In 1965, a time when quantitative, computer-driven planning was very much in vogue, Royal Dutch Shell started experimenting with a different way of looking into the future: scenario planning. Shell's practice has now survived for almost half a century and has had a huge influence on how businesses, governments, and other organizations think about and plan for the future. The authors interviewed almost every living veteran of the Shell scenario planning operation, along with top Shell executives through the years. They identify several principles that both define the process at Shell and help explain how it has survived and thrived for so long. For instance, Shell scenarios are stories, not predictions, and are designed to help break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will look much like the present. They must above all be plausible, with a logical story line, in order to encourage intuition and judgment. They create a safe space for dialogue and for acknowledging uncertainty. They must also be relevant, not simply disruptive and challenging. And they need some quantification to be credible-but the numbers must flow from the stories, rather than the other way around. Otherwise, there's always the danger that quantitative models will hide assumptions and constrain thinking rather than refine it. Because scenarios follow a rhythm distinct from the annual strategy cycle, they allow an organization to see realities that would otherwise be overlooked. INSET: Idea in Brief.


"An American Ordeal" is a comprehensive interpretive history that covers the anti-war movement in the USA throughout the entire Vietnam era. This study offers a narrative of the struggle that took place on the home front, even as the war itself was being waged in South-east Asia. Portraying the movement as a social force that energized people culturally yet failed to develop enduring political strength, the authors view the war as part of the long tradition of peace activism in America, as well as a process that ultimately spurred citizens to take decisive action against their government's policy. Beginning with the rise of a liberal peace movement against atmospheric nuclear testing from 1955 to 1963, the authors describe the emergence of radical pacifists and politically motivated groups who eventually created a diverse coalition against the Vietnam War. They examine how extremist elements came to dominate the movement in the late 1960s, to be supplanted by a larger consensus of liberal and pacifist groups in the early 1970s.


Recent research on conceptual change has argued that it is insufficient to assume that prior knowledge is the only aspect relevant in order to explain the conceptual change process. In addition, "warm constructs" such as emotions, epistemological beliefs, and values have been proposed to play a determinative role. In this study, we aim to further the understanding of the qualitative aspects of such constructs. By investigating how 20 science students interpret Michael Billig's critical theory of nationalism in written exam papers, we explore how values are involved in university students' meaning making of nationalism. The results indicate that students in different ways bring alternative values, such as togetherness, pride, and personal identity, in their reasoning, and these become a significant aspect of their meaning making in political science. This suggests that the students enter the classroom with their own ideas and principles of what is "good" or "right" when "practicing political science." The study thus provides an example of how conceptual change involves accepting prescriptions of a certain intellectual activity.


Reinforcement learning refers to a group of methods from artificial intelligence where an agent performs learning through trial and error. It differs from supervised learning, since reinforcement learning requires no explicit labels; instead, the agent interacts continuously with its environment. That is, the agent starts in a specific state and then performs an action, based on which it transitions to a new state and, depending on the outcome, receives a reward. Different strategies (e.g. Q-learning) have been proposed to maximize the overall reward, resulting in a so-called policy, which defines the best possible action in each state. Mathematically, this process can be formalized by a Markov decision process and it has been implemented by packages in R; however, there is currently no package available for reinforcement learning. As a remedy, this paper demonstrates how to perform reinforcement learning in R and, for this purpose, introduces the ReinforcementLearning package. The package provides a remarkably flexible framework and is easily applied to a wide range of different problems. We demonstrate its use by drawing upon common examples from the literature (e.g. finding optimal game strategies).


ABSTRACT The vascular flora of Butler County, Alabama, was surveyed from 1985 to 2019. A total of 1,524 species, hybrids, or subspecific taxa in 654 genera from 170 families are reported. Fifty-seven species represented by herbarium specimens from Butler County were not re-collected during this study. The Inventory List of Rare, Threatened and Endangered Plants, Animals and Natural Communities of Alabama as compiled by the Alabama Natural Heritage Program contains 36 of the species collected. Approximately 20% of the flora (310 species), are considered non-indigenous. Families with the largest number of species, hybrids, or subspecific taxa were Asteraceae (205), Poaceae (179), Fabaceae (103), Cyperaceae (92), Rosaceae (53) and Lamiaceae (36).


About the book:
The Church of Satan was founded by Anton LaVey on April 30, 1966. In his hands, Satan became a provocative symbol for indulgence, vital existence, natural wisdom and the human being's true animal nature. At present, religious Satanism exists primarily as a decentralized subculture with a strong internet presence within a larger Satanic milieu in Western culture. Though most are inspired by LaVey, the majority of contemporary Satanists are not members of the Church of Satan. The various expressions of modern Satanism all navigate in today's detraditionalized religious market through the creative appropriation of popular culture, philosophy, literature and religion. The concrete solutions are varied; but they all understand the power of transgression allying oneself with a most powerful symbol of resistance, namely Satan. Thus, contemporary religious Satanism could be understood as a complex negotiation of atheism, secularism, esotericism and self: A "self-religion" in the modern age.
Despite the fascinating nature of religious Satanism, it has attracted little scholarship until relatively recently. This book brings together a group of international scholars to produce the first serious book-length study of religious Satanism, presenting a collection that will have wide appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike. The first part contains broader studies of influential groups and important aspects of the Satanic milieu, especially regarding historical developments, the construction of tradition and issues of legitimacy. The second part narrows the view to regional variations, especially with studies on Northern and Eastern Europe. The third part consists of primary documents selected for their representational and informational value.


ABSTRACT Strain comparison is important to population genetics and to evaluate relapses in patients with Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) lung disease, but the "gold standard" of pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) is time-consuming and complex. We used variable-number tandem repeats (VNTR) for fingerprinting of respiratory isolates of M. intracellulare from patients with underlying bronchiectasis, to establish a nonsequence-based database for population analysis. Different genotypes identified by PFGE underwent species identification using a 16S rRNA gene multiplex PCR. Genotypes of M. intracellulare were confirmed by internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1) sequencing and characterized using seven VNTR primers. The pattern of VNTR amplicon sizes and repeat number defined each specific VNTR type. Forty-two VNTR types were identified among 84 genotypes. PFGE revealed most isolates with the same VNTR type to be clonal or exhibit similar grouping of bands. Repetitive sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) showed minimal pattern diversity between VNTR types compared to PFGE. Fingerprinting of relapse isolates from 31 treated patients using VNTR combined with 16S multiplex PCR unambiguously and reliably distinguished different genotypes from the same patient, with results comparable to those of PFGE. VNTR for strain comparison is easier and faster than PFGE, is as accurate as PFGE, and does not require sequencing. Starting with a collection of 167 M. intracellulare isolates, VNTR distinguished M. intracellulare into 42 clonal groups. Comparison of isolates from different geographic areas, habitats, and clinical settings is now possible.


This study analyzed the spatial heterogeneity of grassland canopy nitrogen in a tallgrass prairie with different treatments of fire and ungulate grazing (long-term bison grazing vs. recent cattle grazing). Variogram analysis was applied to continuous remotely sensed canopy nitrogen images to examine the spatial variability in grassland canopies. Heterogeneity metrics (e.g., the interspersion/juxtaposition index) were calculated from the categorical canopy nitrogen maps and compared among fire and grazing treatments. Results showed that watersheds burned within one year had higher canopy nitrogen content and lower interspersions of high-nitrogen content patches than watersheds with longer fire intervals, suggesting an immediate and transient fire effect on grassland vegetation. In watersheds burned within one year, high-intensity grazing reduced vegetation density, but promoted grassland heterogeneity, as indicated by lower canopy nitrogen concentrations and greater interspersions of high-nitrogen content patches at the grazed sites than at the ungrazed sites. Variogram analyses across watersheds with different grazing histories showed that long-term bison grazing created greater spatial variability of canopy nitrogen than recent grazing by cattle. This comparison between bison and cattle is novel, as few field experiments have evaluated the role of grazing history in driving grassland heterogeneity. Our analyses extend previous research of effects from pyric herbivory on grassland heterogeneity by highlighting the role of grazing history in modulating the spatial and temporal distribution of aboveground nitrogen content in tallgrass prairie vegetation using a remote sensing approach. The comparison of canopy nitrogen properties and the variogram analysis of canopy nitrogen distribution provided by our study are useful for further mapping grassland canopy features and modeling grassland dynamics involving interplays among fire, large grazers, and vegetation communities.


In this paper, we propose new scheme for an optimum location for Relay Node (RN) in LTE-A cellular network to enhance the capacity at cell edge based on modified Shannon capacity for LTE networks. The proposed approach mitigates interferences between the nodes and ensures optimum utilization of transmitted power. In addition, this papers the mathematical derivation of optimal number of RNs per cell to prevent the overlapping between neighbouring RNs meanwhile providing the best coverage. Mathematical results are validated by Simulation results and indicate an improvement in capacity for users at the cell edge from 0.6 b/s/Hz to 1.45 b/s/Hz and 40% increment from all cell capacity. Moreover, a gain about 8 dBm and 25 dBm is observed for users at the cell edge for uplink and downlink in the received signal respectively. It has been concluded from the numerical analysis which is conducted on limited interferences for all nodes (in-band and out-band) provides simplicity and ease in implementation by the RF planning designers. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.20.7.3379


We propose herein, a one-step method to assemble the immobilized artificial photosystem I (IAPSI) in a microfluidic chip, which integrated a preformed graphitic carbon nitride photocatalyst (g-C3N4) and electron mediator (M) in one chip and mimicked the characteristics of photosystem I. The simultaneous assembly of g-C3N4 and M could efficiently regenerate NADH from NAD + under visible light irradiation, which verified the effectiveness of the assembly method. The in situ assembly method was thought to outperform traditional methods in several aspects in terms of facile synthesis, promotion of the combination of g-C3N4 and M through p–p stacking and an enhanced coenzyme regeneration rate. For comparison, we used the bulk g-C3N4–slurry and the few-layer g-C3N4–slurry system as the control to regenerate the photocatalytic cofactor/coenzyme NADH, and measured the required times of 305 s and 30 s, respectively, to accomplish 63% NAD conversion. In contrast, our IAPSI microreactor takes only 13 s, faster than the other two by factors of 23 and 2.3 times. Therefore, we assert that the simple, yet highly efficient nature of this technique can act as an important method for artificial photosynthesis, particularly in the photocatalytic cofactor recycling systems for the production of various valuable molecules.


ESSENCE AND NECESSITY, AND THE ARISTOTELIAN MODAL SYLLOGISTIC: A HISTORICAL AND ANALYTICAL STUDY Daniel James Vecchio, B.A., M.A. Marquette University, 2016 The following is a critical and historical account of Aristotelian Essentialism informed by recent work on Aristotle's modal syllogistic. The semantics of the modal syllogistic are interpreted in a way that is motivated by Aristotle, and also make his validity claims in the Prior Analytics consistent to a higher degree than previously developed interpretative models. In Chapter One, ancient and contemporary objections to the Aristotelian modal syllogistic are discussed. A resolution to apparent inconsistencies in Aristotle's modal syllogistic is proposed and developed out of recent work by Patterson, Rini, and Malink. In particular, I argue that the semantics of negation is distinct in modal context from those of assertoric negative claims. Given my interpretive model of Aristotle's semantics, in Chapter Two, I provide proofs for each of the mixed apodictic syllogisms, and propose a method of using Venn Diagrams to visualize the validity claims Aristotle makes in the Prior Analytics. Chapter Three explores how Aristotle's syllogistic fits within Aristotle's philosophy of science and demonstration, particularly within the context of the Posterior Analytics. Consideration is given to the Aristotelian understanding of the relationship among necessity, explanation, definition, and essence. Chapter Four applies Aristotelian modal logic in contemporary contexts. I contrast Aristotelian modality and essentialism with contemporary modalism based upon the semantics of possible worlds, e.g. Kripke and Putnam. I also develop an account of how Aristotelian modal logic can ground a sortal dependent theory of identity, as discussed by Wiggins.


The possibility of controlling discrete diffraction and refraction in a multiband waveguide array by periodic waveguide bending is theoretically demonstrated. Resonance effects, leading to the enhancement or inhibition of discrete diffraction, are found and related to the quantum analog of field-induced n-photon resonances in semiconductor superlattices. A very distinct behavior for light refraction is found for odd or even resonances. In particular, for even resonances, the two-band behavior of the straight binary array is quenched, resulting in the inhibition of double refraction.


EDITOR—In challenging the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome in their recent editorial Geddes and Plunkett make a number of serious errors in interpreting the research on this issue, and they display a worrisome and persistent bias against the diagnosis of child abuse in general.1

In their opening sentence Geddes and Plunkett describe shaking a child to "produce whiplash forces that result in subdural and retinal bleeding," omitting the most important element in this condition: brain injury itself. They elaborate that the "theory" of shaken baby syndrome rests on some core assumptions, including that "the injury an infant receives from shaking is invariably severe."

This is in conflict with the research of Alexander et al, Ewing-Cobbs et al, Kemp et al, and Jenny et al, who found that 30%-40% of newly diagnosed shaken baby cases had medical evidence of previously undiagnosed head injury.2–5 These infants had such mild or non-specific symptoms and signs that their trauma was previously not diagnosed. The diagnosis was ultimately made when the children had subsequent severe episodes of abuse, with computer tomographic evidence of both acute and older subdural haematomata and brain injuries.

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Geddes and Plunkett then consider retinal haemorrhages. Lantz et al, in the same issue, question the specificity of perimacular folds in abusive head trauma in infancy.6 They conclude from a literature review that there was no support for the contention that perimacular folds are pathognomonic for abusive head injury. Geddes and Plunkett applied these authors' conclusions not only to perimacular folds but also to retinal haemorrhages.

Although research on the subject of inflicted childhood neurotrauma—over 600 peer reviewed articles—does not claim that retinal haemorrhages are pathognomonic for …

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Background The incidence of child labour, especially across developing nations, is of global concern. The use of children in employment in developing economies constitutes a major threat to the societies, and concerted efforts are made by the relevant stakeholders towards addressing some of the factors and issues responsible. Significant risk factors include socio-demographic and economic factors such as poverty, neglect, lack of adequate care, exposure of children to various grades of violence, parental education status, gender, place of residence, household size, residence type or size, wealth index, parental survivorship and household size. Egypt is the largest country in Africa by population. Although UNCIF 2017 reported that the worst forms of child labour in Egypt are concentrated in domestic work, forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation, the situation has received little attention. There are still very few studies initiated specifically to look at child labour in domestic service in Egypt and those that exist have been limited in the scope of their methodology. Geographical coverage and research for child labour in Egypt is also limited, as are accurate statistics and data. There was, therefore, a strong case for looking again at the domestic child labour phenomenon in Egypt, especially after the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) released the first data about child labour in Egypt in 2014. This study builds on the few findings of earlier work, and broadens coverage by including advanced methods and geographical effects of this problem. Objectives This study focuses on identifying socio-demographic, economic and geospatial factors associated with child labour participation. Methods We used the 2014 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) from the Ministry of Health and Population in Egypt, with the record of 20,560 never-married children aged 5–17 years engaging in economic activities, in and out of their home. The data focused on demographic and socio-economic characteristics of household members. Multivariate Bayesian geo-additive models were employed to examine the demographical and socio-economic factors for children working less than 16 hrs; between 16 and less 45 hrs; and over 45 hrs weekly. Results The results showed that at least 31.6% of the children in the age group from 5–10 were working, 68.5% of children aged 11–17 years were engaged in child labour for a wage, and 44.7% of the children in the age group from 5–10 were engaged in hazardous work. From the multivariate Bayesian geo-additive models, female children (with male children as reference category) working at least 16 hrs (OR: 1.3; with 95% CI: 1.2–1.5) were more likely to be engaged in child labour than girls working 16 to 45 hrs (OR: 1; 95% CI: 0.3–1.5). Children born to women without formal education, in non-hazardous jobs, irrespective of the hours spent at work, were more likely to be involved in child labour (52.9%, 56.8%, 62.4%) compared to children of mothers with some level of education. Finally, children who have experienced psychological aggression and physical punishment are more likely to be used as child labour than those without such experience across the job types and hours spent. North-eastern Egypt has a higher likelihood of child labour than most other regions, while children who live in the Delta are more engaged in hazardous work. Conclusion This study revealed a significant influence of socio-demographic and economic factors on child labour and violence against children in Egypt. Poverty, neglect, lack of adequate care and exposure of children to various grades of violence are major drivers of child labour across the country. The spatial effect suggests the need to give more attention to some areas that have high rates of child labour, such as the Nile Delta, Upper Egypt, and North-eastern Egypt.


Most of the Blockchain permissioned systems employ Byzantine fault-tolerance (BFT) consensus protocols to ensure that honest validators agree on the order for appending entries to their ledgers. In this paper, we study the performance and the scalability of prominent consensus protocols, namely PBFT, Tendermint, HotStuff, and Streamlet, both analytically via load formulas and practically via implementation and evaluation. Under identical conditions, we identify the bottlenecks of these consensus protocols and show that these protocols do not scale well as the number of validators increases. Our investigation points to the communication complexity as the culprit. Even when there is enough network bandwidth, the CPU cost of serialization and deserialization of the messages limits the throughput and increases the latency of the protocols. To alleviate the bottlenecks, the most useful techniques include reducing the communication complexity, rotating the hotspot of communications, and pipelining across consensus instances.


A large set of equatorial ionospheric scintillation data has been compiled, used to characterize features of severe scintillation that impact Global Positioning System phase tracking, and used to develop a scintillation testbed for evaluating tracking loops. The data-driven testbed provides researchers a tool for studying, and the receiver developers a tool for testing, the behavior of carrier tracking loops under realistic scintillation conditions. It is known that severe equatorial scintillation causes cycle slipping and, in the worst cases, complete loss of carrier lock. Testbed results indicate that cycle slips are primarily caused by the abrupt, near half-cycle phase changes that occur during the deep power fades of severe equatorial scintillation. For a class of standard tracking loops, parameter values that minimize scintillation-induced cycle slipping are identified.


Optical modulation of the crystal structure and materials properties is an increasingly important technique for functionalization of two-dimensional and layered semiconductors, where traditional methods like chemical doping are ineffective. Controllable transformation between the semiconducting (H) and semimetallic (T') polytypes of transition metal chalcogenide monolayers is of central importance to two-dimensional electronics, and thermally-driven and strain-driven examples of this phase transformation have been previously reported. However, the possibility of a H-T' phase transformation driven by electronic or optical excitation is less explored and little is known about the potential energy surface and the magnitude of activation barriers or the mechanism of the phase transformation in the excited state. Here, we model the electronic and ionic structure of excited MoTe2 crystals and demonstrate how electronic excitation leads to a Fermi-surface-nesting driven softening of phonon modes at the Brillouin zone boundary and the subsequent stabilization of a low-energy intermediate crystal structure along the semiconductor-metal phase transition pathway. The significantly reduced barriers for this transformation upon electronic excitation suggest that optical excitation may enable rapid and controllable synthesis of lateral semiconductor-metal heterophase homojunctions in monolayer materials for use in next-generation two-dimensional nano-electronics applications.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


Objectives Medical leaders are facing leadership challenges that ask for a leadership style that takes care of both themselves and their coworkers. Mindfulness may support this leadership style. We explored how a 'Mindful leadership for medical specialists' course affected medical specialists' leadership. Design We conducted a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews. The grounded theory method was used to analyse the data. Setting A university medical centre in the Netherlands. Participants Seventeen medical specialists (six male) with an average age of 51 years (ranging from 40 to 66 years). Interventions The mindful leadership course consisted of 10-weekly 5-hour sessions that focused on cultivating mindfulness and compassion. In addition, sessions included didactic and interactional teaching about leadership theories. Results Four categories emerged from the data: (A) Self - Attitude: psychological attitude towards self, (B) Self - Behaviour: behaviour towards self, (C) Other - Attitude: psychological attitude towards others, and (D) Other - Behaviour: behaviour towards others. Themes were defined within these categories: awareness of self, open mind, insight and appreciation of self (A), emotional and cognitive self-regulation, letting go of unhelpful behaviour and developing helpful behaviour (B), differences in attitude to others such as awareness of (impact on) others, keeping an open mind about others, allowing difficult emotions associated with others, appreciating of others (C), and communicating more effectively, providing direction, empowering and caring for others (D). Conclusions The results help us understand the core elements of mindful leadership, both with respect to one's psychological attitude and behaviour towards oneself and others. More research on mindful leadership and the effects on self and others is needed. Mindful leadership courses could be a valuable part of clinical training and might contribute to more sustainable healthcare organisations.


There is a long-standing debate on the relationship between economic development and environmental quality. From a sustainable development viewpoint there has been a growing concern that the economic expansion of the world economy will cause irreparable damage to our planet. In the last few years several studies have appeared dealing with the relationship between the scale of economic activity and the level of pollution. In particular, if we concentrate on local pollutants many empirical contributions have identified a bell-shaped curve linking per capita pollution to per capita GDP (in the case of global pollutants like CO2 the evidence is less clear-cut). This behavior implies that, starting from low per capita income levels, per capita emissions or concentrations tend to increase but at a slower pace. After a certain level of income (which typically differs across pollutants) – the ''turning point'' – pollution starts to decline as income further increases. In analogy with the historical relationship between income distribution and income growth, the inverted-U relationship between per capita income and pollution has been termed ''Environmental Kuznets Curve''. The purpose of this paper is not to provide an overview the literature: there are several survey papers around doing precisely that. We instead reconsider the explanations that have been put forth for its inverted-U pattern. We consider the literature from this perspective. In addition, without resorting to any econometric estimation, we consider whether simple data analysis can help to shed some light on the motives that can rationalize the Environmental Kuznets Curve.


OBJECTIVE: To investigate changes in pediatric kidney transplant outcomes over time and potential variations in these changes between the early and late posttransplant periods and across subgroups based on recipient, donor, and transplant characteristics. METHODS: Using multiple logistic regression and multivariable Cox models, graft and patient outcomes were analyzed in 17 446 pediatric kidney-only transplants performed in the United States between 1987 and 2012. RESULTS: Ten-year patient and graft survival rates were 90.5% and 60.2%, respectively, after transplantation in 2001, compared with 77.6% and 46.8% after transplantation in 1987. Primary nonfunction and delayed graft function occurred in 3.3% and 5.3%, respectively, of transplants performed in 2011, compared with 15.4% and 19.7% of those performed in 1987. Adjusted for recipient, donor, and transplant characteristics, these improvements corresponded to a 5% decreased hazard of graft loss, 5% decreased hazard of death, 10% decreased odds of primary nonfunction, and 5% decreased odds of delayed graft function with each more recent year of transplantation. Graft survival improvements were lower in adolescent and female recipients, those receiving pretransplant dialysis, and those with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. Patient survival improvements were higher in those with elevated peak panel reactive antibody. Both patient and graft survival improvements were most pronounced in the first posttransplant year. CONCLUSIONS: Outcomes after pediatric kidney transplantation have improved dramatically over time for all recipient subgroups, especially for highly sensitized recipients. Most improvement in graft and patient survival has come in the first year after transplantation, highlighting the need for continued progress in long-term outcomes.


The Eternal Recurrence of Crime and Control features contributions from a distinguished group of criminologists from the UK, the US and Australia, brought together to honour the work of Paul Rock, former Professor of Social Institutions at the London School of Economics. Edited by Tim Newburn, David Downes and Dick Hobbs, it offers an exploration of the theories which underpin much of current criminological thinking. The resulting thirteen essays all examine and build upon the central themes associated with Paul Rock's work: social and criminological theory, policy development and policy-making, and victims and victimology. Together, the chapters draw on some of his landmark publications for inspiration and discuss the key findings presented over his 50 year career. These include his contribution to the theoretical development of symbolic interactionism and approaches to sociological theory and practice, as well as an analysis of the concept of criminal justice as a social institution and the resurgence of treatment programmes for women offenders. Also of note is a critical study of the Macpherson enquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, an ethnographic exploration of the repercussions of incarceration on prisoners' families and inmates, and two papers drawing on Paul Rock's work with victims and secondary victims of homicide.


In the present study, the influence of the sampling density on the coestimation error of a regionalized, locally stationary and geo-mining nature variable is analyzed. The case study is two-dimensional (2D) and synthetic-type, and it has been generated using a non-conditional Sequential Gaussian Simulation (SGS), with subsequent transformation to Gaussian distribution, seeking to emulate the structural behavior of the aforementioned variable. A primary and an auxiliary variable with different spatial and statistical properties are constructed using the same methodology. The collocated ordinary cokriging method has been applied, in which the auxiliary variable is spatially correlated with the primary one and it is known exhaustively. Fifteen sampling densities are extracted from the target population of the primary variable, which are compared with the simulated values after performing coestimation. The obtained results follow a potential function that indicates the mean global error (MGE) based on the sampling density percentage (SDP) ( M G E = 1.2366 · S D P − 0.224 ).


The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.


Abstract Fish provides an important source of protein, especially in developing countries, and the amounts of fish consumed are increasing worldwide (mostly from aquaculture). More than half of all marine fish are caught by small-scale fishery operations. However, no life cycle assessment (LCA) of small-scale fisheries and no LCA of marine fishery operations in Asia (Thailand) exists today. We perform LCAs to compare the impacts of three different fishing techniques: crab gill-nets, squid traps, and fish traps. Primary data sourced from four different fishers were used. We distinguished the life cycle inventories for three different seasons (northeast monsoon, southwest monsoon and pre-monsoon), since the time spent on the water and catch varied significantly between the seasons. Our results showed the largest impacts from artisanal fishing operations affect climate change, human toxicity, and fossil and metal depletion. Our results are, in terms of global warming potential, comparable with other artisanal fisheries. Between different fishing operations, impacts vary between a factor of 2 (for land transformation impacts) and up to a factor of more than 20 (fossil fuel depletion and marine eutrophication). This shows that the way in which operations are performed have a very strong influence on results. Seasonality plays a relevant role for the assessment. Our results highlight that it is important to account for seasonal aspects in LCAs. We encourage a continual effort for collecting and modeling inventory processes, as well as making them available, in order to guarantee that LCA studies outside of Europe can be performed more easily.


The present study pertained to records on milk production and milk constituents of 100 Sahiwal cattle and 115 Karan Fries cattle, the data collected over a period of 2004 to 2016 from Animal Genetics and Breeding division from ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana. In Sahiwal SNP at position G649C was found to be highly associated with FLTMY and FL305DFY and however the association was non-significant for FL305DMY, FL305DSNFY and FL305DPY. GC genotype was superior with respect to FL305DPY and FL305DFY traits, whereas, homozygous (GG) genotype was superior for rest of other traits. In Karan Fries SNP at position G649C was found to be highly associated with FL305DFY and however, the association was non-significant for FL305DMY, FLTMY, FL305DSNFY and FL305DPY. Heterozygote GC genotype was superior for all traits; however the superiority is significantly higher for FL305DFY traits in present study.


In this PhD thesis, the catalytic performance and deactivation of various propane dehydrogenation catalysts is studied. First of all, a literature study is performed, where the three most commonly used formulations, namely Pt-, CrOx- and GaOx-based catalysts are compared in terms of yield relative to space velocity and deactivation rate. It was found that a supported Pt-Sn catalyst provided the more active and stable formulation at similar reaction conditions. Here, a novel catalyst based on 1000 ppm Pt and 3 wt% Ga supported on Al2O3 is reported, that provides a similar excellent activity and stability. A synergy between the two metals is observed, as the catalysts containing either Ga or Pt display significantly lower activities. After extensively characterizing the material, the synergy between the two metals is explained by the presence of a highly stable mixed Al-Ga oxide, on which the Pt is highly dispersed in sub-nanometer clusters. Surface Ga Lewis acid sites are believed to be responsible for the dehydrogenation activity, with the Pt providing a promoting function of facilitating the rate-limiting step of the reaction, which is the recombination of adsorbed hydrogen atoms. A second point of interest, was to use spectroscopic tools such as Raman spectroscopy and Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy (STXM) to study differences in the carbon deposits that are formed as a byproduct during the dehydrogenation reaction on the catalysts. Effects, such as the partial pressure of propane, propylene and hydrogen, temperature and catalyst material used were investigated. For example, bands corresponding with coke deposits change in the Raman spectra, as the partial pressure of hydrogen is increased. This suggests the formation of smaller, more graphitic carbon crystallites. As a second example, the coke formed on Pt, Pt-Sn, Ga and Pt-Ga/Al2O3 was compared. On the latter two catalyst, more coke was formed, which had a more graphitic nature. Finally, using STXM, heterogeneities in the coke formed on individual catalyst particles were observed. Specifically, coke formed on the outside of a catalyst particle has a different chemical nature than coke formed on the inside. Thirdly, the design, construction and testing of special probes to study the process of coke deposition and the consecutive combustion of the coke deposits, inside a propane dehydrogenation pilot scale plant was discussed. The probes are designed as such that they are able to withstand the harsh conditions of the propane dehydrogenation reaction, and that the tip does not foul during the reaction. The process of coke formation was studied at different heights of the catalyst bed, and it was found that the coke deposition is more rapid at the top of the catalyst bed, which is related to the temperature of the catalyst bed. Furthermore, by combining the information obtained by Raman and UV-Vis spectroscopy, quantitative information of the process of coke deposition was obtained during the first hour of the dehydrogenation reaction.


Abstract Delivering high-quality context-relevant information in a timely manner is a priority for location-based services (LBS) where applications require an immediate response based on spatial interaction. Previous work in this area typically focused on ever more accurately determining this interaction and informing the user in the customary graphical way using the visual modality. This paper describes the research area of multimodal LBS and focuses on audio as the key delivery mechanism. This new research extends familiar graphical information delivery by introducing a geoservices platform for delivering multimodal content and navigation services. It incorporates a novel auditory user interface (AUI) that enables delivery of natural language directions and rich media content using audio. This unifying concept provides a hands-free modality for navigating a mapped space while simultaneously enjoying rich media content that is dynamically constructed using such mechanisms as algorithmic music and phrase synthesis to generate task-relevant content based on the path taken. This paper outlines the innovative ideas employed in the design of the AUI and details the geoservices platform developed for facilitating the authoring and delivery of multimodal LBS applications. The paper concludes with a discussion on the results of a live user trial. The results are analysed and presented to validate the original hypothesis for this approach, address the research questions outlined and to inform further research directions. The results show that the proposed solution significantly progresses the state-of-the-art in terms of mobile tour production. The results also show that an AUI is an effective modality for the delivery of audio content and natural directions when used in combination with a graphical user interface, producing significantly reduced overheads in terms of content size and network usage. The results also indicate that the AUI provides a good overall user experience, performing well in the user trial.


Over a one-year period from January 2015 to January 2016, a team of researchers collected nearly 100,000 Tweets from female operated Twitter accounts that exhibited pro-Islamic State (IS) affiliations. The following exploratory research paper aims to address two questions: (1) will identifiable patterns of engagement be revealed through a thematic analysis of Tweets posted by pro-IS women?, and (2) do these patterns illuminate the roles pro-IS women occupy online and in real-time social networks? This research paper intends to challenge the gendered assumption that women play strictly supportive roles within the boundaries of the IS, and demonstrate that IS female supporters fulfill multiple roles in online and real-time social networks. This paper will outline the eight roles identified using a thematic content analysis of pro-IS women's Tweets. The main findings reveal that pro-IS women primarily fulfill supportive roles, but that they also play a variety of non-traditional roles as well, such as recruiters and even terrorists. This knowledge of how women are using Twitter to support the IS, and the roles they play online and in real-time social networks, can be used to develop more effective counterterrorism strategies to deter the radicalization and recruitment of individuals online.


"The Pocket Book of Burlesque" is the no-holds-barred, totally feisty, pocket-sized manual for the aspiring, the practicing, and the admiring burlesque fan, written by Professor Jo Boobs, founder of the New York School of Burlesque. With a foreword by feminist comedian (and bona fide burlesque enthusiast) Margaret Cho, this paperback guidebook runs through the basic philosophies of burlesque performance, provides step-by-step instruction on basic moves, and gives hand-me-down wisdom from one of the most established voices on the burlesque scene. The book also includes hands-on exercises for developing stage-worthy confidence, sexiness, and presence, as well as advice on how to bring together the fabulous makeup, costumes, pasties, moves, grooves, and attitudes of burlesque. "The Pocket Book of Burlesque" is the one-stop, must-have guide for everyone interested in this newly-and wildly-popular performance art and provides inspiration and advice that readers can take straight from the page to the stage!


Five phases of molybdenum carbide encapsulated by a boron–carbon–nitrogen (BCN) network are synthesized by decomposition of a Mo–imidazole-borate organometallic complex with slight variations in the imidazole-borate ligand structure. The method relies on the restrained in situ carburization reaction between Mo atoms and imidazole-borate ligands on an atomic scale, thus generating molybdenum carbide nanoparticles encapsulated conformally by the BCN shell. All phases of molybdenum carbide demonstrate excellent electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity and stability in both acidic and basic electrolytes outperforming most of molybdenum carbides reported in the literature. Hexagonal β-Mo2C@BCN consistently exhibits the most outstanding performance under all conditions. The less active cubic α and hexagonal η phases also display enhanced HER activity and stability due to the promotional effect of the BCN shell. The dual natured (electrophilic and nucleophilic) BCN layers can protect molybdenum carbide nanoparticles from corrosion and agglomeration, and improve their electrocatalytic activity by serving as an electron transfer medium and providing ample adsorption sites for water due to enhanced wetting properties.


Across different layers of the U.S. government there are surprisingly large differences in institutional provisions that impose fiscal discipline, such as constitutionally mandated deficit or debt limits, or specific tax bases. In this paper we develop a framework that can be used to quantitatively assess their costs and benefits. The model features both endogenous and exogenous mobility across jurisdictions, so we can evaluate whether the different degree of mobility at the local vs. national level can justify different institutional restrictions. In preliminary results, we show that pure land taxes have very beneficial incentive effects, but can only raise limited amounts of revenues. In contrast, under exogenous mobility, income taxes lead unambiguously to insufficient incentives to invest in public capital, unless the fiscal constraints explicitly favor such investment. This conclusion seems to hold even with the introduction of endogenous mobility, since adverse congestion effects from inefficient migration offset the beneficial impact of (partial) capitalization of future taxes into land prices.


A new class of thiadiazole having combination of Schiff base and Mannich base containing N-methyl piperazine moiety was synthesized by an efficient microwave assisted green synthetic approach. Antioxidant activity of methanolic solutions of synthesized compounds was determined by Reducing power assay and Hydrogen peroxide scavenging activity at 700 nm and 250 nm respectively. The synthesized compounds were also screened for antbacterial activity and were characterized by FTIR, 1 H NMR and elemental analysis.


Although there are many works in which path planning of robots is studied, but path planning of the bevel-tip needles with highly flexible body is different and difficult due to unique properties of soft tissues. Real soft tissues are nonhomogeneously elastic and uncertainly deformable and hence, during needle motions the planned path changes unknowingly. In this paper, a novel adaptive path planning of bevel-tip needles inside the uncertain brain tissue is presented. The proposed approach is based on minimization of a Lyapanov energy function used as the cost function which consists of 6 partial costs: path length, number of changes in bevel direction, tissue deformation, horizontal and vertical distances of the needle from target and the inverse distance from obstacles. Uncertainty is also modeled using three techniques; random distribution of elasticity, contamination of the brain image with imaging noise and the fuzzfication of obstacles. Uncertainty modeling helps the optimizer generate more reliable paths. The proposed needle path planning is simulated on a 2D modeled tissue on the basis that the needle's tip does not leave the 2D plane, meaning that (although the needle is rotationally flexible), the angle of needle's base and of needle's tip are always equal. Manipulation of needle's base has three possible states: stop in 0 degree (bevel-right), stop in +180 degree (bevel-left) and always spinning the needle's base (bevel-off). The proposed algorithm is designed so that the needle path does not get trapped into local minima and attractors. The main contribution of this work is in defining a novel and effective cost, namely bevel-change cost, in addition to application of a Lyapanov energy function of Hopfield neural network in needle path optimization.


OBJECTIVE
This study examines the influence of cognitive impairment, premorbid intelligence, and decision-making capacity to complete advance directives on the treatment preferences for life-sustaining medical therapy in the elderly.

METHOD
One hundred elderly individuals were recruited. Fifty were first referrals to specialist services with a DSM-IV diagnosis of dementia, and 50 were volunteers. Each person was asked about treatment preferences in three clinical vignettes.

RESULTS
Elderly individuals who had cognitive impairment and were incapable of completing advance directives were significantly more likely to opt for life-sustaining interventions. There was no association between premorbid intelligence and treatment preferences.

CONCLUSIONS
Cognitive impairment appears to influence treatment preferences for life-sustaining medical therapy. With increasing cognitive impairment, elderly individuals tend to opt for treatment interventions.


The interband Faraday rotation of semiconductors, i.e. the rotation not specifically due to free carriers, shows an unusual variety of behaviour. Whereas the rotation of ionic crystals and insulators is generally positive at all frequencies belowthe absorption edge, in InSb and InAs it is unusually large and negative and in Ge and GaSb it is positive at low frequencies but passes through a maximum and becomes negative as the frequency is increased towards the absorption edge. The interband Faraday rotation is analyzed here on the basis of the Luttinger-Kohn model. Effective mass parameters and other band constants previously determined have been employed in computations for GaAs, GaSb, Ge, InAs and InSb. The qualitative features of the observed interband rotations are correctly predicted by this model. This analysis shows that the observed interband rotation is principally determined by a competition between (virtual) transitions from the heavy valence states (a positive term) and the light valence states (a negative term). A small energy gap and small valence effective masses favour the light over the heavy valence band contribution; and conversely for a large gap and large valence masses. Ge lies in the middle of our sequence of five substances and a largely complete cancellation between these two principal contributions leads to an unusually small rotation.


Carbon nanotube  (CNT) nanopaper  (NP) has become a promising platform  to  fabricate  light weight multifunctional polymer nanocompos‐ ites, because of superior properties of CNTs including low density, high strength and modulus, high electrical  and  thermal  conductivities,  etc. However,  the  low permeability of CNT NP  (10to 10m) makes  it difficult to be  impregnated by resin to fabricate nanocomposites via conventional approaches, such as resin transfer molding and hot melt compression molding. The resin  infiltration  time  is usually more  than one hour, and uniform resin  impregnation  is  difficult  to  be  achieved.  Additionally,  solvent  is  required  to  decrease  the  resin  viscosity  to facilitate  the  resin  infiltration.  All  these make  the  process  environmentally  unfriendly  and  significantly  limit  the industrial applications of NP/polymer nanocomposites. Therefore, a novel ultrasonic assisted infiltration technology is developed  to  fabricate  the NP/polymer nanocomposites with a uniform nanoparticle dispersion and high  loadings (>20 wt%). The high  frequency  (20 kHz) ultrasonic vibration al‐  lows  to effectively  infiltrate various  types of  resins, including thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), thermoset epoxy (EP), and elastomer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)  into CNT NP within a  few  seconds,  followed by polymerization. A  systematic  review was  conducted  to  re‐ port on  the NP/polymer  nanocomposite  fabrication  process  and  the  properties  of  the  nanocomposites  together  with  their detailed exempla‐ ry applications.


The Ottoman Empire is known today as a major Gunpowder Empire, famous for its prevalent use of this staple of modern warfare as early as the sixteenth century. However, when Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq visited Constantinople from 1554 to 1562, gunpowder was not used by the Sipahi cavalry who stubbornly, it seems, insisted on continuing to use the composite bow that the Turks had been using for centuries. This continued, despite their fear of European cavalry who used "small muskets" against them on raids. Was this a good idea? Was the composite bow a match or contemporary handheld firearms? Were Turkish tactics incompatible with firearms to the point that the Ottomans would have lost their effectiveness on the battlefield? Could the Ottoman Empire even be considered a Gunpowder Empire with such a refusal?


In a 2002 article Stewart Cohen advances the "bootstrapping problem" for what he calls "basic justification theories," and in a 2010 followup he offers a solution to the problem, exploiting the idea that suppositional reasoning may be used with defeasible as well as with deductive inference rules. To curtail the form of bootstrapping permitted by basic justification theories, Cohen insists that subjects must know their perceptual faculties are reliable before perception can give them knowledge. But how is such knowledge of reliability to be acquired if not through perception itself? Cohen proposes that such knowledge may be acquired a priori through suppositional reasoning. I argue that his strategy runs afoul of a plausible view about how epistemic principles function; in brief, I argue that one must actually satisfy the antecedent of an epistemic principle, not merely suppose that one does, to acquire any justification by its means – even justification for a merely conditional proposition.


Initial studies of modular manufacturing processes have shown that this dominant design required a fundamentally novel organisational structure of the industries. The underlying hypothesis of technological determinism merits a deeper exploration. The first part of the present paper aims at presenting the logic of this argument while making a distinction between the technological and organisational aspects of modularity. Based on this we then attempt a study of the manner in which the transition to modularity takes place in the aircraft and automobile industries. Our main conclusion is that while it may be possible to posit a convergence between these two industries, the paths followed are still quite clearly opposed.


This study seeks to determine the impact of mergers on efficiency and productivity of commercial banks in Malaysia for the period from 1995 until 2005. The study uses a non-parametric approach, namely DEA, to estimate the efficiency scores and to construct the Malmquist productivity index. To enable this estimation, three bank inputs and outputs were used. Amongst the findings are that banks exhibit higher efficiency scores after the merger and that the foreign banks are more efficient than the local banks. For productivity, the banks had improved in both periods, before and after the merger. However, it is the local banks that improved the most after the merger. The main source of productivity was technical change or innovation. The findings support the existing policy of having larger domestic banks in terms of size.


The following chapters explain the reader the key parts of building an information infrastructure for effective representation of highly dynamic data on the internet. Such environment is characteristic for SCADA applications where there can be a few hundred updates per second. This updates are typically visualized as value changes on wiring diagrams. If we naively updated such a diagram as a bitmap image, let say once per second and we had a few diagrams updating at approximately the same time, there would be a lot of network traffic and a lot of processing on the server side. Besides, a bitmap that refreshes once per second in a browser doesn't contribute to the user experience. As an upgrade to such naive technique this paper shall give an overview of other means to achive the same goal, but with a fragment of time and server load. The techniques presented here are XHR (AJAX) for background data transfer, HTTP data streaming for multiple data package transfer from the server to the client whithin a single HTTP transaction, cache managers for caching data until they are updated and finally, SVG as an effective presentational layer. This thesis shall show that the above-mentioned techniques allow for real-time presentation of data from SCADA servers and other sources wih a minimal time lag. Furthermore, all the engaged techniques are natively supported by all major browsers without using plugins


Across advanced economies, affordable housing shortages are pushing low-income voters out of cities. Left governments frequently exacerbate these shortages by eliminating public housing. Why does the Left pursue policies that displace its voters? We argue that the Left's long-term rebalancing towards the middle class and away from an increasingly stigmatized "underclass" has significantly attenuated the trade-offs inherent in reducing affordable housing. Focusing on the UK, we demonstrate that by alienating low-income voters politically and reshuffling them across districts, housing crises have significant costs for Labour. Yet, drawing on interviews, we show that displacement is nonetheless compatible with electoral interests: the displaced make room for richer voters whom politicians believe will also support Labour. A quantitative analysis of Greater London's 32 local authorities and 624 wards further documents trends in line with coalitional rebalancing. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that electoral foundations are key to understanding housing crises and gentrification.


Context: Following the increase in cesarean section rate in Iran, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education has planned a program for the promotion of normal birth. The plan named as "physiologic birth" that is equal with "spontaneous labor." Aims: This study aims to explain factors affecting the implementation of "physiologic birth plan from stakeholders" view. Setting and Design: In this qualitative study, purposive samples of 21 health-care stakeholders (2 men and 19 women) were interviewed in 2016. The participants included three obstetricians and gynecologists, six midwives, three managers and experts in charge of the plan at the Mazandaran University of Medical Science, and nine women who gave birth under the physiological delivery (Spontaneous Labor) plan. Materials and Methods: Face-to-face semi-structured interviews and one focus group discussion were employed to collect the study data. Statistical Analysis Used: Qualitative content analysis method was used. Results: From the data analysis, the main theme "integrity of designing and implementation" and five subthemes as the influencing factors, namely, The "inadequate resources," "ambiguity in tasks and roles," "attention to psychosocial atmosphere," "considering of the delivery culture," and "incomprehensive training and updating the plan," were extracted. Conclusion: This research suggests that the success behind implementing a plan in health-care system including the physiological delivery plan depends on the factors that are requiring should be identified and investigated from the designing stage to the implementation stage and after that. Thus, health system policymakers and planners are required to pay attention to diverse above-mentioned aspects in its designing and implementation.


In a Karaoke computer game, the users receive a score as a measure of their performance. A music recognition system estimates the underlying music notes the users have performed. Many developed approaches use deterministic signal processing. This thesis builds statistical hidden markov models (HMM) to be used in scoring. The HMM-based note models are based on the musical features pitch, accent, zero crossing rate and power. Gaussian mixture models (GMM) are used to determine the probability distributions of the features. A singing database is constructed by an amateur singer who is well-trained in the area of music. During the training stage, an intra-note model is trained using the HTK toolbox. The intra-note model describes the statistical behavior of model states inside a note. Then, a group of note models, covering a wide range of pitch, is built upon the trained intra-note model. Also a recognition network is constructed. During the recognition stage, the test data are decoded with the aid of thecnote models and the recognition network. An experiment compares the proposed approach with the framed-based and note-based approaches. The results show that our approach provides promising results over deterministic approaches.


A fast and comprehensive time-domain method for analyzing electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) phenomena on complex structures that involve electrically large platforms (e.g., vehicle shells) along with cable-interconnected antennas, shielding enclosures, and printed circuit boards is proposed. To efficiently simulate field interactions with such structures, three different solvers are hybridized: (1) a time-domain integral-equation (TDIE)-based field solver that computes fields on the exterior structure comprising platforms, antennas, enclosures, boards, and cable shields (external fields); (2) a modified nodal-analysis (MNA)-based circuit solver that computes currents and voltages on lumped circuits approximating cable connectors/loads; and (3) a TDIE-based transmission line solver that computes transmission line voltages and currents at cable terminations (guided fields). These three solvers are rigorously interfaced at the cable connectors/loads and along the cable shields; the resulting coupled system of equations is solved simultaneously at each time step. Computation of the external and guided fields, which constitutes the computational bottleneck of this approach, is accelerated using fast Fourier transform-based algorithms. Further acceleration is achieved by parallelizing the computation of external fields. The resulting hybrid solver permits the analysis of electrically large and geometrically intricate structures loaded with coaxial cables. The accuracy, efficiency, and versatility of the proposed solver are demonstrated by analyzing several EMC/EMI problems including interference between a log-periodic monopole array trailing an aircraft's wing and a monopole antenna mounted on its fuselage, coupling into coaxial cables connecting shielded printed circuit boards located inside a cockpit, and coupling into coaxial cables from a cell phone antenna located inside a fuselage.


Objectives To assess the quality of antimicrobial prescribing and the level of adherence to the guidelines in the department of medicine at a university hospital. Methods A point prevalence survey was conducted between September 2008 and May 2011 at four selected time points. Demographic and relevant clinical patient data for those receiving antibiotic treatment were recorded. The necessity of antimicrobial treatment was assessed according to a scoring system based on the presence of signs and symptoms of an infection. Antibiotic use was judged according to Guidelines for hospital antimicrobial drug use published in December 2008. Results The percentage of patients receiving antimicrobials varied from 30.8% (N=73) (September 2008) to 25.1% (N=60) (May 2011). At the first time point, 37.3% (N=25) of patients received antimicrobial therapy that was not necessary significantly more often than at other time points (p<0.01). Level of adherence to the guidelines varied between 35.0% (April 2009) and 50.0% (May 2011). The highest level of non-compliance with the guidelines was observed when cefuroxime, ceftriaxone and ciprofloxacin were prescribed. Conclusions Our study demonstrates a continuous overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics. A decrease in unnecessary antibiotic use and an increase in treatments based on susceptibility testing were noted in the periods when the guidelines were in use. This speaks in favour of guidelines for antimicrobial treatment being a valuable part of antimicrobial stewardship programmes.


Islamic economics provides an Islamic viewpoint to a flourishing economic society. It promises to provide solutions to economic issues and challenges, but as a discipline is still in its nascent stage. This study attempts to appraise the present status of research in Islamic Economics, Banking and Finance using a bibliometric examination of research articles indexed in Scopus for the period 1955-2020. This research shows an increasing trend over the study period with Malaysia having the highest number of publications. United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and France are also major contributors to this discipline. The study finds Islamic economics as being un-researched as the focus of research is primarily Islamic banking and finance. In addition, there is a decreasing trend in citations that questions the quality of research. The study also reports a lack of specialized journals in this filed. The study concludes with suitable recommendations of an increase in conferences and funding of researches.


Half-way through 2006, the trends that influenced performance last year continue to challenge bankers to maintain the industry's five-year string of record-breaking profits. And while the industry continues to set records, there has been a considerable amount of change among the banks that do best in any given year, as the table opposite attests. Banks last year enjoyed strong growth in commercial real estate and commercial and industrial lending, which made up for a decline in residential mortgage lending late in the year. The residential market was, and continues to be, a hot topic, with ongoing speculation on whether there is really a "bubble" and where and when it will burst. Meanwhile, banks continue to make adjustable rate and interest-only mortgage loans. Although the Federal Reserve raised the target Fed Funds rate eight times in 2005, ending the year at 4.25 %, long-term interest rates remained low, resulting in an inverted yield curve at year-end. With such low interest rates, many banks' loan portfolios bulged, and they struggled to find low-cost funding. Americans just weren't inclined to save their money, and rising interest rates encouraged businesses to seek out better returns on their cash. With the continued squeeze on margins impacting profitability, institutions deriving a significant portion of their income from non-interest sources, including some of the very largest banks in the country, fared better than their more spread-dependent counterparts. Companies with large non-intermediation businesses, such as Citigroup, U.S. Bancorp, and Wells Fargo saw sharp upticks in their rankings during the year. The year 2005 also saw the near extinction of the monoline credit card companies as Providian Financial, MBNA, and Metris were acquired, and Capital One announced it was buying Hibernia Bank (and more recently, North Fork Bank). Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma wrought havoc on the Southeast, but the otherwise favorable economic conditions kept everyone afloat: 2005 was the first year since the FDIC was created that there were no bank failures. In part one of the 14th annual ABA Banking Journal performance rankings, we review the financial results and strategies of the nation's largest banks and thrifts. Part two, which will appear next month, will high-light the top performing community banks and thrifts. Selection criteria explained Our study ranks the performance of domestic institutions with assets over $3 billion as of Dec. 31, 2005. Two groups were included in our analysis: publicly held depository institutions (banks, thrifts, and bank or financial holding companies) and private depositories. A total of 159 public banks, thrifts, and holding companies and 51 private institutions qualified under our selection criteria. They were ranked by return on average equity ("ROAE") for 2005. In instances where the reported ROAE was identical for two or more institutions, 2005 return on average assets was used as a secondary ranking criterion. (Three banks that met our selection criteria were not included in our analysis, because their data was not available in time for this article. Those banks were: Doral Financial Corp., of San Juan, P.R.; First BanCorp of San Juan; and R&G Financial, of Hato Rey, P.R.) By Stephanie Norwell, consultant, and Vanessa Mambrino, associate, Capital Performance Group LLC, Washington, DC, a firm providing advisory, planning, analytic, and project management support to the financial services industry. Previous analyses included a ranking of specialty lenders, a category that historically was composed largely of mono-line credit card companies, sub-prime home mortgage lenders, and student lenders. With the acquisition or diversification of many of these companies, the pool of specialty institutions has shrunk to barely a dozen companies with assets over $3 billion. As a result, we chose to drop the separate specialty lender ranking. …


An important idea behind the Norwegian oil fund mechanism and the fiscal spending rule is to protect the non-oil economy from the adverse effects of excessive spending of resource revenues over the Government budget. A critical assumption in this respect is that public sector saving is not being offset by private sector dis-saving, which is at stake with the hypothesis of Ricardian equivalence. Based on a framework of co-integrating saving rates, this model provides an empirical test of the Ricardian equivalence hypothesis on Norwegian time series data. Although the model rejects the strong-form presence of Ricardian equivalence, results indicate that the Norwegian approach does not fully succeed in separating spending of resource revenues from the accrual of the same revenues.


This report analyzes new data on student debt and repayment, released by the U.S. Department of Education in October 2017. Previously available data have been limited to borrowers only, follow students for a relatively short period (3-5 years) after entering repayment, and had only limited information on student characteristics and experiences. The new data allow for the most comprehensive assessment to date of student debt and default from the moment students first enter college, to when they are repaying loans up to 20 years later, for two cohorts of first-time entrants (in 1995-96 and 2003-04). This report provides a broader perspective on student debt and default that considers all college entrants rather than just borrowers, provides substantially longer follow-up, and enables a more detailed analysis of trends over time and heterogeneity across subgroups than previously possible.


Three alternative approaches to desalinating seawater were evaluated with respect to their thermodynamic efficiencies and greenhouse-gas emissions. The technologies considered were multistage flash distillation (MSF), reverse osmosis (RO), and membrane distillation (MD). The analysis was based on published stream data from large-scale operational MSF and RO facilities and experimental-scale data for the MD process. RO was found to be the most exergy-efficient (30.1%) followed by MD (14.27%) and MSF (7.73%). RO and MD required less power consumption to produce water (3.29 kWh/m3 and 5.9 kWh/m3, respectively) compared to MSF which had a much higher energy demand (16.7 kWh/m3). Similar results were obtained when comparing equivalent carbon dioxide emissions from each process; MD and RO accounted for 5.22 and 2.91 kg CO2eq/m3, respectively, whereas MSF generated three to four times that amount. The results indicate that MD has potential as a commercially viable technique for seawater desalination provided a source of waste heat is available. This study provides an overview of the use of thermodynamic efficiency analysis to evaluate desalination processes and provides insight into where energy may be saved with developed desalination processes and areas of research for emerging desalination techniques.


Detailed knowledge of the microneuroanatomy of the skull base enables the neurosurgeon to make more aggressive surgical approaches. The most important goal in skull base surgery is minimizing retraction of the brain tissue, since excessive retraction may lead to cerebral contusion, intracerebral hemorrhage, and neuronal damage. The ideal cranial surgery involves no brain retraction, and neurosurgeons have adopted various skull base approaches with this goal in mind. One such method is orbitozygomatic approach. Between 1992 and 1998,55 patients underwent surgery via a combined frontotemporal-orbitozygomatic approach to address tumors of the sphenoid wing, cavemous sinus,and orbit. Nineteen of the patients had orbital tumors and 36 had other types of skull base tumorso There were no postoperative complications associated with this technique, and there was no mortality. All patients retumed to their previous occupations, and are living independently. The main advantages of the orbitozygomatic approach are (1) enhanced orbita!, middle, and anterolateral cranial exposure, and (2) reduced need for brain retraction. The only disadvantage of this technique is the operative time required, which is longer than the standard pterional approach. The orbitozygomatic approach is a useful method for managing extensive tumors of the anterolateral skull base. Key Word s: Cavernous sinus, infratemporal fossa, orbitozygomatic approach, orbita, skull base


In this report, harmonised epidemiological indicators are proposed for food-borne biological hazards that are related to domestic sheep and goats and meat thereof and that can be addressed in the context of meat inspection. These hazards include Toxoplasma gondii, pathogenic verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli and mycobacteria. An epidemiological indicator is defined as the prevalence or concentration of the hazard at a certain stage of the food chain or an indirect measure of the hazard that correlates with the human health risk caused by the hazard. The indicators can be used by the European Commission and the Member States to consider when adaptations to meat inspection methods may be required, and to carry out risk analysis to support such decisions. It is foreseen that the indicators will be used in the integrated sheep and goats meat safety assurance system outlined in the EFSA Scientific Opinion on the public health hazards to be covered by inspection of meat from sheep and goats, particularly to help categorise farms/flock and slaughterhouses according to the risk related to the hazards and process hygiene. Depending on the purpose and the epidemiological situation, risk managers should decide on the most appropriate indicator(s) to use, either alone or in combination, at national, regional, slaughterhouse or farm/flock level. It is recommended that risk managers should define the harmonised requirements for controlled housing conditions of farms, and the requirements for food chain information. Member States are invited to report data generated by the implementation of the indicators in accordance with Directive 2003/99/EC. The proposed indicators should be regularly reviewed in light of new information and the data generated by their implementation. © European Food Safety Authority, 2013


Ethanol extracts of Dodonaea viscosa were used traditionally in India for the treatment of skin diseases. The present study was investigated for in vitro antimicrobial activity against pathogens namely Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Pseudomonas auroginosa, Klebsiella pnemonia, Aspergillus niger, Trichoderma viride and Candida albicans using the agar well diffusion method. A parallel study was performed to identify the distribution and the concentration of the phytocompounds in the roots and leaves of this plant. For this purpose alcoholic extracts were prepared from each part of the plant and studied them separately. Among the leaf extracts of D. viscosa possess the highest inhibitory activity then the root extracts. The results revealed that the plant leaf extract possessed the highest inhibitory activity against the bacteria and fungi.


The diving capabilities of the Procellariformes remain the least understood component of avian diving physiology. Due to their relatively small size, shearwaters may have high oxygen consumption rates during diving relative to their available oxygen stores. Dive performance in this group should be strongly limited by the trade-off between oxygen consumption and oxygen stores, and shearwaters could be a good model group for testing predictions of dive theory. Many earlier measurements of shearwater dive behaviour relied on observations from the surface or potentially biased technology, and it is only recently that diving behaviour has been observed using electronic recorders for many of the clades within the family. The diving behaviour of Manx Shearwaters Puffinus puffinus breeding in Wales, UK, was studied on a large sample of birds using time–depth–temperature recorders deployed on chick-rearing shearwaters in July and August over 3 years (2009–2011). Light availability apparently limited diving as dives only occurred between 04:00 and 19:00 h GMT. All individuals routinely dived deeper than traditionally assumed, to a mean maximum depth of 31 m and occasionally down to nearly 55 m. We compiled all available data for a comparison of the dive depth across shearwater species. There was a positive allometric relationship between maximum dive depth and body mass across Puffinus and Ardenna shearwater species, as expected, but only if samples of fewer than two individuals were excluded. The large intra-specific range in maximum dive depth in our study illustrates that apparent diversity in diving performance across species must be interpreted cautiously.


[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Approximately 13 million school-age students in the United States do not speak English as their primary language (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics 2005). Thus, there is a high demand for developing fair, thought-provoking assessments for English language learners (ELL). Unfortunately, such assessments are rare on standardized tests, which take years to develop, let alone classroom assessments. More importantly, many secondary science teachers are not prepared to teach or assess ELLs. Teachers have many dilemmas when it comes to assessing a classroom of diverse students. Teachers need to find out what students really know while being fair to all students. They also need to learn how to alter assessments without watering down content. These challenges can be addressed by following five principles for equitable assessment. In this article, we describe the "McCes, Sounds Like Success" equity framework. We provide practical examples along with commentary from secondary preservice teachers who participated in a course through which they learned about and applied the framework. The McCes framework The McCes, Sounds Like Success equity framework, for written classroom assessments, is comprised of the five research-based principles listed in Figure 1 (Siegel 2007). The framework states that classroom assessments for ELLs should be comprehensible, challenging, and supportive. As shown in Figure 1, the first principle pertains to matching learning and instructional goals. In particular, when revising an assessment for ELLs, the new version should match the conceptual or scientific goals, as well as the language demands of the original assessment. For instance, if students are asked to develop an argument in the original assessment, they should also be asked to develop an argument on the revised version. Additionally, the language of the assessment should be consistent with instruction (CRESST 2001): if a particular term is used in class, such as trial, that term should also be used on the assessment, rather than a synonym such as experiment. The second principle (Figure 1) is to ensure that classroom assessment is both linguistically and culturally comprehensible. This means that in terms of language, written assessments should be readable, not produce extra reading time for ELLs compared to native English speakers, and fit within the norms associated with the native culture (Abedi et al. 2000; CRESST 2001). To further improve student comprehension, sentences can be shortened, ideas can be bulleted to reduce reading time, and pictures can be added in place of words. Figure 2 shows modifications of one assessment that are appropriate for advanced, seventh-grade ELL students (Siegel 2007). After learning about equitable assessment and how to use the McCES framework, preservice teachers had ideas about how to design assessments that are more equitable for ELLs as illustrated in the following quotes: * "Now I understand that including pictures (e.g., pictorial representations of instructions) could actually assist my ELL students within a classroom." * "I can make the explanations shorter or bulleted and can also use graphic organizers to help [ELL students] with the test. I also have to make sure, however, that none of the content of the assessment is being lost and that am still assessing them fairly." In terms of culture, research has shown that a student's personal background and experience is important in how he or she interprets science assessments (Solano-Flores and Nelson-Barber 2001). For example, an economically underprivileged student who has never left New York City may not have seen a golf course and may therefore be at a disadvantage when completing a question that uses a golf course as the context for a physics problem. A student taught with conventional sky maps may likewise be at a disadvantage when engaging in an assessment drawn by a Yup'ik (native of western Alaska or Siberia) elder. …


In the past, hydrologic modeling of surface water resources has mainly focused on simulating the hydrologic cycle at local to regional catchment modeling domains. There now exists a level of maturity among the catchment, global water security, and land surface modeling communities such that these communities are converging toward continental domain hydrologic models. This commentary, written from a catchment hydrology community perspective, provides a review of progress in each community toward this achievement, identifies common challenges the communities face, and details immediate and specific areas in which these communities can mutually benefit one another from the convergence of their research perspectives. Those include: (1) creating new incentives and infrastructure to report and share model inputs, outputs, and parameters in data services and open access, machine‐independent formats for model replication or reanalysis; (2) ensuring that hydrologic models have: sufficient complexity to represent the dominant physical processes and adequate representation of anthropogenic impacts on the terrestrial water cycle, a process‐based approach to model parameter estimation, and appropriate parameterizations to represent large‐scale fluxes and scaling behavior; (3) maintaining a balance between model complexity and data availability as well as uncertainties; and (4) quantifying and communicating significant advancements toward these modeling goals.


The authors model the recreation demand for Iowa wetlands, combining survey data on both actual usage patterns (i.e., revealed preferences) and anticipated changes to those patterns under hypothetical increases in trip costs (i.e., stated preferences). They formulate and test specific hypotheses concerning potential sources of bias in each data type and consistently reject consistency between the two data sources, both in terms of implied wetland values and underlying preference parameters. The authors pay careful attention to the interpretations of the test results, noting particularly how the interpretation of the same results can vary with the "school of thought" of the reader.


Although chemists have plenty of ways to add carbon atoms to alkenes—including the Nobel Prize-winning Heck reaction—they have fewer options when working with heteroatom nucleophiles, such as alcohols. Now, Matthew S. Sigman and his group at the University of Utah report an intermolecular oxa-Heck reaction that allows them to couple phenols with allylic alcohols in an enantioselective manner (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6b11486). The reaction, which is catalyzed by palladium in the presence of a chiral pyridine oxazoline ligand, creates building blocks that would be tough to make using more common synthetic reactions, such as a Michael addition (example shown). Sigman's team selected allylic alcohols as the alkene in the reaction in order to influence which hydrogen would be removed during the β-elimination to form the chiral product. The chemists show the reaction works with a broad scope of allylic alcohols and phenols, and even successfully swaps the


The purpose of this study is to investigate school administrators? readiness to change in relation to teaching level of the school experiences of school administrators and the size of the school The intentional emotional and cognitive readiness conceptual framework was utilized in the study Using cluster sampling approach the data of the study were collected from 167 school administrators working in 31 different schools A self developed readiness to change scale was utilized in collecting the data Data analysis revealed that school administrators with the highest level of experience exhibited the difference in intentional readiness to change Considering these results it is concluded that conducting participative organizational change practices and giving the opportunity both to teachers and school administrators to actively participate in change processes will result higher readiness to change


In models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. In this paper, we develop a two-sector two-good closed economy new Keynesian model to study the optimal choice of price index in markets with financial frictions. Financial frictions that limit credit-constrained consumers' access to financial markets make demand insensitive to interest rate fluctuations. The demand of credit-constrained consumers is determined by their real wage, which depends on prices in the flexible price sector. Thus, prices in the flexible price sector influence aggregate demand and, for monetary policy to have its desired effect, the central bank has to stabilize price movements in the flexible price sector. Also, in the presence of financial frictions, stabilizing core inflation is no longer equivalent to stabilizing output fluctuations. Our analysis suggests that in the presence of financial frictions a welfare-maximizing central bank should adopt flexible headline inflation targeting--a target based on headline rather than core inflation, and with some weight on the output gap. We discuss why these results are particularly relevant for emerging markets, where the share of food expenditures in total consumption expenditures is high and a large proportion of consumers are credit-constrained.


Plain vanilla caps and floors already present problems for valuation and risk management because the distributions of forward rates generated by the underlying interest rate process must be evaluated for multiple future dates at the same time. Introducing exotic features like barriers only makes things harder. But using a variety of techniques, including change of numeraire, stochastic time-change, and an approximation to the Radon-Nikodym derivative, Nunes is able to obtain approximate pricing models in closed-form for single-barrier caps and floors in a multivariate Gaussian Heath-Jarrow-Morton framework. Comparisons against a Monte Carlo solution and an alternative quasi-analytic technique demonstrate that this technique can produce a huge improvement in performance, in some cases achieving better accuracy in under a second than Monte Carlo valuation reaches in more than 24 hours.


Are you more likely .. . to take the bull by the horns or beat around the bush? Don't let anyone call you on the carpet for failing to put your best foot forward. That would be a bitter pill to swallow. In the long run, it's easier to just bite the bullet and get your ducks in a row. After all, nobody likes the taste of humble pie. You've likely uttered at least one of these adages within the last week, but have you ever stopped to consider where such conversational staples originated? Why You Say It reveals the backstory of more than six hundred words and phrases that pepper our everyday dialogue. This catalog of our language's most colorful expressions delivers an illuminating read for anyone curious about the evolution of words.


The paper presents a model describing the Vickers microhardness of a two-layer film on a substrate as a function of a submergence depth of a nanoindenter. On the base of this model, the deformation characteristics of a two-layer silicon carbide nanofilm grown on silicon by an atom substitution method were derived. The Vickers microhardnesses of each layer of the film as well as of a layer of modified silicon, serving as substrate, were obtained. The thickness of each layer of the film was determined, and a good correspondence between the results obtained by an indentation method and data of spectral ellipsometry was exhibited.


One of the most persistent debates among corporate law scholars has been whether the competition among states for corporate charters produces a race to the top or a race to the bottom. Some argue that the competition leads to the most efficient state emerging as the winner of the race. Others argue that the competition favors the states that put the interests of managers—who have the power to choose the corporation's state of incorporation (the "home state")—ahead of the interests of shareholders and other stakeholders of the corporation. In this Article, I show how corporate long arm statutes could be used to facilitate a race to the top and mitigate the negative spillovers from a race to the bottom that may result from the competition for corporate charters. What I propose is that the rules of another state (the "host state") would become available to their intended beneficiaries when the host state has a greater interest than the home state in protecting such beneficiaries. I offer a few examples of how the proposed statute would work in practice and show that it is more cost-effective and politically feasible than other proposed alternatives.


Background: Improving access to psychological therapies, and in particular cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), has been a health service priority in England and Wales over the past decade. The delivery of CBT has been limited by a scarcity of resources and further limited by the inequitable geographic distribution of CBT therapists. Aims: The current study replicates and extends our previous analysis of the geography of British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) membership (Shapiro, Cavanagh and Lomas, 2003) 10 years later in order to evaluate the progress made in improving equitable access to CBT. Method: This paper presents the absolute and comparative geographic distribution of current BABCP members, accredited CBT practitioners, and BABCP members who are nurses or clinical psychologists in England and Wales. Results: Efforts to improve the availability of CBT in England and Wales are reflected in the doubling of total membership, and a 4.5 fold increase in accredited membership over the last 10 years. There is evidence that the magnitude of inequity in the geographic availability of CBT therapists has decreased, but that inequity is still evident. Limitations of using BABCP membership data as a proxy measure of CBT availability are acknowledged. Conclusions: A five-fold discrepancy in accredited CBT practitioners between the best and least well-served population decile indicates ongoing "postcode availability" of the best qualified CBT practitioners. Possible strategies to improve the availability of CBT and remedy this inequity are discussed.


It is traditionally a challenge for home buyers to understand, compare and contrast the investment values of real estates. While a number of estate appraisal methods have been developed to value real property, the performances of these methods have been limited by the traditional data sources for estate appraisal. However, with the development of new ways of collecting estate-related mobile data, there is a potential to leverage geographic dependencies of estates for enhancing estate appraisal. Indeed, the geographic dependencies of the value of an estate can be from the characteristics of its own neighborhood (individual), the values of its nearby estates (peer), and the prosperity of the affiliated latent business area (zone). To this end, in this paper, we propose a geographic method, named ClusRanking, for estate appraisal by leveraging the mutual enforcement of ranking and clustering power. ClusRanking is able to exploit geographic individual, peer, and zone dependencies in a probabilistic ranking model. Specifically, we first extract the geographic utility of estates from geography data, estimate the neighborhood popularity of estates by mining taxicab trajectory data, and model the influence of latent business areas via ClusRanking. Also, we use a linear model to fuse these three influential factors and predict estate investment values. Moreover, we simultaneously consider individual, peer and zone dependencies, and derive an estate-specific ranking likelihood as the objective function. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation with real-world estate related data, and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.


Traditionally, the Sundanese village people in West Java, to treat various common diseases, use traditional medicines made from various plants. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the knowledge of the Sundanese village people on various diseases, species of medicinal plants and parts of plants used to treat various diseases, sources of medicinal plant species, methods of processing and utilization of medicinal plant species, and source of knowledge on processing and utilization of medicinal plants. The method used in this research was mixed-methods, a mixture of qualitative and quantitative. Data collection techniques were carried out using semi-structured interviews with informants, structured interviews with respondents, and field observation. The results showed that there were 22 common diseases suffered by the people of Cibeurih Hamlet, Nagarawangi Village; 36 species of plants were recorded with the most dominant part of the leaf organ being used as medicine by the community; source of medicinal plants species mainly collected from the home garden; as well as the method of processing medicinal plants most often used by the community by boiling them, this knowledge is passed on from generation through parents.


The paper contains information on light metal alloys of titanium, aluminium and magnesium selected for use in multilayer structures intended for the construction of passive armours. The selected alloys reach the following levels of the tensile strength: Ti alloys: 500÷1050MPa, Al alloys: 300÷600MPa, Mg alloys: 280÷340MPa. For these alloys, the parameter equally important as high strength is adequate ductility. Using the above mentioned light metal alloys, multilayer test materials were made. These materials also included special ceramics such as Al2O3, SiC, B4C polyethylene, laminates reinforced with glass fibres or aramid fabric. The results have proved an effective stopping of armour piercing projectiles of the 7.62mm and 14,5mm calibre assigned to resistance levels 2÷4 according to STANAG 4569 standard. For various levels of resistance, the weight of 1m2 of the multi-layer test material based on the examined light metals was up to 20kg for level 2, up to 65kg for level 3, and ~95kg for level 4..