This paper presents initial research findings of a multi-year, multi-site interdisciplinary project designed to promote alternative transportation (AT) and to encourage mode shift from single occupancy vehicle commuting to transit, carpooling, walking or biking. The research is designed to lay the groundwork towards developing effective interventions to promote transportation behavior change, especially for those who are currently not ready for such a change. This study of students and staff at two public universities in the Northeast is designed to develop and test the methodology of applying the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), to transportation behavior. This behavior change model has been highly successful in the area of health promotion. In this study, it is combined with geospatial modeling to maximize impact on commuters. Transportation surveys at two New England universities measured commute patterns, behaviors, attitudes towards AT and geographical information (e.g., residence locations) among university commuters. The authors assigned survey participants to one of five Stages of Change, a key TTM measure. Two additional constructs, Decisional Balance and Self-Efficacy, were also assessed. Participants' residence, demographics, and commuting information was collected and analyzed in light of TTM measures. At the two universities, students, staff and faculty showed different commute patterns and attitudes toward AT. Students displayed the most readiness to use AT according to the TTM. Students had the shortest commute distances and practiced AT more frequently compared to staff and faculty. Overall, commute distance negatively influenced both the use of and readiness to adopt AT. Other geographic location factors also affected AT usage and commuters' behavior and attitudes toward AT. Using geospatial models, the authors identified many AT users and greater readiness to use AT in towns where there was adequate public transit connectivity to the campuses. Commuters who lived near transit stops were more likely to use AT as their primary transportation mode. When comparing the two universities, there were more AT commuters in the university with a more developed transit system. The impact of the transit system was greater among students than among faculty and staff. The assessment of AT behaviors provides a foundation for developing transportation interventions to promote AT usage, not only within, but also beyond the campus setting. This Fu, Mundorf, Redding Paiva, and Prochaska 2 work will permit targeting not only current AT users, but those who are not yet ready to use AT, and move them towards greater readiness to change their commuting behavior. An important finding in this pilot study is that the survey data for AT fit the TTM based model, which has been successfully applied to numerous other behaviors. Once implemented, this model and interventions based on it have has great promise of being scaled to a modal shift among commuters outside a campus environment. The authors are currently developing interventions which will provide individualized targeting of commuters based on TTM and geospatial information. Once developed, these interventions could provide an effective and low-cost, individualized way to reach commuters and to encourage sustainable transportation. This project can help transportation professionals change commuter behavior in a time of limited resources and increasing interest in encouraging mode change to reduce traffic, conserve fuel, and promoting active transportation modes.


The studies presented in this thesis were carried out because of a lack of previous research with respect to (a) the habits and attitudes towards retinoscopy and (b) the relative accuracy of dedicated retinoscopes compared to combined types in which changing the bulb allows use in spot or streak mode. An online British survey received responses from 298 optometrists. Decision tree analyses revealed that optometrists working in multiple practices tended to rely less on retinoscopy than those in the independent sector. Only half of the respondents used dynamic retinoscopy. The majority, however, agreed that retinoscopy was an important test. The University attended also influenced the type of retinoscope used and the use of autorefractors. Combined retinoscopes were used most by the more recently qualified optometrists and few agreed that combined retinoscopes were less accurate. A trial indicated that combined and dedicated retinoscopes were equally accurate. Here, 4 optometrists (2 using spot and 2 using streak retinoscopes) tested one eye of 6 patients using combined and dedicated retinoscopes. This trial also demonstrated the utility of the relatively unknown '15 degrees of freedom' rule that exploits replication in factorial ANOVA designs to achieve sufficient statistical power when recruitment is limited. An opportunistic international survey explored the use of retinoscopy by 468 practitioners (134 ophthalmologists, 334 optometrists) attending contact related courses. Decision tree analyses found (a) no differences in the habits of optometrists and ophthalmologists, (b) differences in the reliance on retinoscopy and use of dynamic techniques across the participating countries and (c) some evidence that younger practitioners were using static and dynamic retinoscopy least often. In conclusion, this study has revealed infrequent use of static and dynamic retinoscopy by some optometrists, which may be the only means of determining refractive error and evaluating accommodation in patients with communication difficulties.


: In this paper, the phase formation process of Mn 2.5 Ge samples, prepared by mechanical alloying of Mn and Ge metal powders and annealing, has been studied. Results showed that in the milled samples the stable phase is Mn 11 Ge 8 compound with orthorhombic structure and Pnam space group. The value of saturation magnetization increases by increasing milling time from 0.2 up to 1.95 (Am 2 Kg -1 ). The remanece of the samples increases by increasing the milling time while the coercivity decreases. Annealing of 15-hour milled sample results in disappearance of Mn and Ge and the formation of new phases of Mn 3 Ge, Mn 5 Ge 2 , Mn 5 Ge 3 and Mn 2.3 Ge. Mn 3 Ge is the main phase with Do 22 tetragonal structure and I4/mmm space group which is stable and dominant. The enhancement of saturation magnetization in the annealed sample is related to the formation of three new magnetic phases and the increase of coercivity is due to the presence of Mn 3 Ge compound with tetragonal structure. Studies were replicated on samples made by arc melting method to compare the results and to investigate the effect of the preparation method on phase formation and structural and magnetic properties of the materials. In these samples the saturation value was in range of 0.2 up to 1.95 (Am 2 Kg -1 ) depending on preparation methods. Rietveld refinement shows that Mn 2.3 Ge sample prepared from arc melted under 620 o C anealing is single phase. Magnetic analysis of this sample show a saturation magnetization of 5.252(Am 2 Kg -1 ) and 0.005 T coercive field.


'A second epoch of colonisation' this is how Wole Soyinka characterises Western theoretical practice as it applies itself, even with the best of intentions, to the cultural productions of the non-Western world. And it would be fair to say that post-colonial writing by which we mean writing that is grounded in the cultural realities of those societies whose subjectivity has been constituted at least in part by the subordinating power of European colonialism contains hundreds of such statements: statements which lay bare the material, often devastating, consequences of a centuries-long imposition of Euro-American conceptual patterns onto a world that is at once 'out there' and yet thoroughly assimilable to the psychic grasp of Western cognition. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol11/iss1/3 STEPHEN SLEMON and HELEN TIFFIN


In this paper, we present a new method for direct-write laser fabrication of thin-film amorphous silicon (a-Si) on crystalline silicon substrate induced by femtosecond laser irradiation. Using megahertz frequency femtosecond laser pulses makes it possible to control laser fluence in the amorphization range of silicon under ambient condition. Finally, a thin-film of amorphous silicon is generated on the silicon substrate. It was observed a significant drop in light reflectance of the irradiated area (a-Si) in the visible range. This method can lead to promising solutions for solar cell fabrication techniques based on amorphorized silicon. In comparison with previous methods, our approach is singlestep and both processing time and cost of fabrication are reduced. A Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), a Micro-Raman, Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy and an optical spectrometer were used to investigate the properties of the amorphorized thin layer on Si-substrate.


What are you to do when your cheerful, friendly family members morph overnight into sarcastic, sullen, teens? How can you get through to these hormonally challenged strangers when all you get in return are sighs and eyerolls? Thankfully, this book reveals the groundbreaking strategies you can use to maintain good communication, healthy interaction, and strong connections to your teen, no matter how rocky the road to puberty becomes. You'll learn how to: Let your teens help set the rules--and the consequences for breaking them Realize that "me, me, me!" is actually age-appropriate Put honesty above all else Try not to criticize, judge, or become angry Based on the latest research, this book works as a Rosetta Stone to help you hear what your kids are really saying--and makes sure nothing is lost in translation!


Pedestrian survey and shovel testing of three land parcels and shovel testing of four previously identified archaeological sites in Camp Bowie, Brown County, Texas, was performed by the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at The University of Texas at San Antonio during October and November of 2001. This work, conducted under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 2310, was undertaken as a result of recommendations from Wormser and Sullo-Prewitt (2001) following their archaeological survey and site recording efforts. Three areas of Camp Bowie were surveyed and shovel tested. Parcel 1 is 74 acres (30 ha) in extent and 46 shovel tests were excavated in this area. One new site (41BR522) was identified at the northern margin of this survey area. 41BR522 is a small burned rock midden site. Seven additional shovel tests were excavated on this site. One Late Prehistoric projectile point fragment was recovered during shovel testing of 41BR522. Excluding the units on 41BR522, only three shovel tests within Parcel 1 contained subsurface lithics. All of these artifacts represent isolated finds (IF). One additional shovel test had a single animal bone that may not be cultural and is considered an IF. Parcel 2 covers 64 acres (26 ha) and 33 shovel tests were placed within this area. None of the shovel tests in Parcel 2 produced any subsurface archaeological material. Parcel 3 is 62 acres (25 ha) and 43 shovel tests were excavated in this part of Camp Bowie. One shovel test produced two heat-fractured lithics that are not unambiguously cultural in origin. 41BR522 is recommended for additional testing to determine its State Archeological Landmark (SAL) and National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) eligibility. None of the other areas of the three survey parcels contain cultural resources that are considered SAL or NRHP eligible. In the event of deep or extensive excavation of the alluvial soils in Parcel 1, archaeological monitoring is recommended to identify any potential impacts to resources below the 60 cm depth investigated by this project. Normal military use of this area may proceed without further consultation with the Texas Historical Commission (THC). In response to recommendations by Wormser and Sullo-Prewitt (2001), four previously recorded archaeological sites were revisited (41BR248, 41BR467, 41BR469, and 41BR471). Site 41BR248 could not be relocated. No surface or subsurface artifacts were identified at the plotted site location. Four shovel tests were excavated within the identified site location, but no cultural materials were encountered. Either naturally fractured local chert has been mistaken for cultural artifacts or the plotted location is not correct for 41BR248. Four shovel tests were excavated in 41BR467, a low-density lithic scatter. No artifacts were recovered from the shovel tests. Four bifaces and two cores were recovered from the surface of this site. Six shovel tests were placed on 41BR469, a low-density lithic scatter. One shovel test contained a single subsurface flake. 41BR471 is a small, relatively dense lithic scatter. Four shovel tests were excavated on this site. One shovel test contained a single lithic. There were no other indications of subsurface archaeological deposits. Surface artifacts included one Late Prehistoric projectile point. Surface visibility at these sites exceeded 30 percent and the number of shovel tests is considered sufficient to determine the significance of these cultural resources. 41BR248 could not be identified at its previously plotted location, if this site still exists –it requires relocation and testing. Additional examination is recommended for 41BR471. Following re-examination and testing, no further characterization of 41BR467 and 41BR469 is considered necessary. With the exception of 41BR471 and 41BR248, no further archaeological work is recommended and scheduled use of this area may proceed without further consultation with THC. Two additional sites, re-examined in February of 2001 to determine their SAL and NRHP eligibility, are also included in this report (41BR392 and 41BR523). Two shovel tests were excavated in 41BR392 to examine a prehistoric burned rock midden at this previously identified historic site. One Middle Archaic Bulverde point was recovered from the surface of 41BR392. 41BR523 is a World War II-era live grenade court. This site was described but no shovel tests were considered necessary. Further testing is recommended for the burned rock midden component of 41BR392. No additional archaeological work is considered necessary on 41BR523 and that location is recommended for archaeological clearance. Recommendations from this project are that the SAL and NRHP eligibility of 41BR392, 41BR471, and 41BR522 is unclear in the absence of additional testing efforts. These sites should be protected and avoided until additional examination can determine their SAL and NRHP eligibility status. 41BR248 could not be located with the information currently available.


Reducing the impact of anthropogenic pollution on groundwater bodies and ameliorating any deterioration of water quality is central to key legislative drivers such as the EU Water Framework Directive and the proposed daughter Directive relating to the protection of groundwater. Pesticide pollution has a direct impact on groundwater quality and an indirect impact on the associated aquatic ecosystems supported by groundwater. There is currently no legislative requirement to monitor pesticide metabolite concentrations in groundwater. Pesticide and metabolite results from two nationally important aquifers are presented, the Trassic Sandstone and the Chalk of Southern England.

Aerobic microbial degradation of diuron in the soil can
lead to the formation of three compounds; dichlorophenylmethyl urea (DCPMU), dichlorophenyl
urea (DCPU) and dichloroanaline (DCA).Median diuron concentrations were significantly higher
than each of the metabolites with outliers exceeding the
PVC on at least one occasion. At nine sites in Kent, Southern England, (60%) metabolites were more prevalent than diuron. Both aquifers are an important source of water, locally supplying up to 80% of public drinking water. The sandstone site has a predominantly arable landuse with a potential diffuse source of pesticides although soakaways are possible point sources.The chalk site has a mixture of arable and industrial/urban
landuse. A significant source has been from excessive
applications of diuron ("over-spray") on a number of public
amenities. Data from both aquifers show that pesticide concentrations have a high degree of temporal variability. Elevated pesticide concentrations are associated with recharge events in both aquifer systems regardless of pesticide source terms. Pesticides from amenity use and diffuse agricultural sources both pose a threat to groundwater quality. Pesticide metabolites are present in significant concentrations in groundwaters. Systematic, long-term monitoring (5-10 years) is required to understand trends in groundwater quality.


In this paper, finite element simulations of spherical indentation of Nickel thin film on Steel-4340 are studied for single and multiple cycle of indentation as well. The objective was to understand the mechanics of coated systems, from load-displacement (P-h) curves, stress distribution in the film and the effect of substrate yield strength on the indentation response. The loading portion of P-h curve showed displacement bursts and the reason for this is investigated. A transition in the deformation behavior of the film from Hertz-type to flexure was observed for a normalized indentation depth of h/tf ≈0.2. The influence of coating–substrate properties on P-h curve is also investigated for different h/tf ratios and yield strains. Attempts are also made to explore the possibility of understanding the creep-fatigue behavior of coated specimen subjected to cyclic indentation at room temperature from Indentation depth v/s time, Indentation depth v/s number of cycles and Plastic dissipation energy v/s number of cycles curve.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


We propose a newly designed X-cut lithium niobate (LiNbO/sub 3/) optical modulator. It has a two-step back-slot structure to satisfy the velocity-matching condition without the buffer layer of silicon dioxide (SiO/sub 2/). Accordingly, this modulator can achieve low drive voltage and low optical insertion loss. In addition, the dc-drift phenomena due to the buffer layer can be suppressed. This structure is fabricated with micromachining technology using excimer laser ablation. The optical 3-dB bandwidth of the fabricated modulator reaches 30 GHz, and the drive voltage is less than 3 V at 1 kHz. From the measurement of the optical eye diagram at 43.5-Gb/s, clear eye openings were obtained. This modulator is sufficient for 40-Gb/s optical transmission systems.


The failure of endosperm development due to interploidy crosses could be due to two reasons, neither of which has been studied on its own. 1) There is an imbalance of inherited imprinted loci in the endosperm (HAIG and WESTOBY 1989; HAIG and WESTOBY 1991). 2) There is an altered dosage of gene regulators to their target loci in the endosperm cell after fertilization (BIRCHLER 1993). This dissertation presents results that address three topics dealing with the molecular genetics of endosperm development: 1) dosage of regulators to target loci is important for normal endosperm development; 2) evaluation of spontaneous central cell development as a cause of defective kernels in lines that induce high frequencies of haploid embryos; 3) examination of endoreduplicated chromosomes in endosperm and impact of interploidy crosses on chromosomal organization.


Lottery Ticket Hypothesis (LTH) raises keen attention to identifying sparse trainable subnetworks, or winning tickets, which can be trained in isolation to achieve similar or even better performance compared to the full models. Despite many efforts being made, the most effective method to identify such winning tickets is still Iterative Magnitude-based Pruning (IMP), which is computationally expensive and has to be run thoroughly for every different network. A natural question that comes in is: can we"transform"the winning ticket found in one network to another with a different architecture, yielding a winning ticket for the latter at the beginning, without re-doing the expensive IMP? Answering this question is not only practically relevant for efficient"once-for-all"winning ticket finding, but also theoretically appealing for uncovering inherently scalable sparse patterns in networks. We conduct extensive experiments on CIFAR-10 and ImageNet, and propose a variety of strategies to tweak the winning tickets found from different networks of the same model family (e.g., ResNets). Based on these results, we articulate the Elastic Lottery Ticket Hypothesis (E-LTH): by mindfully replicating (or dropping) and re-ordering layers for one network, its corresponding winning ticket could be stretched (or squeezed) into a subnetwork for another deeper (or shallower) network from the same family, whose performance is nearly the same competitive as the latter's winning ticket directly found by IMP. We have also extensively compared E-LTH with pruning-at-initialization and dynamic sparse training methods, as well as discussed the generalizability of E-LTH to different model families, layer types, and across datasets. Code is available at https://github.com/VITA-Group/ElasticLTH.


Although the study of art history in Ireland has long been established, research in the field of Irish art history has been hampered by the difficulty in obtaining key source material on the critical reception of art. This book aims to provide an anthology of sources and documents relating to the history and development of the visual arts in Ireland form the eighteenth century to the present day.The anthology covers the period from the establishment of the Dublin Society Drawing Schools in 1746 to the opening of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1991. Judicious extracts and full texts that inform on attitudes and reactions to both the production of art and its uses in Ireland are included. Public exhibition reviews, comments from private letters and journals as well as polemical and theoretical essays illustrate what was being said and thought about artistic development in Ireland over the past two centuries. A significant achievement of the anthology is that it clearly illustrates the practical and theoretical parallels with both literary and other artistic traditions, which the visual tradition in Ireland enjoys.The publication of these texts in a single volume enables the reader to create useful historical comparisons as well as facilitating the careful examination of historical documents. These features should have particular appeal to students of art history and cultural studies.


We describe a method for automatically recognizing animals in image sequences based on their distinctive locomotive movement patterns. The 2-D motion field associated with the animal is represented using a 'configuration of motion parts' model, the characteristics of which are learned from training data. We adopt an unsupervised approach to learning model parameters, based on minimal a priori knowledge of the physical or locomotive characteristics of the animals concerned. Results are presented demonstrating excellent classification performance, with accuracy exceeding 98% on a test set consisting of over 100 sequences of 7 different species.


We frame Question Answering (QA) as a Reinforcement Learning task, an approach that we call Active Question Answering. We propose an agent that sits between the user and a black box QA system and learns to reformulate questions to elicit the best possible answers. The agent probes the system with, potentially many, natural language reformulations of an initial question and aggregates the returned evidence to yield the best answer. The reformulation system is trained end-to-end to maximize answer quality using policy gradient. We evaluate on SearchQA, a dataset of complex questions extracted from Jeopardy!. The agent outperforms a state-of-the-art base model, playing the role of the environment, and other benchmarks. We also analyze the language that the agent has learned while interacting with the question answering system. We find that successful question reformulations look quite different from natural language paraphrases. The agent is able to discover non-trivial reformulation strategies that resemble classic information retrieval techniques such as term re-weighting (tf-idf) and stemming.


Major-elements oxide, trace- and rare-earth-elements data on very- to low-grade regionally metamorphosed pelites in the Lower Benue rift reveal that the rocks have dominant upper continental crust (UCC) geochemical signature, but without a reworking trend. There was significant weathering of the detritus in the source area as indicated by values of the CIA, the Th/U versus Th diagram and the generally high Cs concentrations in the rocks, which is reflected in their low K/Cs ratios. They are characterized by LREE enrichment and almost flat HREE, coupled with negative Eu-anomalies (Eu/Eu* = 0.58 to 0.74) and chondrite-normalized REE patterns which are similar to those of PAAS and NASC; these are strong support for cratonic and crustal (UCC) derivation. Their protoliths were derived mainly from intermediate igneous provenance constituted by volcanogenic greywacke and argillite, containing volcanic lithic fragments which are predominantly andesitic in composition. This provenance is most likely the metamorphic preCambrian Basement Complex of southeastern Nigeria in the Oban and Bamenda Massifs/cratons, located at the eastern border of the rift. Basic input from the source terrain is suggested by enrichments in V, Cr, Ni, Sc and Ti. Their abnormally high La/Y ratios may have been introduced from the predominantly alkaline basic to intermediate igneous activity, which is coeval with the sedimentation spanning Late Aptian to Coniacian times. The sediments in the Lower Benue rift were deposited in a passive margin tectonic setting in a reducing environment as suggested by Cerium anomalies in the range of 0.01 to 0.07. This passive margin setting corroborates the extensional, within-plate, intra-continental setting obtained for the Benue rift using the igneous rock suite.


Summary In the period from 2005 to 2009 the infl uence of diff erent tillage methods and timelines on chemical properties of soil during cultivation of maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max) in crop rotation was researched at testing grounds of Križevci College of Agriculture (N: 460 01' 12''; E: 160 34' 28''). Almost all researched chemical properties of soil indicated more favourable results with the application of spring and autumn primary tillage with reduced number of secondary tillage interventions. Th e smallest content of total nitrogen and to plant available potassium in soil was in control method of the most intensive tillage and it was determined at the end of the research. Th e worst results regarding humus quantity were observed in control tillage method. Th e applied spring primary soil tillage had unfavourable infl uence on soil reaction. All tillage methods, except the autumn method of primary tillage and secondary tillage with multi-tiller aft er a four year period indicated less plant available phosphorus. From the perspective of sustainable management, the application of tillage methods with reduced number of secondary tillage interventions, achieved more favourable results.


Background: Essential oils of medicinal plants such as chamomile are very complex natural mixtures which can contain compounds at quite different concentrations and some of their components have antioxidant and antimicrobial activities in foodstuff. Objective: The antioxidant and antimicrobial effects of chamomile essential oil in cake preparation were evaluated during 75 days of storage. Methods: Cake were produced: cakes were treated with chamomile essential oil in three levels (0.05%, 0.1%, 0.15%), cakes were not treated with synthetic and natural antioxidant and antimicrobial agents, and a commercial cake containing synthetic antioxidant (tert butyl hydro quinine= TBHQ) and antimicrobial (potassium sorbate) agents. In all samples peroxide value, thiobarbitoric value, acidity, microbial test (yeast and mould) and sensory test (color, flavor, texture, taste and overall quality) were determined at time intervals 1, 7, 15, 30, 40, 60 and 75 days. Results: Statistical results showed that, the sample containing chamomile at 0.15%, had good antioxidant and antimicrobial activity in comparison with the control samples (without any synthetic and natural antioxidant and antimicrobial agents) (p<0.01). But its activity was less than that of synthetic ones (TBHQ and potassium sorbate as antioxidant and antimicrobial agent) (p<0.01). In sensory evaluation, the sample containing chamomile at 0.05% had higher score in flavor, taste and overall acceptability than the samples at 0.15 and 0.1% (p<0.05). Conclusion: Chamomile essential oil as a natural antioxidant and antimicrobial agent can increase shelf-life of food products and due to absence of synthetic agents are safe with no side effect on human health.


Motor cortical activity in the beta range (13-30 Hz) is a hallmark signature of healthy and pathological movement, but its behavioural relevance remains unclear. Recent work in primates and human sensory cortex suggests that sustained oscillatory beta activity observed on average, may arise from the summation of underlying short-lasting, high-amplitude bursts of activity. Classical human movement-related event-related beta desynchronisation (ERD) and synchronization (ERS) may thus provide insufficient, non-dynamic, summaries of underlying focal spatio-temporal burst activity, limiting insight into their functional role during healthy and pathological movement. Here we directly investigate this transient beta burst activity and its putative behavioural relevance for movement control, using high-precision magnetoencephalography (MEG). We quantified the subject-specific (n=8), trial-wise (n>12,000) dynamics of beta bursts, before and after movement. We show that beta activity on individual trials is dominated by high amplitude, short lasting bursts. While average beta changes generally manifest as bilaterally distributed activity (FWHM = 25mm), individual bursts are spatially more focal (FWHM = 6 mm), sporadic (1.3 −1.5/s), and transient (mean: 96 ms). Prior to movement (the period of the classical ERD), the timing of the last pre-movement burst predicts movement onset, suggesting a role in the specification of the goal of movement. After movement (the period of the classical ERS), the first beta burst is delayed by ~100ms after a response error occurs, intimating a role in error monitoring and evaluation. Movement-related beta activity is therefore dominated by a spatially dispersed summation of short lasting, sporadic and focal bursts. Movement-related beta bursts coordinate the retrieval and updating of movement goals in the pre- and post-movement periods, respectively.


Chapter 1 presents a short introduction to Russia's economy in 2013, showing that the country has become more dependent on natural resource exports during the last 15 years, despite attempts by the Russian state to diversify the economy. I then undertake a short comparison of industrial policy and institutions in Russia and China. I argue that two reasons why China has been more successful than Russia in implementing industrial policy and diversifying its economy is the country's pro-growth incentive structure, and its focus on absorbing technology from abroad.
Chapter 2 studies the change in incentives faced by Russian regional governors, after gubernatorial elections were replaced by presidential appointments in 2004. Using an ordered probit model, the chapter examines how various measures of economic performance and political loyalty affect the probability of Russian regional governors to stay in office. While before the 2004 reform, the likelihood to stay in office seems not to depend on political loyalty to the centre, after the reform election results for the president and the Kremlin party play a strong and significant role in explaining the likelihood of regional governors to stay in office, while economic performance has a negative effect. I interpret these results as evidence that after the reform in 2004, the ruling elites in Moscow started using appointments of regional officials to consolidate their political control over the country, while performance-related criteria play only a secondary role.
Chapter 3 presents a novel dataset containing 312 cases of illegal corporate raiding (reiderstvo) that took place between 1999 and 2010 in Russia, assembled through a comprehensive scan of Russian national and regional newspaper archives. Analysing the dataset, I am able to identify a shift in both the regional and sectoral distribution of raiding cases over time, as well as an increasing involvement of state agencies in illegal raiding attacks. Using a fixed-effects panel model, I find that regional election results for the ruling president and his party, as well as the degree to which elections are manipulated throughout Russia's regions, are significantly and positively correlated with the number of raiding cases in a given region. I also find that regions in which governors have stronger ties to their region suffer from a lower degree of attacks. A possible interpretation of these results is that under Russia's new authoritarian electoral regime, the centre tolerates a certain amount of rent-seeking and predatory activities by regional elites, as long as these elites are able to provide a sufficiently high level of electoral support for the centre. I further argue that the results concerning the local attachment of regional governors can be seen as evidence confirming Mancur Olson's theory on stationary and roving bandits.
Chapter 4 (written together with Letizia Montinari) investigates differences in and determinants of technical efficiency across three groups of OECD, Asian and Latin American countries. In the literature, the kind of technical efficiency we examine is seen as one of the main factors influencing the ability of a country to absorb technology from abroad. Using a stochastic frontier framework and data for 22 manufacturing sectors for 1996-2005, we find notable differences in technical efficiency between the three country groups we examine. We then investigate the effect of human capital and domestic R&D, proxied by the stock of patents, on technical efficiency. We find that while human capital has always a strongly positive effect on efficiency, an increase in the stock of patents has positive effects on efficiency in high-tech sectors, but negative effects in low-tech sectors.


In this work we establish novel analytical and small signal circuit modeling of two major effects that co-exist in active Micro-Electro-Mechanical resonators: charge and piezoresistance modulations. Analytical expressions for the output current of vibrating body field effect transistors including capacitive, FET and piezoresistive current components are established and an equivalent small signal circuit is validated experimentally. Two design cases of vibrating FETs are studied and analyzed in detail: (i) a 2 MHz flexural mode resonator operating in a charge-dominant modulation, (ii) a 30 MHz bulk mode resonator operating with significant piezoresistive modulation. Proposed models are able to accurately predict device transfer characteristics at resonance and the influence of various bias levels and configurations.


China's Foreign Trade Policy: The New Constituencies, edited by Ka Zeng. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. xii + 183 pp. £70.00/US$125.00 (hardcover). This collection of essays is the result of a conference on Chinese Foreign Trade Policy in 2006 sponsored by the University of California, San Diego. The book is very nicely edited by Ka Zeng, who also wrote (with Andrew Mertha) the introductory chapter, as well as a chapter on the use of legal trade remedies by various business actors in China and a concluding chapter. The book is less focused on the substance of China's trade policies than on domestic institutional changes and decision-making processes (especially concerning the implementation of trade and investment policies) before and after WTO accession. It includes several case studies which should be as interesting for political scientists as for economists. Being rather slim (175 pages plus index), the book is inevitably very selective in the choice of topics covered. Its discussion of international trade relations and conflicts is focused on China's bilateral relations with the US and, to a lesser extent, Japan. China's even larger trade and investment relations with the EU (which have also generated many conflicts) do not feature, nor is there reference to the increasingly important relations with Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, or its intensifying efforts to negotiate bilateral Free Trade Agreements around the globe. Limited in scope though it is, the book nonetheless clearly demonstrates that China's trade policies and the processes by which they are formulated and implemented have changed significantly as a result of China's opening-up in general and WTO membership in particular. Almost all changes noted in the book point to the sharply increased importance of legal remedies in China's arsenal for dealing with bilateral trade disputes and to the growing influence of non-state actors in China on the formulation and implementation of trade and investment policies. A theme that recurs in several chapters is that trade- and investment-related decision-making processes in China have become considerably more open and subject to the influence of non-state actors, including NGOs. Chapter 2 shows convincingly that China's wish to join WTO was founded on several major longterm development considerations and on the government's desire to constrain the unilateral exercise of power by the US under national trade laws, through the use of impartial WTO-sponsored rules and regulations. The chapter fails to mention the deep disillusionment in China when it became evident to its negotiators in the mid-1990s that the deeply resented Cold-War-era Jackson Vanik Amendment of 1974 would not automatically be lifted once China joined WTO. …


Over the vast distances and rough terrain of the Revolutionary War, the tactics that Daniel Morgan had learned in Indian fighting--the thin skirmish line, the stress upon individual marksmanship, the hit-and-run mobility--were an important element of his success as a commander. He combined this success on the battlefield with a deep devotion to the soldiers serving under him. In a conflict that abounded in vital personalities, Morgan's was one of the most colorful. Illiterate, uncultivated, and contentious, he nevertheless combined the resourcefulness of a frontiersman with a native gift as a tactician and leader. His rise from humble origins gives forceful testimony to the democratic spirit of the new America.


End-to-end encryption is becoming the norm for many applications and services. While this improves privacy of individuals and organizations, the phenomenon also raises new kinds of challenges. For instance, with the increase of devices using encryption, the volumes of outdated, exploitable encryption software also increases. This may create some distrust amongst the users against security unless its quality is enforced in some ways. Unfortunately, deploying new mechanisms at the end-points of the communication is challenging due to the sheer volume of devices, and modifying the existing services may not be feasible either. Hence, we propose a novel method for improving the quality of the secure sessions in a centralized way based on the SDN architecture. Instead of inspecting the encrypted traffic, our approach enhances the quality of secure sessions by analyzing the plaintext handshake messages exchanged between a client and server. We exploit the fact that many of today's security protocols negotiate the security parameters such as the protocol version, encryption algorithms or certificates in plaintext in a protocol handshake before establishing a secure session. By verifying the negotiated information in the handshake, our solution can improve the security level of SSL/TLS sessions. While the approach can be extended to many other protocols, we focus on the SSL/TLS protocol in this paper because of its wide-spread use. We present our implementation for the OpenDaylight controller and evaluate its overhead to SSL/TLS session establishment in terms of latency.


Computer forensics is a hands-on discipline. Introductory skills, however, can be taught using simple exercises that require neither expensive laboratory facilities nor even face-to-face courses. This paper describes a simple floppy disk analysis project that allows an instructor to address issues ranging from the computer forensics process and basics of file systems to long file names, file signatures, and hashing. Projects are essential to teaching this discipline as they support active learning, constructivism, and active learning. These hands-on projects also offer an opportunity for courses to be taught online and for students to build their own toolkits using open source or commercial software. �


The purpose of this dissertation is to examine and evaluate the position of Gilbert Meilaender on the appropriateness of appealing to religious reasons as support for one's position on issues of public policy. The dissertation establishes that, while Meilaender often discusses public policy issues directly or indirectly from a distinctively Christian perspective, he argues that such discussions are unavoidable, appropriate and consistent with toleration for other views in a pluralistic democracy. While this may create a certain amount of tension within pluralistic democracy, it poses no serious threat to social stability and can be both civically virtuous and respectful of other views. The dissertation first surveys the ongoing debate on the place of religious reasons in supporting or opposing public policies, delineating three basic positions on the question and exploring the views of representatives of each position. It then moves to an analysis of Meilaender's conception of Christian ethics which informs his position on the question of religion and public policy. Two salient themes emerge in this analysis: tension and limits. These two themes play an important role in the third part of the dissertation which explicates Meilaender's specific position on the place of religious reasons in supporting or opposing public policies. Meilaender's position is further illuminated through considering some of his publications and his work with government-sponsored bioethics commissions. The last part of the dissertation evaluates Meilaender's position by placing him in conversation with others from a variety of perspectives on this question and closes with some final comments on Meilaender's view. I conclude that his position is both consistent with his conception of Christian ethics and that it is respectful and tolerant of the views of others.


Reference-guided image inpainting restores image pixels by leveraging the content from another single reference image. The primary challenge is how to precisely place the pixels from the reference image into the hole region. Therefore, understanding the 3D geometry that relates pixels between two views is a crucial step towards building a better model. Given the complexity of handling various types of reference images, we focus on the scenario where the images are captured by freely moving the same camera around. Compared to the previous work, we propose a principled approach that does not make heuristic assumptions about the planarity of the scene. We lever-age a monocular depth estimate and predict relative pose between cameras, then align the reference image to the target by a differentiable 3D reprojection and a joint optimization of relative pose and depth map scale and offset. Our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on both RealEstate10K and MannequinChallenge dataset with large baselines, complex geometry and extreme camera motions. We experimentally verify our approach is also better at handling large holes.


We live in a time of increasing polarization and irrationality, like a Tower of Babel with no distinction between fact and opinion, where information no longer changes minds. In cyberspace, we are bombarded with constant distractions and narcissistic self-making activities. Instant judgment and blame have replaced rational thinking. Organizations are bloated by bureaucracy and meaningless measures. Those working for positive change become exhausted, ill, and heartsick as their good work is ignored, underfunded, or attacked.

 We need to acknowledge that we're lost in a world far different than we hoped for. We need new maps to navigate our brave new world. In Leadership and the New Science, Wheatley provided encouraging maps for how to design organizations based on living systems' capacity for inclusion, change, and adaptation. But in the twenty years since that book's publication, she's seen that in spite of our best efforts, the world that has emerged is on a destructive trajectory that won't be reversed by our working harder, finding new methods, or forming better networks.

 But Wheatley has not written a book to increase our despair. Quite the contrary. Her intention is to inspire us to do our work with greater resolve and energy, using maps that won't mislead us. So Far from Home offers maps of two kinds. Using the newest of the new sciences, Wheatley shows how different dynamics interacted to create this harsh new world. A second kind of map invites us to choose a new role for ourselves as warriors for the human spirit. We develop the skills we need most—insight, bravery, decency, compassion—as we look honestly at this complex, difficult world. Clarity gives us enduring strength to discover our right work and create meaningful lives in this dark time.

 So Far from Home is a startlingly honest, profoundly reflective, and yet paradoxically down-to-earth book rooted in the day-to-day experiences we all share but seen with fresh eyes. It is both affirming and provoking, calling us to reexamine our expectations and redefine our role for the work ahead. It is Wheatley's most personal, heartfelt work to date.


The financial trauma of the past two years has had a serious effect on public higher education, as state governments required by law to balance their budgets have reduced support, cut programs, and raised tuition for their state universities and colleges. But the overall problem is not a new one. According to Forging a Foundation for the Future, a report released in March by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), public universities in general-and those that carry out significant amounts of research in particular-have suffered a steady decline in support over the past two decades, with the greatest fall-off occurring in those institutions that carry out the most research. "It's a problem of great magnitude," says David Shulenburger, APLU's vice president for academic affairs and a co-author of the report. It's also a problem that has an obvious impact on the technology industry. While private research universities such as Johns Hopkins, MIT, and Stanford account for a significant proportion of federal R&D funding and produce streams of highly qualifi ed science and engineering graduates, public universities receive more funds and produce more grads. "This country depends on public research universities, which educate 85 percent of the undergraduate students and 70 percent of the graduate students enrolled in all research universities," the APLU report notes. "Public research universities perform 62 percent of the nation's federally financed research. . . . If public universities should fail to be competitive for research grants or have to shrink the size of their student bodies due to budget restrictions, private research universities are unlikely to have available capacity to replace the lost output." Industry profi ts both from the ability to buy or license research advances created at public universities and from the stream of knowledge graduates bring into their labs. A recent report by The Science Coalition highlights an example of public research universities' capabilities. Supported by a $250,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute, two researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed a core technology for tomotherapy, an advanced system that targets radiation precisely at cancerous tumors while minimizing exposure and damage to surrounding tissue. The researchers then founded a company, TomoTherapy Incorporated, to commercialize the advance. "That original investment generates many times its value in salaries and taxes returned to both the U.S. and Wisconsin governments," said Rock Mackie, the company's cofounder and chairman. A growing salary gap How serious is the public research universities' situation? By almost any criterion, the decline is serious and ongoing. One key criterion is the growing salary gap between faculty members in private and public universities. "Salaries for private and public universities' faculty were about the same 25 years ago," Shulenburger says. "Now, salaries for full professors at public universities are about 80 percent of their private university colleagues' and assistant and associate professors' salaries are about 85 percent." In addition, student-faculty ratios at public universities have risen and capital budgets to build new facilities and state spending on individual students have both declined. Between 1987 and 2007, a period that saw an increase of 43 percent in student enrollments, per-student support at state universities fell from $6,896 to $6,538. …


In vivo optical imaging is being conducted in a variety of medical applications, including optical breast cancer imaging, functional brain imaging, endoscopy, exercise medicine, and monitoring the photodynamic therapy and progress of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. In the past three decades, in vivo diffuse optical breast cancer imaging has shown promising results in cancer detection, and monitoring the progress of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The use of near infrared spectroscopy for functional brain imaging has been growing rapidly. In fluorescence imaging, the difference between autofluorescence of cancer lesions compared to normal tissues were used in endoscopy to distinguish malignant lesions from normal tissue or inflammation and in determining the boarders of cancer lesions in surgery. Recent advances in drugs targeting specific tumor receptors, such as monoclonal antibodies (mAb), has created a new demand for developing non-invasive in vivo imaging techniques for detection of cancer biomarkers, and for monitoring their down regulations during therapy. Targeted treatments, combined with new imaging techniques, are expected to potentially result in new imaging and treatment paradigms in cancer therapy. Similar approaches can potentially be applied for the characterization of other disease-related biomarkers. In this chapter, we provide a review of diffuse optical and fluorescence imaging techniques with their application in functional brain imaging and cancer diagnosis.


Progress in the field of Web services has resulted in deployment of a significant number of Web services. Furthermore, it is expected that the number of available Web services will constantly grow in the following years. Due to the high number of available Web services, it is a hard task for developers and business analysts to choose which Web services are most suitable for integration. However, despite the increased academic and commercial interest to Web services, there is currently no survey available analysing most relevant Web services. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, there is no publicly available study analysing the structure and potential synergy between commercial and governmental Web services. In this paper we target these shortcomings by providing a case study of automated Web service composition for semantically annotated commercial and governmental Web services. We propose a method for identifying most applicable Web services and demonstrate it on a case study. We also analyse interaction and potential synergy between commercial and governmental Web services.


This article focuses on the one specific question about folk music quotations and allusions in the symphonic music of Latvian composers in the last third of the 20th century (from the 70s) and the early 21 st century. Several Latvian composers (e.g. Romualds Kalsons, Pēteris Butāns, Pēteris Vasks, Pēteris Plakidis, Juris Karlsons) in their NEO-romantic symphonic works reflects interesting cases of Latvian folk music quotation, quasi quotation or allusion. Overall these are cases that show the composer's ability to actively use and create a similarity with Latvian folk music. However, this aspect raises the following questions. What kind of local (Latvian) traditions regarding folk music use (in general) are represented by Latvian composers? Why, at the end of the 20 th century and the early 21st century, have several composers continued to use folk music quotations or create folk music allusions? What symbolizes the folk music quotations and allusions in the context of the postmodern period's characteristic musical aesthetic and stylistics? It is hoped that this analysis will provoke a fruitful exchange of views on this question from different aspects.


Eigenvalue equations for solving full-vector modes of optical waveguides are formulated using Yee-mesh-based finite difference algorithms and incorporated with perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary conditions. The established method is thus able to calculate the complex propagation constants and the confinement losses of leaky waveguide modes. Proper matching of dielectric interface conditions through the Taylor series expansion of the fields is adopted in the formulation to achieve high numerical accuracy. The method is applied to the study of the holey fiber with triangular lattice, the two-core holey fiber, and the air-guiding photonic crystal fiber.


As the world's ice diminishes in the face of climate change - from the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice, to thinning at the margins of both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, to retreating mountain glaciers the world over - Antarctic sea ice presents something of a paradox. The trend in total sea ice extent in the Antarctic has remained steady, or even increased slightly, over the past three decades, confounding climate model predictions showing moderate to strong declines. This apparent intransigence masks dramatic regional trends; declines in sea ice in the Bellingshausen Sea region that rival the high-profile decline in the Arctic have been matched by opposing increases in the Ross Sea. Much of the explanation lies in the unique nature of the Antarctic sea ice zone. Its position surrounding the continent and exposure to the high-energy wind and wave fields of the open Southern Ocean shape both its properties and its connection to the atmosphere and ocean in ways very different from the Arctic. Sea ice extent and variability are strongly driven by large-scale climate variability patterns such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode. Because many of these patterns have opposing effects in different regions around the continent, decreases in one region are often accompanied by similar, opposing increases in another. Yet, the failure of climate models to capture either the overall or regional behavior also reflects, in part, a poor understanding of sea ice processes. Considerable insight has been gained into the nature of these processes over the past several decades through field expeditions aboard icebreakers. However, much remains to be discovered about the nature of Antarctic sea ice; its connections with the ocean, atmosphere, and ecosystem; and its complex response to present and future climate change.


I. INTRODUCTION Just one week before rendering its controversial landmark decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (1)--arguably the most anticipated ruling of the October 2011 Term--the U.S. Supreme Court sidestepped the longstanding question of whether the First Amendment, given today's multifaceted media landscape, no longer permits the Federal Communications Commission to regulate broadcast indecency on the nation's airwaves. The Court's narrow ruling in FCC v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. (2) ("Fox IF') let broadcasters off the hook for the specific on-air transgressions that brought the case to the Court's docket-twice (3)--but did little to resolve the larger looming issue of whether such content regulations have become obsolete. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a unanimous Court, instead concluded that "[t]he Commission failed to give Fox or ABC fair notice prior to the broadcasts in question that fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent." (4) As a result of this lack of notice, "the Commission's standards as applied to these broadcasts were vague, and the Commission's orders must be set aside." (5) The Court specifically declined to rule on the constitutionality of the Commission's indecency regulations, noting that 'because the Court resolves these cases on fair notice grounds under the Due Process Clause, it need not address the First Amendment implications of the Commission's indecency policy." (6) The broadcasters argued that the indecency regulations no longer made sense because other forms of technology have undercut the traditional rationale, articulated in the 1978 case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, (7) that "the broadcast media have established a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans." (8) In their brief to the Court, they asserted that "[b]roadcasting is not uniquely pervasive because Americans today spend more time engaged with cable and satellite television, the internet, video games, and other media than they do with broadcast media. Nor is broadcasting uniquely accessible to children because other media are no less accessible than broadcasting." (9) The latter point was also in reference to the Pacifica Court's concern that radio and television was so easily in reach of minors that exposure to indecent language "could have enlarged a child's vocabulary in an instant." (10) Initially, proponents on both sides of the issue claimed victory. Tim Winter, president of the media watchdog group Parents Television Council, stated that "[o]nce again, the Supreme Court has ruled against the networks in their years-long campaign to obliterate broadcast decency standards." (11) Similarly, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released a statement saying that [t]oday, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the FCC the green light to continue imposing indecency fines on the networks for fleeting expletives and brief nudity. When a similar case goes before the Supreme Court again for fines imposed for any future violations, we expect the Court to once again decide that fleeting expletives and brief nudity are not protected under the First Amendment. (12) Meanwhile, Steven Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, (13) had a different interpretation--one more favorable to broadcasters. To that end, he observed that [a]lthough today's decision is a narrow one, the indecency regime is now on life support. Speaking unanimously, the Court made clear that it will not uphold an indecency rule that fails to give broadcasters clear notice of what is allowed and what is prohibited. The FCC's track record in enforcing the indecency rule makes clear that it cannot provide the clarity that the Court and the Constitution demand. (14) In the days immediately following the release of the Court's opinion, a torrent of criticism appeared in the press, (15) signaling that the decision, a decade in the making, (16) clarified very little with respect to what broadcasters could legally air on broadcast radio and television. …


In dealing with crises and conflicts, we often commit one of the following four errors of strategy: (1) the failure to use hard power when and where it is required; (2) the failure to use soft power when and where it is required; (3.) the use of hard power when and where a combination of hard and soft powers (smart power) is required; and (4) the use of soft power when and where smart power should be used. These errors of strategy have sometimes grave and disastrous consequences. This paper aims to prove that, in order to successfully prevent, resolve, manage or deal with crises and conflicts, we need to acknowledge that some of them require hard power, some require soft power, while others require both hard and soft powers (smart power). To contextualise the above hypothesis, employing case study and process tracing, the present paper addresses the ante-bellum period of the Nigeria Civil War. In the end, it will be indicated that the above-mentioned four errors of strategy led to war. If hard, soft and smart powers were used whenever and wherever they were required, the war could have been avoided.


Cloacal exstrophy, a rare and complex congenital anomaly, presents with omphalocele; exstrophied bilateral hemibladders with ureteric or miillerian remnant orifices; central exstrophied ileocecal bowel plate with superior orifice of the terminal ileum, inferiorly, the colon, and centrally, the appendix; bifid rudimentary external genitalia; separated pubic rami; low-set umbilicus; and epispadias in the classic form. A newborn case of cloacal exstrophy presenting without an exstrophied intestine and vesicointestinal fistula is reported. The clinicopathologic features of this previously unreported variant of cloacal exstrophy are discussed with special emphasis on embryologic basis. Exstrophied bowel is the main component of exstrophy cloaca, which makes our case unique with regard to the absence of exstrophied bowel and vesicointestinal fistula. This well-known fact is not applicable to the present case. We think that some other unknown mechanisms must be at work for the development of the cloacal exstrophic anomaly presenting with a shortened intact colon ending with an anteriorly located anus. Normal development of the hindgut primarily depends on the normal formation of the cloacal membrane. The basic morphogenetic processes that consist of cell deposition, fusion, and merging should achieve the precise balance between cell proliferation and apoptotic cell death both in hindgut and cloacal membrane development. Unsatisfactory explanations of many similar malformations are primarily due to the lack of accurate and illustrative findings in different fields of embryology. The present case confirms that further studies are required to clarify the various theories in order to achieve more satisfactory explanations for these types of rare anomalies.


Abstract. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) expedition 347 cored sediments from different settings of the Baltic Sea covering the last glacial–interglacial cycle. The main aim was to study the geological development of the Baltic Sea in relation to the extreme climate variability of the region with changing ice cover and major shifts in temperature, salinity, and biological communities. Using the Greatship Manisha as a European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) mission-specific platform, we recovered 1.6 km of core from nine sites of which four were additionally cored for microbiology. The sites covered the gateway to the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean, several sub-basins in the southern Baltic Sea, a deep basin in the central Baltic Sea, and a river estuary in the north. The waxing and waning of the Scandinavian ice sheet has profoundly affected the Baltic Sea sediments. During the Weichselian, progressing glaciers reshaped the submarine landscape and displaced sedimentary deposits from earlier Quaternary time. As the glaciers retreated they left a complex pattern of till, sand, and lacustrine clay, which in the basins has since been covered by a thick deposit of Holocene, organic-rich clay. Due to the stratified water column of the brackish Baltic Sea and the recurrent and widespread anoxia, the deeper basins harbor laminated sediments that provide a unique opportunity for high-resolution chronological studies. The Baltic Sea is a eutrophic intra-continental sea that is strongly impacted by terrestrial runoff and nutrient fluxes. The Holocene deposits are recorded today to be up to 50 m deep and geochemically affected by diagenetic alterations driven by organic matter degradation. Many of the cored sequences were highly supersaturated with respect to methane, which caused strong degassing upon core recovery. The depth distributions of conservative sea water ions still reflected the transition at the end of the last glaciation from fresh-water clays to Holocene brackish mud. High-resolution sampling and analyses of interstitial water chemistry revealed the intensive mineralization and zonation of the predominant biogeochemical processes. Quantification of microbial cells in the sediments yielded some of the highest cell densities yet recorded by scientific drilling.


Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is currently one of the most sensitive methods available for the trace detection of DNA adducts and is particularly valuable for measuring adducts in humans or animal models. However, the standard approach requires administration of a radiolabeled compound. As an alternative, we have developed a preliminary 14C-postlabeling assay for detection of the highly mutagenic O6-methyldeoxyguanosine (O6-MedG), by AMS. Procedures were developed for derivatising O6-MedG using unlabeled acetic anhydride. Using conventional liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) analysis, the limit of detection (LOD) for the major product, triacetylated O6-MedG, was 10 fmol. On reaction of O6-MedG with 14C-acetic anhydride, using a specially designed enclosed system, the predominant product was 14C-di-acetyl O6-MedG. This change in reaction profile was due to a modification of the reaction procedure, introduced as a necessary safety precaution. The LOD for 14C-di-acetyl O6-MedG by AMS was determined as 79 amol, approximately 18,000-fold lower than that achievable by liquid scintillation counting (LSC). Although the assay has so far only been carried out with labeled standards, the degree of sensitivity obtained illustrates the potential of this assay for measuring O6-MedG levels in humans.


Objective: To review the current knowledge on neurobiological aspects of autism and pervasive developmental disorders, as well as to provide pediatricians with up to date information on diagnosis and treatment of autism. Sources of data: Review of MEDLINE and Internet. Summary of the findings: Autism is the 3rd developmental disorder, with an incidence of 40 to 130/100,000 individuals. Diagnosis is based on clinical findings, following DSM IV criteria. Neuroimaging, investigation of fetal neurological status, and genetic investigation contribute towards a better understanding of the neurobiology of autism. Conclusion: Pediatricians are the first health professional to come in contact with patients with autism. Thus, they should be able to diagnose and to coordinate the multidisciplinary treatment of these patients.


A key problem in computational biology is dis-covering the gene expression changes that regu-late cell fate transitions, in which one cell type turns into another. However, each individual cell cannot be tracked longitudinally, and cells at the same point in real time may be at different stages of the transition process. This can be viewed as a problem of learning the behavior of a dynamical system from observations whose times are unknown. Additionally, a single progenitor cell type often bifurcates into multiple child cell types, further complicating the problem of modeling the dynamics. To address this problem, we developed an approach called variational mixtures of ordinary differential equations. By using a simple family of ODEs informed by the biochemistry of gene expression to constrain the likelihood of a deep generative model, we can simultaneously infer the latent time and latent state of each cell and predict its future gene expression state. The model can be interpreted as a mixture of ODEs whose parameters vary continuously across a latent space of cell states. Our approach dramatically improves data fit, latent time inference, and future cell state estimation of single-cell gene expression data compared to previous approaches.


ABSTRACT Research question: Does event satisfaction influence future intentions to attend events and participate in sport? The research addressed this question by focussing on participation in swimming and the influence of watching the London 2012 Olympic Games; an event which sought to create a legacy of mass sport participation. Research methods: Surveys were conducted at the Olympic Aquatics Centre (n = 185) and at a Leisure Centre in Plymouth in south-west England (n = 135) making it possible to test for differences between people who experienced the London Olympic Games as a live event and those who watched the event on television. Exploratory factor analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling were used to analyse the data. Results and findings: Although there was a positive relationship between event satisfaction and intention to watch swimming events in the future (as a spectator and on television), this was not true for event satisfaction and intention to participate in swimming. Implications: The findings are consistent with previous studies which suggest that mega-events are unlikely to create sport participation legacies. However, longitudinal studies are needed to test for behavioural changes and to identify the significance of factors associated with access to sport facilities.


Marching with essential survival equipment is a fundamental military exercise. A consequence of this increased load is an increased risk of dehydration. Dehydration may have fatal consequences in a combat situation where performance must be optimal. This risk can be minimized with an understanding of the additional fluid needs of soldiers marching when loaded compared to unloaded. The aim of this study was to quantify fluid loss caused by marching with a loaded Bergen rucksack and webbing of 33.5 kg for 45 minutes when compared to unloaded carriage in eight healthy male officer cadets (age, 20.5 ± 0.9 years; body mass 80.2 ± 9.2 kg). The findings demonstrate an increased rate of sweat loss (0.6 ± 0.2 L·h-1 to 1.2 ± 0.4 L·h-1; p<0.001) and increased average heart rate (105.5 ± 17.7 beats·min-1 to 136.6 ± 28.3 beats·min-1; p<0.001) for unloaded and loaded trial respectively. Urine osmolality significantly increased pre- to post-march (p<0.05), however there was no difference in this increase between the loaded and unloaded trial. The present study demonstrated that marching with a loaded rucksack and webbing increased sweat rate by 100% compared to the same march with no additional load. For soldiers to prevent dehydration and the potential detrimental effects on performance, fluid replacement should also be doubled when marching with loading in a temperate environment, however individual differences in sweat rate should be taken into account.


My aim is to explain the relation of �right reason� to Ockham's voluntarism by analysing what Ockham takes individual liberty to mean and how men come to know of it. The Christian law of liberty reveals what individuals come to know by other means � from their own experiences and reason, about certain rights which can never be alienated either to Church or �state�. It is argued that his distinctive and later political positions can be supported by positions maintained in his earlier logical, psychological and philosophical writings from his Oxford period. He explains the three sources of our knowledge as experience, natural reason and infallible scriptural authority. Based on his explanation of how Scripture is to be interpreted and linking this to his epistemology which starts with intuitive cognition, it is argued that Ockham's understanding of the separate roles of �state� and Church can be defended. From his earlier positions can also be derived his understanding of corporation theory, his defence of individual members of the community's consent to the constitution of government and the limits on absolute government, no matter what its constitutional form. Because right reason always operates in social contexts with their respective, prevalent knowledge, Ockham has some startling things to say about men's access to the truth.


The main objectives of this study are to determine progress in the implementation of the key Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC) measures compared to the first monitoring effort in 2010–2011, and to compare the gap between the liberalisation rate in terms of commitments and in terms of actual policies. This study also examines the implementation bottlenecks and generates recommendations from stakeholders (such as the business sector, academia, and government) to address the key bottlenecks and move forward the implementation of the AEC measures into 2015 and beyond (2016–2025). In addition, in view of the importance of the private sector for the successful realisation and deepening of the AEC in 2015 and beyond, this study explores greater partnership with or engagement of the private sector by conducting both intensive consultations and interviews with key informants in the private sector. The AEC measures of interest in this study are services liberalisation, nontariff measures (NTM), trade facilitation, investment liberalisation, mutual recognition arrangements (MRA) on professional services, and standards and conformance.


A majority of Stroke survivors have an arm impairment (up to 80%), which persists over the long term (>12 months). Physiotherapy experts believe that a rehabilitation Aide-Memoire could help these patients [25]. Hence, we designed, with the input of physiotherapists, Stroke experts and former Stroke patients, the Aide-Memoire Stroke (AIMS) App to help them remember to exercise more frequently. We evaluated its use in a controlled field evaluation on a smartphone, tablet and smartwatch. Since one of the main features of the app is to remind Stroke survivors to exercise we also investigated reminder modalities (i.e., visual, vibrate, audio, speech). One key finding is that Stroke survivors opted for a combination of modalities to remind them to conduct their exercises. Also, Stroke survivors seem to prefer smartphones compared to other mobile devices due to their ease of use, usability, familiarity and being easier to handle with one arm.


Introduction:
The use of vaginal pessaries for conservative management of pelvic organ prolapse (POP) is well established. However, there is limited data on current clinical practice among gynaecologists, and thus the aim of this survey was to evaluate vaginal pessary use among South African gynaecologists.
Methods:
An anonymous self administered one page questionnaire was designed by the author and administered to South African gynaecologists at an Obstetrics and Gynaecology Update meeting in 2009.
Results: The response rate was 32% (133 out of 420). 24% (29 out of 123) offered vaginal pessaries as first line treatment for pelvic organ prolapse in their clinical practice. The ring pessary was the commonest pessary for all compartmental defects. The two most favored reasons for pessary use was surgical or anaesthetic risk (64%) (85 out of 133) and patient declining surgery (50%) (66 out of 133). Recurrent involuntary expulsion (52%) (69 out of 133), discomfort (41%) (55 out of 133), opting for surgery (39%) (52 out of 133) were the three top reasons for pessary discontinuation. 88% (92 out of 105) responded that they would have reviewed patients within 6 weeks after initial pessary insertion, and thereafter 46% (44 out of 96) reviewed patients on 3-6 monthly interval.
Conclusion:
When compared to other surveys fewer South African gynaecologists offer vaginal pessaries as first line treatment to patients with symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse.
Similar practice trends included the choice of pessary, follow up interval and reasons for pessary discontinuation.


The purpose of this work, based on a survey in the North-West Pakistan, is to assess the impact of various socioeconomic factors on rural-urban migration. Using the binary probit model, our results suggest that economic factors play an important role in the household's decision to migrate but are not the only determinants. Therefore an in-depth analysis of the socio-economic conditions prevailing at the rural and urban areas is necessary to understand the causes of rural-urban migration in Pakistan. Our empirical analyses indicate a positive and significant relationship between employment type, family members in the labor force, years of education, land holdings and migration. Moreover, a negative and significant relationship was observed between living conditions, opportunities of non-farm and farm income and rural-urban migration. Based on our empirical findings, we recommend that investment in urban infrastructure should be supplemented by investment in rural areas so as to reduce the mounting pressure on the urban infrastructure.


Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) can induce deleterious changes in the modulatory ability of the vascular endothelium, contributing to an increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases in the long term. However, the mechanisms involved are not fully understood. Emerging evidence has suggested the potential role of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in vascular health and repair. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the effects of IUGR on vascular reactivity and EPCs derived from the peripheral blood (PB) and bone marrow (BM) in vitro. Pregnant Wistar rats were fed an ad libitum diet (control group) or 50% of the ad libitum diet (restricted group) throughout gestation. We determined vascular reactivity, nitric oxide (NO) concentration, and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) protein expression by evaluating the thoracic aorta of adult male offspring from both groups (aged: 19–20 weeks). Moreover, the amount, functional capacity, and senescence of EPCs were assessed in vitro. Our results indicated that IUGR reduced vasodilation via acetylcholine in aorta rings, decreased NO levels, and increased eNOS phosphorylation at Thr495. The amount of EPCs was similar between both groups; however, IUGR decreased the functional capacity of EPCs from the PB and BM. Furthermore, the senescence process was accelerated in BM-derived EPCs from IUGR rats. In summary, our findings demonstrated the deleterious changes in EPCs from IUGR rats, such as reduced EPC function and accelerated senescence in vitro. These findings may contribute towards elucidating the possible mechanisms involved in endothelial dysfunction induced by fetal programming.


Many of the new credit derivative products are based on default experience for a portfolio of financial instruments. These include collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and similar tranched credit products, and "n-th to default swaps." Devising good default risk models for single-name credits has been challenging enough, but applying them to credit portfolios introduces much greater complexity, because of the critical importance of correlation. The most common valuation technology is Monte Carlo simulation, but with many bonds, each of which is subject to both correlated and idiosyncratic risk factors, the simulation is time-consuming and limited in scope. In this article, Hull and White offer two straightforward approximation techniques for evaluating default risk within the industry-standard "copula" model that eliminate simulation of the idiosyncratic risks. Their approach greatly accelerates the solution while still allowing a large degree of flexibility in the choice of factor correlation structure and probability distributions. For example, Student-t distributed shocks that have fatter tails than the normal are easily accommodated.


The industry and trade policy regimes in India have witnessed drastic changes since 1991. The dismantling of the industrial licensing system and thereby allowing free entry to and exit from the industry of firms in 1991 followed by the WTO induced trade liberalization leading to substantial reduction in tariffs and gradual softening of foreign investment regulations, particularly in the context of foreign direct investment since 1995, may have had significant impact on the state of competitiveness in India industries. In this paper an attempt has been made to evaluate the effects of trade and industrial policy changes on domestic competitiveness for select Indian industries during post-liberalization period. Though there exists a pool of empirical literature focusing on the state of competitiveness in India, the link between theoretical models underlying the empirical analysis is not often strong. Moreover, a section of the literature focuses on a combination of firm and industry data for drawing conclusions on firm behavior, which may not reflect the actual scenario. Given this background, the present paper attempts to provide a unified approach to examine the inter-relationships between entry and competitiveness within a consistent oligopolistic market framework. The empirical analysis of the present study, carried out on the basis of firm data for 14 sectors over 1990-2008, indicates that Indian industry have shown considerable changes over the last decade in terms of entry and competitiveness. An overall decline in concentration is witnessed between the two end points, which signify the importance of newer entry in the markets. The Price-Cost Margin however behaves differently for different sectors, which could be explained by the differing level of spillover of technical changes as a result of increased pressure of competition due to liberalization. Demand curve is generally found to be inelastic and declines over the period. The relationship between the size of the firms and their export volume turns out to be significantly positive.


The aim of this article is to analyze the community interpreter training program in Sweden and, based on the results of two research projects, describe structural conditions and shortcomings. The authors discuss Sweden's laws and regulations, the changing demand for interpreting service in society, the open access ideology within adult education associations, and the limitation of economic resources for fulfilling the demand for trained interpreters. Interpreter training in Sweden is built on public-service needs in the areas of social insurance, the labor market, health care, and court interpreting. It is focused on factual knowledge and terminology and devotes little time for developing aspects of ethical rules, the role of the interpreter, and technical issues. In order to make progress possible it is important to use existing research and theory to develop didactics for community interpreting training. © The authors and CIT


OBJECTIVES:The aim of this study was to characterize the psychometric profiles of symptomatic patients with abnormal esophageal motility and symptomatic patients with normal manometric findings compared to asymptomatic controls.METHODS:A total of 113 patients with abnormal esophageal motility (7 achalasia, 8 diffuse esophageal spasm, 27 nutcracker esophagus, 37 hypertensive lower esophageal sphincter, 21 hypotensive peristalsis, 13 failed peristalsis), 23 symptomatic controls with similar esophageal symptoms but normal manometry, and 27 asymptomatic controls were enrolled. Validated questionnaires assessing depression (Beck Depression Inventory), anxiety (Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory or Trait Anxiety Inventory), and somatization (Psychosomatic Symptom Checklist) were administered to all subjects.RESULTS:Patients with both esophageal symptoms and either hypertensive lower esophageal sphincter, nutcracker esophagus, or hypotensive contractions exhibited increased somatization, acute anxiety, or depression compared to asymptomatic controls but not compared to symptomatic controls. On the other hand, the psychometric profiles of patients with achalasia and diffuse esophageal spasm were strikingly normal. Among esophageal symptoms, chest pain was closely correlated with psychometric abnormalities.CONCLUSIONS:The esophageal symptoms of patients with abnormal esophageal motility may relate to the underlying psychological abnormalities, independent of manometric abnormalities.


Integration between Architecture and Engineering is one of the cardinal elements of the IASS activities and is generally perceived either as a 'starting point', being a quality of the ancient Master Builders of Medieval and Renaissance times or as a 'final destination' to be eventually reached by the two disciplines in times to come. In both cases, such integration seems absent in contemporary
buildings. In contrast, there has been in the recent past, also in the present and will be forthcoming in the future, particular occasions in which such a 'fusion' was not just a possible solution but consistent practice, a built fact. These special occasions are certainly represented by the buildings for the Olympic Games. The 'Olympic Buildings' are designed to represent both an architectural and an engineering challenge to the existing world of construction. They aspire to become icons of a particular time and to set a new standard in terms of building technologies/materials. It is not a coincidence that some of the most influential designers of our times linked their names to the Olympic Games. Indeed, figures like Pier Luigi Nervi (Rome 1960), Yoshikatsu Tsuboi (Tokyo 1964), Frei Otto (Munich 1972) and more recently, Mamoru Kawaguchi (Barcelona 1992) and Santiago Calatrava (Athens 2004) designed some of their masterpieces for such events.
This paper, which is an outcome of a broader, international and in-progress research on this topic, will, through a re-reading of some the most significant post-war editions of the Olympiads, illustrates the historical progress of so-called 'Structural Design'. Considering in depth the casestudy of Rome 1960 as a starting point, and comparing it with buildings designed for other Olympiads, it became apparent that all of the works examined in this article, in spite of their international success, managed to keep what can be defined as a 'Regional character', distinctive of
a particular culture in terms of architectonic language and technological resources. This characteristic seems to be lost in the most recent editions of the Games (Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008) and represents one of the challenges to the next Olympic cities, starting with London 2012.


RFC 1264 was written during what was effectively a completely
different time in the life of the Internet. It prescribed rules to
protect the Internet against new routing protocols that may have
various undesirable properties. In today's Internet, there are so
many other pressures against deploying unreasonable protocols that we
believe that existing controls suffice, and the RFC 1264 rules just
get in the way. This memo provides information for the Internet
community.


Fusion procedures are an accepted and successful management strategy to alleviate pain and/or neurological symptoms associated with degenerative disease of the lumbar spine. In 2005, the first version of the "Guidelines for the performance of fusion procedures for degenerative disease of the lumbar spine" was published in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine. In an effort to incorporate evidence obtained since the original publication of these guidelines, an expert panel of neurosurgical and orthopedic spine specialists was convened in 2009. Topics reviewed were essentially identical to the original publication. Selected manuscripts from the first iteration of these guidelines as well as relevant publications between 2005 through 2011 were reviewed. Several modifications to the methodology of guideline development were adopted for the current update. In contrast to the 2005 guidelines, a 5-tiered level of evidence strategy was employed, primarily allowing a distinction between lower levels of evidence. The qualitative descriptors (standards/guidelines/options) used in the 2005 recommendations were abandoned and replaced with grades to reflect the strength of medical evidence supporting the recommendation. Recommendations that conflicted with the original publication, if present, were highlighted at the beginning of each chapter. As with the original guideline publication, the intent of this update is to provide a foundation from which an appropriate treatment strategy can be formulated.


As groundwater use has surged globally and computing power has grown, groundwater modeling has become a regular feature of subsurface-oriented governance.  Our improved ability to "see" underground with models has not, however, generated epistemic consensus on the inner workings of subsurface systems. Here, I ask how and why that is the case.  I pursue this line of inquiry in the context of groundwater governance in the American West.  Specifically, I trace a decade of groundwater modeling at the heart of a protracted and legally influential groundwater dispute in the state of Colorado to show how models served as mathematical spaces for competing subsurface stakeholders to test and contest opposing visions of groundwater flows, rights, and responsibilities. Drawing from the Science & Technology Studies literature on global climate modeling, I argue that groundwater models are more than simulations of subsurface systems; they are tools of "world building" that embed, enact, and also circumscribe subsurface politics.


This article explains the peculiarities of institutional effects on growth rates in post-communist countries. By proposing a certain dependence of the institution-growth nexus on the nature of institutional emergence, the distinction between revolutionary and evolutionary processes of institution formation is introduced. Theoretical and empirical juxtapositions show that transition countries' institutions which are constructed revolutionarily differ from those that emerge evolutionarily in a twofold manner in their relationship to growth. Growth rates of their economies are less likely to depend on the quality of economic institutions and are more likely to be a function of the maturity of political institutions. In addition, economic institutions in post-communist countries are a product of the quality of political bodies to a greater extent than their evolutionary alternatives.


"Diffuse correlation spectroscopy" (DCS) is a technology for non-invasive transcranial measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF) that can be hybridized with "near-infrared spectroscopy" (NIRS). Taken together these methods hold potential for monitoring hemodynamics in stroke patients. We explore the utility of DCS and NIRS to measure effects of head-of-bed (HOB) positioning at 30 degrees , 15 degrees , 0 degrees , -5 degrees and 0 degrees angles in patients with acute ischemic stroke affecting frontal cortex and in controls. HOB positioning significantly altered CBF, oxy-hemoglobin (HbO(2)) and total-hemoglobin (THC) concentrations. Moreover, the presence of an ipsilateral infarct was a significant effect for all parameters. Results are consistent with the notion of impaired CBF autoregulation in the infarcted hemisphere.


We report a combined experimental and theoretical study of the quasistatic hysteresis and dynamic excitations in large-area arrays of NiFe nanodisks forming a hexagonal lattice with the lattice constant of 390 nm. Arrays were fabricated by patterning a 20-nm-thick NiFe film using the etched nanosphere lithography. We have studied a close-packed (edge-to-edge separation between disks dcp = 65 nm) and an ultraclosed packed (ducp = 20 nm) array. Hysteresis loops for both arrays were qualitatively similar and nearly isotropic, i.e., independent on the in-plane external field orientation. The shape of these loops revealed that magnetization reversal is governed by the formation and expulsion of vortices inside the nanodisks. When we assumed that the nanodisks' magnetization significantly decreases near their edges, micromagnetic simulations with material parameters deter-mined independently from continuous film measu-rements could satisfactorily reproduce the hysteresis. Despite the isotropic hysteresis, significant in-plane anisotropy of the dynamic response of the ultraclose-packed array was found experimentally by the all-electrical spin-wave spectroscopy and Brillouin light scattering. Dynamical simulations could successfully reproduce the difference between excitation spectra for fields directed along the two main symmetry axes of the hexagonal lattice. Simulations revealed that this difference is caused by the magnetodipolar interaction between nanodisks, which leads to a strong variation of the spatial distribution of the oscillation power both for bulk and edge modes as a function of the bias field orientation. Comparison of simulated and measured frequencies enabled the unambiguous identification of experimentally observed modes. Results of this systematic research are relevant both for fundamental studies of spin-wave modes in patterned magnetic structures and for the design of magnonic crystals for potential applications as, e.g., spin-wave guides and filters.