=2644375>. Policy Brief No. 99 — February 2017 Controlling Systemic Risk through Corporate Governance Steven L. Schwarcz1 The Financial Crisis and Credit Unavailability: Cause or Effect? CIGI Policy Brief No. 98 Steven L. Schwarcz Was the 2007-2008 global financial crisis the cause of credit unavailability, or was it the effect? The standard story is that the financial crisis resulted in the loss of credit availability. This policy brief argues that story is reversed and examines the lessons it can teach us. Key Points → Although the causal relationship between credit availability and financial decline leading to the global financial crisis was somewhat interactive, a loss of credit availability appears to have caused the financial crisis more than the reverse. → The potential for credit unavailability to cause a financial crisis suggests at least three lessons: because credit availability is dependent on financial markets as well as banks, regulation should protect the viability of both credit sources; diversifying sources of credit might increase financial stability if each credit source is robust and does not create a liquidity glut or inappropriately weaken central bank control; and regulators should try to identify and correct system-wide flaws in making credit available. → These system-wide flaws can include not only financial design flaws but also flaws caused by our inherent human limitations. → We do not yet (and may never) understand our human limitations well enough to correct the latter flaws. To some extent, therefore, financial crises may be inevitable. Financial regulation should therefore be designed not only to try to prevent crises from occurring but also to work ex post to try to stabilize the afflicted financial system after a crisis is triggered. Policy Brief No. 98 — February 2017 The Financial Crisis and Credit Unavailability: Cause or Effect?


An understanding of modern relationships between the stable oxygen isotope composition (δ18O) of lake water and aquatic invertebrates is essential for the interpretation of paleoclimate records based on δ18O of organic remains of these organisms. We analyzed δ18O of lake water and invertebrate remains, including head capsules of chironomid larvae and resting eggs (ephippia) of planktonic Cladocera, in surface sediments from 31 large, deep, and stratified lakes along a latitudinal transect through Europe. The δ18O values measured for both lake water and aquatic invertebrate remains were compared to estimated δ18O in precipitation. A strong linear relationship between mean annual air temperature and δ18O of precipitation was observed along the north–south transect (r = 0.97), whereas the relationship between precipitation δ18O and lake‐water δ18O was weaker (r = 0.80). A strong positive correlation was observed between δ18O in lake water and aquatic invertebrates (r = 0.95 and 0.94 for chironomids and cladocerans, respectively). Although slopes of linear regressions between lake‐water δ18O and δ18O of both aquatic invertebrate groups are similar, a systematic offset between the absolute δ18O values of chironomids and cladocerans was observed; chironomids were on average 2.4‰ heavier than Cladocera. We attribute this offset to differences in ecology, metabolism, and/or behavior between benthic chironomid larvae and planktonic Cladocera. δ18O records based on subfossil chironomid and cladoceran remains have the potential to quantitatively characterize past lake‐water δ18O and, indirectly, past climatic changes.


This paper addresses the consensus problem of multiagent systems with a time-invariant communication topology consisting of general linear node dynamics. A distributed observer-type consensus protocol based on relative output measurements is proposed. A new framework is introduced to address in a unified way the consensus of multiagent systems and the synchronization of complex networks. Under this framework, the consensus of multiagent systems with a communication topology having a spanning tree can be cast into the stability of a set of matrices of the same low dimension. The notion of consensus region is then introduced and analyzed. It is shown that there exists an observer-type protocol solving the consensus problem and meanwhile yielding an unbounded consensus region if and only if each agent is both stabilizable and detectable. A multistep consensus protocol design procedure is further presented. The consensus with respect to a time-varying state and the robustness of the consensus protocol to external disturbances are finally discussed. The effectiveness of the theoretical results is demonstrated through numerical simulations, with an application to low-Earth-orbit satellite formation flying.


Each paper needs an abstract of up to 200 words describing background, methods, results and conclusions. Footnotes: Footnotes should be avoided. When essential, they are numbered consecutively and typed at the foot of the appropriate page. Tables and illustrations: Tables and illustrations (both numbered in Arabic numerals) should be prepared on separate pages. Tables require a heading and figures a legend, also prepared on a separate page. Due to technical reasons, figures with a screen background should not be submitted. When possible, group several illustrations in one block for reproduction (max. size 180 223 mm) or provide crop marks. Each illustration must be labelled with its number and the first author's name. Electronically submitted b/w half-tone and color illustrations must have a final resolution of 300 dpi after scaling (final size), line art drawings one of 800–1,200 dpi. Figure files should not be embedded in a document file but submitted separately. References: In the text identify references by Arabic numerals [in square brackets]. Material submitted for publication but not yet accepted should be noted as [unpublished data] and not be included in the reference list. The list of references should include only those publications which are cited in the text. Do not alphabetize; number references in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. The surnames of the authors followed by initials should be given. There should be no punctuation other than a comma to separate the authors. Preferably, please cite all authors. Abbreviate journal names according to the Index Medicus system. Also see International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals (www.icmje.org). Authors using EndNote® may choose the format setting for Intervirology for the correct format of references. Examples (a) Papers published in periodicals: Vilhelmsson M, Johansson C, Jacobsson-Ekman G, Crameri R, Zargari A, Scheynius A: The malassezia sympodialis allergen Mala s 11 induces human dendritic cell maturation, in contrast to its human homologue manganese superoxide dismutase. Int Arch Allergy Immunol 2007;143:155–162. (b) Papers published only with DOI numbers: Theoharides TC, Boucher W, Spear K: Serum interleukin-6 reflects disease severity and osteoporosis in mastocytosis patients. Int Arch Allergy Immunol DOI: 10.1159/000063858. (c) Monographs: Matthews DE, Farewell VT: Using and Understanding Medical Statistics, ed 4, revised. Basel, Karger, 2007. (d) Edited books: Park BK, Sanderson JP, Naisbitt DJ: Drugs as haptens, antigens, and immunogens; in Pichler WJ (ed): Drug Hypersensitivity. Basel, Karger, 2007, pp 55–65. Ethics Published research must comply with the guidelines for human studies and animal welfare regulations. Authors should state that subjects have given their informed consent and that the study protocol has been approved by the institute's committee on human research and thus meets the standards of the Declaration of Helsinki in its revised version of 1975 and its amendments of 1983, 1989, and 1996 [JAMA 1997;277:925–926]. Information suitable to reveal the subject's identity is to be avoided. Further, they should also state that animal experiments conform to institutional standards. Copies of these guidelines and policy statements must be available for review by the editors if necessary. Conflict of Interest All forms of funding and support, including that from companies, and any potential competing financial interests should be acknowledged in the cover letter to the editor when applicable. The statement has to be listed at the end of the article. Page Charges There are no page charges for 5 or fewer printed pages, which is equal to approx. 14 manuscript pages including references, figures and tables. Each additional complete or partial printed page is charged to the authors at CHF 325.00. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) S. Karger Publishers supports DOIs as unique identifiers for articles. A DOI number will be printed on the title page of each article. DOIs can be useful in the future for identifying and citing articles published online without volume or issue information. More information can be found at www.doi.org.


This article aims to identify different literature reviews of supplier selection to analyze the topics addressed in these documents, and suggest research opportunities for future literature reviews in issues that have not been addressed in the literature or require a deeper approach. This study states that the majority of existing literature reviews focus on the analysis of supplier selection methods and criteria, and uncertainty management, environmental management, and sustainability have been addressed in recent years. As a conclusion, it is suggested to focus future literature reviews on topics such as risk management, statistical methods, methods applied to industry sectors, implementation of supplier selection to small and medium enterprises, comparative analysis of solution methods performance, and the adaptation of solution methods from areas different to supplier selection. Likewise, it is recommended to continue updating literature reviews related to green and sustainable supplier selection, and uncertainty management in supplier selection, especially for the last 3-5 years.


The focus of this thesis was on the utility of the workplace in promoting employee well-being. The thesis applied principles of positive psychology (PP) to the field of occupational health psychology (OHP). Paper 1 reviewed employee well-being with a focus on both general and work-related dimensions. Paper 2 developed a niche for positive employee well-being programs. It reviewed a number of strategies for improving employee health and well-being, including occupational health and safety legislation, corporate wellness programs, worksite health promotion and disease management programs, and stress prevention. Although important, such programs do not focus on promoting positive psychological well-being. The utility of supplementing these approaches with positive employee well-being programs was discussed from an applied ethics perspective. Paper 3 detailed the design and evaluation of the Working for Wellness Program using a mixed method design. Outcomes were tested using a randomized control trial. Participant feedback and field notes were analyzed to determine process and impact effectiveness. Participants were recruited from a government organization (N = 50; 73% female, M age = 39.7 years; M tenure = 8.9 years) and randomly allocated to an intervention or control group. Subjective and psychological well-being (SWB, PWB), affective well-being at work (AWB), and workplace well-being (WWB) were assessed at pre-intervention, one week post-intervention, and at three and six month follow-ups. Results showed significant improvements in SWB, PWB and AWB, but not WWB. Program strengths were its positive focus and emphasis on group discussion. Limitations were sample attrition and a lack of mechanisms to support participant change at work. Overall, this thesis supports the importance of PP to fields of research, such as OHP, that seek to improve employee well-being and the quality of work life.


Keywords: Agenda Setting, Informational Politics, Frames Analysis, Network Theory, Political Communication, Policy Formation

This dissertation examines the contemporary relationship between agenda setting and frames analysis in Canadian federal politics from 2004-2011. The research project tests Savoie's thesis that the centralization of power has grown with the increasing size of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and that the leader of the office has most clearly exerted that power in controlling the government's agenda by applying it to the experience of minority government at the dawn of the 21st century. To test his thesis, textual analyses of the PMO's agenda-setting documents were conducted to identify the key language, frames, and controlled policy announcements that were reflected within the political discourse.

How does the discourse represent and reflect the shift in power in a dramatically changed political environment when, at least in theory, a minority government would be at the mercy of opposition parties who hold the balance of power?

From 2006 to 2011, the Harper Conservatives stayed in power by cleverly manipulating the agenda through framing and reframing issues to their advantage. The prime minister retained the final executive decision on party and government political communications and was, therefore, the leading arbiter of the messages delivered to represent key party agenda-setting strategies. Harper has often been identified as a shrewd strategist by academics and the media alike, but how different were his agenda-setting techniques compared to previous minority government strategies?

This research identifies the communication tactics that the PMO used in 2006 to ensure its unique five key policy frames of "accountability", "child care tax credits", "cutting the GST", "patient wait time guarantees", and "tough on crime" were consistently delivered and coordinated across media in their platforms, websites, speeches, and outlays. The Harper Conservatives' new strategies included narrowing agendas, promoting wedge issues, priming voters using distracter frames, and using strict media communication protocols to attract popular support from the key segment of middle class families. Using these tactics, the government set the agenda on the dismantling of the firearms registry, framed the skills and motivations of two opposition leaders as ineffective and weak with attack advertisements, and sold the illusion that coalition governments were undemocratic.


Background: Honey has been formulated into gel and film dosage forms for burn wound as previously reported. Aims: In this study, we evaluated the ability of honey gel and film to promote the healing of burns and incision wounds on the skin of Sprague-Dawley female white rats. Materials and Methods: Twenty-four female rats were divided into four groups, which were treatment groups (for honey gel or film), negative control, and positive control (treated with marketed product "B"), respectively. Burn and incision wound were created by the method previously reported with slight modification. Parameters such as the percentage of wound closure and the tensile strength of the incision wound were determined. Results: The experimental results showed that honey film has a greater effectiveness to accelerate the healing for burns and incision wound in comparison to the negative control. Conclusions: Two-way analysis of variance indicates the type of treatment group, and time has a significant effect on the burn wound (P < 0.05). Honey film shows the significant difference (P < 0.05) with other group on the incision wound.


In the colonial era America's mounted force consisted of militia mounted on horses to cope with Indian raids or serve with the British in their conflicts with the French in North America. In this early period the continent's heavily wooded terrain and small population limited the size of mounted units and the extent of their operations. During the Revolutionary War, a need emerged for permanent cavalry units to support the Continental Army. On 12 December 1776 the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the 1st Regiment of Light Dragoons. Authorization for an additional three regiments soon followed. Basic issue to each trooper included a coat, cap, leather breeches, and a pair of boots and spurs. Weapons consisted of a saber and flintlock pistol that each man provided for himself, while officers were further expected to supply their own mounts.


Objectives: To assess the feasibility of ultrasound-guided supraclavicular catheterization of the subclavian vein in pediatric and neonatal ICU. Design: Retrospective cohort. Setting: Ten-bed pediatric medicosurgical ICU and 15-bed neonatal ICU. Patients: Children and newborns undergoing supraclavicular ultrasound-guided subclavian vein catheterization from March 2010 to September 2010. Measurements: The placement of central venous catheter in ICU was carried out either by one of the experts in ultrasound-guided puncture of the unit or by a novice completely supervised by the expert. The success and the early complications were recorded. A comparison between novice and expert operators was also made. Results: Forty-two catheters were placed in 40 children. The median age and median weight were, respectively, 6.5 months and 6.5 kg. The success rate was 97.6% (one failure) and the early complication rate was 4.7% (one pneumothorax and one arterial puncture); 61% of children breathed spontaneously during the catheter placement. No significant difference was found between expert and novice operators. Conclusions: Supraclavicular ultrasound-guided catheterization of the subclavian vein in pediatric and neonatal ICU seems to be a promising technique in the context of emergency. It is safe, reliable, with few early complications. Furthermore, it does not compromise the airways of the patient owing to the low level of sedation needed for its placement.


Intellectual property rights are controversial because on first glance they present a disjunction between the purposes they serve and the mechanisms they employ. New Institutional Economics (NIE) suggests that for reasons of transaction costs, broadly conceived, institutions are imperfect and their imperfections may nonetheless be cost-effective. This Article draws on the NIE to present a theory of the similarities and differences between IP and regular property, and sharpens some empirical questions relating to the advisability of property-style IP protection. IP is characterized by two types of indirectness that need not both be present in regular property. In first-order indirectness, the resource to be measured is difficult to meter, leading to the use of rough proxies. Variation in outcomes along dimensions of the resource – for example, animals supported by grazing land – show high variance, i.e. risk. Second-order indirectness involves uncertainty or ambiguity about the return from a resource, in terms of how to employ it or even to carve it up – for example choosing crops or deciding between agricultural and residential subdivision. The greater the uncertainty, the more attractive, in terms of maximizing option value, it is to delegate decisions over these dimensions of resource activity to those close to the resource. Both types of indirectness point to advantages that in theory a modular structure of rights can provide: difficulty in measuring dimensions (first-order) or identifying the relevant dimensions (second-order) suggests that a given activity be placed within a module and control over local remodularization be given to private actors. Because information is nonrival, the benefits of modularity must be traded off against the benefits of exclusion costs. In both patent licensing and remedies, an NIE approach to property that does not emphasize information costs has difficulty explaining patent rights as opposed to other internalization and coordination devices. The Article applies the information-cost theory to IP licensing and patent remedies. Licensing implements a governance strategy that enriches the interface between IP rights in limited ways. Injunctive remedies dovetail with a modular structure of exclusion rights, and the traditional equitable approach to injunctions provides for targeted safety valves for problems relating to lack of notice and reasonable reliance by potential infringers.


In Talk That Counts, distinguished sociolinguist Rinals Macaulay provides a new way of examining sociolinguistic variation. Linguists traditionally take a limited sample of linguistic data from a given population and look at phonological and morphological variables. Macaulay proposes a much different and highly quantitative approach to the study of variation, which correlates features of discourse with three social categories: social class, gender, and age. He uses as data a sample from 33 speakers of English in Glasgow, and his conclusions indicate that age accounts for the greatest number of differences, followed by gender, with social class accounting for the most variation within a group. Macaulay's work offers a new methodological paradigm to an audience of sociolinguists and others like sociologists concerned with discourse analysis.


The objective of this study was to begin to examine the cellular and biophysical effects on human retinal glial cells of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), which is endogenous to the retina and likely to play a role in retinal pathobiology. Experiments were performed on cultured glial cells derived from the adult postmortem retina. A proliferative response to bFGF established a sensitivity of the retinal glia to this growth factor. The possibility that bFGF alters calcium currents was assessed using the whole-cell recording configuration of the patch-clamp technique to analyze inward currents carried by barium. Two types of voltage-gated calcium channels could be expressed by the glial cells. One, similar to the T-type current described in various kinds of cells, had a low threshold of activation, a transient response, and an insensitivity to the dihydropyridine nifedipine. The other type of inward current, which closely resembles the L-type calcium current found in other cells, had a high threshold, had a long- lasting response, and was inhibited by nifedipine. When continuous whole-cell recordings were made from retinal glial cells, the L-type calcium current increased significantly within 20 min after exposure of the cells to bFGF. The physiological significance of this modulatory effect remains uncertain, though the observation that nifedipine inhibits both the L-type calcium current and the bFGF-induced proliferation is consistent with the hypothesis that dihydropyridine- sensitive channels may play a role in modulating the mitogenic response of retinal glial cells to this growth factor.


ABSTRACT How does the degree to which European citizens see themselves represented by political parties relate to their willingness to participate in an election? We argue that the closer citizens are to the parties running in an election in terms of the socio-economic left-right conflict and the European integration policy dimension, the more likely they participate in elections to the European Parliament. The analysis, which is based on the 2009 and 2014 European Election Studies datasets, indicates that the ideological left-right distance between citizens and parties mattered for participation in both EP elections under study. Moreover, the European integration dimension has become relevant for citizens' turnout decision over the course of the European economic and sovereign debt crisis, but only in countries that are part of the Eurozone. These findings have implications for the nature of European elections and representative democracy on the European level, and indicate that missing policy responsiveness can lead to lower voter turnout.


Parkinson's disease (PD) affects over 6.2 million people around the world. Despite its prevalence, there is still no cure, and diagnostic methods are extremely subjective, relying on observation of physical motor symptoms and response to treatment protocols. Other neurodegenerative diseases can manifest similar motor symptoms and often too much neuronal damage has occurred before motor symptoms can be observed. The goal of our study is to examine diffusion tensor images (DTI) from Parkinson's and control patients through linear dynamical systems and tensor decomposition methods to generate features for training classification models. Diffusion tensor imaging emphasizes the spread and density of white matter in the brain. We will reduce the dimensionality of these images to allow us to focus on the key features that differentiate PD and control patients. We show through our experiments that these approaches can result in good classification accuracy (90%), and indicate this avenue of research has a promising future.


The development of X‐ray tomography in the last decade has led to a revolution in palaeontology by providing a means of imaging 3D fossils. In turn, imaging of flat fossils has strongly benefitted from critical improvement of synchrotron X‐ray fluorescence (XRF). The latter, which allows the mapping of 2D distributions of major‐to‐trace elements over decimetre‐scale objects, usually targets metals with atomic number (Z) up to strontium (K‐shell emission lines); in the same energy domain, L‐shell emission lines of heavier elements (particularly lead) can also be analysed. A fluorescence signal from strontium can escape from a depth of a few 100 μm in fossils, thereby revealing, due to its substitution for calcium in calcium phosphates (apatite group minerals and bone), hidden fossil bone or phosphatized remains. Nonetheless, strontium similarly substitutes for calcium in calcium carbonates, resulting in the absence of contrast when fossils are preserved in limestone. Here, we show that this issue can easily be overcome by using X‐rays slightly higher in energy (17.2 keV and above) to excite and detect yttrium fluorescence. Together with lanthanides (collectively known as the rare earth elements), yttrium preferentially substitutes for calcium in calcium phosphates, offering anatomical contrasts for a wider range of fossils. This is demonstrated here for three fossils (vertebrate and invertebrate) from different ages and depositional environments. We then discuss the different chemical behaviours of strontium and yttrium in calcium phosphates and carbonates. Although yttrium is also found in other (rarer) minerals, its mapping using synchrotron XRF could be used as a proxy to pinpoint calcium phosphates in fossils and other geological materials.


Background. The growing population of migrants (including sub-Saharan Africans) in the United Kingdom poses challenges to British general practice. First, migrants tend to seek health care at times of crisis rather than for preventive measures. This is despite being at increased risk of certain chronic conditions compared with the indigenous population. For sub-Saharan Africans this includes hypertension-related diseases and some cancers. Little has been published about Africans' awareness of this risk or their knowledge of associated causative factors. Second, discordant health beliefs and healthcare expectations between migrants and doctors in the UK have been found to undermine trust during consultations with general practitioners and to lead to poor patient satisfaction. Little is known about the health behaviours of African migrants whose expectations are not met by primary care in the UK. A related area where health beliefs and practices differ between African migrants and their GPs is in the use of traditional medicines. A final challenge lies in considering the wider issues that GPs must address when consulting with migrant patients, including time pressures, organisational factors and the complex nature of problems presented by migrant patients. These issues are the focus of this study.

Aims. To examine African migrants' perceptions of chronic disease and their experience of seeking primary health care in the UK. To explore the impact upon GPs of caring for migrants.

Objectives. To explore: 1) perceptions of chronic disease risk facing African migrants and their underlying explanatory models; 2) experiences of consultations about antibiotic prescriptions; 3) traditional African medicine use in the UK; and (4) to consider the effect of workload and work patterns on GP consultations with migrants.
Design. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 Africans from French- or Swahili- speaking countries, one African key informant and 13 GPs working with migrants. African participant recruitment was from community organisations and GPs were approached via an informal network of doctors. Interviews were transcribed and ten were translated by the principal investigator (three Swahili and seven French). Data analysis was undertaken following the approach of applied thematic analysis using the Nvivo software package. Data collection and analyses were underpinned by the following theoretical frameworks: Kleinman's explanatory models of illness and of cultural health care systems and Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy.

Results. Narratives suggested low awareness of chronic disease risk amongst Africans. Infectious diseases were considered the dominant health threat for African migrants, mainly HIV but also tuberculosis and 'flu'. Chronic diseases were sometimes described by Africans as contagious. Explanatory models of chronic disease included bodily/dietary imbalance, stress/exertion, heredity/predisposition and food contamination. Cancer was feared but not considered a major threat. Cancer was considered more common in Europe than in Africa and was attributed by Africans to chemical contamination from fertilizers, food preservatives and industrial pollution. Evidence cited for these chemicals was rapid livestock/vegetable production, large size of farmed products (e.g. fish), softness of meat and flavourless food. Chemicals were reported to circulate silently inside the body and cancer to develop in the part where they deposit, sometimes years later.
Africans' belief in infective explanations of disease extended to minor illnesses and was manifested in an expectation of antibiotics from GPs for problems such as a sore throat. This arose from participants' experience in Africa, witnessing life-threatening infectious diseases and experience of unregulated access to antibiotics. Africans described various alternative measures to fulfil their unmet expectations, including approaching other National Health Service doctors, importing medication, and using private healthcare services in London, francophone Europe and east Africa. A further option was the use of traditional African medicine, reported by one quarter of African participants. Traditional African herbal medicine use was based upon a perception of its purity and natural origin in African soil and a deep belief in its efficacy. Consulting traditional African healers in the UK was reported to be undertaken in secret.
Some GPs and Africans described consultations in terms of pressure, processing and conflict. Migrants were reported to present with complex health problems that were frequently compounded by language barriers. GPs described a need to remain in control of consultations and this included some use of personal discretion to render their tasks easier to complete. The most common example was accepting patients' family and friends as informal interpreters – a choice that ran contrary to formal policy of only using professional interpreters. Burnout was reported to be one consequence of excessive workload for patient-centred GPs working with vulnerable groups like asylum seekers.

Conclusions. There is a need to improve health literacy amongst African migrants in order to promote preventive behaviours for chronic disease and alternatives to antibiotics for minor illnesses. As part of this, further research is required into the use and properties of traditional African medicine. Interventions should be built upon participants' existing knowledge of disease causation, their self-reliance in the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle and desire to retain cultural practices. One challenge to improving migrant health lies in the service dilemmas facing GPs, including excessive workload, the complex nature of migrants' presenting problems and professional dilemmas. GPs who act as advocates for vulnerable migrant patients may be at increased risk of burnout and greater consideration should be given to providing them with appropriate support.


The peptidoglycan cell wall (CW) and the actin-like MreB cytoskeleton are the majordeterminants of cell morphology in non-spherical bacteria. Bacillus subtilis is a rod-shaped Grampositive
bacterium that has three MreB isoforms: MreB, Mbl (MreB–like) and MreBH (MreBHomologue). Over the last decade, all three proteins were reported to localize in dynamic filamentous helical structures running the length of the cells underneath the membrane. This helical pattern led to a model where the extended MreB structures act as scaffolds to position CW-synthesizing machineries along sidewalls. However, the dynamic relationship between the MreB cytoskeleton and CW elongation complexes remained to be elucidated. Here we describe the characterization of the dynamics of the three MreB isoforms, CW synthesis and elongation complexes in live Bacillus subtilis cells at high spatial and temporal resolution. Using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) we found that MreB, Mbl and MreBH actually do not assemble into an extended helical structure but instead into discrete patches that move processively along peripheral tracks perpendicular to the long axis of the cell. We found similar patch localization and dynamics for several morphogenetic factors and CW-synthesizing enzymes including MreD, MreC, RodA, PbpH and PBP2a. Furthermore, using fluorescent recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), we showed that treadmilling of MreB filaments does not drive patch motility, as expected from the structural homology to actin. Blocking CW synthesis with antibiotics that target different steps of the peptidoglycan biosynthetic pathway stopped MreB patches motion, suggesting that CW synthesis is the driving force of patch motility. On the basis of these findings, we proposed a new model for MreB fuction in which MreB polymers
restrict and orient patch motility to ensure controlled lateral CW expansion, thereby maintaining cell shape. To further investigate the molecular mechanism underlying MreB action, we next performed a site-directed mutagenesis analysis. Alanine substitutions of three charged amino 2 acids of MreB generated a B. subtilis strain with cell shape and growth defects. TIRFM analysis revealed that the mutated MreB protein displayed wild-type localization and dynamics, suggesting that it is still associated to the CW elongation machinery but might be defective in an interaction important for MreB morphogenetic function. Thus, this mutant appears as as a good candidate to start characterizing the interactions between the three MreB isoforms and components involved in CW elongation. It might also help to understand the function of components of theCWsynthetic complexes, and how they are coordinated to achieve efficient CW synthesis. Finally, to investigate how the integrity of the CW is maintained, we studied the localization and dynamics of the LiaIH-system, which i s t he t arget o f L iaRS, a t wo-component system involved in cell envelope stress response. We found that under stress conditions, when liaI and LiaH genes are expressed, the proteins form static complexes that coat the cell membrane. LiaI is required for the even distribution of the LiaH in the membrane. Taken together, these data suggest that LiaIH
complexes may protect the cell from CW damage.
Taken together, the findings described in this thesis provide valuable insights into the
understanding of CW synthesis in B. subtilis, which may open new perspectives for the design of
novel antimicrobial agents.


"Think global, act local" is a phrase much related to green governance. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and its 'Local Agenda 21' in 1992 it is accepted that local authorities have a key role in implementing sustainable development. During the early 1990's Local Agenda 21 diffused to many countries, including the Netherlands. As a consequence local sustainability reached the national policy agenda, and intergovernmental subsidy schemes and supporting policy instruments were implemented to support local authorities in adopting local sustainability policies and creating 'local capacity'. One of the measures implemented concerned a tool, the so‐called 'Local Sustainability Meter', which was designed to both monitor progress and serve as an incentive in terms of 'naming and blaming'. The data that has been collected since 1999 enables us to conduct a longitudinal analysis on local sustainability progress and dynamics. For instance, insights may be derived on the magnitude and intensity of policy measures that are adopted, and variation therein between local authorities. In this paper we investigate which factors influence local authorities to become pioneers in sustainability governance. We use insights from Diffusion-of-Innovations theory, Public Management and Policy Network theory to categorize local authorities on sustainability performance, and define what pioneering means in this regard. Next, we investigate developments in the Netherlands, what pioneering means in practice, by which factors it is influenced, and the ways in which pioneers distinguish themselves from their 'mainstream' peers. The paper offers theoretical elaboration, it presents a historical case study of the Netherlands, as well as results from an explorative statistical analysis. Therewith, the paper contributes to systematic conceptualization of 'pioneering in environmental policy', and adds a local- and multi-level governance component to it.


HTML and CSS are the workhorses of web design, and using them together to build consistent, reliable web pages requires both skill and knowledge. The task is more difficult if you're relying on outdated, confusing, and unnecessary HTML hacks and workarounds. Author Ben Henick shows you how to avoid those traps by going beyond the standard tips, tricks, and techniques to connect the underlying theory and design of HTML and CSS to your everyday work habits. With this practical book, you'll learn how to work with these tools far more effectively than is standard practice for most web developers. Whether you handcraft individual pages or build templates, HTML & CSS: The Good Parts will help you get the most out of these tools in all aspects of web page design-from layout to typography and to color. Structure HTML markup to maximize the power of CSS Implement complex multi-column layouts from scratch Improve site production values with advanced CSS techniques Support formal usability and accessibility requirements with tools built into HTML and CSS Avoid the most annoying browser and platform limitations


The mechanical failure of optical fibers must be avoided to ensure reliability of fiber-based systems. The first stress event in a fiber's lifetime is the proof test. The proof test will alter the fiber's strength distribution for all subsequent processing and applications. Thus it is critical to know the fiber strength distribution after proof test (post-proof strength distribution). It is generally assumed that the proof test truncates the strength distribution at the proof test stress level. But, many users are concerned because they know that theoretically it has been shown that after proof test the strength of fiber may be much less than the proof test stress level, and that the minimum post-proof strength is determined only by the unloading rate during the proof test. But this theoretical result is not consistent with historical field data. Historically no one has documented failures stresses below the proof stress level. This dissertation resolves this apparent contradiction by reviewing the theory and conducting a probabilistic assessment. As optical fibers are used more and more in computer and switching gear backplanes, a new potential mechanical reliability problem arises due to the necessary bends introduced in optical fibers. Previous researchers were concerned with the uniform stress optical fibers saw in long haul underground applications, but bending places a non-uniform stress along the fiber surface. So it is inaccurate to borrow fiber usage mechanical guidelines from long-haul application. This dissertation reviews existing theories and then develops a new analytic approach to assess the mechanical reliability of optical fibers under bending loads and static fatigue conditions. This new analytic approach is verified through a simple static two-point bend experiment. Finally the newly developed reliability assessment method is used to develop new guidelines for bending application and examples are presented to show how the approach can be used to attack some very common mechanical reliability problems with optical fibers. DEDICATION To my father and mother, who have encouraged me to pursue the best and supported me with all their heart, and to my husband Ling, who has spiritually supported me and academically helped me with his wit. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


The next-generation of wireless networks will enable many machine learning (ML) tools and applications to efficiently analyze various types of data collected by edge devices for inference, autonomy, and decision making purposes. However, due to resource constraints, delay limitations, and privacy challenges, edge devices cannot offload their entire collected datasets to a cloud server for centrally training their ML models or inference purposes. To overcome these challenges, distributed learning and inference techniques have been proposed as a means to enable edge devices to collaboratively train ML models without raw data exchanges, thus reducing the communication overhead and latency as well as improving data privacy. However, deploying distributed learning over wireless networks faces several challenges including the uncertain wireless environment (e.g., dynamic channel and interference), limited wireless resources (e.g., transmit power and radio spectrum), and hardware resources (e.g., computational power). This paper provides a comprehensive study of how distributed learning can be efficiently and effectively deployed over wireless edge networks. We present a detailed overview of several emerging distributed learning paradigms, including federated learning, federated distillation, distributed inference, and multi-agent reinforcement learning. For each learning framework, we first introduce the motivation for deploying it over wireless networks. Then, we present a detailed literature review on the use of communication techniques for its efficient deployment. We then introduce an illustrative example to show how to optimize wireless networks to improve its performance. Finally, we introduce future research opportunities. In a nutshell, this paper provides a holistic set of guidelines on how to deploy a broad range of distributed learning frameworks over real-world wireless communication networks.


Raf kinase inhibitor protein (RKIP) is a member of the phosphatidylethanolamine-binding-protein (PEBP) family that modulates the action of many kinases involved in cellular growth, apoptosis, epithelial to mesenchymal transition, motility, invasion and metastasis. Previously, we described an inverse association between RKIP and signal transducers and activators of transcription 3 (STAT3) expression in gastric adenocarcinoma patients. In this study, we elucidated the mechanism by which RKIP regulates STAT3 activity in breast and prostate cancer cell lines. RKIP over expression inhibited c-Src auto-phosphorylation and activation, as well as IL-6-, JAK1 and 2-, and activated Raf-mediated STAT3 tyrosine and serine phosphorylation and subsequent activation. In MDA-231 breast cancer cells that stably over express RKIP, IL-6 treatment blocked STAT3 phosphorylation and transcriptional activation. Conversely, in RKIP knockdown MDA-231 cells: STAT3 phosphorylation and activation increased in comparison to parental MDA-231 cells. RKIP over expression resulted in constitutive physical interaction with STAT3 and blocked c-Src and STAT3 association. The treatment of DU145 prostate, but not PC3 prostate or MDA-231 breast, cancer cell lines with ENMD-1198 or MKC-1 dramatically increased expression of RKIP. Overexpression of RKIP sensitized PC3 and MDA-231 cells to MTI-induced apoptosis. Moreover, MTI treatment resulted in a decrease in Src-mediated STAT3 tyrosine phosphorylation and activation, an effect that was significantly enhanced by RKIP over expression. In stable RKIP over expressing MDA-231 cells, tumor xenograft growth induced by activated STAT3 is inhibited. RKIP synergizes with MTIs to induce apoptosis and inhibit STAT3 activation of breast and prostate cancer cells. RKIP plays a critical role in opposing the effects of pro-oncogenic STAT3 activation.


The thesis presents an intermediate modelling approach to study transient behaviour of vehicle
systems, with emphasis put on simplified yet accurate representation of important system
elements. A representative non-linear vehicle model is developed in MA TLAB/Simulink
environment, where non-linear characteristics of tyre, suspension and braking system are
included to capture the dynamic behaviour of a vehicle under transient conditions. The novel
aspect of this work is the application of a representative full vehicle-tyre-ABS integrated set-up
to study the complicated interaction between tyre and anti-lock braking, under a range of
demanding operating conditions, including combined cornering and braking ..
The modelling methodology involves development of low end vehicle models, based on the
Newton-Euler formulation. Subsequently, an intermediate vehicle model is devised, where more
details are incorporated such as additional DOF to capture the sprung mass motion in space,
along with its non-linear interactions with the un-sprung masses, large angle effects, kinematics
of steering/wheels and an appropriate tyre model suitable for transient manoeuvres. Particular
attention is paid to the suspension system modelling, through inclusion of non-linear effects in
springs, dampers, bump-stops, and anti-roll bars, along with the jacking and anti-dive effects
using the virtual work method. The model also incorporates a hydraulic brake model, based on
the reduced order brake system dynamics for realistic simulation of the braking manoeuvres.
A complex multi-body ADAMS/Chassis model, with much greater level of detail, has also been
established to extensively compare and enhance the realistic behaviour of the intermediate
vehicle model. During the simulation exercise, the intermediate vehicle model has shown good
agreement with the complex ADAMS model, thus justifying the accurate representation of
vehicle.non-linear characteristics, particularly the suspension system. The realistic behaviour of
the vehicle model is further ascertained with a reliable GPS enabled test vehicle, by performing
number of manoeuvres on test tracks, including combined cornering and braking.
A representative 4-channel conventional ABS system is modelled and integrated in the
intermediate vehicle model. The ABS adopts generic peak seeking approach, employing wheel
deceleration and brake slip as control variables. External braking inputs, in form of stepped
pressure pulses, are also separately used to represent the transient braking system dynamics.
In the current work, different transient tyre models based on the single point contact approach
and using Magic Formula steady-state characteristics are applied, while studying the influence of
their dynamic behaviour on the ABS system. By employing a representative ABS system in a
multi-body vehicle model and considering the particularly demanding situation of combined
braking I cornering, it is shown that the models which are adequate for pure braking might
struggle when the complicated full vehicle dynamics are excited. It is shown that the first order
relaxation length approach may not be sufficient to fully satisfy the requirements of an ABS
braking, especially if the relaxation length is not modelled as a variable dependent on tyre slip.
In comparison, the modelling approach, where the carcass compliances and contact patch
properties are explicitly represented, can handle the oscillatory tyre behaviour associated with
ABS braking, in a far more accurate manner. In comparison to the earlier studies, which were
mostly conducted for straight-line braking, this thesis stresses the fact that the tyre behaviour can
be influenced by the complex interaction of handling and braking, and hence the effect should be
captured while investigating or evaluating the performance of a tyre model in relation with ABS
simulation.


Abstract The Sangkulirang Peninsula in Indonesia's East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo has been highlighted as a global priority for karst ecosystem conservation. A team of 19 scientists led by The Nature Conservancy and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences conducted a 5-week biological survey of Sangkulirang's karst mountains between July and August 2004 to determine the conservation relevance of the area based on its species richness and endemism levels. Preliminary results suggest that the peninsula is home to high levels of diversity for plants, snails, insects, birds and bats. The results underline the complementarity of species assemblages in this karst landscape, which is an important result for conservation planning. Because of these differences, more than one site must be protected to ensure the adequate protection of most species in one taxon. Several new species of plants and animals were discovered, including what is probably the largest cave cockroach in the world and a very small blind crab. Preliminary results also show significant threats to this biodiversity due to large-scale fires and, in some areas, illegal logging and hunting. The results of this survey will be used to elaborate or complement a proposal for legal protection and management of the Sangkulirang Peninsula karst ecosystem, in joint efforts with partner organizations and stakeholders, through a World Heritage site nomination.


This paper revives Judith Shklar's "Legalism" (Harvard University Press, 1964) with an eye to its relevance to international criminal law today. It examines her general jurisprudential outlook, and critique of various prominent mid-century positions, before turning to her account of the Nuremberg Trials. Showing that her defense of those trials may fail, the paper concludes by suggesting that the book's failure may make it more relevant to the contemporary enterprise of international criminal law rather than less.


Abstract The Limousin ophiolite (French Massif Central) occurs as elongate bodies forming a (nearly) continuous suture zone between two major lithotectonic units of the French Variscan belt. The mantle section of the ophiolite is made of diopside-bearing harzburgite, harzburgite and dunite characteristic of a lherzolite-harzburgite ophiolite type (LHOT). The plutonic section is essentially composed of troctolites, wehrlites and gabbros locally intruded by ilmenite-rich mafic dykes. All the rocks were strongly affected by an ocean-floor hydrothermal metamorphism. The composition and evolution of primary magmatic phases (olivine, clinopyroxene, plagioclase and spinel) throughout the lowermost magmatic sequence correspond to those described in oceanic cumulates (ODP data). The Limousin ophiolite is thus of MOR type instead of SSZ type. The whole lithological section, the mineral chemistry, the extensive hydrothermal oceanic alteration and the relatively thin crustal section are typical of a slow-spreading ridge ocean (i.e. Mid-Atlantic ridge). Comparison of the Limousin ophiolite with other ophiolites from European Variscides suggests that the oceanic domain was actively spreading during the Late Palaeozoic and extended from the Armorican massif to the Polish Sudetes.


Thanks to modern technological advances, we now enjoy seemingly unlimited access to information. Yet how did information become so central to our everyday lives, and how did its processing and storage make our data-driven era possible? This volume is the first to consider these questions in comprehensive detail, tracing the global emergence of information practices, technologies, and more, from the premodern era to the present. With entries spanning archivists to algorithms and scribes to surveilling, this is the ultimate reference on how information has shaped and been shaped by societies.

Written by an international team of experts, the book's inspired and original long- and short-form contributions reconstruct the rise of human approaches to creating, managing, and sharing facts and knowledge. Thirteen full-length chapters discuss the role of information in pivotal epochs and regions, with chief emphasis on Europe and North America, but also substantive treatment of other parts of the world as well as current global interconnections. More than 100 alphabetical entries follow, focusing on specific tools, methods, and concepts—from ancient coins to the office memo, and censorship to plagiarism. The result is a wide-ranging, deeply immersive collection that will appeal to anyone drawn to the story behind our modern mania for an informed existence.

 Tells the story of information's rise from 1450 through to today
 Covers a range of eras and regions, including the medieval Islamic world, late imperial East Asia, early modern and modern Europe, and modern North America
 Includes 100 concise articles on wide-ranging topics:

Concepts: data, intellectual property, privacy
Formats and genres: books, databases, maps, newspapers, scrolls and rolls, social media
People: archivists, diplomats and spies, readers, secretaries, teachers
Practices: censorship, forecasting, learning, political reporting, translating
Processes: digitization, quantification, storage and search
Systems: bureaucracy, platforms, telecommunications
Technologies: cameras, computers, lithography

 Provides an informative glossary, suggested further reading (a short bibliography accompanies each entry), and a detailed index
 Written by an international team of notable contributors, including Jeremy Adelman, Lorraine Daston, John-Paul Ghobrial, Earle Havens, Niv Horesh, Sarah Igo, Lauren Kassell, Pamela Long, David McKitterick, Elias Muhanna, Carla Nappi, Geoffrey Nunberg, Neil Safier, Haun Saussy, Erin McGuirl, Jacob Soll, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Alexandra Walsham, and many more.


Women's fertility declines with age. The worldwide trend of delaying childbirth has led to more women facing fertility problems at the time they wish to conceive. There are various ultrasound and biochemical markers available for ovarian reserve testing. The common markers are antral follicle count, follicle-stimulating hormone, and antiMullerian hormone. Tests for these markers have their own strengths and limitations. Clinical application of ovarian reserve tests in predicting fertility in pre-conceptual healthy women remains controversial. Clinicians should be cautious when applying and interpreting these ovarian reserve tests for fertility prediction in pre-conceptual women.


My ideas on the topic of media art and self-reference emerged from my research on strategies of analogue media art practices and their parallels with structures and approaches in today's new media art field. My research materials from Moscow, Russia, and Riga, Latvia, (early 1980s) included some examples of samizdat publications – texts and tape recordings. Among the works were a poetic absurdist novel [1] and a re-published documentation and discussion of collective performative actions. [2] Both editions were typed or recorded and transcribed in a collaborative effort by a group of people, manually copied, and distributed (or intended for distribution) as samizdat, hand to hand. I also discovered examples of collaborative creative practices of documentation and reflection on the margins of the Western art canon – 12 dialogues, 1962–1963 [3], featuring dialogues by Carl Andre and Hollis Frampton dedicated to their own fellow artists' practice, and Filmmakers by Takahiko Iimura (1966 / 69), which portrays the experimental filmmakers scene in the U.S. I think that some features of these collaborative creative experiments are similar to characteristics of new media and indie publishing and can also be traced in the growing participatory culture and collaborative writing practice emerging in wikis and blogs. In the following, I will try to sketch out some of these parallels, although I have not yet arrived at a comprehensive, elaborate summary of them. The topic raised several questions about the self-definition of experimental arts practices; the references that provide historical and contemporary context for these initiatives; their methods of discussion and documentation, and the role of media in this process. In a discussion of collective work, it is interesting to see what effect locality has on the scene, at what point practices become adopted in a wider social context, and how the autonomy of these practices is defined. I see these sets of questions not so much as institutional but as organizational.


The proliferation of distributed microservices driven by service oriented architecture and the effectiveness of agile software development processes such as Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), inspired by extreme programming (XP), have driven the challenging necessity to receive prompt test feedback during software development iteratively. Although few test frameworks can execute unit tests in memory in parallel, no existing test frameworks can reliably perform parallel execution for the tests that rely on file system access, database fixtures and network communication. Isolated test execution environment with dedicated resources is a prerequisite to address these challenges. No previous research addresses this need to run groups of tests in parallel on the same development host. In this paper, to cut down test execution time, we present a service framework for parallel tests execution in a developer's containerized sandbox using operating system level virtualization provided by Docker, the new hot driver for Platform as a Service (PaaS).


Abstract. Observational and model evidence suggest that a 2008 Western Pacific typhoon (NURI) ingested elevated concentrations of aerosol as it neared the Chinese coast. This study uses a regional model with two-moment bin-emulating microphysics to simulate the typhoon as it enters the field of elevated aerosol concentrations. A clean maritime field of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) was prescribed as marine background CCN concentrations and then based on satellite and global aerosol model output, increased to pollution levels and further enhanced in sensitivity tests. The typhoon was simulated for 96 h beginning 17 August 2008. During the final 60 h CCN concentrations were enhanced as it neared the Philippines and coastal China. The model was initialized with both global reanalysis model data and irregularly spaced dropsonde data from the 2008 T-PARC observational campaign using an objective analysis routine. At 36 h, the internal nudging of the model was switched off and allowed to freely evolve on its own. As the typhoon encountered the elevated CCN in the sensitivity tests, a significant perturbation of windspeed, convective fluxes, and hydrometeor species behavior was simulated. Early during the ingestion of enhanced CCN, precipitation was reduced due to suppressed collision and coalescence, and storm winds increased in strength. Subsequently, owing to reduced fall speeds of the smaller drops, greater amounts of condensate were thrust into supercooled levels where the drops froze releasing greater amounts of latent heat of freezing. Convection thereby intensified which resulted in enhanced rainfall and more vigorous convectively-produced downdrafts. As the convection intensified in the outer rainbands the storm drifted over the developing cold-pools. The enhanced cold-pools blocked the inflow of warm, moist air into the core of the typhoon which led to a weakening of the typhoon with significantly reduced low level wind speeds. The very high amounts of pollution aerosols resulted in large amounts of condensate being thrust into the storm anvil which weakened convective downdrafts and cold-pools, yet the system did show reductions in windspeed (although weaker) compared with the clean control run. This study suggests that ingestion of elevated amounts of CCN into a tropical cyclone (TC) can appreciably alter the intensity of the storm. This implies that intensity prediction of TCs would be improved by including indirect aerosol affects. However, the pollution aerosols have very little impact on the storm track.


"This lucid study moves changing ideas about sex roles from the margins to the center of intellectual history. With superb insight and erudition Rosenberg discerns the connections between social science and feminism which replaced the ideal of 'true womanhood' with 'the new woman' at the turn of the 20th century. Besides brilliantly illuminating the personalities and ideas which led from one intellectual era to another, the book contributes groundbreaking research to the question of feminism's fate in the 1920s."-Nancy F. Cott "Weaving anecdote and analysis, Rosenberg shows how the women's experiences in academic and institutional settings influenced the direction and content of their theoretical work."-Kathryn Kish Sklar, The Wilson Quarterly


Polarization-decoupled four-wave mixing (FWM) based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a polarization-maintaining fiber is studied both theoretically and experimentally. We show the difference between Brillouin-enhanced FWM, which was studied a long time ago, and the Brillouin dynamic grating that was proposed in recent years. Under undepleted pump approximation, an analytical solution is given for the coupled equations, showing that a net phase-matching condition is dependent on pump power and frequency detuning from the Brillouin frequency. Experimental investigation of this net phase-matching condition provides a method to measure the spectral change in the refractive index that is responsible for the slow light effect based on SBS. Small refractive index changes (on the order of 10−8) versus frequency detuning can be determined experimentally.


In Global Positioning System (GPS), Precise Point Positioning (PPP) achieves the highest accuracy in point positioning. It approaches centimetre-level accuracy in static mode and sub-decimetre accuracy in kinematic mode. PPP is an alternative approach to carrier-phase-based Differential GPS (DGPS) and offers advantages over DGPS. PPP uses GPS observations from a single receiver for position estimation, which is simpler than using more than one GPS receiver. However, PPP needs rigorous modelling for all errors and biases, which are otherwise cancelled out or mitigated when using DGPS. PPP's popularity is on the rise, as it is ideal for land-vehicle positioning and navigation. However, in challenging environments, PPP suffers from a signal loss that prevent continuous navigation or a reduction in the number of visible satellites that causes accuracy degradation.

This research integrates PPP with a Reduced Inertial Sensors System (RISS) — a low-cost system that uses data from reduced MEMS-based inertial sensors and vehicle odometry — to provide accurate and inexpensive land-vehicle navigation systems. The system is integrated in a tightly coupled mode through the use of an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), which employs an improved error model for the RISS data. The system was tested using data from real driving routes with single-frequency code-based PPP/RISS (SF-code-PPP/RISS), dual-frequency code-based PPP (DF-code-PPP/RISS), smoothed dual-frequency code-based PPP (S-DF-code-PPP/RISS), and code- and carrier-phase-based PPP (code-carrier-PPP/RISS). The performance of the developed PPP/RISS was evaluated using position RMS and maximum errors during continuous GPS availability as well as during signal outages.

The developed integrated algorithms were assessed using three real road tests that capture different navigational conditions. The results show that when five or more satellites are available, code-carrier-PPP/RISS solution is superior to that of SF- and DF-code-PP/RISS. For latitude, code-carrier-PPP/RISS solution was 47% and 20% more precise than the SF- and DF-code-
PP/RISS counterparts, respectively. For longitude, code-carrier-PPP/RISS solution was 65% and 31% more precise than the SF- and DF-Code-PP/RISS counterparts, respectively. Similarly, the altitude solution was improved by 46% and 25%, respectively. During GPS signal outages of 60 seconds, code-carrier-PPP/RISS's algorithms outperformed that of SF- and DF-code-PPP/RISS by about 35% when the satellite availability level was set to three satellites. For other satellite availability levels, the algorithms performed almost identically.


Many professionals in instructional education have experienced a relatively new potential virtual learning environment, called Second Life (SL). This article will connect the virtual world to the essential next step in our learning and communicating approach, electracy. Initially, humans utilized an oral mode to communicate, followed by literacy which enabled written information. These modes in concert with an electronic medium, has produced an electracy mode of communicating. Attending to the medium as well as the method in which people now process information can assist in maximizing the power of virtual learning environments such as Second Life


The relationship between cognitive biases, such as illusion of control and problem gambling has been demonstrated in multiple studies. Recent explorative research has proposed that many individuals perceive that via application of information technology (IT), there is scope to influence gambling outcomes, to the extent of becoming consistently profitable. The objective of this study was to explore how the proposed concept of profitable, controlled gambling via IT is affecting how individuals understand and execute their gambling behaviour. This study used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and aimed to produce a detailed understanding of how the concept affects gambling motivation and experiences of seven adult, frequent gamblers. The IPA produced three super-ordinate themes accounting for the impact of IT on their gambling experiences: maturational developments, 'I've had my own epiphany' and 'There are much more lucrative and secure ways to make money with less effort'. Through evaluation of the emergent themes, it is proposed that the acknowledgement of the possibility of gambling in a controlled and profitable process via IT applications leads participants to an increased awareness of their gambling motivations and objectives. Essentially, participants become aware that their primary gambling motivation is not profit accumulation but rather entertainment. The implications of the emergent themes are discussed with particular reference to their relationship to responsible, and problem, gambling behaviour.


According to UNESCO directives, the documentation of monuments is a complex task, which both terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and photogrammetry can decisively support. Today, these techniques are considered complementary, as they demonstrate clear advantages and disadvantages to each other, with regard to representation, texture application, data gathering, acquisition and processing time, practicality, accuracy, data density, surface reflectivity and absorption. In an effort to clarify which part should be acquired with which technique, as well as to understand whether one technique has a clear advantage over the other in some specific task of the documentation process, the Church of the Holy Cross in Pelendri, Cyprus, which is a UNESCO World Heritage monument, was selected as a test site. The deliverables are orthophotos, sections, plots and a complete and accurate 3D model of the monument. The whole documentation process has been carried out independently using an image based technique with Menci's ZScan and terrestrial laser scanning Leica's ScanStation 2, supported by high resolution digital images. Data acquisition has been carried out in parallel while the final products have been created independently by each one. It is clear that the processing phase of photogrammetry is more time consuming than the equivalent in TLS, but high quality texturing and the orthophoto production process are included within the processing, hence image based techniques present an advantage. As for their final accuracy, both techniques deliver satisfactory results within the required scale tolerances. Their individual merits are also presented, discussed and evaluated in this paper.


Abstract The contact relationships of the Fault-Intrusion are described, in detail, from the type locality. Textural and mineralogical evidence indicates that the fine-grained marginal facies of the Fault-Intrusion is not a priori evidence for magmatic emplacement. The production of " flinty crush-rock " from brecciated quartzites downfaulted within the Glencoe cauldron is described from the south-western inner contact, and is shown to be a result of gas attrition. " Flinty crush-rock " is recorded for the first time from the north-eastern contact with the country rocks outwith the cauldron, separated from the latter by a sheared microbreccia not found at the inner contact. The contact relations of the Fault-Intrusion with these " flinty crush-rocks ", more properly termed pseudotachylites, indicates that the Fault-Intrusion was emplaced as an entrained fluidized system of gas, solid phenocrysts and, probably, liquid droplets. The production of the sheared microbreccia at the outer contact is thought to be due to shearing stresses exerted by the entrained system on the heated wall-rocks.


Abstract Accounts of the governance of prostitution have typically argued that prostitutes are, in one way or another, stigmatised social outcasts. There is a persistent claim that power has operated to dislocate or banish the prostitute from the community in order to silence, isolate, hide, restrict, or punish. I argue that another position may be tenable; that is, power has operated to locate prostitution within the social. Power does not operate to 'desocialise' prostitution, but has in recent times operated increasingly to normalise it. Power does not demarcate prostitutes from the social according to some binary mechanics of difference, but works instead according to a principle of differentiation which seeks to connect, include, circulate and enable specific prostitute populations within the social. In this paper I examine how prostitution has been singled out for public attention as a sociopolitical problem and governed accordingly. The concept of governmentality is used to think through such issues, providing, as it does, a non-totalising and non-reductionist account of rule. It is argued that a combination of self-regulatory and punitive practices developed during modernity to manage socially problematic prostitute populations.


In MIMO OFDMA system, multiuser diversity gain can be achieved both in spatial and frequency domain by channel aware scheduling. For real time (RT) service, the data rate and the packet delay should be guaranteed. But for none-real time (NRT) service, larger packet delay is acceptable and multiuser diversity gain can be exploited more to improve the system throughput. In this paper, by exploiting the queue status information and channel status information, a novel framework of unified scheduling for mixed RT and NRT services is proposed for MIMO OFDMA system, and two novel joint spatial-frequency scheduler based on Modified Proportional Fairness (MPF) and Quality Guaranteed (QG) priority function are proposed. From the simulation results, QG&MPF has much better performance than M2PF. For 2times4 MIMO case, QG&MPF can support 40 RT user and 40 NRT users in 10 MHz bandwidth simultaneously, and the system throughput of QG&MPF can approach 32 Mbps; while M2PF can only support 15 RT users and 15 NRT users, and the system throughput is about 11.5 Mbps.


In the Netherlands, self-employment and entrepreneurship among older age groups (here defined as after state pension age) are rising. On the one hand, this is due to an increase in career self-employed persons and their tendency to work until older ages than employees. On the other hand, this seems to be related to the development – which is not unique for the Netherlands – that employees enter self-employment after their retirement from a wage-and-salary job, as a way to bridge the period between career employment and full-time retirement (Von Bonsdorff, Zhan, Song, & Wang, 2017; Wang, Zhan, Liu, & Shultz, 2008). In order to get a better understanding of senior self-employment in the Netherlands, we will therefore make a distinction between two groups of senior self-employed persons based on their work history: (a) career self-employed individuals who continue their employment activities beyond the state pension age, and (b) career wage-and-salary workers who re-enter the labour market after retirement as being selfemployed. These two groups may have different options and motives for continuing / starting work as an entrepreneur after state pension age. More particularly, in this paper we try to find out whether continuing / starting to work in self-employment beyond state pension age is predominantly driven by opportunity, or intrinsic motives, or rather by driven by financial needs and a lack of opportunities in the primary labour market. After this short introductory section, we will continue with a descriptive paragraph (Section 2), which sketches the senior self-employed in the Netherlands in terms of size and composition. Thereafter, we will look more in depth into the two groups of the senior self-employed. In Section 3, we focus on the career self-employed. In Section 4, we focus on post-retirement self-employment of former wage-andsalary workers. By synthesizing insights from the existing empirical literature on the senior self-employed in the Netherlands and by analysing recent data on postretirement self-employment plans of Dutch older workers, we aim to provide a better understanding of the motives to continue / start self-employment beyond state pension age. To conclude, Section 5 provides a summary and discussion of the existing empirical evidence on senior self-employment in the Netherlands, and describes relevant directions for future research.


Abstract: The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of education and work experiences to employee performance at PT. Global Informasi Bermutu. Descriptive quantitative research methods by using statistical correlation an multiple regression with the aim of analyzing the effect of the two independent variables (Education and Work Experiences) on the dependent variable (Employee Performance). The sample used was an employee of employees as much as 240 respondents who made a sample random determination. The result research showed that from the analysis are known, also demonstrated from regression technique and significance, which states that both partially and jointly a positive and significant of employee performance. From two independent variables, the education has the most dominant influence on employee performance. Keywords: education, work experiences, employee performance.


This thesis conducts positive and normative analysis of inequality based on human capital theory. In Chapter 2, we document important differences in early child investments by family income and study four leading mechanisms thought to explain these gaps: intergenerational ability correlation, consumption value of investment, information frictions, and credit constraints. We evaluate whether these mechanisms are consistent with other stylized facts related to the marginal returns on investments and the effects of parental income on child investments and skills. In Chapter 3, I study optimal higher education subsidies when parents willingness to pay for their children's education differs due to heterogeneity in altruism. I first document substantial heterogeneity in the fraction of college expenditure paid by parents across families and provide evidence that this heterogeneity can be explained by parental altruism. Then I analytically characterize optimal education subsidies when the social planner minimizes distortions generated by borrowing constraints and can observe neither the amount of parental transfers nor parental altruism. I show that redistributing towards constrained students of low altruism parents is socially beneficial, but it involves substantial deadweight loss. The calibrated model suggests that the deadweight loss due to unobservable heterogeneity in parental altruism can be quantitatively large and therefore limit redistribution towards students with low parental transfers. In Chapter 4, we study the role of returns to unobserved skills in the rising residual earnings inequality for the past few decades in the U.S. We identify and estimate a general model of earnings residuals that incorporates (i) changing returns to unobserved skills, (ii) changing distribution of unobserved skills, and (iii) changing volatility of earnings that is not related to skills. Using data from the PSID, we find that the returns to unobserved skills went down since the mid-1980s despite the steady increase in the residual inequality. Using a simple demand and supply framework, we show that both demand and supply factors contributed to the downward trend in the returns to skills over time.


The Arctic marine system is large and heterogeneous, harsh and remote, and now changing very rapidly, all of which contribute to our current inadequate understanding of its basic structures and functions. In particular, many key processes within and external to the Arctic Ocean are intrinsically linked to its freshwater system, which itself is undergoing rapid and uncertain change. The role of the freshwater system (delivery, disposition, storage, and export) in the Arctic Ocean has recently received significant attention; however, due to the fact that few studies are able to cover all regions and seasons equally, we still lack an accessible, unified pan-Arctic representation generalizing the impacts of freshwater on the upper Arctic Ocean where many biological and geochemical interactions occur. This work seeks to distill our current understanding of the Arctic freshwater system, and its impacts, into conceptual diagrams which we use as a basis to speculate on the impact of future changes. We conclude that an understanding of regional and seasonal variability is required in order to gain a pan-Arctic perspective on the physical-geochemical-biological state of the upper Arctic Ocean. As an example of regionality, enhanced stratification due to freshening will be more important in the Pacific influenced Amerasian Basin, which stores the bulk of the freshwater burden, while the Atlantic influenced Eurasian Basin will experience more consequences related to increased heating from advective sources. River influenced coastal regions will experience a mosaic of these and other biogeochemical effects, whereas glacial fjords may follow their own unique trajectories due to the loss of upwelling mechanisms at glacial fronts. As an example of seasonality, the continued modulation of the sea ice freeze-melt cycle has increased the seasonal freshwater burden in the deep basins dramatically as the system progresses toward ice-free summer conditions, but will eventually reverse, reducing the seasonal flux of freshwater by more than half in a future, perennially ice-free ocean. It is our goal that these conceptualizations, based on the current state-of-the-art, will drive hypothesis-based research to investigate the physical-biogeochemical response to a changing freshwater cycle in a future Arctic Ocean with greatly reduced ice cover.


In order to base welfare assessment of dairy cattle on real-time measurement, integration of valid and reliable precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies is needed. The aim of this study was to provide a systematic overview of externally validated and commercially available PLF technologies, which could be used for sensor-based welfare assessment in dairy cattle. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify externally validated sensor technologies. Out of 1,111 publications initially extracted from databases, only 42 studies describing 30 tools (including prototypes) met requirements for external validation. Moreover, through market search, 129 different retailed technologies with application for animal-based welfare assessment were identified. In total, only 18 currently retailed sensors have been externally validated (14%). The highest validation rate was found for systems based on accelerometers (30% of tools available on the market have validation records), while the lower rates were obtained for cameras (10%), load cells (8%), miscellaneous milk sensors (8%), and boluses (7%). Validated traits concerned animal activity, feeding and drinking behavior, physical condition, and health of animals. The majority of tools were validated on adult cows. Non-active behavior (lying and standing) and rumination were the most often validated for the high performance. Regarding active behavior (e.g., walking), lower performance of tools was reported. Also, tools used for physical condition (e.g., body condition scoring) and health evaluation (e.g., mastitis detection) were classified in lower performance group. The precision and accuracy of feeding and drinking assessment varied depending on measured trait and used sensor. Regarding relevance for animal-based welfare assessment, several validated technologies had application for good health (e.g., milk quality sensors) and good feeding (e.g., load cells, accelerometers). Accelerometers-based systems have also practical relevance to assess good housing. However, currently available PLF technologies have low potential to assess appropriate behavior of dairy cows. To increase actors' trust toward the PLF technology and prompt sensor-based welfare assessment, validation studies, especially in commercial herds, are needed. Future research should concentrate on developing and validating PLF technologies dedicated to the assessment of appropriate behavior and tools dedicated to monitoring the health and welfare in calves and heifers.


Following the increased consciousness regarding global warming and other environmental issues, there is a growing urge in cities for a more rational energy supply and use in buildings. In parallel, the range of possible actions has broaden, from building refurbishment and construction options, through local energy production (solar panels, heat pumps) to the larger scale re-use of waste heat, green electricity production or trading. This evolution has increased the complexity of urban energy management, and more information regarding the energy efficiency of the energy demand and supply is required to evaluate possible improvements. Crude models fail to include all aspects of this complexity, while specialised simulation tools make global assessments and comparisons difficult.There is thus an opportunity for research to provide tools dealing with the increased complexity of urban energy flow to study the numerous options available to decrease the primary energy use of buildings and the related greenhouse gas emissions.Focusing on the scale of a few hundred buildings, we model in this paper the disaggregated energy flow, from the resources through networks and energy conversion system towards the energy use in buildings for distinct services, as an oriented graph. Combining the limited available data with existing simulation tools and energy consumption data, a new graph theory inspired simulation method is formulated. The resulting detailed picture of energy flow can give access to a large amount of information but, most importantly, will provide a unied tool to compare energy effciency scenarios regarding a broad range of technological aspects of energy demand and supply.


This essay critically reviews Richard Thompson Ford's Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality (2011), a comprehensive critique of the American system of civil rights. Ford argues that civil rights litigation and activism are anachronistic and lacking in nuance, and are therefore no longer useful for addressing today's entrenched social problems. He suggests that categorical anti-discrimination rules are formalistically applied by lawyers and courts, yielding results that do not advance social justice, but instead protect self-indulgent, fringe claimants (e.g., men complaining that bars that sponsor "ladies' nights" are engaged in illegal gender discrimination). He contends that civil rights remedies are problematic because they encourage society to view rights as individual entitlements. Damages remedies are not suitable to addressing complex civil rights problems, while structural injunctions and class actions are too broad and clunky to offer meaningful relief. He calls instead for an administrative regime that treats civil rights issues as "public policy questions that involve difficult technical and administrative complexities and tricky questions of distributive justice."While Ford's book is both provocative and comprehensive, this essay critiques his work by showing that his claims are overbroad and do not support his call for reform. First, it argues that he relies too heavily on isolated examples of abuses of the civil rights laws that are not generalizable to the entire system. This devalues the continuing importance of most civil rights work. Second, it demonstrates that Ford's harsh condemnation of civil rights remedies fails to account for the importance of a multi-faceted approach to addressing civil rights problems. In contrast to Ford's claim, the availability of multiple types of remedies increases the nuance of the rights system because they are complementary. Damages may be more suitable to address some types of social issues than injunctions or class actions; other times the situation may be reversed. By disaggregating remedies, he understates the contribution they make collectively. Finally, and most importantly, the essay responds to Ford's critique of right lawyers, which depicts them as elitist, litigation hawks who care little for their clients or the subtleties of the dialectic political process. This approach, which I call rights lawyer essentialism, permeates much of the academic literature, but is based on inaccurate stereotypes and anachronistic understandings of public interest practice. Contemporary rights lawyers have transformed their roles in social change campaigns to invoke a wide range of non-litigation tactics, such as lobbying, public education, and community mobilization, and employ litigation in ways that complement, rather than supplant, these other tactics. Their work also now often includes precisely the type of context-specific, "new governance" approaches to solving social problems that Ford argues should be taking place through an administrative regime. While Ford argues that civil rights are an anachronism, he relies on an outdated view of the lawyers who carry out its important work.


Abstract With increasing land scarcity, efforts to increase agricultural production in the past decades have been concentrated on agricultural intensification. Recent studies have shown that improvement in market access increases agricultural productivity, firstly by facilitating specialisation and exchange transactions in rural areas, and secondly through intensification of input use. The extent to which specialisation and intensification contribute to agricultural productivity, and how this increase is distributed across farmers of different farm sizes and resources, will be presented in this paper. The output generated from a variance analysis is used to develop and estimate a three stage least square regression model. The model is used to assess the effects of market access on agricultural productivity, and the distribution of market-generated benefits among small and large farmers. Data collected from 100 farmers in Machakos District are used for the analysis. The results indicate that aggregate physical productivity increases with improvement in market access, but that there is a disparity in the distribution of market-generated efficiency gains between small and large farmers (large farmers benefit more than small farmers), and between farmers with different access options to markets—easy access farmers benefit more than farmers with difficult access.


This report presents the implementation and evaluation of a computer vision problem on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). This work is based upon [5] where the feasibility of application specific image processing algorithms on a FPGA platform have been evaluated by experimental approaches. The results and conclusions of that previous work builds the starting point for the work, described in this report. The project results show considerable improvement of previous implementations in processing performance and precision. Different algorithms for detecting Binary Large OBjects (BLOBs) more precisely have been implemented. In addition, the set of input devices for acquiring image data has been extended by a Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) camera. The main goal of the designed system is to detect BLOBs in continuous video image material and compute their center points.
This work belongs to the MI6 project from the Computer Vision research group of the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg1 . The intent is the invention of a passive tracking device for an immersive environment to improve user interaction and system usability. Therefore the detection of the users position and orientation in relation to the projection surface is required. For a reliable estimation a robust and fast computation of the BLOB's center-points is necessary. This project has covered the development of a BLOB detection system on an Altera DE2 Development and Education Board with a Cyclone II FPGA. It detects binary spatially extended objects in image material and computes their center points. Two different sources have been applied to provide image material for the processing. First, an analog composite video input, which can be attached to any compatible video device. Second, a five megapixel CCD camera, which is attached to the DE2 board. The results are transmitted on the serial interface of the DE2 board to a PC for validation of their ground truth and further processing. The evaluation compares precision and performance gain dependent on the applied computation methods and the input device, which is providing the image material.


Theoretical and experimental studies of molecular photodegradation in π-conjugated chromophores with resonant and nonresonant excitation relative to the lowest-energy electronic transition of the chromophore are performed. The limitations of previous photodegradation models are discussed, and new models that overcome these limitations and provide more accurate estimates of chromophore photostability are presented. In particular, the necessity of considering multiple degradation pathways in the analysis of photobleaching studies is shown. Photostability studies of a dihydrofuran thiophene-bridged dicyanomethylene based chromophore (FTC) employing 1.55-μm excitation reveal that the photoinitiated decay kinetics are biphasic. We present what we believe to be a new, double-pathway photodegradation model capable of describing this behavior. Through investigations employing the singlet-oxygen quencher bis(dithiobenzil)nickel, photooxidation is shown to be one of the photodegradation pathways, and the ability of a quencher to inhibit chromophore photooxidation is quantified. The studies presented here provide insight into the mechanism of photochemical degradation of π-conjugated chromophores for devices operating in the visible and at telecommunication wavelengths.


Annotations are useful to semantically enrich documents and other datasets with concepts of ontologies. In the medical domain, many documents are not annotated at all and manual annotation is a difficult process making automatic annotation methods highly desirable to support human annotators. We propose a linguistic-based and a reuse-based approach annotating medical documents by concepts from an ontology. The reuse-based approach utilizes previous annotations to annotate similar medical documents. The approach clusters items in documents such as medical forms according to previous ontology-based annotations and uses these clusters to determine candidate annotations for new items.


Context. The 15N fractionation has been observed to show large variations among astrophysical sources, depending both on the type of target and on the molecular tracer used. These variations cannot be reproduced by the current chemical models. Aims. Until now, the 14N/15N ratio in N2H has been accurately measured in only one prestellar source, L1544, where strong levels of fractionation, with depletion in 15N, are found (14N/15N≈ 1000). In this paper we extend the sample to three more bona fide prestellar cores, in order to understand if the antifractionation in N2H is a common feature of this kind of sources. Methods. We observed N2H , N15NH+ and 15NNH+ in L183, L429 and L694-2 with the IRAM 30m telescope. We modeled the emission with a non-local radiative transfer code in order to obtain accurate estimates of the molecular column densities, including the one for the optically thick N2H . We used the most recent collisional rate coefficients available, and with these we also re-analysed the L1544 spectra previously published. Results. The obtained isotopic ratios are in the range 630 − 770 and significantly differ with the value, predicted by the most recent chemical models, of ≈ 440, close to the protosolar value. Our prestellar core sample shows high level of depletion of 15N in diazenylium, as previously found in L1544. A revision of the N chemical networks is needed in order to explain these results.


Both total quality management (TQM) and the use of information technology (IT) have been widely researched over recent years. However, there has been no well-founded empirical research on the two together on how IT can support TQM practices. A scarcity of empirical studies on the role of IT in TQM, especially in the non-manufacturing sector, which can illustrate the importance or otherwise of IT for TQM, has prompted this study. Thus the study sought to provide such an empirical base. This study investigated the extent to which IT has been used to support TQM among selected Malaysian public agencies. It also identified the external, organisational and technological factors that may influence the use of IT in TQM. A framework based on the literature of TQM has been derived and used as the conceptual base for the creation of a questionnaire to determine the use of IT in TQM. The questionnaire was sent to 110 Malaysian public agencies that have implemented TQM. The results presented were based on the responses from 47 agencies. The study reveals that IT is helpful for implementing TQM but its usage varies across the nine aspects of TQM processes. 'Important Innovations' exhibits the highest level of IT usage followed closely by 'Information and Analysis'. 'Supplier Quality Assurance', on the other hand, shows the lowest level of IT usage. Regression analysis showed that four independent variables have a significant effect on the use of IT. They are IT experience, top management support, public accountability and IT structure (in order of importance). The responding agencies were then classified into three distinctive IT-usage groups (i. e. low, moderate, and high) according to their IT-usage level. Contextual influences (external, organisational and technological) were then explored using regression analysis. The results revealed that when the IT-usage level is high, technological factors play an important role. However, when the usage level is low, organisational factors become more influential. For the moderate group, both technological and organisational factors affect the usage level.


T his study was motivated by the fact that there is a tendency to see poetry as being remote from language teaching contexts. Thinking that this is partly because of the lack of training in teaching literature given to English language teacher trainees, an experimental group of 3 rd year Uludag University English Language Teaching (ELT) Department students taking the "Poetry Analysis and Teaching" course were taught about new poetry-centered techniques and activities compiled from the related literature and they were asked to design a lesson using them. The control group continued to take the course without any changes. At the end of the term, both groups were given a questionnaire on their attitudes towards the use of poetry in EFL and statistically significant differences were found between the groups showing that the experimental group favored poetry more strongly as a multi-purpose and multi-functional tool to teach a foreign language.