In March 2008, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) revised its position statement on live animals and dissection. This statement, Responsible Use of Live Animals and Dissection in the Science Classroom, emphasizes the role of student interaction with animals in the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996). It encourages educators and school officials to address proper care and treatment of animals, as well (see "On the web"). Live animal safety Responsible Use of Live Animals and Dissection in the Science Classroom promotes science activities that require observing and working with animals. This approach fosters students' interest in science and a general respect for life. To do so safely, NSTA recommends that teachers do the following: * Educate themselves about the safe and responsible use of animals in the classroom, seek information from reputable sources, and familiarize themselves with state laws and regulations. * Become knowledgeable about the acquisition and care of the animals under study so that both students and animals stay safe and healthy during all activities. * Follow local, state, and national laws, policies, and regulations when live organisms, particularly native species, are included in the classroom. * Develop activities that instill in students an appreciation for the value of life and the importance of caring for animals responsibly. * Teach students how to safely handle live organisms and establish a plan for addressing such issues as allergies and fear of animals. * Develop and implement a plan for future care or disposition of animals at the conclusion of the study and during school breaks and summer vacations. * Espouse the importance of not conducting experimental procedures on animals if such procedures are likely to cause pain, induce nutritional deficiencies, or expose animals to parasites, toxic chemicals, or radiation. Shelter animals when the classroom is being cleaned with chemical cleaners, sprayed with pesticides, or when other potentially harmful chemicals are being used. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Because of allergies and other immune system concerns, there are several steps teachers must take before animals enter the classroom. Students' health information should be secured from the school health office, parents notified, and Board of Education policies reviewed. Teachers must also consider proper animal care: The American Association for Laboratory Animal Science's Caring for Animals: A Guide to Animals in the Classroom (see "On the web") is a good place to start. Dissection safety Responsible Use of Live Animals and Dissection in the Science Classroom also addresses laboratory dissections and meaningful alternatives. Teachers should have a policy in place for dealing with students who have religious, moral, or ethical objections to dissection, and provide alternative activities when appropriate. If a teacher chooses to include a dissection, specific safety issues must be addressed, including engineering controls (e.g., ventilation), standard operating procedures (e.g., appropriate specimen purchasing and disposal practices), and personal protective equipment (PPE; e. …


The principal problem of gravitational wave detection is distinguishing true gravitational wave signals from non-Gaussian noise artifacts. We describe two methods to deal with the problem of non-Gaussian noise in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory (LIGO). Perturbed black holes (BH) are known to vibrate at determinable quasi-normal mode frequencies. These vibrational modes are strongly excited during the inspiral and merger of binary BH systems. We will develop a template based search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns: the final stage of binary merger. Past searches for gravitational waves developed ad hoc detection statistics in an attempt to separate the expected gravitational wave signals from noise. We show how using the output of a multi-variate statistical classifier trained to directly probe the high dimensional parameter space of gravitational waves can improve a search over more traditional means. We conclude by placing preliminary upper limits on the rate of ringdown producing binary BH mergers. LIGO data contains frequent, non-Gaussian, instrument artifacts or glitches. Current LIGO searches for un-modeled gravitational wave bursts are primarily limited by the presence of glitches in analyzed data. We describe the BayesWave algorithm, wherein we model gravitational wave signals and detector glitches simultaneously in the wavelet domain. Using bayesian model selection techniques and a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo, we are able determine whether data is consistent with the presence of gravitational waves, detector glitches, or both. We demonstrate BayesWave's utility as a data quality tool by fitting glitches non-Gaussian LIGO data. Finally, we discuss how BayesWave can be extended into a full-fledged search for gravitational wave bursts.


ArDM is a new-generation WIMP detector which will measure simultaneously light and charge from scintillation and ionization of liquid argon. Our goal is to construct, characterize and operate a 1 ton liquid argon underground detector. The project relies on the possibility to extract the electrons produced by ionization from the liquid into the gas phase of the detector, to amplify and read out with Large Electron Multipliers detectors. Argon VUV scintillation light has to be converted with wavelength shifters such as TetraPhenyl Butadiene in order to be detected by photomultipliers with bialkali photocathodes. We describe the status of the LEM based charge readout and light readout system R&D and the rst light readout tests with warm and cold argon gas in the full size detector.


Underreporting of income is a costly problem for the government and for those people who do pay their taxes, due to the necessity of higher tax burdens to sustain a given amount of revenue. An extensive research report published by the IRS this year estimates that in the United States in 2006 the "tax gap" between paid taxes and legally owed taxes was $450 billion, which means 16.9 percent of total tax liabilities were evaded that year (Black et al., 2012). The IRS recovered $65 billion from late payments and audits, but that still left 14.5 percent noncompliance. Breaking the tax gap down into finer categories, the IRS finds that the vast majority (84 percent) comes from underreporting of income, most of that (62.5 percent) comes from individual income taxes, and most of that (52 percent) is small business proprietor's income. This totals to 27 percent of noncompliance due to underreporting of individual proprietor income. It is estimated that 57 percent of business income is not reported (Black et al., 2012). Wages make up a small fraction of underreporting, mostly due to the fact that firms must report employee income directly to the IRS, and withholding is common, so a relatively disinterested third party makes the decision of how much income is reported (Slemrod, 2008). Slemrod emphasizes the importance of enforcement in compliance behavior, citing the fact that income subject to withholding and substantial information reporting (wages) has a 1 percent noncompliance rate, compared to 56 percent noncompliance for income with little or no information reporting requirements. Given the difficulty of identifying cheaters and the cost of increasing the rate of auditing, a better understanding of the determinants of noncompliance is needed 1 to reduce the magnitude of tax cheating. To address a part of the tax evasion quandary, Kalambokidis et al. (2012) conducted a laboratory experiment1 which was designed to examine the feasibility of using the choice between a high-burden,2 low-transparency and a low-burden, high-transparency tax regime, as a mechanism to separate out those who have higher and lower propensities to cheat when reporting their income. The results are the subject of this paper.


The Japanese Consumer Price Index (CPI) is considered to be upwardly biased. This paper estimates the Engel curve based on National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure data to measure the bias. The estimated annual bias for the period 1989 to 2004 is 0.5 percentage points. Correcting the bias leads to a lower inflation rate of 0.14 percent per year, against the official inflation rate of 0.65 percent during the period. A demographic analysis shows that a household with a pre-school child faces a smaller bias suggesting that the opportunity cost of shopping determines the size of the bias.


This masterly study has a grand sweep. It ranges over centuries, with a long look backward over several millennia. Yet the history it unfolds is primarily the story of individuals: thinkers and dreamers who envisaged an ideal social order and described it persuasively, leaving a mark on their own and later times. The roster of utopians includes men of all stripes in different countries and eras--figures as disparate as More and Fourier, the Marquis de Sade and Edward Bellamy, Rousseau and Marx. Fascinating character studies of the major figures are among the delights of the book. Utopian writings run the gamut from fictional narratives to theoretical treatises, from political manifestos to constitutions for a new society. The Manuels have structured five centuries of utopian invention by identifying successive constellations, groups of thinkers joined by common social and moral concerns. Within this framework they analyze individual writings, in the context of the author's life and of the socio-economic, religious, and political exigencies of his time. Concentrating on innovative works, they highlight disjunctures as well as continuities in utopian thought from the Renaissance through the twentieth century. Witty and erudite, challenging in its interpretations and provocative in the questions it poses, the Manuels' anatomy of utopia is an adventure in ideas.


Abstract Unlike performance incentives for private sector managers, little is known about performance incentives for managers in public sector bureaucracies. Through a randomized trial in rural China, we study performance incentives rewarding school administrators for reducing student anemia—as well as complementarity between incentives and orthogonally assigned discretionary resources. Large (but not small) incentives and unrestricted grants both reduced anemia, but incentives were more cost-effective. Although unrestricted grants and small incentives do not interact, grants fully crowd-out the effect of larger incentives. Our findings suggest that performance incentives can be effective in bureaucratic environments, but they are not complementary to discretionary resources.


Many pulsating phenomena are associated with the auroral substorm. It has been considered that some of these phenomena involve kilometer-scale Alfven waves coupling the magnetosphere and ionosphere. Electric field oscillations at the altitude of the ionosphere are a signature of such wave activity that could distinguish it from other sources of auroral particle precipitation, which may be simply tracers of magnetospheric activity. Therefore, a ground based diagnostic of kilometer-scale oscillating electric fields would be a valuable tool in the study of pulsations and the auroral substorm. In this study we attempt to develop such a tool in the Poker Flat incoherent scatter radar (PFISR). The central result is a statistically significant detection of a 1.4 Hz electric field oscillation associated with a similar oscillating optical emission, during the recovery phase of a substorm. The optical emissions also contain a bright, lower frequency (0.2 Hz) pulsation that does not show up in the radar backscatter. The fact that higher frequency oscillations are detected by the radar, whereas the bright, lower frequency optical pulsation is not detected by the radar, serves to strengthen a theoretical argument that the radar is sensitive to oscillating electric fields, but not to oscillating particle precipitation. Although it is difficult to make conclusions as to the physical mechanism, we do not find evidence for a plane-wave-like Alfven wave; the detected structure is evident in only two of five adjacent beams. We emphasize that this is a new application for ISR, and that corroborating results are needed.


Abstract The increasing demands of elite sports make it difficult for talented young athletes to balance school and sport. This paper investigates the multi-dimensional policy effectiveness of elite sport schools (ESSs) in secondary education in Flanders. Four hundred and eight elite athletes who graduated from an ESS, and 341 from mainstream schools, completed an online survey. The data showed no clear evidence of more effective outputs (performance), or more positive evaluation of throughputs (processes) by athletes who attended an ESS. Athletes who did not attend an ESS received less support services, but those who did receive such services were generally more satisfied. They were equally satisfied about their coaches' expertise. Only training facilities were rated generally better in an ESS. The study concluded that evaluating effectiveness of ESS (at input-throughput-output level) requires a tailor-made, sport-specific approach. Furthermore, as ESS is only a small part of a total career, many other factors influence long-term success.


Electrochemical devices such as fuel cells are key to a sustainable energy future. However the applicability of such under realistic conditions is not viable to date. Expensive precious metals are used as electrocatalysts and contaminants present in the operating media poison the utilized catalysts. Here the one pot synthesis of a highly active, self-supporting and surprisingly poison tolerant catalyst is reported. The polymerisation of 1,5-diaminonaphthalene provides self-assembled nanospheres, which upon pyrolysis form a catalytically active high surface area material. Tolerance to a wide range of substances that poison precious metal based catalysts combined with high electrocatalytic activity might enable numerous additional technological applications. In addition to fuel cells these could be metal–air batteries, oxygen-depolarized chlor-alkali cathodes, oxygen sensors, medical implantable devices, waste water treatment and as counter electrodes for many other sensors where the operating medium is a complex and challenging mixture.


Drawn from ecology, the optimal forager predictive policing methodology has been identified as the primary tasking tool used by police services to tackle domestic burglary. Built upon established findings that the target selection behaviour of foraging domestic burglary offenders can be predicted, this thesis examines the physical offending and geographical characteristics of foraging offenders in greater detail. This study evolves established research evidence by drawing upon criminological methods that have potential to increase the approaches effectiveness before testing their applicability in respect of foraging criminals. Ecological research evidence relating to assumptions of foraging behaviour are used to devise theoretical manifestations within criminal behaviour which are subsequently tested for and used to build a theoretical model to combat them.
The study achieves all of this through a number of key research chapters, these include (1) identifying predictive thresholds for linking burglary offences committed by foraging criminals (2) drawing on existing assumptions within ecology the study then seeks to identify their presence within foraging criminals, including the presence of significant crime displacement, and (3) geographical profiling is identified and tested as a potential solution to combat the evasive behaviour of foraging offenders as a response to the increased police presence that the optimal forager model is designed to co-ordinate. Underpinning the study throughout is an examination of the enablers and blockers present that impact upon the effectiveness of such transitions of theory into practice. Overall, the thesis provides new theoretical material by creating a framework of foraging offender typologies. The key practical implications for policing include a model for tackling the identified theoretical foraging typologies to increase the crime prevention and reduction efforts in respect of domestic burglary.


Interdisciplinary models of teaching have been present in education systems for at least 30 years. The idea of the interdisciplinarity is to show students the contextualisation of subject knowledge, its relation to real-life problems and to build skills across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This is essential to future competitiveness since innovations frequently occur at the interface of disciplines when people are able to collaborate. Schools try to respond to the need to prepare students for an interdisciplinary and collaborative job market by modifying the curricula and training teachers. But one of the most primary and difficult problems is preparing a truly interdisciplinary lesson or a project. It seems that all complex issues could be good examples for this purpose. One of these complex issues is the study of climate change, which requires the collaboration of different specialists and a comprehensive understanding of the problem in different scientific fields: physical, geographical, biological, social, engineering, etc. The paper presents an interdisciplinary project which links knowledge within a few different science areas around the real-life problem important for students. The work shows the developed and tested interdisciplinary educational project 'Panta Rhei' which integrates physics and other STEM subjects to present the biological and social consequences of changes in vegetation periods for different climate zones. It shows how Earth observation research can be utilised in schools for teaching physics and other science subjects. The project was validated on a group of Polish teachers. In the paper we present the whole project together with teachers' opinions.


This paper reviews Lisa Hilbink's, Judges Beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship (2007). It argues that Hilbink's well-written and impressively researched book provides the best available book on why Chile's judges have hitherto tended to facilitate and condone illiberal and antidemocratic policies, and why these tendencies persist with respect to civil rights in general, beyond the Pinochet-era human rights cases. It stresses that Hilbink not only deepens our understanding of Chilean judges, but also highlights the relevance of the Chilean experience to current debates about judicial behaviour, the role of a judiciary in building and sustaining a meaningful democracy, and the potential and limits of institutional reform to the judiciary in Latin America and elsewhere. It is also argued that Hilbink's book has some limitations: namely, the narrowly framed and deterministic character of its institutional analysis; the lack of attention given to informal institutions, relationships and understandings and their impact on judicial behaviour and outcomes, and to the fact that the old inquisitorial system of criminal procedure that applies to the Pinochet-era cases gives enormous discretion to the judges and is important for understanding the legal lottery experienced by victims and defendants alike. Specifically, and drawing upon the author's own and other recent research on Chile, this paper argues that Chile's judiciary are more heterodox, pragmatic and politicised than Hilbink implies. This paper presents findings that with respect to the human rights trials in Chile since 1998, Chile's courts have been more successful in investigating and prosecuting the state crimes committed under the dictatorship than any other comparable country that has experienced the aftermath of authoritarianism and mass atrocity, and that this represents a new, distinct phase in Chile's struggle to secure truth and justice. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether the judges of Chile will pull back from involvement in and support of the Pinochet-era human rights cases if a right-wing Chilean head of state is elected in the up-coming presidential elections, as much of what has been achieved on the human rights front is reversible.


This thesis presents optical characterization of the static and dynamic magnetic interactions in ferromagnetic and multiferroic heterostructures with time-resolved and interface-specific optical techniques. The focus of the thesis is on elucidating the underlying physics of key physical parameters and novel approaches, crucial to the performance of magnetic recording and spintronic devices. First, time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect (TRMOKE) is applied to investigate the spin dynamics in L10 ordered FePt thin films, where perpendicular magnetic anisotropy Ku and intrinsic Gilbert damping a0 are determined. Furthermore, the quadratic dependence of Ku and a0 on spin-orbit coupling strength ? is demonstrated, where ? is continuously controlled through chemical substitution of Pt with Pd element. In addition, a linear correlation between a0 and electron scattering rate 1/T e is experimentally observed through modulating the anti-site disorder c in the L10 ordered structure. The results elucidate the basic physics of magnetic anisotropy and Gilbert damping, and facilitate the design and fabrication of new magnetic alloys with large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and tailored damping properties. Second, ultrafast excitation of coherent spin precession is demonstrated in Fe/CoO heterostructures and La0.67Ca0.33MnO 3 thin films using TRMOKE technique. In the Fe/CoO thin films, Instant non-thermal ferromagnet (FM) ñ antiferromagnet (AFM) exchange torque on Fe magnetization through ultrafast photo-excited charge transfer possesses in the CoO layer is experimentally demonstrated at room temperature. The efficiency of spin precession excitation is significantly higher and the recovery is notably faster than the demagnetization procedure. In the La0.67Ca 0.33MnO3 thin films, pronounced spin precessions are observed in a geometry with negligible canting of the magnetization, indicating that the transient exchange field is generated by the emergent AFM interactions due to charge transfer and modification of the kinetic energy of eg electrons under optical excitation. The results will help promoting the development of novel device concepts for ultrafast spin manipulation. Last, the interfacial spin state of the multiferroic heterostructure PbZr0.52Ti0.4803/La0.67Sr0.33MnO 3 and its dependence on ferroelectric polarization is investigated with interface specific magnetization induced second harmonic generation (MSHG). The spin alignment of Mn ions in the first unit cell layer at the heterointerface can be tuned from FM to AFM exchange coupled, while the bulk magnetization remains unchanged as probed with MOKE. The discovery provides new insights into the basic physics of interfacial magneto-electric (ME) coupling.


Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology is being investigated for monolithic pixel device fabrication. The SOI wafers by UNIBOND allow the silicon resistivity to be optimized separately for the electronics and detector parts. We have fabricated pixel detectors using fully depleted SOI (FD-SOI) technology provided by OKI Semiconductor Co. Ltd. The first pixel devices consisting of 32times32 matrix with 20 mum times 20 mum pixels were irradiated with 60Co gamma's up to 0.60 MGy and with 70-MeV protons up to 9.3times10 60Co p/cm2. The performance characterization was made on the electronics part and as a photon detector from the response to reset signals and to laser. The electronics operation was affected by radiation-induced charge accumulation in the oxide layers. Detailed evaluation of the characteristics changes in the transistors was separately carried out using transistor test structures to which a wider range of irradiation, from 0.12 kGy to 5.1 MGy, was made with 60Co gamma's.


Efforts to improve the understanding of past climatic or hydrologic variability have received a great deal of attention in various fields of geosciences such as glaciology, dendrochronology, sedimentology and hydrology. Based on different proxies, each research community produces different kinds of climatic or hydrologic reanalyses at different spatio-temporal scales and resolutions. When considering climate or hydrology, many studies have been devoted to characterising variability, trends or breaks using observed time series representing different regions or climates of the world. However, in hydrology, these studies have usually been limited to short temporal scales (mainly a few decades and more rarely a century) because they require observed time series (which suffer from a limited spatio-temporal density). This paper introduces ANATEM, a method that combines local observations and large-scale climatic information (such as the 20CR Reanalysis) to build long-term probabilistic air temperature and precipitation time series with a high spatio-temporal resolution (1 day and a few km 2 ). ANATEM was tested on the reconstruction of air temperature and precipitation time series of 22 watersheds situated in the Durance River basin, in the French Alps. Based on a multi-criteria and multi-scale diagnosis, the results show that ANATEM improves the performance of classical statistical models – especially concerning spatial homogeneity – while providing an original representation of uncertainties which are conditioned by atmospheric circulation patterns. The ANATEM model has been also evaluated for the regional scale against independent long-term time series and was able to capture regional low-frequency variability over more than a century (1883–2010).


The Dalradian Supergroup is divided into four groups, the uppermost of which is the Southern Highland Group (SHG). To date there are few sedimentological data that pertain to the SHG. In this thesis new field, petrographic and geochemical data are provided for the SHG and a model for its evolution outlined.
The Killin and Aberfoyle areas together provide one of the most complete sections through the SHG. New sedimentological data from these sections are used here as a basis on which to build a correlative stratigraphy for the entire SHG basin which extents from Banff in NE Scotland southwestward into N. Ireland.
The sediments of the SHG and the underlying Tayvallich subgroup of the Argyll Group change are dominantly turbiditic in character. They change stratigraphically upward from predominantly carbonate turbidites to siliciclastic turbidites. Volcaniclastic units are present, especially in the lower parts of the sequence. The volcaniclastic sediments document distal fall out of ash derived from plume-related volcanoes. The sedimentary sequences record the history of an evolving basin developed on the southern margin of Laurentia during the opening of the Iapetus Ocean. This history spans sedimentation during initial active rift faulting with rapid subsidence rates through to a drift stage with sedimentation along a passiv.e margin marked by thermal subsidence. Those parts of the sequence deposited on oceanic crust have been removed by later tectonic activity.
Using present day geographic co-ordinates, the long axis of the basin was orientated NE-SW with the majority of the sediments derived from the N and NW and deposited by sediment gravity flows in a slope apron or a submarine ramp environment. The source terrain comprised mainly granitic basement-type rocks with abundant quartz veins. However parts of the sequence show an igneous component with the geochemical signature of within-plate, plume-type basalts. Geochemical data show that the major change in provenance was temporal rather than geographic. Geochronological data derived from detrital minerals suggest that erosional systems in the hinterland were exposing increasingly old, probably Archaean basement, rocks as SHG deposition continued.


This paper presents an application of tower fan control for optimization of the performance of chiller plants combined with free cooling on the condenser water side. Mathematical models including all the main components of an existing cooling plant were developed and implemented in MATLAB. Simulation results include a mapping of the performance of the plant working in free cooling mode which was used to select control parameters for free cooling operation. Then a mapping of the plant operating with chillers was developed to find the correlation between load and near-optimal air flow, which is the basis of the near-optimal tower control (NOTC) strategy. Finally, simulations were carried out using three consecutive years of historical data to predict the performance of the plant under three different control strategies: 1) tower fan control aiming to keep the temperature of the water supplied to chiller condensers at a constant set point (current control strategy), 2) NOTC and 3) NOTC and free cooling combined. Comparison of the performance of the plant with the baseline (constant condenser water temperature) shows that significant savings can be achieved through the implementation of NOTC along with free cooling. It is expected that the methodology and results of this study provide a useful framework for optimization of cooling plants.


This paper reports the results of a study investigating how jurors interpret and digest scientific evidence when it is presented to them in a trial setting and how differences in juror attitudes and education influence interpretation of scientific evidence. The study involved a sample of mock jurors recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (n=91). Study subjects each viewed a transcript of a mock legal case involving DNA evidence. Results suggest that when presented with conflicting expert testimony, jurors will interpret evidence in a way that is consistent with pre-existing attitudes or beliefs (such as political predispositions). Importantly, results suggest that a juror's ability to do this and therefore the polarization between jurors of different political pre-dispositions increases as level of education increases. For jurors classified as Conservative, as education levels increased, the prosecution expert was rated as more credible and the defendant was found guilty more often. For jurors classified as Liberal, as education levels increased, the prosecution expert was rated as less credible and the defendant was found guilty less often. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.


Chile was the first major Latin American nation to carry out a complete neo-liberal transformation. Its policies - encouraging foreign investment, privatizing public sector companies and services, lowering trade barriers, reducing the size of the state, and embracing the market as a regulator of both the economy and society - produced an economic boom that some have hailed as a 'miracle' to be emulated by other Latin American countries. But how have Chile's millions of workers, whose hard labor and long hours have made the miracle possible, fared under this program?Through empirically grounded historical case studies, this volume examines the human underside of the Chilean economy over the past three decades, delineating the harsh inequities that persist in spite of growth, low inflation, and some decrease in poverty and unemployment. Implemented in the 1970s at the point of the bayonet and in the shadow of the torture chamber, the neoliberal policies of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship reversed many of the gains in wages, benefits, and working conditions that Chile's workers had won during decades of struggle and triggered a severe economic crisis.Later refined and softened, Pinochet's neo-liberal model began, finally, to promote economic growth in the mid-1980s, and it was maintained by the center-left governments that followed the restoration of democracy in 1990. Yet, despite significant increases in worker productivity, real wages stagnated, the expected restoration of labor rights faltered, and gaps in income distribution continued to widen.To shed light on this history and these ongoing problems, the contributors look at industries long part of the Chilean economy - including textiles and copper - and industries that have expanded more recently - including fishing, forestry, and agriculture. They not only show how neoliberalism has affected Chile's labor force in general but also how it has damaged the environment and imposed special burdens on women. Painting a sobering picture of the two Chiles - one increasingly rich, the other still mired in poverty - these essays suggest that the Chilean miracle may not be as miraculous as it seems.


A novel electrochemical sensor gold nanoparticle (AuNP)/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) modified pencil graphite electrode (PGE) was developed for the ultrasensitive determination of Bisphenol A (BPA). The gold nanoparticles were electrodeposited by constant potential electrolysis and PVP was attached by passive adsorption onto the electrode surface. The electrode surfaces were characterized by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The parameters that affected the experimental conditions were researched and optimized. The AuNP/PVP/PGE sensor provided high sensitivity and selectivity for BPA recognition by using square wave adsorptive stripping voltammetry (SWAdSV). Under optimized conditions, the detection limit was found to be 1.0 nM. This new sensor system offered the advantages of simple fabrication which aided the expeditious replication, low cost, fast response, high sensitivity and low background current for BPA. This new sensor system was successfully tested for the detection of the amount of BPA in bottled drinking water with high reliability.


It remains uncertain whether intensive control of blood pressure (BP) results in a lower risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients with hypertension. Using data from SPRINT (Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial), which enrolled participants with hypertension at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, we examined whether intensive BP lowering (target systolic BP [SBP] <120 mm Hg), compared with standard BP lowering (target SBP<140 mm Hg), results in a lower risk of AF. This analysis included 8022 participants (4003 randomized to the intensive arm and 4019 to standard BP arm) who were free of AF at the time of enrollment and with available baseline and follow-up electrocardiographic data. AF was ascertained from standard 12-lead electrocardiograms recorded at biannual study examinations and an exit visit. During up to 5.2 years of follow-up and a total of 28 322 person-years, 206 incident AF cases occurred; 88 in the intensive BP-lowering arm and 118 in the standard BP-lowering arm. Intensive BP lowering was associated with a 26% lower risk of developing new AF (hazard ratio, 0.74 [95% CI, 0.56–0.98]; P=0.037). This effect was consistent among prespecified subgroups of SPRINT participants stratified by age, sex, race, SBP tertiles, prior cardiovascular disease, and prior chronic kidney disease when interactions between treatment effect and these subgroups were assessed using Hommel adjusted P values. In conclusion, intensive treatment to a target of SBP <120 mm Hg in patients with hypertension at high risk of cardiovascular disease has the potential to reduce the risk of AF. Registration— URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT01206062.


ABSTRACT In this article, we investigate abuse, captivity, and human trafficking along routes of irregular migration in Libya after the reign of Muammar Gaddafi. We argue that the systematic exploitation of migrants financially benefits competing actors in intra-state conflicts and terrorist organizations with global ambitions. Through a macro to micro analysis informed by a corpus of investigative reports and survivor testimony from 2011 to 2019, we map sites of captivity, facility types, and the conditions of abuse. We establish that the treatment of detainees across both official and illicit channels constitutes conditions of human trafficking, gender-based violence, and enslavement. Decentralized mechanisms of detainment directly benefit militant, criminal, and terrorist actors vying for power. This realization compels us to consider the implications of outsourcing migration control against the backdrop of verified human rights abuse, human trafficking, counterterrorism concerns, and global insecurity.


Creating and establishing a successful innovation is challenging and many attempts fail. Despite of the complex nature of the phenomenon, previous literature often tends to limit its focus on either to the technical elements or human elements related to an innovation. Current research-in-progress paper aims to avoid this 'either-or' thinking and rather examine the roles, impact and mutual interaction of both, technical and human elements, in order to further understand the successful emergence of a digital service innovation, i.e. a novel value co-creation practice enabled by a digital infrastructure. To achieve this we draw from three separate fields: service ecosystem perspective, information technology (IT) perspective and actor-network theory. The paper presents a plan for future empirical study and provides initial description of a case study about establishing a digital shopping solution in a small brick and mortar convenience store in Northern Finland.


Chinese scientists for years have conducted unregistered clinical trials on humans that have raised concerns about the level of controls and transparency in place, as well as the kinds of safety standards available to trial subjects.

But the World Health Organization's July 2007 addition of recently launched Chinese and Indian registers into its new global clinical trial network has raised hopes that medical research standards would start benefiting from greater scrutiny.

The WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform was launched in May 2006 to bring different clinical trials registers from around the world into one network. It aims to increase the transparency and accountability of clinical research conducted by companies and institutions, and thus boosts public trust and confidence in that research. The initiative follows a number of high-profile cases in developed countries, where negative research results were withheld from the public.

China's new state-backed registry, known as the Chinese Clinical Trial Register, was launched in 2005 in response to calls for greater transparency of the clinical trial process in the world's most populous country. It is run by the Chinese Evidence-Based Medicine Centre, sponsored by institutions such as the state-run Sichuan University and Chinese Ministry of Health, and was designated by the government to join the WHO platform.

Associate Professor Taixiang Wu, administrator of the register, estimated at least 30 000 clinical trials were performed annually in China, but information on them is limited. Since 2006, some Chinese researchers have been registering their trials at http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov, a web site run by the United States of America National Institutes of Health, or at the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number scheme sponsored by the Medical Research Council in England, which aims to simplify trial identification and improve reporting traceability. But despite this recent trend, most trials in China remain unregistered, Wu said. Fewer than 300 current Chinese trials have been recorded in international registers that contributed research to WHO.

The new Chinese register "aims to help trialists (i.e. researchers) correctly report their trials to let the public know how the trial was planned and detail its results", Wu told the Bulletin.

Its aim is to encourage widespread trial registration within China, a country where millions live in far-flung regions and where close scrutiny and consumer activism for improving medical procedures are weak. The Chinese register faced a "very big challenge", Wu acknowledged.

Dr Davina Ghersi, WHO platform coordinator, said bringing China and India into the network was "extremely important because of the vast populations in those two countries, the amount of research that is being done there, and the need to meet the needs of the populations of the two countries".

"The sketchiness of information relating to trials in China deprives both the public and scientific community of potentially valuable information", Ghersi said.

In some developed countries, editors of peer-reviewed medical journals have pressured researchers to publicly register their protocols and results. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, a group that represents the world's leading general medical journals, announced in 2004 that it would only publish results of clinical trials registered before the first patient's enrolment.

The new Chinese register wants to build consensus for such a move by enrolling the editors of 52 key Chinese journals in the Chinese Clinical Trial Registration and Publication Collaboration, which was formed in 2006.

The collaboration was established by the Chinese Evidence-based Medicine Centre, the Ministry of Health, the Chinese Cochrane Centre and the International Clinical Epidemiology Network Resource and Training Centre of the West China Hospital. It aims to build an effective trial registration system by fostering agreement among key journals that only research relating to registered trials will be published. China has some 1100 medical journals.

Ghersi said China's government has supported involvement in the WHO platform to improve clinical trials. "Having a register in China supported by the Ministry of Health will give it the support needed to successfully identify all the clinical research being done in China," she said.

In many developed countries, consumer activism has led to transparency, registration of clinical trials and improved standards governing them. But this has not happened in China. Wu said that public consumer scrutiny of clinical trials helps promote these goals.

"Although consumer action in China is very young, I believe it will become stronger in the future", Wu said. "Joining the WHO (clinical trials) network will be very helpful in promoting such action to become a movement, and will feed back into promoting the rate of trial registration."

A Chinese advocate for patient involvement in improved clinical trials, Professor Mingming Zhang, said major obstacles, including large populations and poorly distributed health services, hindered public participation in efforts to raise research standards.

"The establishment of the Chinese Clinical Trials Register is a big step for those of us who understand why it is important", said Mingming, a member of the Cochrane Consumer Network Committee. "But Chinese patients know nothing about it at the moment, so raising awareness among the public is the first step." ■

The WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform has welcomed China's new state-backed registry, the Chinese Clinical Trial Register, into its network in a move to enhance transparency and strengthen standards surrounding clinical research ...


We consider the problem of learning predictive models from longitudinal data, consisting of irregularly repeated, sparse observations from a set of individuals over time. Such data often exhibit longitudinal correlation (LC) (correlations among observations for each individual over time), cluster correlation (CC) (correlations among individuals that have similar characteristics), or both. These correlations are often accounted for using mixed effects models that include fixed effects and random effects, where the fixed effects capture the regression parameters that are shared by all individuals, whereas random effects capture those parameters that vary across individuals. However, the current state-of-the-art methods are unable to select the most predictive fixed effects and random effects from a large number of variables, while accounting for complex correlation structure in the data and non-linear interactions among the variables. We propose Longitudinal Multi-Level Factorization Machine (LMLFM), to the best of our knowledge, the first model to address these challenges in learning predictive models from longitudinal data. We establish the convergence properties, and analyze the computational complexity, of LMLFM. We present results of experiments with both simulated and real-world longitudinal data which show that LMLFM outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of predictive accuracy, variable selection ability, and scalability to data with large number of variables. The code and supplemental material is available at https://github.com/junjieliang672/LMLFM.


The theoretical implications of equating the melancholic states of past eras with today's depression are explored. These include the presuppositions of the descriptive psychiatry so influential in twentieth century classification, which attempts to identify and describe mental disorders without reference to underlying causes. It also includes claims made about different forms of masked, and non-Western depression, and the new "drug cartography" assigning psychiatric categories based on psychopharmacological effect. An evaluation of the relative merits of descriptivist and causal ontologies, together with an assessment of the similarities and differences between melancholia and depression, suggest the conclusion that these two conditions are misleadingly equated.


Workflow driven support systems in the peri-operative area have the potential to optimize clinical processes and to allow new situation-adaptive support systems. We started to develop a workflow management system supporting all involved actors in the operating theatre with the goal to synchronize the tasks of the different stakeholders by giving relevant information to the right team members. Using the OMG standards BPMN, CMMN and DMN gives us the opportunity to bring established methods from other industries into the medical field. The system shows each addressed actor their information in the right place at the right time to make sure every member can execute their task in time to ensure a smooth workflow. The system has the overall view of all tasks. Accordingly, a workflow management system including the Camunda BPM workflow engine to run the models, and a middleware to connect different systems to the workflow engine and some graphical user interfaces to show necessary information or to interact with the system are used. The complete pipeline is implemented with a RESTful web service. The system is designed to include different systems like hospital information system (HIS) via the RESTful web service very easily and without loss of data. The first prototype is implemented and will be expanded.


In this document, we discuss location privacy as applicable to Mobile
IPv6. We document the concerns arising from revealing a Home Address
to an onlooker and from disclosing a Care-of Address to a
correspondent. This memo provides information for the Internet
community.


This research was conducted in the central region of Ghana to investigate the utilisation of ICT in hotels business operation. Primary data collections employed in the study were obtained from 200 respondents using well-structured questionnaires. Findings of the research study revealed that telephones, computers, internet, printers and fax machines were ICT applications in hotels business operation. Telephones were the most common ICT application used, and then followed by fax machines were the least ICT applications used in hotels business operation in the Central Region. Findings of the research study further revealed that the majority hotels in the region were using the internet as the latest developments in telecommunications. Hotels in the Central Region have benefited from the uses of ICT in their business operations through accessing hospitality information, improving customer service and increasing patronage. The main conclusion drawn from the research study is that there is still a need to promote ICT utilisation in hospitality industry in the Central Region and Ghana at large.

 Key words: Information communication and technology (ICT), internet, hotels, central region, Ghana.


ECON 5005. Fair Trade Entrepreneurship. (3 Credits) Fair trade is a global response to social injustice and poverty. Whether it is capital for "startups" or markets for fair trade coffee, the fair trade movement promotes socially and environmental responsibility business practices here and abroad. This course reviews the fair trade movement's successes and failures to find alternatives to business as usual that reduce poverty and build a sustainable global economy. Students focus on country specific examples of fair trade and microfinance social innovation that reduce poverty by creating viable livelihoods. Marketing, insurance, finance and management can all be applied to build a socially justice and sustainable global economy. "We urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision" Pope Francis argues in his recent Encyclical Letter, this course explores this vision. Attributes: CEED, CENS, LALS, LASS.


The SCCS CO2-EOR Joint Industry Project accepted a proposal by Element Energy, supported by Dundas Consultants and Prof. Kemp, to quantify the potential impacts of fiscal incentives for CO2-EOR in the UK Continental Shelf in detail, recognising the additional costs, complexities, uncertainties and longer-term liabilities faced by CCS projects involving CO2-EOR.
The approach agreed uses financial modelling of investor behaviour and outcomes under a wide range of drivers, scenarios, sensitivities. The approach draws on published data and the team's data and models for oil and gas taxation, and understanding of CCS and CO2-EOR. No confidential oil industry data have been used, and all results are therefore illustrative, based on generic assumptions.
This non-technical report represents part of the final deliverable from the Element Energy- led study.


Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a reaction to trauma that results in a chronic perception of threat, precipitating mobilization of the autonomic nervous system, and may be reflected by chronic disinhibition of limbic structures. A common injury preceding PTSD in veterans is mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). This may be due to the vulnerability of white matter in these networks and such damage may affect treatment response. We evaluated transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation (tVNS), a non-invasive, low-risk approach that may alter the functions of the limbo-cortical and peripheral networks underlying the hyperarousal component of PTSD and thus improve patient health and well-being. In this single visit pilot study evaluating the impact of tVNS in 22 combat veterans, we used a between-subjects design in people with either PTSD with preceding mTBI or healthy controls. Participants were randomized into stimulation or sham groups and completed a posturally modulated autonomic assessment and emotionally modulated startle paradigm. The primary measures used were respiratory sinus arrhythmia (high-frequency heart rate variability) during a tilt-table procedure derived from an electrocardiogram, and skin conductance changes in response to acoustic startle while viewing emotional images (International Affective Picture System). The stimulation was well tolerated and resulted in improvements in vagal tone and moderation of autonomic response to startle, consistent with modulation of autonomic state and response to stress in this population. Our results suggest that tVNS affects systems underlying emotional dysregulation in this population and, therefore, should be further evaluated and developed as a potential treatment tool for these patients.


We present a real-time stamp classifier of astronomical events for the Automatic Learning for the Rapid Classification of Events broker, ALeRCE. The classifier is based on a convolutional neural network, trained on alerts ingested from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). Using only the science, reference, and difference images of the first detection as inputs, along with the metadata of the alert as features, the classifier is able to correctly classify alerts from active galactic nuclei, supernovae (SNe), variable stars, asteroids, and bogus classes, with high accuracy (∼94%) in a balanced test set. In order to find and analyze SN candidates selected by our classifier from the ZTF alert stream, we designed and deployed a visualization tool called SN Hunter, where relevant information about each possible SN is displayed for the experts to choose among candidates to report to the Transient Name Server database. From 2019 June 26 to 2021 February 28, we have reported 6846 SN candidates to date (11.8 candidates per day on average), of which 971 have been confirmed spectroscopically. Our ability to report objects using only a single detection means that 70% of the reported SNe occurred within one day after the first detection. ALeRCE has only reported candidates not otherwise detected or selected by other groups, therefore adding new early transients to the bulk of objects available for early follow-up. Our work represents an important milestone toward rapid alert classifications with the next generation of large etendue telescopes, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.


Abstract. The efficient primitive-equation coupled atmosphere-ocean model SPEEDO V2.0 is presented. The model includes an interactive sea-ice and land component. SPEEDO is a global earth system model of intermediate complexity. It has a horizontal resolution of T30 (triangular truncation at wave number 30) and 8 vertical layers in the atmosphere, and a horizontal resolution of 2 degrees and 20 levels in the ocean. The parameterisations in SPEEDO are developed in such a way that it is a fast model suitable for large ensembles or long runs (of O(104) years) on a typical current workstation. The model has no flux correction. We compare the mean state and inter-annual variability of the model with observational fields of the atmosphere and ocean. In particular the atmospheric circulation, the mid-latitude patterns of variability and teleconnections from the tropics are well simulated. To show the capabilities of the model, we performed a long control run and an ensemble experiment with enhanced greenhouse gases. The long control run shows that the model is stable. CO2 doubling and future climate change scenario experiments show a climate sensitivity of 1.84 K W-1 m2, which is within the range of state-of-the-art climate models. The spatial response patterns are comparable to state-of-the-art, higher resolution models. However, for very high greenhouse gas concentrations the parameterisations are not valid. We conclude that the model is suitable for past, current and future climate simulations and for exploring wide parameter ranges and mechanisms of variability. However, as with any model, users should be careful when using the model beyond the range of physical realism of the parameterisations and model setup.


Understanding temporal dynamics of populations is important for the management of endangered and/or harvested populations as well as for evolutionary biology. Population sizes usually fluctuate over time because of changes in reproduction, mortality/survival, immigration and emigration. I reviewed the state of knowledge with respect to these vital demographic parameters on nine European woodpecker species. Only 4.2% of over 2100 publications found on these species reported on one or more of the vital rates, indicating severe knowledge gaps with respect to these traits. For most species, I found some information on reproduction (nest and fledging success), but generally much less on adult survival and immigration. No study quantitatively reported on emigration. No information on vital rates was found for Picus canus and Dendrocopos syriacus. Results are discussed in relation to geographic distribution and trends of the studied populations as well as with respect to life-history aspects and factors influencing vital rates.


While there is a clear consensus in the epidemiologic literature on the direct association between alcohol consumption and blood pressure, the shape of this relation and its strength in blacks are uncertain. Therefore, the association between alcohol and blood pressure was examined in a community-based random sample of 1,784 black adults aged 25 to 50 years living in eastern North Carolina. These individuals were interviewed in 1988 for a study of psychosocial and dietary risk factors for elevated blood pressure. Alcohol consumption was estimated from responses to a food frequency questionnaire and was divided into four categories, which ranged from abstention (52% of the sample) to greater than or equal to seven drinks/week (12%). After adjustment for age and body mass, the systolic blood pressure of adults reporting greater than or equal to seven drinks/week exceeded that of nondrinkers by 6.8 mmHg for men and women (p less than 0.001). There was no evidence of a threshold effect, and similar patterns were observed for diastolic blood pressure. Being in the highest category of alcohol consumption was related to low socioeconomic status, lower social integration, and higher levels of socioeconomic stressors. These data are consistent with a graded association between alcohol and blood pressure in black adults and suggest the importance of social factors underlying this association.


This role of faith-inspired health care providers in sub-saharan Africa and public-private partnerships is comprised of a three volume series on strengthening the evidence for faith inspired engagement in health in sub-Saharan Africa. An increasing level of interest in the role of faith in development has generated much debate and dialogue at the international and national levels over the last decade. Despite difficulties in communication and differences in cultures within such debates, there has been a continued reaffirmation of the potential benefits that faith-inspired communities can bring towards efforts to achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs), especially in the areas of health. This series focuses on assessing the role and market share of faith-inspired providers and on assessing the extent to which they are involved in and benefit from public-private partnerships. The purpose of this series is three HNP discussion papers is to round up various analytical perspectives and emerging research on faith engagement in health in Africa from a range of researchers and practitioners from the north as well as the south. The series is structured into three volumes: a first volume on the role and market share of faith-inspired providers and public-private partnerships, a second on satisfaction and the comparative nature of faith-inspired health provision, and the third on mapping of faith inspired provision and the extent to which faith-inspired providers reach to the poor.


In the early 1960s, medical officers and administrators began to receive reports of what was being described as "mass madness" and "mass hysteria" in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Uganda. Each epidemic reportedly affected between three hundred and six hundred people and, coming in the wake of independence from colonial rule, caused considerable concern. One of the practitioners sent to investigate was Benjamin H. Kagwa, a Ugandan-born psychiatrist whose report represents the first investigation by an African psychiatrist in East Africa. This article uses Kagwa's investigation to explore some of the difficulties facing East Africa's first generation of psychiatrists as they took over responsibility for psychiatry. During this period, psychiatrists worked in an intellectual climate that was both attempting to deal with the legacy of colonial racism, and which placed faith in African psychiatrists to reveal more culturally sensitive insights into African psychopathology. The epidemics were the first major challenge for psychiatrists such as Kagwa precisely because they appeared to confirm what colonial psychiatrists had been warning for years—that westernization would eventually result in mass mental instability. As this article argues, however, Kagwa was never fully able to free himself from the practices and assumptions that had pervaded his discipline under colonial rule. His analysis of the epidemics as a "mental conflict" fit into a much longer tradition of psychiatry in East Africa, and stood starkly against the explanations of the local community.


Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries. The Boko Haram Reader offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group's origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram's leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimization, radicalization, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa. Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram's insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimize its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa's religious marketplace.


Six bottom-trawl cruises, undertaken in spring 1994 to 1999 along the Spanish Mediter- ranean coastline, sampled pandalid shrimps from 30 to 800 m depth. Data analysis yielded a descrip- tion of the distribution patterns of the 4 most common species (Plesionika heterocarpus, P. martia, P. gigliolii, P. edwardsi) over an area of 45 331 km 2 . We analysed abundance of juveniles and adults by partial correspondence analysis (pCCA) in order to determine the effect on distribution of depth (as an overall estimate of temperature, salinity, turbidity and other variables), time (among-survey vari- ability) and space (geographical location). The main null hypothesis we explicitly evaluated is that species composition remains constant along the Spanish Mediterranean coastline after controlling for depth and time. A significant (8.2%) effect of geographical location was found. Hauls located in the central zone of the sampling cruises (Valencia: Ibiza Channel) showed an intermediate relative abun- dance of all species. By contrast, the samples from northern and southern zones showed a large rela- tive abundance of P. martia and P. heterocarpus, respectively. This pattern may be related to envi- ronmental specificity of the hydrodynamic conditions in the Ibiza Channel, dynamic topography characteristics linked to the canyons in the North Catalan zone, and surface production inputs, as found in the North Alboran zone (southern zone), where the main species (P. heterocarpus) exhibited the shallowest bathymetric distribution. Although discrimination between depth preferences of juve- niles and adults (with adults being located deeper) is already known on a local scale, our results extend this pattern to the entire Spanish Mediterranean coastline and across all the species studied.


Abstract. A new algorithm for automatic change detection is presented. It detects a pixel-change and DSM-change from two orthoimages and two DSMs, then it extracts the polygons in elevation-changed areas. Pixel-change is detected by using least squares fitting technique. This method can extract the visible changed areas between two orthoimages, while DSM-change is detected by difference DSM. From these two changes, polygons in elevation-changed areas are extracted using the longest matched line selection techniques. This method can automatically detect not only visible changed areas such as vegetated areas, new road construction areas and so on, but also elevation-changed areas such as new building construction, land improvement areas and so on with footprint polygon extraction. We have tested our method using the two sets of ALOS-PRISM triplet images observed over a testfield in Tsukuba, Japan. We confirmed that this method has an effect finding changed areas. Also we compared the number of extracted polygons between manual operation and our automatic method.


This article presents empirical findings from a critical discourse analysis of institutional responses by the Catholic Church to clergy-child sexual abuse in Victoria, Australia. A sample of 28 documents, comprising 1,394 pages, is analysed in the context of the 2012-2013 Victorian Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. Sykes and Matza's (1957) and Cohen's (1993) techniques of, respectively, neutralisation and denial are used to reveal the Catholic Church's Janus-faced responses to clergy-child sexual abuse and mandatory reporting requirements. Paradoxical tensions are observed between Catholic Canonical law and clerical practices, and the extent of compliance with secular law and referral of allegations to authorities. Concerns centre on Church secrecy, clerical defences of the confessional in justification of inaction, and the Melbourne Response compensation scheme. Our research findings underscore the need for greater Church transparency and accountability; we advocate for mandatory reporting law reform and institutional reform, including adjustments to the confessional ritual.


Background: The growing number of electric vehicles gives rise to a whole new reverse supply chain. Once the electric vehicle batteries reach their end-of-life, societal and governmental pressure forces automotive manufacturers to set up a network for disposing the hazardous batteries. Although, the volumes of returned batteries remain low, volumes will increase in upcoming years. Current networks and processes related to the return flow of electric vehicle batteries are not well established, nor well defined. Thus, creating an urgency to develop efficient collection networks. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how reverse logistics networks are currently set up and to provide an overview of how the different actors and processes are connected. In addition, this thesis aims to identify challenges encountered by logistics providers and recyclers. By doing so, we hope to contribute to the research gap of which factors that constitutes a bottleneck for further development of the reverse logistics chain of electric vehicle batteries. Method: The thesis conducts an interview study and is qualitative in nature. Semistructured interviews generated empirical data, which was analysed through cross-case analysis incorporating a thematic analysis. Through this analysis we were able to achieve new theoretical understandings in connection to institutional theory. Conclusion: Through empirical findings a detailed framework of the reverse logistics chain of EVBs is portrayed. Furthermore, different challenges span over the processes illustrated in the framework. This presents an overview which is not found in current literature and extends current research on this topic.


Extending the working life of older workers, defined in this study as between 55 and 64 years of age, is an important policy goal in Australian and overseas in the context of an ageing society. However, current research on older workers' job mobility is scant, except for the established finding that older workers have lower job mobility rates than younger workers. This article addresses this void with an analysis of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Labour Mobility Survey data. An alternative job mobility classification framework from that published by the ABS is developed, which distinguishes those successful at job mobility, those unsuccessful at job mobility, and those continuously employed. The composition of each group is analysed by educational status, industry and occupation, in order to determine the defining features of each group. However, findings suggest that the main influence on the likelihood of successful job mobility for older males is the voluntary or otherwise nature of their separation from employment. These findings have important implications for the federal government's predominantly supply-sided policy reforms aimed at older workers.


ABSTRACT The study of collaborative governance constitutes an established sub-literature within environmental policy and management scholarship. Among the lessons of this literature is that collaborative planning outputs are shaped by the mix of collaborative participants in question and the commitment participants exhibit towards joint planning efforts. This paper argues that a focus on the composition and commitment of collaborative participants ignores an increasingly prevalent actor in environmental planning – private sector contract consultants. We examine the relative influence of stakeholder attendance and the consulting firm providing support and facilitation in the case of integrated water resource management (IWRM) planning in the state of Georgia. Using attendance data derived from meeting minutes for ten concurrently operating regional IWRM councils, we document that neither the strength nor the commitment of collaborative efforts correlate with the content of planning outputs. Instead, the variation observed among regional plans can be largely explained by taking into account the consultant firms that were contracted to advise IWRM councils. Our discussion addresses the practical implications of relying on professional consultant services in environmental policy processes, and the theoretical imperative of incorporating consultant influence when explaining collaborative governance processes, outputs, and outcomes.


The thesis is concerned with the design, analysis,
fabrication am evaluation of integrated optic lenses which are
inhomogeneous either in physical shape or in refractive index
profile. The thesis has nine chapters. Chapter one, the
introduction, illustrates the importance of these lenses within
the domain of integrated optiCS, where the complicated
mathematical functions required to describe the lens profiles are
most easily realised. Connections are made between the study of
these lenses and the exciting new field of optical computing.
A special class of non-uniform lenses which are conceptually
perfect optical instruments forms the main area of interest in
the present study. Historically, the development of these lenses
has followed two distinct lines, related to two possible methods
of physically obtaining the required variation in path of light
rays passing through the lens. In one method the optical path is
made to vary directly, whilst the other method involves
controlling the fi'lysical path, and thus the optical path, through
the principle of equivalence. The dual development has been
continued in the field of integrated optiCS, where lenses based
on direct control of the optical path are termed variable-index
lenses and those based on physical path control are termed
geodesic lenses. The perfect variable-index lens studied in this
work was the well-known Luneburg lens. Perfect geodesic lens
designs have also been published. The design formulae for both
types of lens are presented in chapter two. A simpler lens, of
spherical geometry, is also presented which is easily analyzed
and characterised and which serves as an archetypal model against
which the performance of the more sophisticated lenses can be
assessed.
Chapter three investigates the problems involved in
modelling fabrication conditions in a thermal-evaporation-invacuum
environment so that lens profiles can actually be
constructed. Chapter four goes into methods of tracing rays
through these lenses in some detail. Ray-tracing has long been the classical tool of optical designers, providing a useful guide
to optical performance. Ray methods, which effectively provide
image error evaluations, are not entirely-appropriate for those
lenses which are conceptually perfect within the geometrical
optics approximation. Diffraction effects prevent the lenses from
attaining true perfection. In such cases the wave-field produced
by the lenses in the image space is the important quantity. In
chapter five, the beam-propagation method (BPM) is used to study
diffraction arrl associated effects in inhomogeneous lenses. '!he
method allows the propagation of complicated waveshapes in
lnhomogeneous media, normally a difficult task. Furthermore,
anlsotropic effects and the interaction between acoustic waves
aoo optical waves can be studied with the method. Negative focal
shifts are reported which are not predicted by geometrical optics
or the usual approximate diffraction theories.
The fabrication of lenses is considered in chapter six.
Planar waveguide measurements car r ied out on the var ious
materials used in the study are presented. A major problem in the
fabrication of geodesic lenses, that of obtaining a uniform
wavegulde layer over the complete lens area, is dealt with in
some detail in chapter seven. In chapter eight, extensive tests
on the experimental performance of several lenses are reported.
Near diffraction-limited performance is reported for geodesic
lenses. More limited performance figures are obtained for
Luneburg lenses though the possibility of high performance is
lndicated if profile resolution can be improved. The themes of
the thesls are pulled together for discussion in chapter nine and
conclusions are drawn as to the relative merits of the various
lenses. Possible means of improving fabrication procedures, thus
driving lenses closer to ultimate resolution limits, are
presented. The greatest problem faced is that of scatter ing in
the waveguide, which appears to be accentuated as the waveguide
traverses the lens surface. If the scattering problem can be
successfully dealt with it is concluded that integrated optical
lenses could be important and viable components in addresslng the
problem of fast, high-throughput data processing.


Two distinct kinds of transition have been identified in Couette flow between concentric rotating cylinders. The first, which will be called transition by spectral evolution, is characteristic of the motion when the inner cylinder has a larger angular velocity than the outer one. As the speed increases, a succession of secondary modes is excited; the first is the Taylor motion (periodic in the axial direction), and the second is a pattern of travelling waves (periodic in the circumferential direction). Higher modes correspond to harmonics of the two fundamental frequencies of the doubly-periodic flow. This kind of transition may be viewed as a cascade process in which energy is transferred by non-linear interactions through a discrete spectrum to progressively higher frequencies in a two-dimensional wave-number space. At sufficiently large Reynolds numbers the discrete spectrum changes gradually and reversibly to a continuous one by broadening of the initially sharp spectral lines. These periodic flows are not uniquely determined by the Reynolds number. For the case of the inner cylinder rotating and the outer cylinder at rest, as many as 20 or 25 different states (each state being defined by the number of Taylor cells and the number of tangential waves) have been observed at a given speed. As the speed changes, theso states replace each other in a repeatable but irreversible pattern of transitions; vortices appear or disappear in pairs, and waves are added or subtracted. More than 70 such transitions have been found in the speed range up to about 10 times the first critical speed. Regardless of the state, however, the angular velocity of the tangential waves is nearly constant at 0.34 times the angular velocity of the inner cylinder. The second kind of transition, which will be called catastrophic transition, is characteristic of the motion when the outer cylinder has a larger angular velocity than the inner one. At a fixed Reynolds number, the fluid is divided into distinct regions of laminar and turbulent flow, and these regions are separated by interfacial surfaces which may be propagating in either direction. Under some conditions the turbulent regions may appear and disappear in a random way; under other conditions they may form quite regular patterns. One common pattern of particular interest is a spiral band of turbulence which rotates at very nearly the mean angular velocity of the two walls without any change in shape except possibly an occasional shift from a right-hand to a left-hand pattern. One example of this spiral turbulence is being studied in some detail in an attempt to clarify the role played in transition by interfaces and intermittency.


The paper aims to show how regional policy-makers can stimulate firms' co-operation with research organizations by granting an R&D subsidy. Using an original dataset for the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, propensity score matching is first applied to identify the impact of the subsidy received. A generalized propensity score technique is then employed to investigate the effect of an increasing amount of support. The firm's co-operation is policy sensitive. The award of a subsidy to regional firms affects their intra-regional more than their extra-regional co-operation. The propensity toward the latter appears subject to a monetary effect and is influenced by the amount of public funding received providing the subsidy overcomes a minimum threshold.


The objective of this study was to compare subjective health status and its correlates in progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and multiple system atrophy (MSA). One hundred eighty‐eight patients with PSP and 286 patients with MSA completed EQ‐5D and Hospital Depression and Anxiety Scale. The impact on mobility, usual activities, and self‐care was similarly high in both groups after similar duration. Fifty‐six percent of PSP and 43% of MSA had probable depression, and 37% of both groups had probable anxiety. Patients with PSP had significantly higher depression scores, but groups did not differ in anxiety scores. Patients with MSA had significantly greater pain/discomfort than patients with PSP. The most important association with subjective health status was with depressive symptoms, which accounted for 38% and 29% of EQ‐5D variance in patients with PSP and MSA, followed by disease severity and anxiety scores. We conclude that depressive symptoms were common in both disorders, but more severe in PSP. Anxiety symptoms affected 37% of patients in both groups and contributed to impaired subjective health status. Pain was more problematic in MSA than PSP. © 2010 Movement Disorder Society


When reading in a second language, a reader's first language may be involved. For word reading, the question is how and at what level: lexical, pre-lexical, or both. In three experiments, we employed an implicit reading task (color judgment) and an explicit reading task (word naming) to test whether a Chinese meaning equivalent character and its sub-character orthography are activated when first language (L1) Chinese speakers read second language (L2) English words. Because Chinese and English have different spoken and written forms, any cross language effects cannot arise from shared written and spoken forms. Importantly, the experiments provide a comparison with single language experiments within Chinese, which show cross-writing system activation when words are presented in alphabetic Pinyin, leading to activation of the corresponding character and also its sub-character (radical) components. In the present experiments, Chinese–English bilinguals first silently read or made a meaning judgment on an English word. Immediately following, they judged the color of a character (Experiments 1A and 1B) or named it (Experiment 2). Four conditions varied the relation between the character that is the meaning equivalent of the English word and the following character presented for naming or color judgment. The experiments provide evidence that the Chinese meaning equivalent character is activated during the reading of the L2 English. In contrast to the within-Chinese results, the activation of Chinese characters did not extend to the sub-character level. This pattern held for both implicit reading (color judgment) and explicit reading (naming) tasks, indicating that for unrelated languages with writing systems, L1 activation during L2 reading occurs for the specific orthographic L1 form (a single character), mediated by meaning. We conclude that differences in writing systems do not block cross-language co-activation, but that differences in languages limit co-activation to the lexical level.


We introduce a new operator on information structures which we call `knowing whether' as opposed to the standard knowledge operator which may be called `knowing that'. The di erence between these operators is simple. Saying that an agent knows that a certain event occurred implies that this event indeed occurred, while saying that the agent knows whether an event occurred does not imply that the event occurred. (Formally, knowing whether X means that either it is known that X occurred or it is known that X did not occur.) We show that iterating `knowing whether' operators of di erent agents has a remarkable property that iterations of `knowing that' do not have. When we generate a sequence of events, starting with a given event and then applying `knowing that' or `not knowing that' to the previous event, then the events in this sequence may be, somewhat surprisingly, contradictory. In contrast, any sequence of this type, generated with `knowing whether' and `not knowing whether' is never contradictory. We use this property of the `knowing whether' operator to construct a simple and natural state space and information structures for two agents, such that: (1) any two states are distinct relative to some interactive knowledge of a xed event, (2) the space has the cardinality of the continuum. This result | originally proved in a complicated manner by Aumann (1989) | demonstrates the usefulness of the `knowing whether' operator.


"Any claim coming from an observational study is most likely to be wrong." Startling, but true. Coffee causes pancreatic cancer. Type A personality causes heart attacks. Trans‐fat is a killer. Women who eat breakfast cereal give birth to more boys. All these claims come from observational studies; yet when the studies are carefully examined, the claimed links appear to be incorrect. What is going wrong? Some have suggested that the scientific method is failing, that nature itself is playing tricks on us. But it is our way of studying nature that is broken and that urgently needs mending, say S. Stanley Young and Alan Karr; and they propose a strategy to fix it.


A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out amongst eighty graduate mothers having U-5 years children from different socio-economic groups of Mohammadpur area in Dhaka city. They were interviewed on nutrition related programs thorough television. The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of advertisements and understandability of nutrition education programs through different TV channels among the respondents and also the impact of these programs on maternal and child nutrition (MCN). Results of the study showed that the programs of mass media like TV on nutritional aspects influence the nutritional awareness of the respondents. Most of the graduate mothers practiced extra diet as special food taken during pregnancy and lactation period of which television was the major source of knowledge compared to radio, newspaper, doctor and family members. Again 52.5% respondents were normal along with 33.8% respondents were overweight and rests of 13.7% mothers were obese. Furthermore, 82% U5C's nutritional status were normal whereas only 3% were found in border line according to MUAC. Few U-5 children were found overweight by WAZ. So adult and child overweight are increasing day by day in urban areas which need great attention to prevent chronic diseases. From this study, it was revealed that no relationship exist between family income and nutritional status of the respondents and also between the educational level and nutritional status of them (P value > 0.05). It may be concluded from the study that the exposure to nutrition related programs through different television channels had a role to improve the nutritional status. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjnut.v24i0.14037 Bangladesh J. Nutr. Vol. 24-25 Dec 2011-2012 pp.65-76


As the Middle East is gripped with political instability and violence, Western policy makers As the Middle East is gripped with political instability and violence, Western policy makers and scholars are confounded by how populist, non-violent mass uprisings in the so-called "Arab Spring" ultimately strengthened authoritarianism in the region. In particular, what has come to be known as Egypt's "January 25th Revolution" has produced little more than a switching of the guards in the presidential palace. While attempting to predict Egypt's future would be a fool's errand, there is much to learn from the past four years. For legal scholars, an examination of the Egyptian judiciary's role in the post-January 25th aftermath is a salient and under-researched topic in comparative law that depicted a liberal judiciary – when in reality it was quite the opposite. Specifically, Egyptian judges proved to be much less impartial and resistant to accountability than the revolutionary youth had anticipated. The mass death sentences against thousands of alleged Muslim Brotherhood members, life sentences to the youth that lead the January 25th revolution for violating a dubious anti-protest law, and convictions of journalists on specious evidence put into question the legitimacy of Egypt's judiciary in the minds of the Egyptian public and the international community. In the end, the judges' rulings sealed the fate of the revolution. The rule of law scholarship on the Middle East has yet to take into account the impact of the momentous events of the so-called "Arab Spring" on Arab judiciaries and the role judges played in quashing the popular uprisings. For instance, the scholarship on Egypt is based largely on studies of human rights lawyers and political opposition groups in the 1990s leveraging Egypt's highest administrative and constitutional courts to expand political and social rights. Indeed, civil society's reliance on the courts at the time, as opposed to the streets, to restrain authoritarian practices was due in large part to the judiciary's liberal leanings within an illiberal political context. Although Mubarak's regime granted the court some latitude as part of a broader strategy of depoliticization that decreased the political costs of the growing predatory state, the courts' rulings nonetheless emboldened civil society to push for more political rights. The human rights litigation that preceded the January 25th uprisings produced a protective constituency that vigorously defended the courts against overt executive interference in judicial independence. As a result, students of Egypt's deteriorating political and economic indicators expected Egypt's judiciary to be a bastion of support for calls for systemic rule of law reforms by the young revolutionaries, established opposition groups, and burgeoning new political parties. Because events in Egypt carry significant weight in the Middle East, a close examination of its post-Arab Spring experiences offers valuable insights into events unfolding in other Middle Eastern countries.Accordingly, this Article cautiously proceeds to examine why the Egyptian judiciary, despite its liberal rulings in the 1990s that facilitated the lead up to the January 25th revolution, ultimately obstructed the populist demands for revolutionary change. In doing so, the Article makes an intervention in the literature on rule of law in societies undergoing political transitions, and more specifically the role of judiciaries. Scholars have long stated that Egypt's judiciary as one of the few state institutions willing to challenge executive authority and among the most independent judiciaries in the Middle East. This article challenges this position by arguing that the Egyptian judiciary opposed revolutionary reform efforts for four reasons. First, Mubarak's concerted efforts since 2001 to quash judicial independence through coercive mechanisms imposed top-down by the loyalist judicial leadership effectively coopted a critical mass of judges. Second, the revolutionary youth and civil society failed to appreciate the judiciary's circumscribed definition of judicial independence that did not include judicial accountability to the citizenry. Third, the judges' elite notions of democracy viewed populism as a threat to the stability of the state and more specifically to the judiciary's institutional interests. Finally, internal divisions within the judiciary with respect to the role of religion in adjudication coupled with longstanding suspicions of the Muslim Brotherhood as an authoritarian organization pushed judges into the arms of the military-security apparatus that sought to preserve the status quo. In sum, the judges preferred the devil they knew over the devil they did not know.


Dietary medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) may improve insulin-mediated glucose metabolism. To examine this possibility, 10 non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) patients, 4 hypertriglyceridemic, and 6 normotriglyceridemic nondiabetic control subjects were examined with a 5-day cross-over design, in which the short-term metabolic effects of a 40% fat diet containing 77.5% of fat calories as MCT were compared with an isocaloric long-chain triglyceride-containing diet. In diabetic patients, MCT failed to alter fasting serum glucose concentrations but reduced preprandial glycemic excursions by 45% (F = 7.9, P < 0.01). On MCT, the amount of glucose needed to maintain euglycemia during an intravenous insulin infusion was increased in diabetic subjects by 30%, in hypertriglyceridemic subjects by 30%, and in normotriglyceridemic control subjects by 17%. MCT increased mean ± SE insulin-mediated glucose disposal (4.52 ± 0.56 vs. 2.89 ± 0.21 mg.kg−1 · min−1; n = 3, P < 0.05) but failed to alter basal glucose metabolism or insulin-mediated suppression of hepatic glucose output. Metabolic responses to MCT were observed independent of sulfonylurea therapy or severity of fasting hyperglycemia. No change in fasting serum insulin or triglyceride concentrations were seen with MCT administration. Although MCT increased mean fasting serum β-hydroxybutyrate levels from 0.10 ± 0.03 to 0.26 ± 0.06 mM (P < 0.05) in normotriglyceridemic nondiabetic subjects, no change was seen in diabetic patients. Thus, MCT-containing diets increased insulin-mediated glucose metabolism in both diabetic patients and nondiabetic subjects. In diabetic subjects, this effect appears to be mediated by increases in insulin-mediated glucose disposal. MCT may be a promising adjunct to conventional dietary and sulfonylurea treatment in NIDDM.


Importance
Pityriasis rubra pilaris is a rare and disabling cutaneous disease that is frequently recalcitrant to conventional therapies and appears to involve interleukin (IL)-17 overexpression.

Objective
To investigate the clinical response and safety of ixekizumab in treating pityriasis rubra pilaris.

Design, Setting, and Participants
Single-arm, investigator-initiated trial conducted in adult patients with moderate to severe pityriasis rubra pilaris at a single-center academic university from June 2018 to January 2020. A total of 41 patients were screened, 12 were enrolled, and 11 completed the full duration of therapy. A referred, consecutive sample was used during participant selection. The treatment period and primary outcome occurred over 24 weeks with additional patient follow-up through 36 weeks.

Intervention
Subcutaneous administration of ixekizumab, a humanized IgG4 antibody that binds IL-17A, at the US Food and Drug Administration-approved dosing schedule for treatment of psoriasis for 24 weeks.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The primary outcome was the mean change in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index at 24 weeks. Secondary outcomes included change in affected body surface area, quality of life, induction of sustained remission, and association of improvement with CARD14 genetic variations and cutaneous cytokine expression.

Results
A total of 12 white patients (mean [SD] age, 49.8 [15.1] years; 8 male [67%]) were enrolled between June 2018 and April 2019, with 11 completing the full course of intervention. The mean (SEM) improvements in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index, affected body surface area, and Dermatology Life Quality Index were 15.2 (2.1) (P < .0001), 29.8% (9.3%) (P = .009), and 9.5 (2.5) (P = .004), respectively. The 4 participants with the most improvement in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index at week 24 stayed in remission at week 36 (defined as lack of increase in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index from week 24 through week 36), off therapy. Relative dermal IL-17A expression decreased by a 1.9 log-fold change. No participants had known pathogenic CARD14 variations. There were no serious adverse events.

Conclusions and Relevance
In this single-armed trial, ixekizumab was associated with reduced clinical signs and symptoms of pityriasis rubra pilaris in a subset of patients, including those in whom other systemic therapies have failed.

Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03485976.


This study sought to identify signs of social learning, change and transformation resulting from adaptive co-management interrelations in terms of the project 'Reduction of Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation' (REDD) at the Pugu and Kazimzumbwi Forest Reserves (PKFR) community in Tanzania. The study therefore presents some enablers and constraints in respect of learning, agency formation, social change and transformation potentially influenced by the REDD. This is a qualitative case study that explored 'learning'1 from living experiences of local people at the PKFR and from local mechanisms of the REDD project. Reflexive workshop interventions were used to validate the performance of local REDD practices against the adaptive co-management framework. Other data was obtained through interviews, focus-group discussion, the analysis of documents and direct observations. The study found that individual people may deepen their understanding of forestry issues through collaborative interrelations. Social learning in the PKFR community was potentially stimulated by people's relational interactions, reflective thinking and anticipations, and questioning of past practices. Learning occurred subtly, and the learning process was not endured firmly enough to foster the complex learning dynamics necessary for transformational changes. As a result, most of the REDD-stimulated learning did not transform the practices desired in the project. Keywords : Social learning, transformations, interrelations, adaptive co-management.


Introduction: In developing countries patients with oro-facial tumours present for health care rather late with advanced disease, a situation that complicates management and negatively influences prognosis.Objective: To determine the reasons for late reporting for health care among patients with tumours and tumour-like lesions in the maxillofacial region attending the Muhimbili National Hospital.Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study, which involved 144 patients with either tumours or tumour-like lesions in the oral and maxillofacial region. The study was conducted at the oral and maxillofacial surgery firm of the Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH). A structured questionnaire that was translated to Swahili language was used to gather information. The diagnosis was obtained from the histopathology department of the MNH. Data were analysed using SPSS version 20. Ethical clearance was obtained from the ethical committee of Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS).
Results: Findings revealed that 55.6% of the patients lived near health facilities (dispensaries, health centres or hospitals) which did not offer oral health services. The average time of reporting after a referral from primary health facilities was rather long (69 weeks). Ameloblastoma was the frequently encountered benign tumour and squamous cell carcinoma was the commonest malignant neoplasm.The absence of pain, transport and treatment costs, lack of perception that the lesion was a problem, attending to traditional healers and the use of herbal medicines were reported to be main reasons for the delay in reporting for health care. The odds of reporting late to the referral hospital was three folds higher in patients who had delayed to seek treatment from the primary health facility.
Conclusion: Generally, there are varying levels of delay of patients with tumours in reporting to primary health facilities and to referral centres. The major reasons cited for delay in reporting for health care were cost implications and tendency to attend to traditional healers.


Abstract: We seem to directly perceive external things. But can we? According to the time-lag argument, we cannot. What we directly perceive happens now. There is a time-lag between our perceptions and the external things we seem to directly perceive; these external things happen in the past; thus, what we directly perceive must be something else, for example, sense-data, and we can only at best indirectly perceive other things.

This paper examines the time-lag argument given contemporary metaphysics. I argue that this argument is not as compelling as it may initially seem. First, it denies that what we directly perceive can ever be what it seems to be; second, it conflicts with the current physical conception of time, relativity theory. This latter point leads to a more general one: the argument's force depends on a particular metaphysical conception on time, presentism, which is controversial in contemporary metaphysics of time. Given the alternative conception, eternalism, the argument is much less compelling. The overall argument of this paper, then, is that, if one wishes to hold that we directly perceive external things, we should subscribe to the latter view of time, i.e., eternalism.