and prop- erly addressed can (co-) parenting be restored to assure the children of post-divorce safety and well-being.


The Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit at the Montreal General Hospital is a bilingual hospital-based multidisciplinary chronic pain treatment facility. Its members are practitioners in the disciplines of anaesthesiology, physiatry, rheumatology, nursing, psychology, physiotherapy, family practice, psychiatry, palliative medicine and others. The patients who present typically have chronic, often unrelenting, pain for years which progresses to a complex condition that drastically changes their physical, social, mental and emotional level of functioning. The team works together to synthesize both medical and relevant psychological issues to develop individual treatment programs using multiple treatment modalities including pharmacological management, physiotherapy, psychological techniques, clinic based procedures and operating room based interventions. The unit is also dedicated to academic endeavors including conducting pain research, hosting instructional rounds and the teaching of fellows, residents and medical students. As a student welcomed there on a 2 week elective, I had the opportunity to participate in the initial pain assessments and assist in multiple treatment modalities, both in the clinic and in the operating room. Given that chronic pain is among the most common presenting complaints seen by physicians, I am confident that this experience will undoubtedly influence the future practices of any student who takes advantage of this unique opportunity.


Twenty-two patients with chronic renal failure were randomly assigned to a conventional low-protein diet containing 0.6 g protein/kg/day or a very-low-protein diet containing 0.4 g protein/kg/day supplemented with essential amino acids; they were followed up for 9 months. There were no significant changes in body mass index, arm muscle area, percentage body fat, serum albumin and transferrin levels in any of the groups; neither was there any difference between the groups in respect of these parameters. Renal function, as measured by the reciprocal of serum creatinine over time, stabilised in both groups during intervention, with no significant difference between the groups. There was however no correlation between changes in renal function and changes in blood pressure, or dietary intake of protein, phosphorus, cholesterol, polyunsaturated and saturated fatty acids. There were also no significant changes and no significant differences between the groups in serum levels of parathyroid hormone and alkaline phosphatase, urine cyclic adenosine monophosphate, tubular reabsorption of phosphate, and the theoretical renal threshold for phosphate. The results of this study suggest that the supplemented very-low-protein diet was not superior to the conventional low-protein diet in terms of its effect on protein-energy status, renal function and biochemical parameters of renal osteodystrophy.


This paper unpacks Sterling's concept of spimes and outlines how it can be developed as a lens through which to speculate and reflect upon the future of more preferable and sustainable technological products. The term spimes denotes a class of near future, sustainable, manufactured objects, and unlike the disposable products, which permeate our society today, a spime would be designed so that it can be managed sustainably throughout its entire lifecycle. This would have the goal of making the implicit consequences of product obsolescence and unsustainable disposal explicit to potential users. With the current rhetoric associated with the so-called Internet of Things promoting existing production and consumption models, the time is right to explore Sterling's concept in greater depth. In doing so, this paper examines the meaning of the term spimes, distinguishes the concept from today's Internet-connected products and posits design criteria for potential near future spime objects. The paper concludes with an initial evaluation of a speculative design fiction created by the author – the Toaster for Life – which seeks to embody several of the spime design criteria in order to facilitate audiences in considering the unsustainable people-product relationships which define present day behaviour, and also aid the author in reflecting upon the design fiction process itself.


This book explores how we can aspire to accumulate knowledge about the language faculty in line with Feynman's 'The test of all knowledge is experiment'. The two pillars of the proposed methodology for language faculty science are the internalist approach advocated by Chomsky and what Feynman calls the 'Guess-Compute-Compare' method. Taking the internalist approach, the book is concerned with the I-language of an individual speaker. Adopting the Guess-Compute-Compare method, it aims at deducing definite predictions and comparing them with experimental results. It offers a conceptual articulation of how we deduce definite predictions about the judgments of an individual speaker on the basis of universal and language-particular hypotheses and how we obtain experimental results precisely in accordance with such predictions. In pursuit of rigorous testability and reproducibility, the experimental demonstration in the book is supplemented by an accompanying website which provides the details of all the experiments discussed in the book.


An era of technocratic national planning of water resources is examined against the views of a leading liberal economist and critics, both contemporary and retrospective. Post Second World War Labour Governments in Britain failed to nationalise either land or water. As late as 1965, the idea of public ownership of all water supplies appeared in the Labour Party manifesto and a short‐lived Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, 1964‐ 1966, had amongst its duties the development of plans for reorganising the water supply industry under full public ownership. However, instead of pursuing such a politically dangerous takeover of the industry, in July 1964, a Water Resources Board (WRB), a special interest group dominated by engineers, was set up to advise on the development of water resources. In its first Annual Report (1965) WRB claimed its role as "the master planner of the water resources of England and Wales". The WRB had a great deal of influence and justified its national planning role by promoting large‐scale supply schemes such as interbasin transfers of water, large reservoirs and regulated rivers. Feasibility studies were even carried out for building innovative, large storage reservoirs in tidal estuaries. Less progress was made on demand reduction. Yet the seeds of WRB's demise were contained in its restricted terms of reference. The lack of any remit over water quality was a fatal handicap. Quantity and quality needed to be considered together. Privatisation of the water industry in 1989 led to a shift from national strategic planning by engineers to attempts to strengthen economic instruments to fit supply more closely to demand. Engineers have now been usurped as leaders in water resources management by economists and accountants. Yet climate change may demand a return to national strategic planning of engineered water supply, with greater democratic input.


This guide provides links to image databases and resources to help you find and effectively use digital images in your scholarly work.


Ten leading scholars of early American social history here examine the nature of work and labor in America from 1614 to 1820. The authors scrutinize work diaries, private and public records, and travelers' accounts. Subjects include farmers, farmwives, urban laborers, plantation slave workers, midwives, and sailors; locales range from Maine to the Caribbean and the high seas. These essays recover the regimen that consumed the waking hours of most adults in the New World, defined their economic lives, and shaped their larger existence. Focusing on individuals as well as groups, the authors emphasize the choices that, over time, might lead to prosperity or to the poorhouse. Few people enjoyed sinecures, and every day brought new risks. Stephen Innes introduces the collection by elucidating the prophetic vision of Captain John Smith: that the New World offered abundant reward for one's "owne industrie." Several motifs stand out in the essays. Family labor has begun to assume greater prominence, both as a collective work unit and as a collective economic unit whose members worked independently. Of growing interest to contemporary scholars is the role of family size and sex ratio in determining economic decision, and vice ersa. Work patterns appear to have been driven by the goal of creating surplus production for markets; perhaps because of a desire for higher consumption, work patterns began to intensify throughout the eighteenth century and led to longer work days with fewer slack periods. Overall, labor relations showed no consistent evolution but remained fluid and flexible in the face of changing market demands in highly diverse environments. The authors address as well the larger questions of American development and indicate the directions that research in this expanding field might follow.


Abstract. Low oxygen conditions, often referred to as oxygen deficiency, occur regularly in the North Sea, a temperate European shelf sea. Stratification represents a major process regulating the seasonal dynamics of bottom oxygen, yet, lowest oxygen conditions in the North Sea do not occur in the regions of strongest stratification. This suggests that stratification is an important prerequisite for oxygen deficiency, but that the complex interaction between hydrodynamics and the biological processes drives its evolution. In this study we use the ecosystem model HAMSOM-ECOHAM to provide a general characterisation of the different zones of the North Sea with respect to oxygen, and to quantify the impact of the different physical and biological factors driving the oxygen dynamics inside the entire sub-thermocline volume and directly above the bottom. With respect to oxygen dynamics, the North Sea can be subdivided into three different zones: (1) a highly productive, non-stratified coastal zone, (2) a productive, seasonally stratified zone with a small sub-thermocline volume, and (3) a productive, seasonally stratified zone with a large sub-thermocline volume. Type 2 reveals the highest susceptibility to oxygen deficiency due to sufficiently long stratification periods (>  60 days) accompanied by high surface productivity resulting in high biological consumption, and a small sub-thermocline volume implying both a small initial oxygen inventory and a strong influence of the biological consumption on the oxygen concentration. Year-to-year variations in the oxygen conditions are caused by variations in primary production, while spatial differences can be attributed to differences in stratification and water depth. The large sub-thermocline volume dominates the oxygen dynamics in the northern central and northern North Sea and makes this region insusceptible to oxygen deficiency. In the southern North Sea the strong tidal mixing inhibits the development of seasonal stratification which protects this area from the evolution of low oxygen conditions. In contrast, the southern central North Sea is highly susceptible to low oxygen conditions (type 2). We furthermore show that benthic diagenetic processes represent the main oxygen consumers in the bottom layer, consistently accounting for more than 50 % of the overall consumption. Thus, primary production followed by remineralisation of organic matter under stratified conditions constitutes the main driver for the evolution of oxygen deficiency in the southern central North Sea. By providing these valuable insights, we show that ecosystem models can be a useful tool for the interpretation of observations and the estimation of the impact of anthropogenic drivers on the North Sea oxygen conditions.


Energy-intensive industrialization and various anthropogenic actions by humans over centuries have resulted in a huge build up of Greenhouse gases triggering consequential 'Greenhouse effects' and 'Global warming'. This, in turn, has caused global climate change with adverse impact on ecology, environment, economy and human health. Among other things, the economic impact of global warming and climate change/aberration has been widely acknowledged to be phenomenal. In past few years, climate change economics has focused on diagnosing the economic underpinnings of climate change and offering positive and normative analyses of policies to confront the problem. While overlapping with other areas of environmental economics, climate change economics has a unique focus because of distinctive features of the climate problem, including the long time scale, the extent and nature of uncertainties, the international scope of the issue, and the uneven distribution of policy benefits and costs across space and time. The 'Kyoto Protocol' (1997), 'Bali Action Plan' (2007), and of late Copenhagen Accord (2009), have effectively provided, among other things, the institutional mechanisms and broad operational framework for funding such of those initiatives at local, regional and global levels that can limit and progressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carefully designed mitigation and adaptation actions. In this paper, an attempt has been made to discuss the various economic and financial implications in climate change impact assessment and thereby help formulation of appropriate strategies, including the mode of transfer of resources and technologies from the developed to the developing economy to respond to the various adverse impacts of climate change, primarily through mitigation and adaptation actions. The emerging business opportunities, borne out of economic responses to climate change management and Emissions trading in the post-Copenhagen scenario, is also briefly discussed.


: Transcatheter valve interventions on the mitral and tricuspid valves entail increasing complexity. Part of the knowledge that has been generated during the development of mitral devices can be transferred to the tricuspid valve (TV). However, a deeper understanding of the peculiar anatomy of the TV and of the right heart chambers, together with differences and similarities between the two valves, is fundamental. This report compares the anatomy of the mitral and tricuspid valves, and its inferences with regard to transcatheter treatments. Condensed Abstract: This report explores anatomical similarities and differences between the mitral and the tricuspid valves, and their implications with regard to transcatheter treatments. Comparative anatomy of mitral and tricuspid valve: what can the interventionist learn from the surgeon. Transcatheter valve interventions on the mitral and tricuspid valves entail increasing complexity. Part of the knowledge that has been generated during the development of mitral devices can be transferred to the tricuspid valve (TV). However, a deeper understanding of the peculiar anatomy of the TV and of the right heart chambers, together with differences and similarities between the two valves, is fundamental. This report compares the anatomy of the mitral and tricuspid valves, and its inferences with regard to transcatheter treatments. This report explores anatomical similarities and differences between the mitral and the tricuspid valves, and their implications with regard to transcatheter treatments.


When contemporary critics like McGann and Christensen link the figure of the dandy with the category of "the thing," they participate in a rich and enduring cultural pattern that dates back at least to the Restoration. "Reification and the Dandy" elaborates this cultural history through an examination of eighteenth-century British rhetorics of foppishness and their reliance on the category of the thing in order to situate its contemporary iterations in their historical context. Recalling this history also underscores the extent to which Byron's poetics in Beppo are disarmingly queer in their performance of a refusal to feel the degradation of foppishness, thinghood, and impotent triviality. Beppo neither resolves nor exorcises the double binds and blinds of poetic composition in a reified culture, but it performs those binds for us in a slight work, next of kin to a nonentity. In Beppo Byron offers foppery as poetics itself, making the slight, the trivial, the barely there, turn his career. The ottava rima may have been inspired by Frere and Pulce, but the foppish poem, itself a dandiacal confrontation with Wordsworthian poetics, was Byron's own.


Active Queue Management (AQM) is intended to achieve high link utilization with a low queuing delay. Recent studies show that RED, one of the most well-known AQMs, is difficult to configure and does not provide significant performance gains given the complexity required for proper configuration. Recent variants of RED, such as Adaptive-RED are designed to provide more robust RED performance under a wider-range of traffic conditions but have not yet been evaluated. This paper presents a router queue behavior model (a queue law) for TCP-dropping and TCP-marking control systems, and uses the queue law to illustrate the impact of TCP traffic on the load and queue behavior of congested routers. Through queue law analysis and simulation, this paper confirms that RED-like AQM techniques that employ packet dropping do not significantly improve performance over that of drop-tail queue management. However, when AQM techniques use Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) as a method to notify TCP sources of congestion rather than packet drops, the performance gains of AQM in terms of goodput and delay can be significant over that of drop-tail queue management.


China's aging problem is continuing to ferment, so that the state is advocating the non-profit organizations to actively provide home care services. However, China's non-profit organizations lack of the prophets in home care service, so they need to learn a lot from foreign advanced experience. Japan, which is a neighbor of our country, has been rich in old service experience because of its early entry into the aging country of Asia. Therefore, the main content of this paper is the implications of Japanese home care service to our nonprofit organization. After analyzing the present situation of non-profit organization's participation in home-based old-age service and the experience of non-profit organization in Japan, this paper analyzes the obstruction and deficiency of non-profit organization's participation in home care service. On the basis of the previous analysis, the author further explores the implications of Japan's experience of old service to China's non-profit organization's participation in home care, with a view to China's non-profit organizations in the future to provide home care services to provide reference.


Krill are bolo-planktonic crustaceans that are wide-spread across the ocean basins of the world. The 86 known species fulfil an important role in pelagic food webs. The first basin-wide investigation of krill zoogeography was conducted during the International Indian Ocean Expedition (1962 - 1965). Together with subsequent plankton and micro-nekton studies conducted over the past five decades, all available krill distribution information for the 57 krill species occurring throughout the Indian Ocean has been collated to produce spatially-explicit data on species richness and taxonomic distinctness. The number of krill species was highest throughout the tropical and subtropical areas, and within the south-ward flowing Agulhas and Leeuwin Currents, each of which, had 34 species of krill. Average taxonomic distinctness (Δ+) is a measure of biodiversity that be applied to presence/absence data and is robust to differences in sampling effort, which allows historical data sets to be included. Most areas of the Indian Ocean were comparable in Δ+ values, which reflects the high connectivity across the basin and, in turn, holo-planktonic krill. Areas with lower Δ+ included the Red Sea and the north-west coast of India, whilst, somewhat surprisingly, areas of higher Δ+ were found in the middle of the Bay of Bengal. Although only 10 species were recorded from this region, these species were spread across six different genera, including Bentheuphausia amblyops, from the monotypic family Bentheuphausiidae, and Pseudeuphausia latifrons, which is the only species of this genus found in the Indian Ocean. All values of fell within the 95% probability limits of the expected mean for A+, indicating that, for each 20 x 30 grid spanning the Indian Ocean, the krill species sampled were representative Of the Indian Ocean species pool. Basin-scale environmental data sets and ocean reveal patterns in environmental drivers such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll a across decadal time series. Using generalised additive models, these environmental factors have been correlated with krill zoogeography to establish basin-wide relationships across the Indian Ocean.


Hazardous substance releases into the Lower Duwamish River (LDR) resulted in the contamination of the sediments and injuries to natural resources. The Elliott Bay Trustee Council (Trustees) is developing the Lower Duwamish River Natural Resource Damage Assessment (LDR/NRDA) to determine the extent of injuries to natural resources resulting from these releases. Natural resources include fish, shellfish, wildlife, sediments, and water quality, and the services they provide. Trustees are also determining how to restore injured natural resources and lost resource services. The Restoration Plan, which is also a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) will guide implementation of LDR/NRDA restoration activities. The PEIS analyzes the environmental impacts of the alternatives considered by the Trustees to restore, replace, rehabilitate, and/or acquire the equivalent of the injured natural resources and their services. The Trustees evaluated three alternatives: the No-Action Alternative, which is required to be included in the analysis; the Species-Specific Restoration Alternative; and the Integrated Habitat Restoration Alternative. The Trustees' preferred alternative is Integrated Habitat Restoration, which is a comprehensive plan based on restoration of key habitats that, together, will benefit the range of different resources injured by releases of hazardous substances in the LDR. In addition, the Trustees have included a detailed description of the methodology considered for use in a settlement-based approach to injury assessment for the Lower Duwamish River. A draft RP/PEIS was made available for public review on May 22, 2009, with the comment period ending on July 28, 2009. In response to comments received on that draft, the Trustees added more detail about the injury assessment and restoration valuation methodology used in the LDR/NRDA, and made some other minor changes to address other comments. The Trustees released the Supplement to the draft RP/PEIS for additional review and comment on July 27, 2012, with the comment period ending on October 10, 2012. This Final PEIS was developed after consideration of all comments received.


We develop in this paper a generalization of the Indirect Inference (II) to semi-parametric settings and termed Semi-parametric Indirect Inference (SII). We introduce a new notion of Partial Encompassing which lays the emphasis on Pseudo True Values of Interest. The main difference with the older notion of encompassing is that some components of the pseudo-true value of interest associated with the structural parameters do correspond to true unknown values. This enables us to produce a theory of robust estimation despite mis-specifications in the structural model being used as a simulator. We also provide the asymptotic probability distributions of our SII estimators as well as Wald Encompassing Tests (WET) and advocate the use of Hausman type tests on the required assumptions for the consistency of the SII estimators. We illustrate our theory with examples based on semi-parametric stochastic volatility models.


The transport of trace metals (TM) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from headwater streams to the sea is influenced by various landscape elements. Our focus was to investigate the influence of major landscape elements on observed concentrations of dissolved metals (e.g. As, Cd, Co, Fe, Pb), DOC, sulphate, and sulphur isotope composition in streams, north- eastern Sweden, a coastal region characterized by peat wetlands and coniferous forests.Stream water samples collected from 10 streams (0.13 to 67 km2) in a boreal stream network reveal that landscape type (i.e. coverage of wetland and forest) is significant for river chemistry. Streams with different catchment characteristics responded differently to hydrological episodes. In forested streams, concentrations of TM, Fe and DOC increased, while they decreased in wetland influenced streams. Furthermore, Fe and Pb correlated positively with wetland coverage. Moreover, significantly lower average sulphate concentrations, but higher isotope values, were observed in wetland streams.This study emphasises the importance of understanding stream water chemistry from a landscape perspective in order to identify potential environments where climate change may induce enhanced metal mobilization in the future.


A detecting system based on the Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) technology is considered for tokamak plasma radiation monitoring. In order to estimate its capabilities in processing and recording intense photon flux (up to ∼0.1 MHz/mm2), the imaging effectiveness of GEM detectors was tested with different patterned anode planes (i.e., different signal readouts): a simple hexagonal readout structure and three structures with interconnected electrodes (XY square, XY rectangular, and UXV). It was found that under intense photon flux, all the readouts fail to account for a considerable amount of the incoming signals due to mostly photon position determination ambiguity and overlapped signals. Analysis of the signals that can be used to determine photon position and energy unambiguously showed that the UXV readout structure is more effective among the readouts with interconnected electrodes. Along with similar spatial resolution and accuracy, the UXV based layout could be considered as a quite promising base of the interconnected anode electrodes configuration, keeping in mind that the photon rate capability has to be improved for the final application.


Education can help improve compliance with inhaled corticosteroid therapy or correct faulty metered-dose inhaler (MDI) technique. Options for patients with poor MDI technique indude use of a spacer or an alternative device, such as a nebulizer or a dry powder inhaler. If therapy is ineffective, consider alternative conditions that mimic asthma, especially vocal cord dysfunction and upper airway obstruction. Treatment of comorbid conditions, such as gastroesophageal reflux disease or rhinosinusitis, may improve control. In refractory asthma, it is crucial to identify allergic triggers and reduce exposure to allergens. If another medication needs to be added to the inhaled corticosteroid, consider a long-acting β-agoinist, leukotriene modifier, or the recombinant monodonal anti-IgE antibody omalizumab.


We theoretically study the properties of one-dimensional nonlinear saturable photonic lattices exhibiting multiple mobility windows for stationary solutions. The effective energy barrier decreases to a minimum in those power regions where a new intermediate stationary solution appears. As an application, we investigate the dynamics of high-power Gaussian-like beams finding several regions where the light transport is enhanced.


OBJECTIVES
To presents socio-demographic characteristics and health seeking behaviour of elderly and to determine frequency of Diabetes Mellitus and Hypertension in elderly population of a poor peri-urban community in Karachi, Pakistan.

METHODS
A cross-sectional study was conducted, targeting population aged 65 or above. A total of 438 respondents were interviewed after taking informed consent, between November 2005 and December 2005. Frequencies and Chi square values were calculated for different variables using SPSS 13.0.

RESULTS
Total population surveyed comprised of 438 elderly, 158 (36%) women and 280 (63.9%) men. Mean age for the population was 71.44 +/- 7.74. A total of 238 (54.3%) elderly were found to be economically active. More than half (n = 269, 61.4%) of the elderly were found to be illiterate. Only 72 (16.4%) of the elderly population were Diabetic and 132 (30.1%) were Hypertensive. Common symptoms that prompted elderly of Azam Basti to seek health care were fever (61.2%), generalized body aches (43.4%) and cough (40.4%). Over half of the (n = 269, 61.4%) responders reported factors which deterred them from seeking health care, out of which 62% reported financial constraint as the commonest factor. Deterrence from seeking health care was associated with illiteracy (p = 0.001) and living alone (p = 0.06).

CONCLUSION
The elderly population of this peri-urban community has financial constraints in seeking health care. Hypertension was found to be more prevalent among women as compared to men, ratio being 1:2. Less number of people knew they were diabetics; this might be attributed to ignorance and non-availability of investigations and screening.


In this paper, we describe a new method of modeling coastal inundation arising from storm surge by coupling a widely used storm surge model (ADCIRC) and an urban flood inundation model (FloodMap). This is the first time the coupling of such models is implemented and tested using real events. The method offers a flexible and efficient procedure for applying detailed ADCIRC storm surge modeling results along the coastal boundary (with typical resolution of ∼100 m) to FloodMap for fine resolution inundation modeling (<5 m). The coastal inundation during Hurricane Sandy was simulated at both the city (New York City) and subregional (lower Manhattan) scales with various resolutions. Results obtained from the ADCIRC and coupled ADCIRC‐FloodMap simulations were compared with the recorded (high water marks) and derived (inundation extent based on the planar method) data from FEMA. At the city scale, coupled ADCIRC‐FloodMap modeling demonstrates improved prediction over ADCIRC modeling alone for both the extent and depth of inundation. The advantage of the coupled model is further illustrated in the subregional modeling, using a mesh resolution of 3 m which is substantially finer than the inland mesh resolution used by ADCIRC (>70 m). In further testing, we explored the effects of mesh resolution and roughness specification. Results agree with previous studies that fine resolution is essential for capturing intricate flow paths and connectivity in urban topography. While the specification of roughness is more challenging for urban environments, it may be empirically optimized. The successful coupling of ADCIRC and FloodMap models for fine resolution coastal inundation modeling unlocks the potential for undertaking large numbers of probabilistically based synthetic surge events for street‐level risk analysis.


We present a novel ultrafast multipass laser amplifier design optimized for sub-millijoule output energy and capable of being operated at repetition rates exceeding 40 kHz. This ti:sapphire based system makes use of a grism based stretcher, a cryogenically cooled ti:sapphire crystal and an astigmatically compensated multipass amplifier design that allows for pumping with significantly lower pump pulse energies than has been demonstrated to date. We also make use of the downchirped pulse amplification scheme to minimize loss in the pulse compression process. Preliminary experiments demonstrate an output pulse energy of 290 muJ at 10 kHz and 270 muJ at 15 kHz with a pulse duration of 36 fs.


Derek Bambauer's provocative paper argues that, because the remedies available to people who suffer unconsented distribution of intimate images of themselves are insufficient, we should amend copyright law to fill the gap. Bambauer's proposal requires significant changes to every part of copyright — what copyright seeks to encourage, who counts as an author/owner, what counts as an exclusive right, what qualifies as infringement, what suffices as a defense, and what remedies are available. These differences are not mere details. Among other things, incentivizing intimacy is not the same thing as incentivizing creativity. Bambauer's argument that copyright is normatively empty and already full of inconsistencies and exceptions does not justify such profound changes. Bambauer's true target is § 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online intermediaries from liability stemming from users' violations of others' privacy. Copyright claims aren't subject to § 230, so his proposal hopes to force intermediaries to do more in revenge porn cases. But the case for requiring more from intermediaries to protect privacy should be made on its own merits, not by distorting copyright law.


This thesis reports on coupling optical microresonators to micro- and nanomechanical oscillators. The mutual optomechanical coupling based on radiation pressure between the microcavity and a mechanical degree of freedom modulating its spatial structure thereby allows both transduction and actuation of the motion of the mechanical degree of freedom by the light field launched into the microcavity.

The first part of the thesis reports on a novel experimental approach based on cavity enhanced evanescent near-fields of toroid microresonators. It enables the extension of dispersive cavity optomechanical coupling to sub-wavelength scale nanomechanical oscillators which are at the heart of a variety of precision measurements. The optomechanical coupling present in the developed system is carefully analyzed experimentally and good agreement with theoretical expectations is found. The demonstrated platform allows transduction of nanomechanical motion with an exceptionally high sensitivity, outperforming the previous state-of-the-art transducers. Thereby, for the first time a measurement imprecision lower than the level of the standard quantum limit is achieved. In the present measurements, quantum backaction should already be the dominating contribution to the measurement sensitivity which is however masked by thermal noise.
This may pave the way to the first experimental demonstration of radiation pressure quantum backaction on a solid-state mechanical oscillator.
Moreover, the radiation pressure interaction between evanescent cavity field and nanomechanical oscillator is shown to enable actuating and controlling the motional state of the oscillator. Both amplification, leading to self-sustained mechanical oscillations, and cooling by radiation pressure dynamical backaction is reported. In addition, the capability of the near-field platform to implement resonant interaction of a mechanical mode with two optical modes is shown as well as the feasibility of quadratic coupling to the nanomechanical oscillators.

In the second part of the thesis monolithic on-chip resonators that combine ultra-low optical and mechanical dissipation are designed. To this end, the intrinsic mechanical modes of toroid microresonators are analyzed in detail. High-sensitivity measurements enable the observation of a plethora of mechanical modes and good agreement with finite element modelling is found. In particular the dissipation mechanisms limiting their mechanical quality are studied. Clamping losses are identified as the dominant loss mechanism at room temperature. Using a novel geometric design, these are systematically minimized which leads to spoke-supported microresonators with intrinsic material-loss limited mechanical quality factors rivalling the best published values at similar frequencies.


Outside intervention in civil warfare is important for humanitarian, theoretical, and practical policy reasons—since 2006, much of the debate over the war in Iraq has turned on the danger of external intervention if the United States were to withdraw. Yet, the literature on intervention has been compartmented in ways that have made it theoretically incomplete and unsuitable as a guide to policy. We therefore integrate and expand upon the theoretical and empirical work on intervention and apply the results to the policy debate over the US presence in Iraq using a Monte Carlo simulation to build upon the dyadic results of probit analysis. We find that Iraq is, in fact, a significantly intervention-prone conflict in an empirical context; the prospect of a wider, regional war in the event that violence returns in the aftermath of US withdrawal cannot safely be ignored.


Heroic endeavour or diaster of hemispheric proportions? What is certain is that Columbus's discovery of the New World resulted in biological and cultural exchanges unprecedented in the history of human populations. This volume brings together 11 scholars - from both sides of the Atantic and from the disciplines of history, archaeology, anthropology, geography and biology - to discuss the nature of the European conquest and its consequences. A major them is the complex process by which Europeans and Amerindians adapted to create new criollo cultures which are distinctively American: the successess and failures of this process are evident in Latin America today. The multidisciplinary scope of this volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the enormous changes that followed Columbus' expedition.


Ocean acidification is expected to impact the high latitude oceans first, as CO2 dissolves more easily in colder waters. At the current rate of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, the sub-Antarctic Zone will start to experience undersaturated conditions with respect to aragonite within the next few decades, which will affect marine calcifying organisms. Shelled pteropods, a group of calcifying zooplankton, are considered to be especially sensitive to changes in carbonate chemistry because of their thin aragonite shells. Limacina retroversa is the most abundant pteropod in sub-Antarctic waters, and plays an important role in the carbonate pump. However, not much is known about its response to ocean acidification. In this study, we investigated differences in calcification between L. retroversa individuals exposed to ocean carbonate chemistry conditions of the past (pH 8.19; mid-1880s), present (pH 8.06), and near-future (pH 7.93; predicted for 2050) in the sub-Antarctic. After 3 days of exposure, calcification responses were quantified by calcein staining, shell weighing, and Micro-CT scanning. In pteropods exposed to past conditions, calcification occurred over the entire shell and the leading edge of the last whorl, whilst individuals incubated under present and near-future conditions mostly invested in extending their shells, rather than calcifying over their entire shell. Moreover, individuals exposed to past conditions formed larger shell volumes compared to present and future conditions, suggesting that calcification is already decreased in today's sub-Antarctic waters. Shells of individuals incubated under near-future conditions did not increase in shell weight during the incubation, and had a lower density compared to past and present conditions, suggesting that calcification will be further compromised in the future. This demonstrates the high sensitivity of L. retroversa to relatively small and short-term changes in carbonate chemistry. A reduction in calcification of L. retroversa in the rapidly acidifying waters of the sub-Antarctic will have a major impact on aragonite-CaCO3 export from oceanic surface waters to the deep sea.


Assessment of impairment and disability experienced by patients with chronic pain is challenging. The AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides) assesses impairment primarily based on objective findings, but pain is subjective. The sixth edition of the AMA Guides provides a pain-related impairment (PRI) of up to 3% in rare situations. Otherwise, pain is considered to be reflected in the conventional impairment rating system. There are still many unanswered questions.


The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) supports teams of educators in collaborative, inquirybased professional learning. Effective collaborative inquiry teams build sustainable capacity in schools by giving teachers skills, structures, and support systems to continually learn from and refine their shared practice. Both empirical research and international comparisons tell us that investments in this kind of adult learning lead to powerful changes in student learning. Research also provides clear evidence about the specific characteristics that make collaborative inquiry teams effective. NCLE's portfolio of supports for collaborative inquiry teams will be closely guided by a framework derived from this research. This document briefly summarizes literature on the impact of teacher collaboration on student learning and the specific characteristics that make teams effective.


Object oriented programming languages have raised the level of abstraction by supporting the object querying on collections. Programming languages can execute first class query constructs, using query optimization techniques from the database field, for run time optimizations. Existing approaches, however, such as Java Query Language (JQL), which executes such query constructs on collections have high run time overhead. Therefore, we propose an approach to reduce the burden of run time overhead by performing most of the query optimization for object queries on collections at compile time. This approach both analyzes the source code and obtains the metadata provided through annotations. It relies on building histograms from the metadata information. Then, the predicate and join selectivity estimates within a query are computed from these histograms. The selectivity estimates are maintained accurate with the incremental maintenance of histograms to the data changes in the program at run time. Next, both the selection and join optimizations are applied on the queries. The optimizations help in skipping and eliminating the execution of some of the predicates and joins based on the collected metadata. Finally, a query plan is generated at the compile time through the proposed selectivity cost heuristic. The query itself is executed at run time according to the determined query plan. But, in cases of inaccurate metadata and significant data changes in the source code, the query plan is modified at run time according to the correct selectivity estimates obtained from the updated histograms. Our experimental results demonstrate that our approach reduces the run time overhead of a program with collections more than the earlier approaches such as JQL.


Abstract Building on contemporary research on teacher professional development, this study examined the practices of a technology-focused learning community at a high school in the United States. Over the course of a school year, classroom teachers and a university-based researcher participated in the learning community to investigate how technology can promote student achievement and engagement within the secondary English curriculum. This analysis used the design frame-work to identify key practices within the learning community, which included writing a mission statement, innovating with digital tools, engaging in critical discussion, and examining student work. Findings suggest that the design framework can offer a common discourse and visual representation to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of professional development.


Tropospheric ozone (O3) is one of the major air pollutants in China. This paper examined the O3 concentration in 16 important Chinese cities including 7 megacities and developed a statistical model named Generalized Additive Model (GAM) as a function of different factors to estimate the maximum daily 8 h (MDA8) O3 during 2014–2016 and how the leading factors impacts O3. We found that: (1) Three seasonal patterns of O3 have been summarized in the spatial-temporal analysis and summer is the highest season in most of the cities. (2) GAM performs very well that it can capture 43–90% of daily O3 variations. (3) DOY (day of year) and 6 meteorological factors of daily average relative humidity at 1000 mb, daily maximum temperature at 2 m, daily average zonal wind speed at 700 mb, distance of trajectory back 12-hour, surface pressure and geopotential height at 500 mb are sensitive for all 16 cities. The sequence of the leading factors is the same in each group respectively (3 group categories: Beijing, Shijiazhuang and Kunming; Harbin, Hohhot and Dalian; Chengdu and Wuhan). The other 8 cities have different leading factor combination. (4) HYSPLIT back trajectory data can help us to know the importance of transport direction for O3 concentration in Beijing and other three coastal cities Dalian, Shanghai and Guangzhou. (5) During the Beijing "Parade Blue" period in the summer of 2015, NO2 was reduced by 44.6% but O3 was only reduced by 15.7%. Most of these O3 changes can be explained by meteorological variations such as wind direction and air temperature.


The evolution of the multi-billion-dollar computer services industry, from consulting and programming to data analytics and cloud computing, with case studies of important companies. The computer services industry has worldwide annual revenues of nearly a trillion dollars and employs millions of workers, but is often overshadowed by the hardware and software products industries. In this book, Jeffrey Yost shows how computer services, from consulting and programming to data analytics and cloud computing, have played a crucial role in shaping information technology-in making IT work. Tracing the evolution of the computer services industry from the 1950s to the present, Yost provides case studies of important companies (including IBM, Hewlett Packard, Andersen/Accenture, EDS, Infosys, and others) and profiles of such influential leaders as John Diebold, Ross Perot, and Virginia Rometty. He offers a fundamental reinterpretation of IBM as a supplier of computer services rather than just a producer of hardware, exploring how IBM bundled services with hardware for many years before becoming service-centered in the 1990s. Yost describes the emergence of companies that offered consulting services, data processing, programming, and systems integration. He examines the development of industry-defining trade associations; facilities management and the firm that invented it, Ross Perot's EDS; time sharing, a precursor of the cloud; IBM's early computer services; and independent contractor brokerages. Finally, he explores developments since the 1980s: the transformations of IBM and Hewlett Packard; the offshoring of enterprises and labor; major Indian IT service providers and the changing geographical deployment of U.S.-based companies; and the paradigm-changing phenomenon of cloud service.


Abstract The turbulent temperature structure and winds in thermal convective plumes over prairie grassland have been investigated with an acoustic echo sounder system. Three spaced acoustic antennas, with two inclined at 45° elevation, were used to provide plume shape information and Doppler-derived total wind-vector patterns between heights of 70 and 500 m. Supporting in situ measurements were made on a 15 m tower, with a tethered balloon-supported Boundary Layer Profiler, and from a light aircraft. The most probable orientation of the plumes was nearly vertical, but frequent upwind and downwind tilts were also observed. Maximum positive vertical velocities in the plumes at midday were near 2 m s−1, while maximum downward currents were one-half this value. Acoustic echoes from regions above the mixed layer, corresponding in height to an elevated temperature inversion, correlate well with regions of maximum wind shear.


Abstract Background: It has been suggested that spectral entropy of the electroencephalogram as applied in the M-Entropy S/5TM Module (GE Healthcare) does not detect the effects of nitrous oxide (N2O). The aim of this study was to investigate the effect on entropy by graded increases in N2O concentrations in the presence of a constant concentration of sevoflurane, in the absence of surgical stimulation. Method: This single-blind, randomised study was conducted at an altitude of approximately 1 400 m. Patients received sevoflurane 2% (1.7% at sea level) and N2O, at end-tidal concentrations of 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% or 70% (equivalent to 8.5%, 17%, 25.5%, 34%, 42.6%, 51.1% and 59.6% at sea level). Entropy was measured before, during and after N2O administration. The absolute changes and ratios of entropy relative to the baseline were calculated. Between- and within-group comparisons were made using analysis of variance and covariance. Results: None of the entropy variables differed significantly within and between groups before and after N2O administration. Within-group analysis revealed that entropy during N2O administration was significantly lower than before or after N2O administration (P < 0.007). While a minor clinical but statistically significant linear relationship was observed between increasing N2O concentration and decreasing entropy from N2O 0% to 60%, a steeper and clinically important decrease (relative change > 20%) was noted at N2O > 60% (> 51% at sea level). Conclusions: The M-Entropy Module S/5TM responds to increasing concentrations of N2O in the presence of 2% (1.7% at sea level) sevoflurane, in the absence of surgical stimulation. There is a linear relationship between increasing N2O concentrations and decreasing entropy with a steep and clinically important decrease at N2O > 60% (> 51% at sea level). The influence of ambient pressure on the partial pressures, which determine the effects of anaesthetic agents, must be taken into account.


Given a large repository of geotagged imagery, we seek to automatically find visual elements, e.g. windows, balconies, and street signs, that are most distinctive for a certain geo-spatial area, for example the city of Paris. This is a tremendously difficult task as the visual features distinguishing architectural elements of different places can be very subtle. In addition, we face a hard search problem: given all possible patches in all images, which of them are both frequently occurring and geographically informative? To address these issues, we propose to use a discriminative clustering approach able to take into account the weak geographic supervision. We show that geographically representative image elements can be discovered automatically from Google Street View imagery in a discriminative manner. We demonstrate that these elements are visually interpretable and perceptually geo-informative. The discovered visual elements can also support a variety of computational geography tasks, such as mapping architectural correspondences and influences within and across cities, finding representative elements at different geo-spatial scales, and geographically-informed image retrieval.


The use of radiosensitizers recently emerged as a promising approach to circumvent the depth penetration limitations of photodynamic therapy of cancer and to enhance radiotherapeutical effects. A widely explored current strategy is based on complex nanoarchitectures that facilitate the transfer of energy harvested from X-ray radiation by scintillating nanoparticles to the surrounding photosensitizer molecules to generate reactive oxygen species, mostly singlet oxygen O2(1Δg). We describe an alternative approach aiming at a considerable simplification of the architecture. The presented nanoparticles, made of the luminescent octahedral molybdenum cluster compound (n-Bu4N)2[Mo6I8(OCOCF3)6], efficiently absorb X-rays due to the high content of heavy elements, leading to the formation of the excited triplet states that interact with molecular oxygen to produce O2(1Δg). The activity of the nanoparticles on HeLa cells was first investigated under UVA/blue-light irradiation in order to prove the biological effects of photosensitized O2(1Δg); there is no dark toxicity at micromolar concentrations, but strong phototoxicity in the nanomolar range. The nanoparticles significantly enhance the antiproliferative effect of X-ray radiation in vitro at lower concentration than for previously reported O2(1Δg) radiosensitizing systems and this effect is more pronounced on cancer HeLa cells than non-cancer MRC cells. The results demonstrate that the cluster-based radiosensitizers of O2(1Δg) have strong potential with respect to the enhancement of the efficacy of radiotherapy with exciting opportunities for cancer treatment.


Introduction Academic detailing (AD) is an educational outreach strategy to provide clinicians with current evidence-based information, which has been shown to change prescribing behaviours. The overall effectiveness of AD interventions is associated with prescriber satisfaction; however, most approaches use single items or non-validated measures. This study aims to develop and validate an instrument to assess prescriber satisfaction with AD interventions. Methods A group of candidate items was generated and refined based on constructs identified through a literature review and in consultation with an expert panel. The initial instrument was piloted with 183 primary care providers who participated in an AD intervention on opioid-related pain management. To support the validity and reliability of the measure, psychometric properties were examined. Results Ten candidate items were developed based on the following themes: acceptability, feasibility of implementation, usefulness, perception of efficacy, overall satisfaction, willingness to repeat and willingness to change. One item related to willingness to change did not contribute to assessing an individual's ability and lowered the measure's internal consistency and was therefore dropped. Conclusion Results supported the validity and reliability of a refined 9-item measure of Provider Satisfaction with Academic Detailing (the PSAD). This measure should be considered for broad use across educational outreach programmes as a standardized measure to assess provider satisfaction and provide continuous quality improvement.


Purpose: Research indicates that physical education can be an effective setting for promoting positive values, attitudes, and behaviors that transfer to other settings. However, there is a lack of instrumentation to assess the cognitive and motivational aspects of the transfer process. Therefore, this study proposed and validated the Transfer of Responsibility Questionnaire (ToRQ).Methods: After instrument development and pilot testing, an initial version of the ToRQ was completed by 442 adolescents. Data analysis began with exploratory factor analysis followed by confirmatory factor analysis.Results: The exploratory factor analysis yielded a stable three-factor structure that measured the participants' cognitive and motivational processes related to transfer. This factor structure was affirmed using confirmatory factor analysis, which also examined convergent and discriminant validity.Discussion/Conclusion: The model was a good fit for the data, and the ToRQ correlated positively with related scales from an existing life skill transfer survey. These analyses support the initial validation of the ToRQ.


With increasing motorisation, road safety has become a major concern within Oman. Internationally, traffic policing plays a major role in improving road safety. Within Oman, the Royal Oman Police's (ROP) Directorate General of Traffic is responsible for policing traffic laws. Many common enforcement approaches originate from culturally different jurisdictions. The ROP is a relatively young policing force and may have different operational practices. Prior to applying practices from other jurisdictions it is important to understand the beliefs and expectations within the Directorate General of Traffic. Further, there is a need for individuals to understand their role and what is expected of them. Therefore, it is important to explore the agreement between levels of the ROP to determine how strategies and expectations transfer within the organisation. Interviews were conducted with 19 police officers from various levels of the ROP. A number of themes and findings emerged. Individuals at the upper level of the traffic police had a clear knowledge of the role of the ROP, believed that traffic police know what is expected of them, are well trained in their role and can have a very positive influence on road safety. These beliefs were less certain lower within the organisations with traffic officers having little knowledge of the role of the ROP or what was expected of them, felt undertrained, and believed their peers have little positive impact on road safety. There is a need to address barriers within the ROP in order to positively impact road safety.


Background: Psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory disease associated with an accelerated risk of myocardial infarction, provides an ideal human model to study inflammatory atherogenesis in vivo. We hypothesized that the increased cardiovascular risk observed in psoriasis would be partially attributable to an elevated subclinical coronary artery disease burden composed of noncalcified plaques with high-risk features. However, inadequate efforts have been made to directly measure coronary artery disease in this vulnerable population. As such, we sought to compare total coronary plaque burden and noncalcified coronary plaque burden (NCB) and high-risk plaque (HRP) prevalence between patients with psoriasis (n=105), patients with hyperlipidemia eligible for statin therapy under National Cholesterol Education Program-Adult Treatment Panel III guidelines (n=100) who were ≈10 years older, and healthy volunteers without psoriasis (n=25). Methods: Patients underwent coronary computed-tomography angiography for total coronary plaque burden and NCB quantification and HRP identification, defined as low attenuation (<30 hounsfield units), positive remodeling (>1.10), and spotty calcification. A consecutive sample of the first 50 patients with psoriasis was scanned again 1 year after therapy. Results: Despite being younger and at lower traditional risk than patients with hyperlipidemia, patients with psoriasis had increased NCB (mean±SD: 1.18±0.33 versus 1.11±0.32, P=0.02) and similar HRP prevalence (P=0.58). Furthermore, compared to healthy volunteers, patients with psoriasis had increased total coronary plaque burden (1.22±0.31 versus 1.04±0.22, P=0.001), NCB (1.18±0.33 versus 1.03±0.21, P=0.004), and HRP prevalence beyond traditional risk (odds ratio, 6.0; 95% confidence interval, 1.1–31.7; P=0.03). Last, among patients with psoriasis followed for 1 year, improvement in psoriasis severity was associated with improvement in total coronary plaque burden (&bgr;=0.45, 0.23–0.67; P<0.001) and NCB (&bgr;=0.53, 0.32–0.74; P<0.001) beyond traditional risk factors. Conclusions: Patients with psoriasis had greater NCB and increased HRP prevalence than healthy volunteers. In addition, patients with psoriasis had elevated NCB and equivalent HRP prevalence as older patients with hyperlipidemia. Last, modulation of target organ inflammation (eg, skin) was associated with an improvement in NCB at 1 year, suggesting that control of remote sites of inflammation may translate into reduced coronary artery disease risk.


Aim: The responses of 10 patients with long-standing, symptomatic, intractable drug-refractory histories of irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea (IBS-D) and with abdominal pain, gas/bloating and distention, termed IBS undefined (IBS-U), were evaluated when administering a medical food product containing serum-derived bovine immunoglobulin/protein isolate (SBI). Methods: Patients in this case series were chosen based on their lack of satisfactory response to a variety of drugs, including antidiarrheal and antispasmodic medications, serotonin 5-HT3 receptor antagonists, selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), antibiotics, and antidepressive drugs. Patients met Rome III criteria and were administered 5 g/day of SBI as standard-of-care nutritional support. A scale of 0% - 25%, 25% - 50%, 50% - 75%, 75% - 100% response to SBI was used for patient-reported improvement in overall IBS symptoms following administration for one month. Exact methods for calculating confidence intervals and p-values were used to assess complete management of symptoms and response to therapy. Adverse events were also monitored for this nutritional product. Results: The onset of gastrointestinal (GI) symptom reduction utilizing nutritional management with SBI occurred within an average time of 2-4 weeks with improved or near complete management in all 10 patients who were refractory to previous drug therapies by 4 weeks. When prompted, patients reported significant IBS symptom improvement which averaged between 50% - 100% (p = 0.002) with an average for complete management in all patients of 69%. No side effects were reported after SBI administration even when taken for up to 28 weeks. Conclusion: Based on the safety profile and reported outcomes in this case report, SBI should be considered as a nutritional option for management in IBS-D and IBS-U.


Mammalian embryo development is characterised by regulative mechanisms of lineage segregation and cell specification. A combination of carefully orchestrated gene expression networks, signalling pathways and epigenetic marks defines specific developmental stages that can now be resolved at the single-cell level. These new ways to depict developmental processes have the potential to provide answers to unresolved questions on how lineage allocation and cell fate decisions are made during embryogenesis. Over the past few years, a flurry of studies reporting detailed single-cell transcription profiles in early embryos has complemented observations acquired using live cell imaging following gene editing techniques to manipulate specific genes. The adoption of this newly available toolkit is reshaping how researchers are designing experiments and how they view animal development. This review presents an overview of the current knowledge on lineage segregation and cell specification in mammals, and discusses some of the outstanding questions that current technological advances can help scientists address, like never before.


While inflation targeting (IT) has been adopted by a few countries as a monetary policy tool chiefly for inflation fighting purposes, the debate relative to its effect on making a difference on actual inflation level of the adopting country has been waging with no end in sight. A number of authors have attempted to address the issue with usually qualitative means. In this paper, we analyze the stability of inflation levels before and after the adoption of IT with the help of lcontrol charts.' Control charts tell us when and in what fashion processes deviate from stability, allowing us to take timely and appropriate action to keep the process on course. Our findings show that the instability in inflation levels has been reduced in the post adopted era.


Migration is a controversial issue. Reading of the popular media in virtually any country, alongside an array of opinion polls suggest that residents see controls on immigration as essential and that people would prefer to see existing rules on entry tightened rather than relaxed. This stands in contrast to the evidence which points to significant gains for movers and, in many cases, benefits also for destination and origin countries – as reviewed in the forthcoming Human Development Report 2009. This paper makes several important contributions to an already rich literature about public opinion and migration. It highlights that attitudes are not as monochrome as might initially appear. A more detailed analysis of the nature, patterns and correlates of opinions toward migration in both developed and developing countries shows that values favourable toward diversity are in fact widely held, albeit with important variations. We also cast important light on how policies toward migration and underlying structural characteristics affect attitudes. Moreover, as many migrants do not end up in developed or OECD countries, public opinions in developing countries are of interest. As far as we are aware, this paper is the first published attempt to explore attitudes in countries in all parts of the human development spectrum. While the data investigated is largely drawn from 2005/2006, we frame key questions in both a longer term perspective, and highlight attitudes towards migrants when jobs are scarce, which has heightened relevance during periods of recession.


The article provides project managers with a new approach to project planning with regard to monitoring the actual progress of the project implementation. The method introduced in the article is based on system dynamics modelling and project management principles outlined in the internationally recognised PRINCE2 methodology. It also makes use of the principle set in the EVM method, which is a part of the standard of the PMI. The System dynamics model of a plan and of the real-life situation have the same structure but differ in the values of exogenous variables. The method enables better information for the project manager and their team on the expected project outcomes. The project model is divided into stages and the actual outcomes of the project are compared against the plan at the end of each stage, indicating the current trend for further development of the project. This approach provides the project manager with a strong argument for introducing timely managerial interventions in the project team. The method resembles checking the route by a traveller with the use of GPS navigation, which is why we named it GPS-PM. The method is used in real-life projects that are part of university courses in project management.


Sugarcane is one of the most important crops for sugar production in sugarcane-growing areas. Many biotic and abiotic stresses affected the sugarcane production which leads to severe losses. Pokkah boeng is now playing a very important role due to its economic threats. Currently, the occurrence and rigorousness of pokkah boeng disease have been spread like wildfire from major sugarcane-growing countries. Pokkah boeng is a fungal disease that can cause serious yield losses in susceptible varieties. Infection of the disease is caused either by spores or ascospores. It may cause serious yield losses in commercial plantings. However, there have been many reported outbreaks of the disease which have looked spectacular but have caused trade and industry loss. Fusarium species complex is the major causal agent of this disease around the world, but some researchers have documented the increased importance of Fusarium. Three Fusarium species have been identified to cause the sugarcane pokkah boeng disease in China. Moreover, Fusarium may be accompanied of its mycotoxin production, genomic sequencing, and association with nitrogen application in China. Many studies on disease investigations, breeding of disease-resistant varieties, and strategy of disease control have also been carried out in China.


We used comparative genomic hybridization to analyze 17 tumor samples from 11 patients with papillary renal cell carcinoma (RCC), including three patients with hereditary papillary RCC. Whereas the most frequent aberrations confirmed data obtained by banding analyses, copy number increases on 5q, which previously were considered characteristic of nonpapillary RCC, were identified in two cases. In two complex cases belonging to the same family, a characteristic pattern of chromosomal aberrations was found: five of the six imbalances present in the less complex case were included in the karyotype of the other case, suggesting a genetically determined mechanism resulting in genomic instability of specific chromosomes or chromosomal subregions and/or selection of specific mutations.


Background: One of the most common complaints of the patient seeking medical care is pain, and it has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a problem of global importance. Objectives: The aim was to estimate the prevalence of pain among people above the age of 40 years, to identify the common sites of pain complaints and to study the association of body mass index (BMI) with musculoskeletal pains. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among 1246 participants through our weekly medical camp in 12 villages of Kattankulathur block in Kancheepuram District of Tamil Nadu from August 2013 to October 2013. Individuals over the age of 40 years who had attended our medical camp with complaint of pain (intermittent or continuous) for 1 month or longer were included in the study. Descriptive data were presented as measures of central tendency and dispersion. Chi-square test was used for analyzes of categorical variables. Results: Nearly 51.1% of the respondents reported some form of pain. The prevalent sites of pain include knee pain (18.6%), low back pain (8.9%), generalized body pain (7.8%), multiple joint pain (4.9%) and pain in the legs (2.7%). Prevalence of musculoskeletal pain in men and women were 32.7% and 53.7%, respectively. Respondents with BMI more than 25 are at higher risk of suffering from knee pain, hip pain, low back pain and leg pain and it was found statistically significant for Knee pain and low back pain. Conclusion: An appropriate strategy and guidelines have to be developed to manage the problem of pain among above 40 years age group at primary care level of the rural communities in India.


Introduced predators have had, and continue to have, severe impacts on Australian biodiversity. At a recently established conservation reserve, Witchelina, in arid South Australia, we assessed the diet of feral cats (Felis catus) (404 samples), red fox (Vulpes vulpes) (51 samples) and dog (Canis familiaris) (11 samples) over a 3-year period. There was marked overlap (98.5%) in dietary composition between cats and foxes. Rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) comprised a major dietary item for all three predators. Invertebrates contributed the largest number of prey items for foxes and cats, but mammals comprised the bulk, by weight, for all three predators. Birds and reptiles had a higher frequency of occurrence in the diet of cats than of foxes or dogs. The size of mammal prey taken was least for cats and greatest for dogs. The diets of cats and foxes showed significant seasonal variation, with reptiles and invertebrates being least common in the diet in winter. The threatened thick-billed grasswren (Amytornis modestus) was found for the first time in the diet of feral cats. Bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) occurred in about one-third of cat and fox samples. This study contributes further to the evidence of biodiversity impacts of introduced predators, and the need for their strategic management.


Past research into student engagement has focused on behavioural engagement in students attending mainstream school. The present study investigated the school-related factors that facilitate re-engagement in learning from the perspective of disengaged students. Specifically, teacher (or other school staff) behaviours that supported the psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence were identified using the framework of self-determination theory (SDT; Deci, Vallerand, Pelletier, and Ryan 1991). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 secondary school students (aged 14–16 years) attending an alternative provision (AP) school in England and data were triangulated using staff interviews and lesson observations. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify, describe and interpret the themes within the data. Students believed that they were engaged in their learning at the AP school, and the student-staff relationship was found to be crucial to this re-engagement. Students reported many different avenues through which staff supported their needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence. These specific teacher behaviours may reflect a process of re-engagement into education not currently represented in existing models of engagement and may be used to form the basis of a model of re-engagement into education. Moreover, the current findings need to be disseminated to mainstream schools to enable them to incorporate elements into their teaching practices to prevent disengagement/encourage re-engagement.


Virtual machine consolidation is attractive in cloud computing platforms for several reasons including reduced infrastructure costs, lower energy consumption and ease of management. However, the interference between co-resident workloads caused by virtualization can violate the service level objectives (SLOs) that the cloud platform guarantees. Existing solutions to minimize interference between virtual machines (VMs) are mostly based on comprehensive micro-benchmarks or online training which makes them computationally intensive. In this paper, we present CloudScope, a system for diagnosing interference for multi-tenant cloud systems in a lightweight way. CloudScope employs a discrete-time Markov Chain model for the online prediction of performance interference of co-resident VMs. It uses the results to optimally (re)assign VMs to physical machines and to optimize the hypervisor configuration, e.g. the CPU share it can use, for different workloads. We have implemented CloudScope on top of the Xen hypervisor and conducted experiments using a set of CPU, disk, and network intensive workloads and a real system (MapReduce). Our results show that CloudScope interference prediction achieves an average error of 9%. The interference-aware scheduler improves VM performance by up to 10% compared to the default scheduler. In addition, the hypervisor reconfiguration can improve network throughput by up to 30%.


Road accidents involving alcohol are routinely monitored in Great Britain. Statistical information for recent years is summarised in this paper, the data having been drawn from reported motoring offences involving alcohol, police records of screening breath tests following injury accidents, and from special returns of blood alcohol concentrations from fatalities. Background information on the requirements for breath, blood or urine alcohol tests are outlined, together with returns for the period of the implementation in 1983 of the 1981 legislation. Distributions of blood alcohol levels in fatalities by age, season, time of day, and region for the period are given, together with data for single and multi-vehicle accidents. The materials presented update earlier published papers; information for subsequent years will be produced in a series of TRRL leaflets. (TRRL)


Over the last two decades, indigenous populations in Latin America have achieved a remarkable level of visibility and political effectiveness, particularly in Ecuador and Bolivia. In "Struggles of Voice", Jose Antonio Lucero examines these two outstanding examples in order to understand their different patterns of indigenous mobilization and to reformulate the theoretical model by which we link political representation to social change.Building on extensive fieldwork, Lucero considers Ecuador's united indigenous movement and compares it to the more fragmented situation in Bolivia. He analyzes the mechanisms at work in political and social structures to explain the different outcomes in each case. Lucero assesses the intricacies of the many indigenous organizations and the influence of various NGOs to uncover how the conflicts within social movements, the shifting nature of indigenous identities, and the politics of transnationalism all contribute to the success or failure of political mobilization.Blending philosophical inquiry with empirical analysis, "Struggles of Voice" is an informed and incisive comparative history of indigenous movements in these two Andean countries. It helps to redefine our understanding of the complex intersections of social movements and political representation.


This paper presents a new algorithm for bipartite ranking functions trained with partially labeled data. The algorithm is an extension of the self-training paradigm developed under the classification framework. We further propose an efficient and scalable optimization method for training linear models though the approach is general in the sense that it can be applied to any classes of scoring functions. Empirical results on several common image and text corpora over the Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) and the Average Precision measure show that the use of unlabeled data in the training process leads to improve the performance of baseline supervised ranking functions.


The size and complexity of software and hardware systems have significantly increased in the past years. As a result, it is harder to guarantee their correct behavior. One of the most successful methods for automated verification of finite-state systems is model checking. Most of the current model-checking systems use binary decision diagrams (BDDs) for the representation of the tested model and in the verification process of its properties. Generally, BDDs allow a canonical compact representation of a boolean function (given an order of its variables). The more compact the BDD is, the better performance one gets from the verifier. However, finding an optimal order for a BDD is an NP-complete problem. Therefore, several heuristic methods based on expert knowledge have been developed for variable ordering.

We propose an alternative approach in which the variable ordering algorithm gains "ordering experience" from training models and uses the learned knowledge for finding good orders. Our methodology is based on offine learning of pair precedence classifiers from training models, that is, learning which variable pair permutation is more likely to lead to a good order. For each training model, a number of training sequences are evaluated. Every training model variable pair permutation is then tagged based on its performance on the evaluated orders. The tagged permutations are then passed through a feature extractor and are given as examples to a classifier creation algorithm. Given a model for which an order is requested, the ordering algorithm consults each precedence classifier and constructs a pair precedence table which is used to create the order.

Our algorithm was integrated with SMV, which is one of the most widely used verification systems. Preliminary empirical evaluation of our methodology, using real benchmark models, shows performance that is better than random ordering and is competitive with existing algorithms that use expert knowledge. We believe that in sub-domains of models (alu, caches, etc.) our system will prove even more valuable. This is because it features the ability to learn sub-domain knowledge, something that no other ordering algorithm does.