This article examines the relationship between Lady Lucy Barry and John Franklin. Barry has been dismissed by other writers as a fanatic who had only a passing influence on the explorer's religious beliefs. Though their friendship ended after Franklin's marriage to Eleanor Porden in August 1823, Barry's Evangelical faith, as expressed through the books she presented to the members of the first Franklin expedition, had already shaped both Franklin's own understanding of his Arctic experiences and the literary representation of them in his Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22 . In the narrative, both Franklin and his companion John Richardson affirmed the great value of religious books and practices in helping them to endure the sufferings of the journey. As a result, the public came to revere Arctic explorers as Christian heroes. Without Lady Lucy Barry and her books, Arctic exploration might never have come to hold such an important place in 19th-century British culture.


ABSTRACT The first section of the paper focuses principally on the analysis of four wells located west of Shetland, UK to demonstrate that the appropriate use of AVO (amplitude versus offset) analysis forms a worthwhile and valuable tool for exploration. The wells analysed include two with hydrocarbons, the Foinaven oil well 204/24a-2 and the Laggan gas field discovery well 206/1-2, and two wells positioned on amplitude-related prospects (204/17-1 Fleet North Prospect and 204/18-1 Assynt Prospect). Both 204/17-1 and 204/18-1 failed to find hydrocarbons, where the previous work indicated mainly a Class III AVO anomaly. However, these studies demonstrate that both the amplitude anomalies conform to a Class I AVO. For the hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs encountered in both the 204/24a-2 and 206/1-2 wells, the results confirmed the presence of Class III AVO anomalies. A second aspect to this paper centres on the application of spectral decomposition to the seismic data relating to these four wells, which provides further evidence that there are also apparent differences in the spectral characteristics between them. Both Foinaven and Laggan exhibit Class III AVO anomalies, which are consistent with the theoretical predictions for frequency-dependent AVO behaviours. However, the results from the 204/17-1 and 204/18-1 wells show rather complicated behaviour in the iso-frequency sections that cannot be explained fully. In summary, though the amplitude anomalies seen in the two prospect wells were interpreted originally to be similar to that in Foinaven, this study demonstrates they are different in both their AVO behaviour and spectral characteristics.


In this study, carbon fiber–epoxy composites are interleaved with electrospun polyamide-6,6 (PA 66) nanofibers to improve their Mode-I fracture toughness. These nanofibers are directly deposited onto carbon fabrics before composite manufacturing via vacuum infusion. Three-point bending, tensile, compression, interlaminar shear strength, Charpy impact, and double cantilever beam tests are performed on the reference and PA 66 interleaved specimens to evaluate the effects of PA 66 nanofibers on the mechanical properties of composites. To investigate the effect of nanofiber areal weight density (AWD), nanointerlayers with various AWD are prepared by changing the electrospinning duration. It is found that the electrospun PA 66 nanofibers are very effective in improving Mode-I toughness and impact resistance, compressive strength, flexural modulus, and strength of the composites. However, these nanofibers cause a decrease in the tensile strength of the composites. The glass-transition temperature of the composites is not affected by the addition of PA 66 nanofibers. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2017


The open-pit mine production scheduling problem has received a great deal of attention in recent years, both in the academic literature, and in the mining industry. Optimization approaches to strategic planning for mine exploitation have become the industry standard, as the recent review of Newman et al. (19) highlights. However most of these approaches focus on extraction sequencing, and don't consider the material ow after mining. In particular, the use of stockpiling to manage processing plant capacity, and the interplay of material ows from mine to stockpile, mine to processing plant and stockpile to plant, has not been treated as an integrated part of mine schedule optimization. One of the key reasons is that material of dierent grades becomes mixed on a stockpile, leading to dicult nonconvex, nonlinear optimization models. Here we show that the special structure of such models can be exploited to yield eective algorithms that incorporate post-mining material ows and stockpile management as an integrated part of mine production scheduling. The results give a more realistic assessment of the NPV that can be realized by a mining project than is possible with current approaches. We address the solution of the open pit mine production scheduling problem (OPMPSP) with a single stockpile (OPMPSP+S). The addition of a stockpile adds a relatively small number of quadratic con- straints to the formulation of the OPMPSP and turns the problem from a mixed-integer linear into a mixed-integer nonlinear program. We develop several extended formulations of the OPMPSP+S and discuss the strength of the linear outer approximations obtained by relaxing their nonlinear constraints. We also introduce an aggressive branching scheme that can force the violation of the quadratic stock- piling constraints to be arbitrarily close to zero and a primal heuristic that produces a fully feasible solution of OPMPSP+S from an integer feasible solution of OPMPSP which violates these constraints. Combining these two techniques with a branch-and-bound approach,we obtain an algorithm that yields fully feasible solutions of OPMPSP+S arbitrarily close to the optimum. Experimental results for real- istic benchmark instances show that this algorithm is very ecient in practice. Our methodology is easily extendable to multiple stockpiles.


The traditional concept of rectal cancer management has changed significantly over the last few years. Although surgical resection remains central the treatment of distal rectal cancer by proctectomy and total mesorectal excision (TME), there has been increased interest in organ preservation strategies. Neoadjuvant chemoradiation (nCRT) may result in significant tumor regression and complete pathological response may be observed in up to 42% of patients. In order to avoid the morbidity, mortality and functional consequences of major surgery, selected patients with clinical and radiological evidence of significant tumor regression after nCRT have been managed non-operatively with strict follow-up (Watch & Wait Strategy—WW) with acceptable outcomes and minimal functional consequences. In addition, close surveillance may allow early detection of local recurrences and salvage alternatives with no oncological compromise.


Robots exploring the subsurface ocean of Europa, for example, will not have reliable communications with scientists on Earth. Robots exploring with unreliable communications must conduct scientific exploration autonomously. Automation of scientific exploration requires both opportunistic and deliberative decision-making algorithms. Opportunistic decision making chooses to investigate events or phenomena which could not have been anticipated from prior knowledge but which may yield valuable scientific data. Deliberative decision making uses prior knowledge to plan observations that increase information. Approaches to deliberative and opportunistic science autonomy that work in the laboratory may not work in the field. This thesis presents three algorithms designed to improve the performance of robots conducting autonomous science investigations. The first algorithm, foraging, improves opportunistic responses by deciding between sampling immediately available objects or searching for better options. Foraging moves science autonomy beyond simply responding to matched templates or anomalous data. The work recognizes that robots may not get to choose which objects they can to sample, but must deal with what they encounter. Our approach has increased performance in selecting objects to sample when sampling costs are high, without neglecting opportunities when sampling costs are low. The second algorithm addresses how to effectively conduct prospecting without relying on either arbitrary thresholds or responding to anomalies. Threshold-based algorithms cannot distinguish between anomalies and true changes in the distribution driving sensor readings. We present an algorithm that directly poses the question of whether or not a change has occurred. The change detection algorithm developed in this thesis encodes a level of confidence that a change has occurred, based on data collected by the robot. This can improve the efficiency of the investigation. The third algorithm represents a new approach to information gathering based on falsification. Recognizing scientists come to missions with hypotheses formulated, the algorithm uses those hypotheses to choose sampling actions that help determine which hypothesis is most credible. Prior information gathering approaches consider one or fewer hypotheses, and focus mainly on sampling the hypotheses' domain. We show that our approach biases the belief in hypotheses towards the most credible one. The thesis proven in this work is that accounting for operational and environmental context improves science autonomy algorithms. Each of these algorithms improve components of autonomous science, and thereby the process as a whole.


The choice between alternative developmental pathways is primarily controlled at the level of transcription. Induction of meiosis in budding yeasts in response to nutrient levels provides a system to investigate the molecular basis of cellular decision-making. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, entry into meiosis depends on multiple signals converging upon IME1, the master transcriptional activator of meiosis. Here we studied the regulation of the cis-acting regulatory element Upstream Activation Signal (UAS)ru, which resides within the IME1 promoter. Guided by our previous data acquired using a powerful high-throughput screening system, here we provide evidence that UASru is regulated by multiple stimuli that trigger distinct signal transduction pathways as follows: (i) The glucose signal inhibited UASru activity through the cyclic AMP (cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA) pathway, targeting the transcription factors (TFs), Com2 and Sko1; (ii) high osmolarity activated UASru through the Hog1/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway and its corresponding TF Sko1; (iii) elevated temperature increased the activity of UASru through the cell wall integrity pathway and the TFs Swi4/Mpk1 and Swi4/Mlp1; (iv) the nitrogen source repressed UASru activity through Sum1; and (v) the absence of a nitrogen source was detected and transmitted to UASru by the Kss1 and Fus3 MAPK pathways through their respective downstream TFs, Ste12/Tec1 and Ste12/Ste12 as well as by their regulators Dig1/2. These signaling events were specific to UASru; they did not affect the mating and filamentation response elements that are regulated by MAPK pathways. The complex regulation of UASru through all the known vegetative MAPK pathways is unique to S. cerevisiae and is specific for IME1, likely because it is the master regulator of gametogenesis.


Greenish-blue metallic colored fossil elytra of the leaf beetle ( Plateumaris sp.) have been discovered in the peat sediment of the middle Pleistocene (ca. 600 ka) Hirabaru Formation, Kyushu, Japan. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy revealed the smooth outer surface of the fossil elytra and five alternating electron-dense and electron-lucent layers in the epicuticle. By applying the matrix method to the epicuticle, three reflective peaks of wavelengths 388 nm, 544 nm, and 656 nm were computed. These peaks correspond to the reflective color observed under white light. Thus, the coloration of the fossils was caused by multilayer reflectors of the epicuticle of the elytra. Pyrolysis–gas chromatography–mass spectrometric analysis revealed that the fossil elytra have preserved some of their original macromolecules (chitin, protein, and amino acids), which are similar to those of a related Holocene species. The high-porosity matrix of the peat contains many fragments of diatoms, indicating the high productivity of the water column but a reducing bottom environment. Slight acidity of the interstitial water also seems to contribute to the preservation of some original macromolecules of fossil insects through geologic time.


In severe illness of any cause, downregulation of the thyroid hormone system may occur. How this affects patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is largely unknown. To investigate changes in serum levels of the thyroid hormones during AMI in the CAD-prone South Indian population. In this study, thyroid parameters were estimated in a series of 30 consecutive infarction patients treated by thrombolysis. Blood samples were taken at time of admission before therapy (4h), after 12h, 24h, 36h, 48h and 7th day following admission and we investigated the possible relationship of these alterations with the severity of AMI. Fifteen patients had left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) 50% (group II). A transient decrease in total tri-iodothyronine (T3) occurred at 24 hours after onset of symptoms, in both groups. Total thyroxine and TSH levels did not change significantly. Negative correlation was found between total T3 and CK-MB levels (p < 0.001). The thyroid hormone system is rapidly down regulated in AMI. This may be beneficial during acute ischaemia. The degree of T3 decrease is proportional to the severity of cardiac damage and may have a possible prognostic value.


In this paper, we analyze how forced displacements caused by violent conflicts affect the wages of displaced workers in Colombia, a country characterized by a long historical prevalence of violent conflicts between the government, the militia group (FARC), drug trafficking, and other crime that affect hundreds of people, forcibly displaced to other regions of the country. Using data from the Quality of Life Survey (2011-2014), we analyze differences in wages between those who were forced to move to other regions, and those who were not forced to move. In our empirical strategy, we take into account that those who were displaced may have characteristics that differ from those who were not forced, and we apply Propensity Score Matching techniques to consider forced displacements exogenous to the individuals. We apply different matching algorithms, and find that forced displacement decreases between 6% and the 22% the wages of males, and between 17% and 37% the wages of females, compared to their non-displaced counterparts. Thus, forced displacements result in poorer labor market outcomes, and the government should explore how public policies may help to alleviate the negative consequences of forced displacements as first step to reduce wage inequalities originated by these conflicts.


By now, supercomputers have become an efficient tool of mathematical simulation for both scientific and applied large-size problems. This makes it possible to thoroughly analyze such physical processes that otherwise could be too costly or even prohibitively expensive or time consuming to be analyzed in a usual way. This tool helps one considerable reduce the design time of Hi-Tech production. The demand for high performance computations constantly grows. And so does the list of applications and users, who are involved in an extremely wide range of problem domains. The efficient use of supercomputers is not a trivial goal. In order to achieve it, a network informational infrastructure has to be created. It should include not only a system and application software to provide the supercomputers-aided simulation but also software tools for the interactive communications between participants of an innovation project and tools for the access to vast repositories of general and professional information. The requirements imposed on the network Informational Computational System (ICS) for the support of innovation activity, its objectives, architecture and prototype implementation are discussed in [1–3]. The evolution of the system proceeds by the way of implementation of a feature that can be named mobility. Mobility implies an open architecture, support of multiple platforms, and what is more important, the ease of adaptation of a system to users' needs by users themselves. The steps of constructing a system that possess mobility are considered in [4–6]. The objective of this paper is to present a combined technology based at these steps and dedicated to the ICS construction and to describe the software tools to support this technology.


This is the first field guide to the identification of the birds of the islands of the tropical Pacific, including the Hawaiian Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, southeastern Polynesia, and Micronesia. It is intended both as a reference for the expert and as an introduction to birding in the region for the novice. Small enough to be carried afield, it contains much previously unpublished information about behavior, vocalizations, ecology, and distribution. The forty-five color plates depict all plumages of all bird species that breed in the islands, as well as of those that regularly visit them and the surrounding oceans, and of most species believed to be extinct on the islands. Black-and-white figures show many of the rarer visitors.Introductory sections discuss the tropical Pacific as an environment for birds, problems of birding on islands, and bird conservation. Appendixes include maps of the island groups and a thorough bibliography.


We investigate the form of mathematical structuralism that acknowledges the existence of structures and their distinctive structural elements. This form of structuralism has been subject to criticisms recently, and our view is that the problems raised are resolved by proper, mathematics-free theoretical foundations. Starting with an axiomatic theory of abstract objects, we identify a mathematical structure as an abstract object encoding the truths of a mathematical theory. From such foundations, we derive consequences that address the main questions and issues that have arisen. Namely, elements of different structures are different. A structure and its elements ontologically depend on each other. There are no haecceities and each element of a structure must be discernible within the theory. These consequences are not developed piecemeal but rather follow from our definitions of basic structuralist concepts.


The main sources of solar energetic particle (SEP) events are solar flares and shocks driven by coronal mass ejections (CMEs). While it is generally accepted that energetic protons can be accelerated by shocks, whether or not these shocks can also efficiently accelerate solar energetic electrons is still debated. In this study we present observations of the extremely widespread SEP event of 26 Dec 2013. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the widest longitudinal SEP distribution ever observed together with unusually long-lasting energetic electron anisotropies at all observer positions. Further striking features of the event are long-lasting SEP intensity increases, two distinct SEP components with the second component mainly consisting of high-energy particles, a complex associated coronal activity including a pronounced signature of a shock in radio type-II observations, and the interaction of two CMEs early in the event. The observations require a prolonged injection scenario not only for protons but also for electrons. We therefore analyze the data comprehensively to characterize the possible role of the shock for the electron event. Remote-sensing observations of the complex solar activity are combined with in-situ measurements of the particle event. We also apply a Graduated Cylindrical Shell (GCS) model to the coronagraph observations of the two associated CMEs to analyze their interaction. We find that the shock alone is likely not responsible for this extremely wide SEP event. Therefore we propose a scenario of trapped energetic particles inside the CME-CME interaction region which undergo further acceleration due to the shock propagating through this region, stochastic acceleration, or ongoing reconnection processes inside the interaction region. The origin of the second component of the SEP event is likely caused by a sudden opening of the particle trap.


This paper discusses the thermal stability of optical quartz fiber in a tin coating at a temperature of 180-200 °C, close to the melting temperature of tin. The mechanical strength of the quartz fiber was measured by the bending method. It is shown that the strength is reduced by comparison with the value measured at room temperature but remains higher than the strength of quartz fiber in a polymeric coating.


Sediment cores were collected from two remote subalpine lakes: the rather shallow (1.5m) Little Ghost Lake at 2040 in elevation and the deep Great Ghost Lake (35m) at 2150m elevation. The distributions of metal/Al (in bulk samples) and acid-leached metal in the sediments of the Little Ghost Lake suggest that the surface enrichments of Cd and Pb (probably also Cr and Zn) are caused mainly by anthropogenic inputs. The distributions of leached Pb and Pb-206/Pb-207 ratios indicate a large anthropogenic input since about 1940, as based on Pb-210 and C-14 dating. A natural process driven by the Fe redox cycle caused surface enrichments of acid-leached Fe, Ni, Zn and part of Pb in the Great Ghost Lake. The Pb-206/Pb-207 ratios confirm the anthropogenic Pb input in surface sediments here. According to C-14 dating, the onset of the large anthropogenic Pb increase occured in around 1945, suggesting that such large increases in these two subalpine lakes are due to widespread lead emissions from automobiles. The Fe oxides produced during winter overturn in the Great Ghost Lake play a major role in removing the aeolian anthropogenic metals, particularly Pb, from the water column. In the Little Ghost Lake, the aeolian anthropogenic metals may be directly removed with the sinking of aeolian particulates and/or by aquatic organisms.


By using discourse analysis, this paper compares and contrasts the journalistic coverage of the story of a beauty blogger with facial disfigurement with her blog. On the one hand, we will show the extent to which a self-representational account may align with the journalistic coverage, reinforcing rather than contesting mainstream representations of disability. On the other, we will demonstrate how a person with a disfigurement can use blogging to reclaim her own identity and challenge the medical objectification of her body perpetuated by mainstream media. This research found that rather than being mutually exclusive, journalism and blogging can play a complementary role in shaping the society's understanding of the complexities and contradictions surrounding disfigurement.


Quartzite cobbles in Lower Triassic Buntsandstein conglomerates from northeastern Spain display unusual millimeter- to centimeter-sized circular craters, commonly having central mounds and surrounded by radial fractures. The conglomerates are also marked by intense fracturing down to microscopic scale. These features have traditionally been attributed to tectonic compression and pressure dissolution at cobble contacts. Sections through the cratered cobbles reveal pervasive internal fracturing, segments detached along concave spall fractures, and zones marked by quartz grains with planar deformation features. Comparison with results of impact experiments on artificial conglomerates suggests that these features were produced by internal accelerations, grain collisions, and spallation related to shock-wave propagation through inhomogeneous deposits. The proximity of the outcrops to the Azuara and proposed Rubielos de la Cerida impact structures suggests that shock deformation of conglomerates can provide an easily recognizable regional impact signature.


Robots are widely used for part assembly across manufacturing industries to attain high productivity through automation. The automated mechanical part assembly system contributes a major share in production process. An appropriate vision guided robotic assembly system further minimizes the lead time and improve quality of the end product by suitable object detection methods and robot control strategies. An approach is made for the development of robotic part assembly system with the aid of industrial vision system. This approach is accomplished mainly in three phases. The first phase of research is mainly focused on feature extraction and object detection techniques. A hybrid edge detection method is developed by combining both fuzzy inference rule and wavelet transformation. The performance of this edge detector is quantitatively analysed and compared with widely used edge detectors like Canny, Sobel, Prewitt, mathematical morphology based, Robert, Laplacian of Gaussian and wavelet transformation based. A comparative study is performed for choosing a suitable corner detection method. The corner detection technique used in the study are curvature scale space, Wang-Brady and Harris method. The successful implementation of vision guided robotic system is dependent on the system configuration like eye-in-hand or eye-to-hand. In this configuration, there may be a case that the captured images of the parts is corrupted by geometric transformation such as scaling, rotation, translation and blurring due to camera or robot motion. Considering such issue, an image reconstruction method is proposed by using orthogonal Zernike moment invariants. The suggested method uses a selection process of moment order to reconstruct the affected image. This enables the object detection method efficient. In the second phase, the proposed system is developed by integrating the vision system and robot system. The proposed feature extraction and object detection methods are tested and found efficient for the purpose. In the third stage, robot navigation based on visual feedback are proposed. In the control scheme, general moment invariants, Legendre moment and Zernike moment invariants are used. The selection of best combination of visual features are performed by measuring the hamming distance between all possible combinations of visual features. This results in finding the best combination that makes the image based visual servoing control efficient. An indirect method is employed in determining the moment invariants for Legendre moment and Zernike moment. These moments are used as they are robust to noise. The control laws, based on these three global feature of image, perform efficiently to navigate the robot in the desire environment.


Cancer is one of the most common causes of death in the Western world. Hence, the
development of novel effective treatment modalities to combat this disease is important.
Combretastatins are powerful anticancer drugs that are being evaluated in phase I/II clinical
trials. Combretastatins act by binding to p-tubulin, preventing microtubule assembly and
inhibiting angiogenesis in developing tumours. Most widely studied is the natural product
c/5(Z)-combretastatin A4 that was originally isolated from the African bush willow
Combretum caffrum by Pettit and co-workers. Chemically Combretastatins are substituted
stilbenes, exhibiting major activity in the cis-form, whereas the corresponding fr-am'-isomers
are ~ 2 - 3 orders of magnitude less cytotoxic.
Combretastatins undergo reversible photoisomerization upon irradiation with UV/visible
light. Here a novel form of two-photon phototherapy is proposed, in which the "inactive"
fnms(£)-combretastatins are used as anticancer pro-drugs that may be activated (converted to
the cw-isomer) by localized irradiation with light at the tumour site. The use of near-infrared
(NIR) light to trigger a nonlinear two-photon excited photoactivation process provides deeper
light penetration into tissues and minimizes cellular autofluorescence compared with
UV/visible light.
The work described in this thesis is highly multidisciplinary. A major task was the synthesis
of a range of combretastatin derivatives as target compounds for the novel form of
two-photon excited anticancer phototherapy proposed herein. The cytotoxicity of the drug
candidates was assessed on live mammalian cell lines. Photochemical properties such as
fluorescence quantum yields, fluorescence lifetimes, photoisomerization quantum yields and
two-photon absorption characteristics of the combretastatin derivatives were investigated
spectroscopically. The fact that the trans-isomers fluoresce in most cases, whereas ds-isomers
are virtually non-fluorescent has allowed multiphoton fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM)
of the real-time uptake of the inactive pro-drugs into live mammalian cells, as well as
monitoring their intracellular distribution and concentration. Two-photon excitation of
^-Combretastatins on monolayers of live cells led to effective conversion of the inactive
pro-drugs to the highly cytotoxic Z-derivatives leading to apoptosis in the irradiated areas
within 24 h. In conclusion, the two-photon excited activation of £-combretastatins on live
cells was demonstrated, making £-combretastatins promising pro-drug candidates for
two-photon excited anticancer phototherapy.


Smooth films were deposited via pulsed laser ablation of a Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ bulk target on silicon. SEM micrographs reveal as-deposited films that are about a micron thick and with indistinguishable grain sizes even at high magnification. Crystallization was observed in the annealed films. The XRD spectrum reveals the crystallinity of the film but the peaks correspond to crystal orientations that may have come from dissociated BSCCO compounds. Further material analysis will be carried out for this preliminary study on the deposition of smooth high-temperature superconducting films.


Social foraging strategies and their association with learning and innovation abilities have been studied extensively in flocking birds, but their importance for cooperatively breeding birds has remained relatively unexplored. The high degree of sociality typical of cooperative societies may indicate an important role of social foraging for learning and innovation. We studied 1) social foraging strategies and 2) the acquisition of a novel foraging skill in 16 groups of wild, cooperatively breeding Arabian babblers (Turdoides squamiceps). In Experiment 1, we provided a foraging grid of 96 feeding wells to each group, allowing them either to search for food individually (producer) or to join other birds (scrounger). Subordinates scrounged significantly more than dominant individuals, spent longer on the foraging grid, and had a higher proportion of their foraging steps rewarded (due to the effect of successful scrounging). However, scrounging was not related to poor learning ability because almost all the individuals that learned the novel foraging skill in Experiment 2 (removing a rubber lid to reach food) were scroungers. These findings suggest that group members differ in their foraging strategies and learning abilities according to their rank and that subordinate group members may be more opportunistic and flexible in their behavior than dominants, making use of both scrounging and novel foraging opportunities.


Now a day, traveling recommendation is important for user who is the plan for trave ling. There are many existing techniques which are used for travel recommendation. In this paper explain a personalized travel sequence suggestion system using travelogues and users contributed photos with metadata of this photo by comparing existing different technique. It recommends personalized users travel interest and recommend a sequence of travel interest instead of an individual point of interest. The existing system cannot complete the requirement i.e. personalized and sequential recommendation together. To solve the problem of providing personalized and sequential travel package recommendation, a topical package model is created using social media data in which automatically mine user travel interest with another attribute like time, cost, and season of traveling. The proposed system uses the travelogues and photos of social media which map each user and routes description to the topical package area to induce user topical package model and route topical package model. To suggest personalized POI sequence, first famous routes are stratified as per the similarity between user package and route package. Then high stratified routes are more optimized by using social similar users travel records for more accuracy.


The Adriatic Carbonate Platform (AdCP), was a separate shallowmarine depositional system characterized by a lack of terrigenous input and was connected to Gondwana towards the South via Gavrovo–Tripolitza or Apulia. It existed for approximately 120 MY, from the Early Jurassic Pliensbachian/Toarcian) to the end of the Cretaceous, resulting in a 4000–6500 m thick succession of almost pure carbonates. However, this is part of a thicker (>8000 m) sequence of predominantly carbonate rocks which forms the Karst Dinarides, and was deposited during more than 270 MY – at least from the Carboniferous (Moscovian) to the Late Eocene. Among many different groups of fossil organisms, benthic foraminifera are especially abundant and well preserved, so they, along with calcareous algae (Dasycladales), are the most important fossils used for age determination and stratigraphic subdivision of shallow-marine carbonate deposits. Within the 257 determined taxa belonging to different foraminiferal families which lived through the Mesozoic, numerous different index fossils occur in assemblages indicating various ages: Early Triassic, Anisian, Carnian, Norian–Rhaetian, Late Sinemurian, Early and Late Pliensbachian (Carixian and Domerian), Early and Late Aalenian, Early and Late Bajocian, Early and Late Bathonian, Callovian, Early and Late Oxfordian, Kimmeridgian, Tithonian, Berriasian, Valanginian, Late Hauterivian, Late Barremian, Early and Late Aptian (Bedulian and Gargasian), Early and Late Albian, Early, Middle and Late Cenomanian, Turonian, Coniacian, Santonian, Early and Late Campanian and Early and Late Maastrichtian. A total of 64 biostratigraphic units – biozones of different categories, from subzone to superzone, were defined within the stratigraphic interval from the Carnian to the Late Maastrichtian. This enabled very detailed biostratigraphic subdivision of the carbonate deposits within the Karst Dinarides. This is one of the most precise sequences, not only in this area, but also among former shallow marine deposits of the entire Neotethyan realm in the present Mediterranean region. The palaeobiogeographic characteristics of biotopes and the composition of foraminiferal assemblages during the Mesozoic were controlled by the position of the study area within the Neotethyan bioprovinces. Until the Albian, this area represented part of the Southern Neotethyan bioprovince, while from the Cenomanian to its final disintegration at the end of the Cretaceous it belonged to a separate, Central Mediterranean Neotethyan bioprovince.


Background: Job stress is regarded as a harmful factor for both employees and organizations, which negatively affects the effectiveness of employees and efficiency of organizational performance. Many of occupations are exposed to different types of stress in the work place environment. One of these occupations is nursing, which occupies essential role and vital parts of the effectiveness of health care system. Objective: To investigate the relationship between the effect of job stress on job satisfaction for nurses. Method: A descriptive study was conducted among nursing staff in mental health hospitals in Sulaimani. The process of the necessary data collection began from 25th May 10th July 2016 and was obtained through selfreport convenient sample of (75) nurses. They distributed in three hospitals Soz Mental Hospital, Shahid Salahi Muhandis Hospital and Mental Health Center / Teaching Hospital by using questionnaire were divided into three parts: First, socio-demographic characteristics consisted of eight items. Second, Expanded Nursing Stress Scale (ENSS). This consisted of (57) items ranged in nine sub scales. Third, Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS), which included 36 items in nine subscales. Descriptive data and inferential data were used for analysis. validity of the questionnaire was determined through panel of (11) experts in the different fields and work settings. Results: The analysis of the data figured out that total average job stress among nursing staff at the mental hospitals was "Occasionally stressfulfrequently stressful". The subscale death and dying from job stress took the highest level. Nursing staff had job satisfaction, subscale payment (salary) from job satisfaction took the lowest level. There were significant statistical relationships between level of job stress subscales and demographic characteristics except training course dimension. There was no statistical significant correlation between total ENSS and total JSS. Conclusions: The death of the patients played an important role in perceiving job stress. The lack and delay in salary were a major factor of decreasing job satisfaction, although the level of job stress among nurses does not highly recorded. Also, most of the nurses were satisfied with their work.


Why do we need to communicate science? Is science, with its highly specialised language and its arcane methods, too distant to be understood by the public? Is it really possible for citizens to participate meaningfully in scientific research projects and debate? Should scientists be mandated to engage with the public to facilitate better understanding of science? How can they best communicate their special knowledge to be intelligible? These and a plethora of related questions are being raised by researchers and politicians alike as they have become convinced that science and society need to draw nearer to one another. Once the persuasion took hold that science should open up to the public and these questions were raised, it became clear that coming up with satisfactory answers would be a complex challenge. The inaccessibility of scientific language and methods, due to ever increasing specialisation, is at the base of its very success. Thus, translating specialised knowledge to become understandable, interesting and relevant to various publics creates particular perils. This is exacerbated by the ongoing disruption of the public discourse through the digitisation of communication platforms. For example, the availability of medical knowledge on the internet and the immense opportunities to inform oneself about health risks via social media are undermined by the manipulable nature of this technology that does not allow its users to distinguish between credible content and misinformation. In countries around the world, scientists, policy-makers and the public have high hopes for science communication: that it may elevate its populations educationally, that it may raise the level of sound decision-making for people in their daily lives, and that it may contribute to innovation and economic well-being. This collection of current reflections gives an insight into the issues that have to be addressed by research to reach these noble goals, for South Africa and by South Africans in particular.


Organic matter influences aggregation in non-sodic soils, but less is known about its role in sodic soils. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of organic matter in aggregation and clay dispersion in soils with different levels of sodicity. Prepared soils with 15% clay (smectitic or illitic) and natural soil aggregates (from a smectitic clay soil [Pellustert] with 25 g kg−1 organic C and a pair of illitic loams [Rhodoxeralfs] with 15 and 29 g kg−1 organic C) were equilibrated with solutions having sodium adsorption ratios (SAR) of 0, 5, 15, and 30. Pea (Pisum sativum L.) straw was added at 50 g kg−1 to the prepared soils, which were then incubated. Changes in aggregation during incubation were similar irrespective of clay type. After 7 d incubation with no added straw at SAR 0 and 30, the amounts of spontaneously dispersible clay were 5.9 and 23.7 g kg−1 soil, and mechanically dispersible clay was 11.9 and 23.3 g kg−1 soil. Macroaggregation (>250 µm) was 125 and 41 g kg−1 soil at SAR 0 and 30. After 67 d incubation with pea straw, spontaneously dispersible clay contents were 2.1 and 5.4 g kg−1, mechanically dispersible clay contents were 9.0 and 17.7 g kg−1 soil, and macroaggregation was 533 and 416 g kg−1 soil at SAR 0 and 30. The effects of sodicity and organic matter on structural stability of the natural soil aggregates were similar to those in the prepared soils, but macroaggregation was less, and the smectitie clay soil was more sensitive to sodicity than the illitic loams. This work showed that organic matter has at least as great a role in aggregation in sodic soils as in non-sodic soils.


Faces and clothing are clues to interpersonal perception. However, it is not known whether perceptions of faces and clothing are interacting with each other. We examined the effects of facial attractiveness on subjective ratings of clothing attractiveness. Participants were shown pictures of a person wearing a T-shirt in which the faces and shirt designs were manipulated. The faces were either male or female, attractive or unattractive. Participants were instructed to rate the attractiveness of the shirts, not the faces. Nevertheless, attractive female faces increased shirt attractiveness ratings, irrespective of the participant's gender. Attractive male faces only slightly increased shirt attractiveness ratings. Gender differences and individual variability in visual attention were not responsible for these effects. The current results more likely reflect social or cultural factors, such as the higher priority placed on female facial attractiveness than male facial attractiveness in today's society.


Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the German Federal Statistical Office combined with micro level data from the German SOEP (1991-2008) on the personal work situation and subjective feelings concerning several aspects of life. Employing the indicators suggested by the Stiglitz Report, we find that much of the variation in many well-being measures can indeed be captured well by the hard economic indicators as used in the literature, especially by GDP and the unemployment rate. This suggests that the hard indicators are still a reasonable and quite robust gauge of well-being of a country. And yet, we also see that these correlations are far from perfect, thus giving considerable hope that there is room for a broader statistical reporting.


Forensic expertise methodology normally used in different criminal investigation and forensic medicine field such as blood type, anthropologic analysis and forensic dentistry (dental records, X-rays, bite marks, among others) solved and will continue solving many crimes. Those methods will continue estimating age of several people. Nevertheless, since the development of genetics and molecular biology there were an increase in number and quality of solved cases. The present work points out the importance to associate certain forensic biology areas to traditional investigation methods in human identification, especially with forensic dentistry. It also shows that in some situations, teeth are an important source to genetic analysis and molecular studies. After a scientific literature review it was concluded that it is mandatory that those in forensic investigations acquire knowledge in forensic genetics in order to apply with traditional investigation techniques, this fact would produce an increase of information to Justice.


Short paper (10 min).  This case study was conducted as part of a PhD in Archaeology on the production and distribution of stone sarcophagi from the early Middle Ages. The tests were mainly carried out in the quarries of Panzoult in the Vienne valley (Indre-et-Loire, France). The use of photogrammetry is certainly not unique in subterranean environments, but through this communication we would show how it helps bringing new elements for the study of Panzoult's quarries.  The study of early Middle Ages sarcophagi quarries presents a number of constraints (low light, readability of tool marks, accessibility and safety) that requires the set up of an appropriate methodology. The analysis of the remains is based primarily on tools marks and blocks' limitations visible on the walls, the floor and the sky of the quarry, which allows to reconstruct the organization and chronology of the exploitation. For a better understanding on the quarry, we must necessarily think in three dimensions.  After testing several methods and traditional surveying tools, 3D modelling and especially photogrammetry have come out as a relevant solution. Among its characteristics we find:  - Field material is compact and handy  - Data acquisition quick and easy  - Data available at all times  - Almost one centimetre accuracy  - Very dense point cloud allowing a high resolution image  Automated processing software, freeware or free of charge ( 123D Catch ©, Arcweb 3D © or Meshlab ) were preferred. Usually they do not require advanced computing skills; it is a quick and easy solutions to work. They can create, from a large number of photos, a 3D model viewable as a point cloud, a mesh model or a textured model. The 3D model provides many elements for the study of the quarry faces: microrelief features and block limitations are clearly visible with an important accuracy; thus the blocks can be precisely counted and measured. Furthermore, for a better understanding, through detailed visualization, of tool marks, the actions of quarrymen and the extraction order.  A second step (in progress) involves the use of GIS and post-processing software for 3D modelling. It will allow a further understanding in the treatment of acquired 3D model, with plans and sections automatically made, an estimation of quarry volume to quantify the volume and the number of blocks extracted and mining waste among other utilities.


The Dimensional Model of Driver Demand is extended to include Auditory-Vocal (i.e., pure "voice" tasks), and Mixed-Mode tasks (i.e., a combination of Auditory-Vocal mode with visual-only, or with Visual-Manual modes). The extended model was validated with data from 24 participants using the 2014 Toyota Corolla infotainment system in a video-based surrogate driving venue. Twenty-two driver performance metrics were collected, including total eyes-off-road time (TEORT), mean single glance duration (MSGD), and proportion of long single glances (LGP). Other key metrics included response time (RT) and miss rate to a Tactile Detection Response Task (TDRT). The 22 metrics were simplified using Principal Component Analysis to two dimensions. The major dimension, explaining 60% of total variance, we interpret as the attentional effects of cognitive demand. The minor dimension, explaining 20% of total variance, we interpret as physical demand. The 22 metrics were well segmented into three groups, using cluster analysis, which independently agreed with the metric groups that were visually evident in the 2-D loadings plot. One cluster was associated with cognitive demand, and the other with physical demand. An additional cluster was discovered which loaded in an opposing fashion to cognitive demand along the cognitive demand dimension, and was called cognitive facilitation. The Dimensional Model, by eliminating the correlation between the task scores on the dimensions, also minimizes the biasing effects arising from interactions between metrics. The extended Dimensional Model allows for a simplified understanding of the effects of all modes of secondary tasks on driver performance. Language: en


Program management has become an important issue today. The governments in many countries and on different levels use different programs whose essence sometimes is very different. The current stage of modern development includes a scientific-technological revolution (STR) in which large-scale complex problems, which cannot be solved by ordinary separate government actions, have emerged.

There are several reasons for taking the energy conservation program of the USA as an object of the present study. This program is deeply connected with the economy and all key industries, it is a large-scale non-conventional program with an element of crisis in it, it has top-level government priority, and represents an example for studying the American economy.

In this article the attempt is made to understand the program using the systems approach. The author does not aim to describe all governmental actions in detail or the technical questions connected with the problem of energy conservation. There is also no program evaluation here, although it is one of the most important components of program management. The accent is rather on the decomposition of the system into related subsystems, definition of the actors involved, and interactions between them.


Biomedicine approaches infertility as a disease that can be cured with the application of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). This study aims to explore some of the ethical issues that surround the use of these technologies in India. The study was carried out in two well-known private health care settings in Pune, Maharashtra. One of the private hospitals was selected on the basis of familiarity with the doctor; the other on the basis of popularity among patients. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted to collect information from a sample of 25 women between December 2007 and April 2008. The study reveals that all the women interviewed found ART treatment to be painful and—at the time of interview—had not achieved a full-term pregnancy. The study also found that there was no uniform protocol specifying the sequenced application of intrauterine insemination (IUI)followed by the enrolment of the woman in in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). The interviews found that the women were burdened by the treatment. These technologies are based on profit at the cost of women's lives. Literature suggests that there are chances that embryos are made available for research without the consent of couples, and these embryos could be manipulated prior to transfer, thus trying to control birth. Based on the findings from this study and on previous literature (Raymond 1993) these IUI, IVF, and ICSI technologies should not become medical practice, until they have undergone a scientific evaluation.

Keywords: IUI, IVF, ICSI, informed consent, painful, burdened, uniform protocol


This thesis is comprised of X-ray and optical studies of 27 X-ray selected galaxy clusters from the XMM-LSS survey. These systems are mostly groups and poor clusters, with temperatures 0.6-4.8 keV, spanning the redshift range 0.05 to 1.05, hence these are some of the highest redshift X-ray selected clusters to have been studied. In the X-ray study, the evolution in the X-ray surface brightness profiles of the hot intracluster plasma is studied. Comparing the profiles with a standard -model it is found that 54% of the sample possess cuspy (cool) cores. Trends with both temperature and redshift in the outer slope beta of the X-ray surface brightness and in the incidence of cuspy cores are investigated. Fits indicate that the incidence of cuspy cores does not decline at high redshifts, as has been reported in rich clusters. Rather such cores become more prominent with increasing redshift. It is also found that has a positive correlation with temperature. In the optical study, CFHTLS optical photometry has been used to study the galaxy luminosity functions of 14 members of the sample. Individual luminosity functions (LFs) as well as redshift-stacked and temperature-stacked LFs in three filters, g', r' and z', down to M = -14:5 are derived. All LFs were fitted by Schechter functions which well-constrained the faint-end slope, . Derived values of ranged from -:03 to as steep as -2:1. No evidence is found for upturns at faint magnitudes. Evolution in was apparent in all bands: it becomes shallower with increasing redshift. It is found that at z~0:3, alpha is steeper (-1.67) in the green (g') band than it is (-1.30) in the red (z') band. This colour trend disappears at low redshift, which is attributed to reddening of faint blue galaxies from z ~0.3 to z~0. Also, the total optical luminosity is calculated and is found to correlate strongly with X-ray luminosity and temperature, which is consistent with expectations for self-similar clusters with constant mass-to-light ratio.


This study examines the use of Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English in two Freshman English classrooms in a university in southern Taiwan. With a varied language history, several languages are spoken in Taiwan. Although there are monolingual speakers of either Taiwanese or Mandarin, the majority of people in Taiwan are bilingual or trilingual. Therefore, code-switching often occurs in people's daily conversation. Just as languages are used in speaker's daily communication, so it is in the classroom context. The three aims of this study are firstly to explore the nature of classroom talk, focusing specially on how teachers and learners use more than one language to talk around monolingual textbooks in order to accomplish lessons, and secondly to investigate the attitudes of teachers and learners towards the use of more than one language in the classroom (code-switching in the classroom). Thirdly, the study considers the implications of the way language is used in the classroom and the teachers' and learners' attitudes to code-switching. A mixed research method, a combination of quantitative and qualitative perspectives, was utilized in the study, which is based on three major data sources: interviews with two teachers and two groups of students, questionnaires answered by the students, and in-class observations, together with field notes and audio recordings. The study has found that code-switching was used both by the teachers and students in the classrooms. The teachers switched codes, mainly between English and Mandarin, to unlock the meanings from the monolingual English textbooks, for classroom management and to form and maintain solidarity in the classrooms. The students were allowed to use Mandarin and Taiwanese in classrooms. Attitudes towards the usefulness of code-switching in the classrooms were found to be positive amongst the participants.


This study analyses and discusses the chances and limits of corporatist experiments in transition societies. In recent decades, several countries have used them as temporary means of governance to cope with the complicated processes of dual transformation: political and social democratization on the one hand and economic liberalization on the other. Analyzing the processes of corporatist policy-making and their effects, this study pays attention to the essential tension between the functional necessity and the configurative incapability of such experiments. It attempts to overcome the limits of the previous studies, which have either neglected the essential tension and the contextual peculiarities of transition societies; or paid little attention to the concrete processes of integrating corporatist arrangements into the established arenas of policy-making.
The main objects of the empirical analysis are the experiments of South Korea, in the 1990s when reforms towards dual transformation - social democratization (democratic labor relations and social insurance expansion) and economic liberalization (deregulation of labor markets and industrial restructuring) - were exactly being pursued, and various types of corporatist arrangements were formed and reformed to cope with the reforms. This is comparable with the experiences of Spain in the 1970s and 1980s, when the similar phenomena occurred under similar context. Through a comparison of the two countries, this study tries to more precisely understand the peculiarities of the Korean experiences and to extract general theses on the chances and limits of experimental corporatism in transition societies, which are distinguished from the neo-corporatist experiences in advanced democratic capitalism in Western Europe.
Broadly, the experiments in Korea were activated under the three governments for a decade long, which resepectively form two phases: the formative attempts under the two conservative governments (1990-1998) and the more strengthened attempts under the successive center-left government (1998-2003). As none of the reform programs were strongly pursued in the former phase, the effects of experimental corporatism were trivial in both reform areas in the formative time. Their effects were strengthened much more, as the center-left government accelerated reforms in both areas. The latter phase can be further divided into two: the experiments in their heyday in 1998, when corporatism was urgently emphasized as a means to manage the serious economic crisis; and the institutionalized experiments thereafter.
The corporatist experiments in Korea were restrained due to their limited political and social integration. On the one hand, frequent discords between the corporatist channels and the administrative and parliamentary actors limited the political integration of corporatism, while the labor movement did not have a privileged relationship with any political parties; and the strong state tradition, which had developed over the previous decades, remained dominant in policy-making. Even though they tried to overcome the limits through institutionalization and achieved some advancement, such problems could not be completely solved.
On the other hand, discords between the divided labor movements and between the national leadership of the confederations and the local unions often limited the social integration of corporatism. The stronger the initiatives at corporatist experiments became, the more serious the problems were of their social integration such as rand-and-file revolts and the counter-mobilization of the non-participants in corporatism, which ultimately led even the most advanced experiment to remain 'immobile corporatism'.
The relatively unsuccessful and vulnerable experiences in Korea have both similarities and differences in comparison to the pioneering experiments in Spain. Different from Korea, Spain accelerated reforms towards social democratization from the beginning of democratic transition. Accordingly, corporatist experiments in Spain did not need to deal with the issues of democratic labor reform as much as in Korea, but made contribution to strengthening the social insurances much more and earlier than in Korea. Coordination between the political actors and the corporatist channel was less difficult than in Korea, as political parties, which had privileged relationships with trade unions were achieving enormous political success. Accordingly, they did not need institutional mechanisms for the political integration of corporatism. The social integration of the corporatist arrangements was less difficult as well by virtue of the less severe competition between the divided labor movements and of the relatively coherent structure of union confederations.
These empirical analyses have some implications on the relevant theories. The integration problems of corporatist arrangements demonstrate the validity of classic neo-corporatism theories, which emphasize the organizational properties and structural networks between unions and political parties. The roles of experimental corporatism in dual transformation vary according to the contextual variations: this has not been paid attention to by now, and needs further elaboration. The unique features of experimental corporatism and its essential tension need to be further analyzed and theorized.


This thesis looks at how the identification and recording of family violence offending in the criminal justice system could be improved. In doing so it examines s 16A of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, which was introduced in 2019 to ensure "family violence offences" are identified as such on charging documents and on the offender's criminal record. This provision is known operationally as the "family violence flag". The role of the family violence flag in relation to risk assessment is considered, particularly its ability to reveal a perpetrator's prior family violence offending. Research has shown that a history of family violence is the most consistently identified risk factor for intimate partner lethality and risk of re-assault. The potential of the family violence flag to improve the evidence-base of family violence offending in New Zealand is also considered, which is important given the prevalence and detrimental impact of family violence in New Zealand. Analysis suggests that despite its recent introduction, changes could be made to s 16A to increase its utility. Accordingly, reform options to s 16A are proposed to better achieve the policy intent of the family violence flag, strengthening both its application and subsequent use.


The participation of persons with disabilities to higher education institutions has started to be investigated more thoroughly in recent years, in various countries, particularly from the West. Studies and realities from the world are showing that the access and participation of students with disabilities as adult learners are increasing. The recent international documents like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) of 2006 or the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020 adopted by the European have enhanced their right for the equal opportunities in all educational levels. The present paper presents a review of the legislation adopted by different countries to comply with the prerequisites of integration of students with disabilities in Higher Education as well as the variety of support provided by universities to students with disabilities.


The article studies the specifics of the immigration problem that European countries were confronted at the end of the 20th century. The characteristic of the main models of the migration policy adopted by leading European countries is given. The following models typical of various countries were singled out: the assimilationist model adopted in France, the segregationist model adopted in Germany, and the pluralistic model adopted in the UK. Their comparative analysis is carried out. The case study of France is used to examine the main approaches, assessments and proposals formulated by liberal politicians to solve the immigration issue. The article analyzes the course of discussions in French political and intellectual communities in the 1980s and early 1990s. The studied material can be used by historians, sociologists, and political scientists to study the migration policy of European states.


Chronic diseases and cancer account for over 75 percent of healthcare costs in the US. Increased prevention services and improved primary care are thought to decrease costs. Current models for detecting changes in the health of populations are cumbersome and expensive, and are not sensitive in the short term. In this paper we model population health as a dynamical system to predict the time evolution of the new diagnosis of chronic diseases and cancer. This provides a reliable forecasting tool and a means of measuring short-term changes in the health status of the population resulting from preventive care programs. Twelve month forecasts of cancer and chronic populations were accurate with errors lying between 3 percent and 6 percent. We confirmed what other studies have demonstrated that diabetes patients are at increased cancer risk but, interestingly, we also discovered that all of the studied chronic conditions increased cancer risk just as diabetes did, and by a similar amount. The model(i)yields a new metric for measuring performance of preventive and clinical care programs that can provide timely feedback for quality improvement programs;(ii)helps understand "savings" in the context of preventive care programs and explains how they can be calculated in the short term, even though they materialize only in the long term and(iii)provides an analytic tool and metrics to infer correlations and derive insights on the effect of changes in socio-economic factors affecting population health on improving health and lowering costs of populations.


The Life and Miracles of Thekla offers a unique view on the reception of classical and early Christian literature in Late Antiquity. This study examines the Life and Miracles as an intricate example of Greek writing and attempts to situate the work amidst a wealth of similar literary forms from the classical world. The first half of the Life and Miracles is an erudite paraphrase of the famous second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla. The second half is a collection of forty-six miracles that Thekla worked before and during the composition of the collection. This study represents a detailed investigation into the literary character of this ambitious Greek work from Late Antiquity.


To investigate the geochemical behaviour of argon isotopes during mantle metasomatism and to obtain chronological information on the age of metasomatic events under the Arabian Shield, we analyzed mantle xenoliths and hornblende megacrysts from Saudi Arabian volcanic fields (Uwayrid, Al Birk) applying the 40Ar-39Ar dating technique. Two hornblende megacrysts yield plateau ages indicating formation or total resetting of the K/Ar system 1-2 Myr ago. The ultramafic xenoliths trapped mantle-derived and atmospheric argon in different proportions, resulting in variable isotopic compositions: 40Ar/36Ar ratios range from 296 (i.e. atmospheric) to 10 500, reflecting interactions with isotopically and genetically different fluids and/or melts during recent mantle metasomatism. One such episode of metasomatism led to the formation of Ba-rich phlogopite, which yielded a saddle-shaped age spectrum with a maximum age estimate of 18 Ma. Another episode, inducing formation of secondary pargasite in the lithospheric mantle, was dated to 4 Ma. In the mantle xenoliths the concentration of mantle argon is clearly related to the intensity of metasomatism. Argon extraction by high-resolution stepwise heating allowed us to deconvolve various argon components distributed heterogeneously within single xenoliths and ascribe them to specific carrier phases. Pyroxenes generally preserve much higher 40Ar/36Ar ratios than olivine, as they contain up to 100 times higher concentrations of mantle argon, which also correlates with a higher fluid inclusion content in pyroxenes. Hydrous phases (phlogopite/amphibole) have more variable 40Ar/36Ar ratios. K and Cl concentrations and the argon isotope compositions of the Uwayrid xenoliths indicate distinct metasomatic agents, causing elemental and isotopic disequilibrium on a local scale. On the basis of correlations between Ar isotope composition and K and Cl concentration in the samples most strongly affected by the late metasomatic fluids, we suggest that metasomatic processes in the local mantle occurring simultaneously with the opening of the Red Sea were accompanied by the introduction of saline-water saturated fluids into deep lithospheric zones.


Mitochondrial SSU-rDNA has been used recently to infer phylogenetic relationships among a few ciliates. Here, this locus is compared with nuclear SSU-rDNA for uncovering the deepest nodes in the ciliate tree of life using broad taxon sampling. Nuclear and mitochondrial SSU-rDNA reveal the same relationships for nodes well-supported in previously-published nuclear SSU-rDNA studies, al- though support for many nodes in the mitochondrial SSU-rDNA tree are low. Mitochondrial SSU-rDNA infers a monophyletic Colpodea with high node support only from Bayesian inference, and in the concatenated tree (nuclear plus mitochondrial SSU-rDNA) monophyly of the Colpodea is supported with moderate to high node support from maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference. In the monophyletic Phyllopharyngea, the Suctoria is inferred to be sister to the Cyrtophora in the mitochondrial, nuclear, and concatenated SSU-rDNA trees with moderate to high node support from maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference. Together these data point to the power of adding mitochondrial SSU-rDNA as a standard locus for ciliate molecular phylogenetic inferences.


Relying on primary sourcesoral history interviews, personal memoirs, newspaper articles, official records, diaries, and lettersE. R. Milner cuts through myth and legend to create this startling portrait of the real Bonnie and Clyde.In his prologue, Milner introduces Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, showing them as they drive along a rural Louisiana lane toward the ambush that would put a dramatic end to their turbulent lives of crime. Milner then traces their backgrounds, noting the events that bring the two outlaws together. The ensuing adventures of Bonnie and Clyde featured gun battles, narrow escapes and captures, frequent moves, and, of necessity, several shifts in personnel over a short period of time. It was a life of wild action, betrayal, and sometimes even gallantry. In the abstract, an aura of romance surrounded this violent pair.Although the mythology surrounding Bonnie and Clyde is charged with drama and fascination, Milner reveals the truth behind the bloody legend, carefully gleaning materials from obscure locally published accounts, previously untapped court records, and archived but unpublished oral history accounts from some sixty victims, neighbors, relatives, and police who were involved in the exploits of the infamous duo. And the truth proves to be sufficiently exciting. Romance aside, the Barrow gang carved a grisly swath through Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. The string of deaths was longand real: Akota, Oklahoma, sheriff severely wounded, deputy killed; Sherman, Texas, grocery clerk killed; Temple, Texas, man killed as gang attempts to steal his car; Joplin, Missouri, two officers killed; Alma, Arkansas, police officer killed; Crockette, Texas, prison guard killed; Miami, Oklahoma, police officer killed.Milner traces this violent path until 23 May 1934, when Bonnie and Clyde die in an ambush. Even dead, they draw crowds and are buried in a circus-like atmosphere. In death they continue to intrigue us in ways few criminals had before or have since."


A partial password is a mode of password-based authentication that is widely used, especially in the financial sector. It is based on a challenge-response protocol, where at each login attempt, a challenge requesting characters from randomly selected positions of a pre-shared secret is presented to the user. This mode could be seen as a "cheap way" of preventing for example a malware or a keylogger installed on a user's device to learn the full password in a single step. Despite of the widespread adoption of this mechanism, especially by many UK banks, there is limited material in the open literature. Questions like how the security of the scheme varies with the sampling method employed to form the challenges or what are the existing server-side implementations are left unaddressed. In this paper, we study questions like how the security of this mechanism varies in relation to the number of challenge-response pairs available to an attacker under different ways of generating challenges. In addition, we discuss possible server-side implementations as (unofficially) listed in different online forums by information security experts. To the best of our knowledge there is no formal academic literature in this direction and one of the aims of this paper is to motivate other researchers to study this topic.


Although agricultural terraces and terrace walls are a conspicuous feature of the modern dissected terrain of the Mediterranean, it is unclear how extensively the Graeco-Roman rural landscape was terraced. Some scholars have assumed that the past landscape was very like the present one, while others have denied that agricultural terracing was much used in classical antiquity. This article explores two ways of detecting ancient terraces and terrace walls. First, it looks carefully at ancient terminology, using texts drawn from the full array of ancient Greek linguistic registers (both literary texts and inscriptions). The claim that there are no, or almost no, ancient written references to terraces is false, because it looks only at a range of texts that is limited in both date and linguistic register. Second, the article investigates the evidence of archaeological fieldwork, drawing mainly on our own fieldwork in Sphakia. In some cases, scholars have denied that the physical remains of terraces are ancient. This sceptical claim is exaggerated; there are cases where the remains of terraces are Graeco-Roman in date.


This thesis studies disfluency in spontaneous Swedish speech, i.e., the occurrence of hesitation phenomena like eh, oh, truncated words, repetitions and repairs, mispronunciations, truncated words and so on. The thesis is divided into three parts: PART I provides the background, both concerning scientific, personal and industrial–academic aspects in the Tuning in quotes, and the Preamble and Introduction (chapter 1). PART II consists of one chapter only, chapter 2, which dives into the etiology of disfluency. Consequently it describes previous research on disfluencies, also including areas that are not the main focus of the present tome, like stuttering, psychotherapy, philosophy, neurology, discourse perspectives, speech production, application-driven perspectives, cognitive aspects, and so on. A discussion on terminology and definitions is also provided. The goal of this chapter is to provide as broad a picture as possible of the phenomenon of disfluency, and how all those different and varying perspectives are related to each other. PART III describes the linguistic data studied and analyzed in this thesis, with the following structure: Chapter 3 describes how the speech data were collected, and for what reason. Sum totals of the data and the post-processing method are also described. Chapter 4 describes how the data were transcribed, annotated and analyzed. The labeling method is described in detail, as is the method employed to do frequency counts. Chapter 5 presents the analysis and results for all different categories of disfluencies. Besides general frequency and distribution of the different types of disfluencies, both inter- and intra-corpus results are presented, as are co-occurrences of different types of disfluencies. Also, inter- and intra-speaker differences are discussed. Chapter 6 discusses the results, mainly in light of previous research. Reasons for the observed frequencies and distribution are proposed, as are their relation to language typology, as well as syntactic, morphological and phonetic reasons for the observed phenomena. Future work is also envisaged, both work that is possible on the present data set, work that is possible on the present data set given extended labeling and work that I think should be carried out, but where the present data set fails, in one way or another, to meet the requirements of such studies. Appendices 1–4 list the sum total of all data analyzed in this thesis (apart from Tok Pisin data). Appendix 5 provides an example of a full human–computer dialogue.


Categorical variables are a natural choice for representing discrete structure in the world. However, stochastic neural networks rarely use categorical latent variables due to the inability to backpropagate through samples. In this work, we present an efficient gradient estimator that replaces the non-differentiable sample from a categorical distribution with a differentiable sample from a novel Gumbel-Softmax distribution. This distribution has the essential property that it can be smoothly annealed into a categorical distribution. We show that our Gumbel-Softmax estimator outperforms state-of-the-art gradient estimators on structured output prediction and unsupervised generative modeling tasks with categorical latent variables, and enables large speedups on semi-supervised classification.


We consider the identification and estimation of the average wage return to attaining educational qualifications when attainment is potentially measured with error. By exploiting two independent measures of qualifications, we identify the extent of misclassification in administrative and self-reported data on educational attainment. The availability of multiple self-reported educational measures additionally allows us to identify the temporal patterns of individual misreporting errors across survey waves. We provide the first reliable estimate of a highly policy relevant parameter for the UK, namely the return from at-taining any academic qualification compared to leaving school at the minimum age without any formal qualification. We identify returns to qualifications under two alternative settings: a strong ignorability assumption and an exclusion restriction. All these results are obtained by casting the identification problem in terms of a mixture model, and using a semi-parametric estimation approach based on balancing scores, which allows for arbitrarily heterogeneous individual returns. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).


As the Era of Accountability has given rise to the prevalence of curriculum standards and multiple educational stakeholders have engaged in the writing of these documents, the National Council for the Social Studies has revised its original standards document published nearly two decades ago. This study investigated what the revised document reveals in terms of gendered discourses. Through employing the tools of discourse analysis, the dominant discourses advanced in the document's curricular recommendations were revealed. Two discourses prevailed in the analysis: gender imbalance with a narrow view of valued masculinity and gender-free with a hidden discourse of males dominating in those spaces. A discussion of the presence of trans and other gender identities in the document is included. As gender is sparsely mentioned in the curricular recommendations, and a binary view of gender is adhered to throughout, there is little guidance for curriculum writers and teachers to teach in transformative ways that challenge the status quo.


I have dealt with numerous complaints from the public and pharmacists alike which, in many cases, indicate that business policies impact negatively on the professional practice of pharmacists. The shortage of pharmacists, the low dispensing fees paid by medical aids, the system of designated service providers and the general supermarket philosophy of lower prices and increased sales volume adopted by some pharmacies are all contributing factors which put pressure on pharmacists to process as many prescriptions as quickly as possible. In this article, examples of actual complaints received are used to illustrate how certain business policies inevitably lead to poor patient care, mistakes or negligence in professional practice, and adversely affect the rights of the pharmacist.


Immigration law relies on rules that bind effectively, but not legally, to adjudicate millions of applications for immigration benefits every year. This Article provides a blueprint for immigration law to improve its use of these practically binding rules, often called guidance documents. The agency that adjudicates immigration benefit applications, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), should develop and adopt its own Good Guidance Practices to govern how it uses guidance documents. This Article recommends a mechanism for reform, the Good Guidance Practices, and tackles many complex issues that USCIS will need to address in creating its practices. The recommended reforms promote increased accessibility, transparency, and fairness for immigration law stakeholders, including unrepresented parties. This Article also contributes to the larger administrative law debate about guidance documents. Guidance documents present a conundrum for administrative law because they have powerful positive and negative features. Because the Administrative Procedure Act does not require agencies to consider public input in the crafting of these rules, agencies may respond more quickly and flexibly than notice and comment rulemaking would allow. On the other hand, an agency policy statement (a type of guidance document that explains an agency's current thinking on a particular issue) is effectively binding even though it is not legally binding. Applicants are free to argue in an adjudication that a different approach should apply. Yet, stakeholders tend to follow the rule announced in the policy statement as if it were legally binding. Thus, there is a practically binding effect without the opportunity for notice and comment. In developing a prescription for USCIS, this Article concludes that the best approach to reforming agency use of guidance documents is an agency-by-agency approach. It rejects a one-size-fits-all approach in favor of the opportunity for each agency to formalize its own practices. Such tailored reform recognizes that every agency is different, with its own guidance culture and communities of stakeholders. This approach is designed to ease the negative effects of guidance documents while maximizing their positive features.


The coefficient of determination (CoD) has significant applications in genomics, for example, in the inference of gene regulatory networks. We study several CoD estimators, based upon the resubstitution, leave-one-out, cross-validation, and bootstrap error estimators. We present an exact formulation of performance metrics for the resubstitution and leave-one-out CoD estimators, assuming the discrete histogram rule. Numerical experiments are carried out using a parametric Zipf model, where we compute exact performance metrics of resubstitution and leave-one-out CoD estimators using the previously derived equations, for varying actual CoD, sample size, and bin size. These results are compared to approximate performance metrics of 10-repeated 2-fold cross-validation and 0.632 bootstrap CoD estimators, computed via Monte Carlo sampling. The numerical results lead to a perhaps surprising conclusion: under the Zipf model under consideration, and for moderate and large values of the actual CoD, the resubstitution CoD estimator is the least biased and least variable among all CoD estimators, especially at small number of predictors. We also observed that the leave-one-out and cross-validation CoD estimators tend to perform the worst, whereas the performance of the bootstrap CoD estimator is intermediary, despite its high computational complexity.


This paper shows equivalence of several versions of applicative similarity and contextual approximation, and hence also of applicative bisimilarity and contextual equivalence, in LR, the deterministic call-by-need lambda calculus with letrec extended by data constructors, case-expressions and Haskell's seq-operator. LR models an untyped version of the core language of Haskell. The use of bisimilarities simplifies equivalence proofs in calculi and opens a way for more convenient correctness proofs for program transformations. The proof is by a fully abstract and surjective transfer into a call-by-name calculus, which is an extension of Abramsky's lazy lambda calculus. In the latter calculus equivalence of our similarities and contextual approximation can be shown by Howe's method. Similarity is transferred back to LR on the basis of an inductively defined similarity. The translation from the call-by-need letrec calculus into the extended call-by-name lambda calculus is the composition of two translations. The first translation replaces the call-by-need strategy by a call-by-name strategy and its correctness is shown by exploiting infinite trees which emerge by unfolding the letrec expressions. The second translation encodes letrec-expressions by using multi-fixpoint combinators and its correctness is shown syntactically by comparing reductions of both calculi. A further result of this paper is an isomorphism between the mentioned calculi, which is also an identity on letrec-free expressions.


In the first comprehensive history of South Carolina published in nearly fifty years, Walter Edgar presents a sweeping narrative of a state with an illustrious, sometimes infamous, past. He describes in very human terms 475 years of recorded history in the Palmetto State, including the experiences of all South Carolinians - rich and poor; male and female; those with roots in Africa and in Europe as well as Native Americans. In an eminently readable presentation, Edgar uses letters, diaries, and other writings to let voices from the past take part in telling the state's fascinating story.


In legal academia, there are various claims as to the proper role of the courts and the standard of review to be employed in evaluating claims of right. These competing judicial philosophies have been the subject of great debate in recent years. Yet underlying these debates is the question of rights and whether men are entitled, in justice, to assurances of personal autonomy, or whether the concept of rights is a mere legal fiction. In a recent article in the Journal of Law and Philosophy, Evan Fox-Decent argues that individuals are entitled, at a minimum, to certain guarantees of bodily integrity and basic freedoms. He concludes that the State owes her citizens the duty to act in their best interest as a fiduciary because justice will not allow a party to unilaterally assert power over the interests of another unless such authority is exercised to promote those interests. This article builds upon Fox-Decent's fiduciary theory of governance, offering it as an alternative to social contract theory and a more useful paradigm for conceptualizing the basis and scope of individual rights. Application of the fiduciary theory, as understood through the lens of classical natural law theory, mandates that government must respect the individual's right to better his or her own life. As such the fiduciary theory holds that the State must generally forbear on actions which may interfere with the individuals' liberties and proprietary interests. Accordingly, in defining the scope of rights, the judiciary must not presume a regulation interfering with those interests to be legitimate, but on the contrary must employ an exacting standard of review to ensure that the regulation does not offend the moral basis of the sovereign-citizen relationship.


ABSTRACT Based on mapping of laterally traceable stratigraphic discontinuities, we propose a high-resolution allostratigraphic scheme for one of the world's foremost fossil marine vertebrate Lagerstätten: the lower Miocene strata of the Chilcatay Formation exposed along the Ica River near Zamaca, southern Peru. Measured sections combined with 1:10,000 scale mapping of a 24 km2 area provide an overview of the stratal architecture, as well as a general facies framework and interpretation of the various depositional settings. As a whole, the Chilcatay alloformation is bounded by the CE0.1 unconformity at the base and the PE0.0 unconformity at the top. An internal Chilcatay surface, termed CE0.2, splits the alloformation into two distinct allomembers (Ct1 and Ct2). The Ct1 allomember comprises three facies associations recording deposition in shoreface, offshore, and subaqueous delta settings. The Ct2 allomember comprises two facies associations, recording deposition in shoreface and offshore settings. Using these data, we place the rich marine vertebrate assemblage in a precise spatial and stratigraphic framework. The well-diversified vertebrate assemblage is dominated by cetaceans (mostly odontocetes) and sharks (mostly lamniforms and carcharhiniforms); rays, bony fish, and turtles are also present. Taxonomic novelties include the first records of baleen whales, platanistids, and eurhinodelphinids from the Chilcatay Formation.


The major challenges with big data examination and analysis are volume, complex interdependence across content, and heterogeneity. The examination and analysis phases are considered essential to a digital forensics process. However, traditional techniques for the forensic investigation use one or more forensic tools to examine and analyse each resource. In addition, when multiple resources are included in one case, there is an inability to cross-correlate findings which often leads to inefficiencies in processing and identifying evidence. Furthermore, most current forensics tools cannot cope with large volumes of data. This paper develops a novel framework for digital forensic analysis of heterogeneous big data. The framework mainly focuses upon the investigations of three core issues: data volume, heterogeneous data and the investigators cognitive load in understanding the relationships between artefacts. The proposed approach focuses upon the use of metadata to solve the data volume problem, semantic web ontologies to solve the heterogeneous data sources and artificial intelligence models to support the automated identification and correlation of artefacts to reduce the burden placed upon the investigator to understand the nature and relationship of the artefacts.


Fresh human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates from patients with AIDS were screened for infectivity in chimpanzee peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) to identify strains potentially able to generate high virus loads in an inoculated animal. Only 3 of 23 isolates obtained were infectious in chimpanzee cells. Of these three, only one (HIV-1DH12) was able to initiate a productive infection in PBMC samples from all 25 chimpanzees tested. HIV-1DH12 tissue culture infections were characterized by extremely rapid replication kinetics, profound cytopathicity, and tropism for chimp and human PBMC, primary human macrophage, and several human T-cell lines. An infection was established within 1 week of inoculating a chimpanzee with 50 50% tissue culture infective doses of HIV-1DH12; cell-free virus was recovered from the plasma at weeks 1, 2, and 4 and was associated with the development of lymphadenopathy. Virus loads during the primary infection and at 6 months postinoculation were comparable to those reported in HIV-1-seropositive individuals.


A new code, CFD-BWR, is being developed for the simulation of two-phase flow phenomena inside a BWR fuel bundle. These phenomena include coolant phase changes and multiple flow regimes which directly influence the coolant interaction with fuel assembly and, ultimately, the reactor performance. CFD-BWR is a specialized module built on the foundation of the commercial CFD code STAR-CD which provides general two-phase flow modeling capabilities. New models describing the inter-phase mass, momentum, and energy transfer phenomena specific for BWRs have been developed and implemented in the CFD-BWR module. A set of experiments focused on two-phase flow and phase-change phenomena has been identified for the validation of the CFD-BWR code and results of two experiment analyses focused on the radial void distribution are presented. The close agreement between the computed results, the measured data and the correlation results provides confidence in the accuracy of the models. (authors)


Eradication may not be necessary before countries can eliminate, scale back control, and rely on health systems. When the Global Malaria Eradication Programme (GMEP) was launched in 1955 (1, 2), all malaria-endemic countries outside of Africa were (or would soon be) eliminating malaria (3). The GMEP's design was based on a theory of malaria transmission dynamics and control that has become the standard for malaria elimination decisions today (4–6). When financial support for the GMEP collapsed in 1969, participating countries were caught at different stages of progress toward elimination (1). Examining their fate in the decades that followed provides a natural experiment that tests the theory. With a rise in funding (7) and renewed interest in eradication (8, 9), there is now a need to revisit the lessons learned from the GMEP. We identify changes in the epidemiology of malaria when elimination is reached that could explain its stability and discuss how this calls for a reassessment of strategies for eradication.


Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) has been used in dentistry for the last five to eight years. Because of its high biocompatibility, its good sealing ability, and the fact that cemental tissues grow on this material, it has a relatively wide range of applications in endodontics. MTA may be used to cap exposed vital pulps, to seal open apices or perforations, or as a retro-filling material in apical surgery. These applications are presented in the current article, and discussed based on case reports.


This article is based on an in-depth qualitative study of efforts by an Early Head Start program to include fathers in program activities with the aim of supporting and strengthening their involvement in their children's lives. Since this program employs a home-visiting model of service delivery, our focus is on the work and experiences of home-visiting staff. Our key findings concern the evolutionary development of program thinking and practice regarding fathers and father involvement; barriers or challenges to father involvement; and successful strategies for engaging fathers on both a programmatic and an individual family basis. Unlike most previous research on father involvement, this study provides a close-up look at staff experiences as they attempt to involve fathers in programming for infants and toddlers. Although significant barriers to father involvement were identified, certain approaches and strategies proved most effective in encouraging father engagement in key program components and with their youngest children. Language: en


To elucidate cortical correlates of vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) modulation, we observed cortical activation during fixation suppression and habituation of caloric vestibular nystagmus in 12 normal subjects, using PET. Significant positive correlation between regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and slow phase eye velocity of caloric nystagmus was observed in the middle and posterior insula, inferior parietal lobule, temporal pole, right fusiform gyrus, lingual gyrus, and cerebellar vermis and hemisphere. The rCBF increase in the insular region and the inferior parietal lobule was lateralized depending on the direction of the nystagmus. Caloric nystagmus was suppressed as a result of visual fixation, during which time the area around the right frontal eye field, temporal pole, inferior temporal gyrus, a broad area in the visual cortex, including fusiform and lingual gyrus, cerebellar uvula/nodulus and flocculus, exhibited positive correlation with fixation suppression of caloric nystagmus, while vestibular cortices exhibited negative correlation. The caloric nystagmus habituated with repetition of stimulation. With habituation, we observed activation in the right anterior cingulate gyrus, left superior parietal lobule and right cuneus, and deactivation in the anterior insula, cingulate gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and occipito-temporal visual cortex. The region that showed significant co-activation with fixation suppression and habituation of caloric nystagmus was the right cuneus, and significant co-deactivation was observed in the anterior insula, cingulate gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and middle temporal visual cortex. The present results support previous observations that the parieto-insular cortex and inferior parietal lobule are involved in processing of vestibular information, and, in addition, suggest that activation may depend on the direction of nystagmus. Deactivation of vestibular cortices during visual fixation supports the concept of inhibitory visual-vestibular interaction in the cortex. Significant activation of the cingulate, superior parietal and visual cortices, and cerebellar vermis accompanying reduction of caloric response with repeated stimuli suggests possible involvement of these regions in vestibular habituation. Common activation of the cuneus in visual cortex and deactivation of vestibular and visuo-spatial association cortices by both visual suppression and habituation of VOR suggests that these two mechanisms are not completely independent but may share some cortical and subcortical regions.