The phenomenon of population aging, caused by increased life expectancy and declining birth rates, has resulted in a high, and continuously rising proportion of elderly people in the population. This means it is critical to improve our understanding of age-associated diseases and to develop new therapies for them. One of the conditions most commonly associated with aging is a decline in memory, which occurs at different rates in elderly individuals.  At one end of the spectrum are cognitively healthy individuals who retain good memory capacities in old age. On the other are patients who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and suffer a sharp decline in cognitive capabilities, with memory usually being one of the earliest-affected functions. There relationship between the various kinds of age-associated memory impairment and the degree to which they share molecular mechanisms is unclear. The aim of the experiments described in this thesis is to gain an understanding of age-associated memory impairment and Alzheimer's disease by studying RNA expression profiles.
Cellular RNA undergoes constant turnover, being transcribed, translated and degraded at varying rates. It thus provides a dynamic index of cellular status, being required for housekeeping functions as well as response to stimuli, stress or changes in the cellular environment. A learning stimulus is associated with a change in expression levels of large number of genes, and learning is impaired in the absence of these gene expression changes. In addition to protein-coding genes, there are a number of regulatory RNAs that likely play a role in the process, but their functions are not yet clear. Thus studying the coding and non-coding RNA under situations of disease or impaired function gives an insight not only into cellular protein expression but also into the regulatory or compensatory mechanisms that occur in response to stimuli or to disease. Clearly, the RNA profile of a cell at any given time depends both on the underlying genome and on the environment of the cell, allowing the study of their interaction. For these reasons, next generation RNA sequencing, followed by analysis of coding and non-coding RNA expression profiles was the method chosen for the study.
 The first major aim of this project was to develop a mouse model that the inter-individual variation in age-associated memory impairment. We show that wild type mice show an age-dependent increase in intra-group variability that parallels the decline in memory. Thus, as in humans, a group of aging mice consists of some individuals who perform well on memory tests, at levels comparable to young mice and a some individuals who decline faster. These differences cannot be attributed to loss of motor or visual abilities and individual mice show remarkable consistency in day-to-day performance. This means that by testing over a number of days on the water maze task, 'good learners' can be distinguished from 'poor learners'. This model was set up in a group of genetically identical wild-type mice which had been raised in the same environment, enabling us to study the hippocampal gene expression profiles and correlate them with memory performance in the absence of confounding factors. A large number of genes were found to have a significant correlation with performance, and a gene set enrichment analysis was performed on this dataset to look for functions or pathways that were over- or under-represented in the best- and worst-performing individuals. We found that high expression of the components of the translational machinery, including ribosomes, RNA-binding proteins, and translation initiation factors were associated with good memory performance in aging. Another finding was that high expression of components of the glutamatergic pathway was associated with age-associated memory impairment.  These pathways merit further investigation as potential therapeutic targets in age-associated memory impairment.
Alzheimer's disease, a condition that has a very strong connection with aging, is one of the age-associated diseases for which no effective therapies exist. One possible reason for this is that our knowledge about the underlying molecular mechanisms is still incomplete, relying mainly on the pathological evidence of amyloid-beta accumulation and to genetic linkage studies. However, the majority of patients with AD suffer from a sporadic form of the disease, with the strongest risk factor being age. There is still no clear explanation for this strong relationship between aging and AD. While aging is often associated with a mild degree of memory loss, the rapid decline characteristic of Alzheimer's disease is probably associated with distinct pathomechanisms.
Since the current methods to study the living brain in AD are limited to neuroimaging approaches, our knowledge of RNA expression in AD comes from post-mortem analyses and mouse models.  In particular, we lack methods to study the progress of AD in live patients in the early stages of disease. Recently, it has been shown that cells secrete RNA into the extracellular space, enclosed in vesicles. If this RNA can be isolated and profiled from cerebrospinal fluid, it could serve as a "nanobiopsy" for brain tissue.
Thus the second major aim of this project was to determine if extracellular RNA isolated from cerebrospinal fluid could be used to help understand the underlying molecular mechanisms in live patients with AD. To this end, we isolated the vesicle fractions from human cerebrospinal fluid and tested for RNA yield. We were able to obtain a robust and reproducible RNA expression profile from CSF extracellular vesicles (EVs) that was distinct from the cellular RNA profile. Primary hippocampal neurons in culture were used to compare the RNA derived from EVs with the RNA in the neurons of origin. Interestingly, when the cells were challenged by application of amyloid-beta, there was a detectable response in the secreted vesicular RNA.
Before using this method to study CSF from patients with AD, the scalability of the RNA isolation and profiling protocol was tested for the small amounts of RNA typically available from 1‒2 ml of CSF. We show that it is possible to distinguish between subjects using as little as 0.25 ng of cerebrospinal EV-derived RNA.
Finally we compared EV RNA between the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer's disease and control subjects. One potential application of CSF RNA profiling is the development of biomarkers that allow early disease diagnosis. We used a machine learning approach to predict AD based on CSF microRNA and other non-coding RNA and were able to achieve a prediction accuracy of over 80%.  If these findings can be extended to a larger set of patients, RNA isolated from cerebrospinal fluid could provide a new method not only for further research into early Alzheimer's disease, but also be useful as a diagnostic marker.


Background Two-dimensional (2D) analysis of knee valgus during common athletic screening tasks such as SLS has been purported to identify individuals who may be at a high-risk of ACL injury. There is limited literature exploring the relationships between joint motion during SLS and other athletic tasks associated with knee joint injuries, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the SLS to identify athletes with hazardous knee motion in a range of athletic tasks. Objective To assess the relationship between the 2D knee valgus angle among three tasks (SLS, SLL, and Running). Design A correlational study. Setting Undertaken in the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Salford. Participants 15 recreational athletes, 7 males and 8 females, were recruited (age 25.2±5.1 years; height 1.6±7.38 m; and mass 67.6±10.93 kg). Intervention Participants performed a series of SLS, SLL from a 31-cm step, and forward running at percieved maximum speed whilst being videotaped with a 2D digital camera. Main outcome measurements Maximum right knee valgus angle was quantified by measuring the frontal plane projection angle (FPPA) using Quintic Biomechanics v21 software package. Results A moderate correlation was shown between FPPA during SLS and SLL when the whole participant group was analysed (r=0.35). When split by gender female statistics showed good correlations between the majority of tasks; SLS and SLL (r=0.87), SLS and Run (r=0.59) but weaker between SLL and Run (0.26). Conclusions In females the FPPA during SLS correlates with FPPA during SLL and running. This indicates that if a female patient has increased FPPA during SLS they are likely to have increased FPPA across all the tasks. This could potentially reduce the time and tasks required for screening, as only one task would need to be assessed. In males there is little correlation between tasks so the same would not apply in male subjects.


The 2011 decision by the Federal Circuit in Uniloc v. Microsoft properly condemned the "25% Rule," which bases a reasonable royalty on 25% of an infringer's profits. Nonetheless, at least one proponent of the Rule continues to argue that the Rule is fundamentally valid and should remain in use. This article analyzes the historical development of the Rule, its conceptual basis, its application in actual cases, and relevant insights from other recent Federal Circuit cases. Each analysis shows fundamental problems and contradictions that demonstrate the Rule can never be a reliable patent damages methodology. There is no reason to change the conclusion in Uniloc.


This book is an illustrated field guide to diurnal raptors, a bird group that many people find among the most difficult birds to identify. Raptors are popular and iconic birds, and important ecologically as well as in legislation, with some species listed as threatened. Birds of Prey of Australia will enable people to more easily identify them. It also provides a brief overview of the biology of raptors and an indication of the current state of knowledge on them.

The book has been completely revised and updated, with 15 years of new data, a section on difficult species-pairs (split-images providing direct contrast), and rearranged in modern field-guide format, making it easy to use and enabling rapid identification of 'difficult' raptors.

Birds of Prey of Australia will appeal to a wide range of readers, including ornithologists, raptor biologists, birdwatchers, wildlife rescuers/carers, raptor rehabilitators, zookeepers, naturalists, bushwalkers, ecological consultants, fauna authorities, park rangers, state forestry personnel and students.

2013 Whitley Award Commendation for Vertebrate Guide.


The neonatal FcR (FcRn) regulates IgG and albumin homeostasis, mediates maternal IgG transport, takes active part in phagocytosis, and delivers Ag for presentation. We have previously shown that overexpression of FcRn in transgenic (Tg) mice extends the half-life of mouse IgG by reducing its clearance. In this paper, we demonstrate that immunization of these mice with OVA and trinitrophenyl-conjugated human IgG results in a 3- to 10-fold increase of Ag-specific IgM and IgG in serum. The IgM increase was unexpected because FcRn does not bind IgM. Our results showed that the affinity of the Ag-specific IgG was at least as good in Tg mice as in the wild-type (wt) controls, implying appropriate affinity maturation in both groups. Influenza vaccination produced a 2-fold increase in the amount of virus-specific Ab in Tg animals, which proved twice as efficient in a hemagglutination inhibition assay as was the case in wt controls. After immunization, Tg mice displayed significantly larger spleens containing a higher number of Ag-specific B cells and plasma cells, as well as many more granulocytes and dendritic cells, analyzed by ELISPOT and flow cytometric studies. The neutrophils from these Tg mice expressed the Tg FcRn and phagocytosed IgG immune complexes more efficiently than did those from wt mice. These results show that FcRn overexpression not only extends the IgG half-life but also enhances the expansion of Ag-specific B cells


Siberian arctic vegetation and lake water communities, known for their temperature dependence, are expected to be particularly impacted by recent climate change and high warming rates. However, decadal information on the nature and strength of recent vegetation change and its time lag to climate signals are rare. In this study, we present a 210Pb/137Cs dated pollen and Pediastrum species record from a unnamed lake in the south of the Taymyr peninsula covering the period from AD 1706 to 2011. Thirty-nine palynomorphs and 10 morphotypes of Pediastrum species were studied to assess changes in vegetation and lake conditions as probable responses to climate change. We compared the pollen record with Pediastrum species, which we consider to be important proxies of climate changes. Three pollen assemblage zones characterised by Betula nana, Alnus viridis and Larix gmelinii (1706–1808); herbs such as Cyperaceae, Artemisia or Senecio (1808–1879), and higher abundance of Larix pollen (1955–2011) are visible. Also, three Pediastrum assemblage zones show changes of aquatic conditions: higher abundances of Pediastrum boryanum var. brevicorne (1706–1802); medium abundances of P. kawraiskyi and P. integrum (1802–1840 and 1920–1980), indicating cooler conditions while less eutrophic conditions are indicated by P. boryanum, and a mainly balanced composition with only small changes of cold- and warm-adapted Pediastrum species (1965–2011). In general, compositional Pediastrum species turnover is slightly higher than that indicated by pollen data (0.54 vs 0.34 SD), but both are only minor for this treeline location. In conclusion, the relevance of differentiation of Pediastrum species is promising and can give further insights into the relationship between lakes and their surrounding vegetation transferred onto climatic conditions.


This paper analyses the discussion of a substitution account in the 1970s and how the account might have performed had it been agreed in 1980. The substitution account would have allowed central banks to diversify away from the dollar into the IMF's Special Drawing Right (SDR), comprised of US dollar, Deutsche mark, French franc (later euro), Japanese yen and British pound, through transactions conducted off the market. The account's dollar assets could fall short of the value of its SDR liabilities, and hedging would have defeated the purpose of preventing dollar sales. In the event, negotiators were unable to agree on how to distribute the open-ended cost of covering any shortfall if the dollar's depreciation were to exceed the value of any cumulative interest rate premium on the dollar. As it turned out, the substitution account would have encountered solvency problems had the US dollar return been based on US Treasury bill yields, even if a substantial fraction of the IMF's gold had been devoted to meet the shortfall at recent, high prices for gold. However, had the US dollar return been based on US Treasury bond yields, the substitution account would have been solvent even without any gold backing.


Many consumers are committed to buying local. With the study reported here, we aimed to advance understanding of the influence of culture in the local food movement. The study addressed the presence of cultural indicators in discussions about local food among a sample of Florida residents interested in local food. The influence of culture on participants' thoughts about local food was examined for the purpose of guiding communication and Extension programming surrounding local food. A qualitative thematic analysis revealed the influence of culture through the themes of tradition/ritual, family, local economy, trust, health and quality, experience with local food, and convenience.


The world today is relying on hands free devices and teleconferencing equipments but the major problem with the use of these systems is creation of acoustic echo at the time of conversation. The quality of information to be transmitted and received is degraded due to the echo. Hence, echo cancellation has come up as the most interesting as well as challenging part in any communication system. Echo is the degraded or delayed version of an original signal which comes back to the source after successive reflections from the surroundings. The removal of echo without degrading the quality of an original signal is a challenge of research in present time. Echo cancellation in case of voice communication is removal of echo, improving the quality of an original voice signals. In our thesis we have focused on the acoustic echo cancellation in closed room with the help of adaptive filters. Stereo echo cancellation is a key technique for solving the echo problem in modern teleconferencing systems. There is a fundamental problem in stereo echo cancellation, the misalignment between the converged filter weights and the real room impulse responses. Most existing works explain the misalignment problem by a conceptual stochastic equation, and no studies have investigated the closed form of the final weights in a stereo echo canceller. In our thesis we have proposed a subband adaptive modeling approach to develop an effective system of stereo echo cancellation with the help of better adaptive filtering techniques. We have adopted the subband adaptive modeling because the fullband adaptive modeling technique may not be able to characterize the electro-acoustic performance of a Multichannel Compression Hearing Aid (MCHA). We also employ the design of DFT filter banks for the analysis and synthesis of the signal and in the place of conventional NLMS or RLS algorithm; we have rather employed the APA (Affine Projection Algorithm) for adaptive modeling in each subband. The performance of the subband adaptive modeling is simulated under various conditions in MATLAB and the results are analyzed. The performance of the subband adaptive modeling system is better and effective as compared to the fullband adaptive modeling system. The results for various input and noise signals are plotted and shown in result section of this report.


Abstract. Among the more than 20 ground-based FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) stations currently operating around the globe, only a few have provided formaldehyde (HCHO) total column time series until now. Although several independent studies have shown that the FTIR measurements can provide formaldehyde total columns with good precision, the spatial coverage has not been optimal for providing good diagnostics for satellite or model validation. Furthermore, these past studies used different retrieval settings, and biases as large as 50 % can be observed in the HCHO total columns depending on these retrieval choices, which is also a weakness for validation studies combining data from different ground-based stations.For the present work, the HCHO retrieval settings have been optimized based on experience gained from past studies and have been applied consistently at the 21 participating stations. Most of them are either part of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) or under consideration for membership. We provide the harmonized settings and a characterization of the HCHO FTIR products. Depending on the station, the total systematic and random uncertainties of an individual HCHO total column measurement lie between 12 % and 27 % and between 1 and 11×1014 molec cm−2, respectively. The median values among all stations are 13 % and 2.9×1014 molec cm−2 for the total systematic and random uncertainties.This unprecedented harmonized formaldehyde data set from 21 ground-based FTIR stations is presented and its comparison with a global chemistry transport model shows consistency in absolute values as well as in seasonal cycles. The network covers very different concentration levels of formaldehyde, from very clean levels at the limit of detection (few 1013 molec cm−2) to highly polluted levels (7×1016 molec cm−2). Because the measurements can be made at any time during daylight, the diurnal cycle can be observed and is found to be significant at many stations. These HCHO time series, some of them starting in the 1990s, are crucial for past and present satellite validation and will be extended in the coming years for the next generation of satellite missions.


What does it mean to be a tribal police officer? What are the complexities of that role? And how do tribal communities, tribal police departments, and other law enforcement agencies collaborate to address the alarmingly high rate of violent crime in Indian country? Author Eileen Luna-Firebaugh answers these and other questions in this well-documented text about tribal government and law enforcement in America. Based on extensive research with tribal police departments conducted over a period of eight years, Tribal Policing reveals the complicated role of police officials in Indian country and the innovative methods they are developing to address crime within their borders and to advance tribal sovereignty in the United States. Tribal police departments face many challenges, such as heightened crime rates, a lack of resources (working patrol vehicles, 911 systems, access to police radios), and vast patrol areas. Luna-Firebaugh demonstrates that tribal officers see themselves as members of the tribal community and that tribal law enforcement is a complex balance of tribal position and authority within the community. Among other topics, Luna-Firebaugh analyzes the structure of tribal law enforcement and the ways it differs from mainstream policing; the role of women, tribal members, and others who comprise tribal law enforcement personnel; tribal jails and corrections; police training; and the legal, political, cultural, and historical issues that affect American Indian tribal policing. This informative text addresses the scarcity of published material regarding tribal law enforcement and will be a welcome addition to courses in criminal justice, the administration of justice, law enforcement, and Native American studies.


In America, almost all the money in circulation passes through financial institutions every day. But in Nigeria's "cash and carry" system, 90 percent of the currency never comes back to a bank after it's issued. What happens when two such radically different economies meet and mingle, as they have for centuries in Atlantic Africa? The answer is a rich diversity of economic practices responsive to both local and global circumstances. In "Marginal Gains," Jane I. Guyer explores and explains these often bewildering practices, including trade with coastal capitalism and across indigenous currency zones, and within the modern popular economy. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, Guyer demonstrates that the region shares a coherent, if loosely knit, commercial culture. She shows how that culture actually works in daily practice, addressing both its differing scales of value and the many settings in which it operates, from crisis conditions to ordinary household budgets. The result is a landmark study that reveals not just how popular economic systems work in Africa, but possibly elsewhere in the Third World.


This paper reports on a study that investigates the acquisition of English tense and agreement morphology by Malaysian ESL (English as a Second Language) learners. These learners speak Malay and Chinese. In other words, they are Malaysian L1 Malay and L1 Chinese speakers of L2 English. The Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (Hawkins and Chan, 1997) serves as the framework for the study. The hypothesis claims that post-childhood second language (L2) learners experience syntactic deficits in the L2 if parameterised features present in the functional categories of the L2 are not specified in the L1. However, selected L1 features that correspond to L2 settings are able to enter L2 syntactic derivations. In terms of form-meaning relationships, it is predicted that a syntactic deficit resulting from an L1 influence will affect the assignment of native-like meanings to surface forms. And depending on the differences in the L1 and L2, learners from different L1 backgrounds will not show similar patterns of development. The study gathered data from the two groups of ESL learners in an attempt to compare the role played by the Chinese and Malay languages in the acquisition of the English property being investigated. A grammaticality judgement task (comprising both grammatical and ungrammatical items) was designed to test the learners' underlying knowledge of tense and agreement morphology in English. The task comprised 16 correctly inflected items with thematic and copula/auxiliary be verb forms, and 32 incorrectly inflected items. The findings suggest that apparent near native-like acquisition of the L2 property might not be the case when learners seem to have more difficulty with the ungrammatical items than the grammatical items. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications for the ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom.


Title of Dissertation: Marketing of Digital Products Nevena Taneva Koukova, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Dissertation directed by: Professor Brian T. Ratchford and Professor P. K. Kannan Department of Marketing My dissertation comprises of three essays that theoretically and empirically investigate the marketing of digital products, which are information products such as newspapers and books sold in both physical and electronic form. In the first essay, we study product form bundling, defined as marketing two or more forms of the same product as a package. We show experimentally that, regarding information products, the usage situations communicated to consumers moderate the effect of the availability of bundle discount on the purchase likelihood for the product form bundle. We also compare the effect of different pricing strategies for information products. When no bundle discount is offered, the likelihood of buying both forms of an information product, holding the sum of their prices constant, can be increased by pricing the electronic form lower than the print form rather then pricing both at the same level. In the second essay we compare two product strategies that can be used in marketing digital products. Under standard mixed bundling companies offer full content in print and electronic form and the bundle of the two, while under content unbundled mixed bundling companies offer full content in print form, unbundled content in electronic form, and the bundle of the two. Which strategy is more attractive for a company to pursue? We model the profits under these two strategies and outline conditions in which one or the other leads to higher profit. We apply our analytical framework to data from a field experiment implemented on the website of a book publisher. The third essay investigates the attractiveness of complete product lines of items such as books and newspapers. We employ a choice experiment in which a sample of consumers is presented with hypothetical product scenarios asked to make a choice. The data is used to develop a profit-maximizing configuration of products and prices. Similar approaches to the product line pricing problem have been employed for conventional products, but not when bundling of different forms of a product is an option, and not when the different products may be complements rather than substitutes. MARKETING OF DIGITAL PRODUCTS


Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now the most common liver disease in both adults and children worldwide. As a disease spectrum, NAFLD may progress from simple steatosis to steatohepatitis, advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis. An estimated 20–35% of the general population has steatosis, 10% of whom will develop the more progressive non-alcoholic steatohepatitis associated with markedly increased risk of cardiovascular- and liver-related mortality. Development of NAFLD is strongly linked to components of the metabolic syndrome including obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia and type 2 diabetes. The recognition that NAFLD is an independent risk factor for CVD is a major public health concern. There is a great need for a sensitive non-invasive test for the early detection and assessment of the stage of NAFLD that could also be used to monitor response to treatment. The cellular and molecular aetiology of NAFLD is multi-factorial; genetic polymorphisms influencing NAFLD have been identified and nutrition is a modifiable environmental factor influencing NAFLD progression. Weight loss through diet and exercise is the primary recommendation in the clinical management of NAFLD. The application of systems biology to the identification of NAFLD biomarkers and factors involved in NAFLD progression is an area of promising research.


Hard-limited quadrature pulse-overlapping modulation (QPOM) techniques have a constant envelope, good spectral properties and good performance especially in fading channels. These modulation techniques are suitable to applications using nonlinear or saturated power amplifiers to obtain high power and bandwidth efficiencies. A technique to combine convolutional codes and QPOM schemes to further improve its performance in fading channels is introduced and evaluated. At first, the QPOM scheme is decomposed into an encoder followed by a memoryless modulator. Then, the binary convolutional encoder is concatenated to the QPOM encoder and considered as one entity to be optimized. Performance of the coded QPOM scheme is analyzed and compared to uncoded QPOM and coded QPSK schemes.<<ETX>>


A recent investigation of the mass movement modified cliffs along the Bristol Channel coastline has been achieved by utilising ground survey data, historical and contemporary cartographic data and oblique aerial and terrestrial photographs. This has revealed that the solid geology annual recession rates are a result of a complex integration of sub-aerial and marine processes, through the mechanisms of translational and deep rotational sliding, small-scale sliding, flows, toppling and translational mode rock falls. Averaged annual recession rates of 20 cm for Triassic cliffs, 6 to 8 cm for Jurassic, 4 cm for Devonian and negligible values for Carboniferous equivalents were obtained.


ABSTRACT Settler colonialism is structured in part according to the principle of civilizational progress yet the roots of this doctrine are not well understood. Disparate ideas of progress and practices related to colonial dispossession and domination can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and as far back as ancient Greece, but there remain unexplored logics and continuities. I argue that civilizational progress and settler colonialism are structured according to the opposition between politics governed by reason or faith and the figure of the child as sinful or bestial. Thus, it is not contingent, but rather necessary that justificatory frameworks of European empire and colonialism depict Indigenous peoples as children. To illustrate how the theoretical link between Indigenous peoples and children emerges not as a simple analogy, but rather, as the source of the premodern/modern and savage/civilized binaries, I trace the various historical iterations of the political/childhood opposition through the classical, medieval, enlightenment, and modern eras. I show how the model of civilizational progress from a premodern and savage state of childhood continues to serve as the model for settler colonial exclusion and domination of Indigenous peoples.


Abstract. Cliff collapse poses a serious hazard to infrastructure and passers-by. Obtaining information such as magnitude-frequency relationship for a specific site is of great help to adapt appropriate mitigation measures. While it is possible to monitor hundreds-of-meter-long cliff sites with ground based techniques (e.g. lidar or photogrammetry), it is both time consuming and scientifically limiting to focus on short cliff sections. In the project SUAVE, we sought to investigate whether an octocopter UAV photogrammetric survey would perform sufficiently well in order to repeatedly survey cliff face geometry and derive rock fall inventories amenable to probabilistic rock fall hazard computation. An experiment was therefore run on a well-studied site of the chalk coast of Normandy, in Mesnil Val, along the English Channel (Northern France). Two campaigns were organized in January and June 2015 which surveyed about 60 ha of coastline, including the 80-m-high cliff face, the chalk platform at its foot, and the hinterland in a matter of 4 hours from start to finish. To conform with UAV regulations, the flight was flown in 3 legs for a total of about 30 minutes in the air. A total of 868 and 1106 photos were respectively shot with a Sony NEX 7 with fixed focal 16mm. Three lines of sight were combined: horizontal shots for cliff face imaging, 45°-oblique views to tie plateau/platform photos with cliff face images, and regular vertical shots. Photogrammetrically derived dense point clouds were produced with Agisoft Photoscan at ultra-high density (median density is 1 point every 1.7cm). Point cloud density proved a critical parameter to reproduce faithfully the chalk face's geometry. Tuning down the density parameter to "high" or "medium", though efficient from a computational point of view, generated artefacts along chalk bed edges (i.e. smoothing the sharp gradient) and ultimately creating ghost volumes when computing cloud to cloud differences. Yet, from a hazard point of view, this is where small rock fall will most likely occur. Absolute orientation of both point clouds proved unsufficient despite the 30 black and white quadrants ground control point DGPS surveyed. Additional ICP was necessary to reach centimeter-level accuracy and segment rock fall scars corresponding to the expected average daily rock fall volume (ca. 0.013 m3).


By distinguishing between attributions of sentience and agency we begin to take crucial analytical steps to consider ontological and cosmological differences between groups. Scholars in New Animist and Actor-Network Theory camps sometimes expound broadly generalized notions of agency, thus overlooking the ways in which characterizations of different kinds of beings—and the implications of these characterizations—may apply to aspects of environment and change historically. In Australia there has been debate about the "sentience" of the country as understood by Indigenous Australians. In a broader Australian public culture, there has come about in the last four decades or so an "etherealized" apprehension of Indigenous relations to landscape, which has privileged attention to certain kinds of cosmogenic being (that is, "Dreamings" as world founding agencies). Considering Australian Aboriginal practices and descriptions of spirit, human, other-than-human figures, and sacralized countryside, I take the view that there is incommensurability between Indigenous and non-Indigenous experiences of environment as sentient. Drawing on both my field experience with Indigenous people in North Australia and the broader Australianist ethnographic record, I discuss the many other kinds of being that populate and animate the countryside, showing a wide range of beings and forces. Three themes of continental distribution stand out: continuities between life and death; human-animal ambiguity; and communicative connectivities among life-forms. All these were elaborated in a way of life integral with its surroundings. The article considers change over time to such understandings, reduction in the range of life-forms, and what this may involve.


Missionaries played an important role in the colonisation of the Congo. They brought Christianity and "civilisation" to the new colony in central Africa, which was ruled over by the Belgian King Leopold II from 1885 to 1908 and by the Belgian government
from 1908 to 1960. Missionaries were active in the field of education, but they also left their mark on colonial literature, both as authors and as protagonists. This article explores the traces of the missionaries in the literature on the Congo. Father Amaat Vyncke was an early example of a missionary and author, just as Father Garmijn and Father Constant de Deken. These missionaries provided a positive assessment on the colonial system in their writings. Writers like Ad. Verreet and J. G. Schoup used missionaries as protagonists in their novels. Schoup portrayed a sympathetic missionary who sharply criticised the colonial system.
After the colonial period Jef Geeraerts painted a very negative image of the missionary in his Gangreen novels. However, the travel books written by Lieve Joris and Bart Castelein and the play Missie (Mission) written by David van Reybrouck (2007) sketched a positive and nostalgic image of the missionary. Keywords : Dutch (post)colonial literature, Congo, missionaries, colonialism. Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Vol. 46 (1) 2009: pp. 123-138


This chapter (forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook on the Indian Constitution) is an introduction to the Indian court system and is written to be of interest to both those learning about the Indian judicial system for the first time as well as experts seeking a more nuanced overview. It describes the architecture of the Indian judiciary – in other words, the different types of courts and judges in the Indian judicial system and the hierarchies and relations between them. In particular, it focuses on how the Indian judiciary coordinates its behavior through both a system of stare decisis (i.e. judicial precedent) and internal administrative control. This chapter argues that the Indian judiciary is unusually top-heavy, with more cases, more judges, and more administrative power located in the upper judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court, than in most other systems. This top-heaviness has a range of implications that the chapter explores – including leading to a more polyvocal jurisprudence and a unique set of inter-judge relations – that while empowering the upper judiciary may also weaken the court system's overall ability to perform core parts of its institutional mandate.


The increase in activist campaigns by entrepreneurial investors and hedge funds in the past decade has raised considerable debate about their benefits for average shareholders. Although critics have longed charged that the proposals for change by such active investors typically do not increase the longer-run efficiency and values of the targeted companies, more recent studies have provided evidence of success, both in terms of increasing the market value of such companies and achieving at least some of the investors' expressed objectives. This article attempts to add to these findings by examining the case of a single well-known investor, Carl Icahn, whose career as a shareholder activist now spans at least three decades. The authors report, first of all, that Icahn's targets have included companies from a remarkable variety of industries, and that his stated objectives have varied with the industries of the targets. Although more of Icahn's targets appear to have been overleveraged than underleveraged, a significant minority have had payouts ratios that were judged to be too low and more cash than they needed. In terms of Icahn's effect on other shareholders, the authors report a significant positive stock price reaction - on the order of 10% - to the announcement of Icahn's taking a position in the target firm. When examining the subsequent performance of the target firms, the authors found a very large difference between those firms that were either taken private or acquired (within 18 months) - over a third of the target companies - and those that remained independent. The authors report that although the acquired group achieved significant positive stock market returns, the firms that remained independent suffered very negative (-60%) returns. Although Icahn's proposed changes could be responsible, as critics charge, for the performance of the latter group, the authors suggest that the success of many of these companies in fending off Icahn without enacting most of his proposed reforms is a more plausible explanation. At the same time, the authors report that Icahn was successful in achieving at least one of his stated objectives in well over half of the cases in which the target companies remained independent.


The aim of this study was extracting and purifying resveratrol from skin black grapevine. The synthesis of new derivatives from purified resveratrol was employed through out a series of reactions. The synthesized compounds are: (E)-2,2'-(5-(4-(carboxymethoxy)styryl)-1,3-phenylene) bis (oxy) diacetic acid (derivative 1); (E)- 5-(4-(3-chloropropanyloxy)styryl)-1,3-phenylene) bis(3-chloro- propanoate (derivative 2); 5-(4-(4-hydrazinylbutanoyloxy) styryl)-1,3-phenylenebis(4-hydrazinyl- butanoate) (derivative 3) and 5-(4-(4-(2-(benzo(d)thiazol-2-yl)hydrazinyl) butanoyloxy) styryl)-1,3- phenylene bis(4-(2-(benzo(d)thiazol-2-yl) hydrazinyl)butanoate) (derivative 4) respectively. The synthesized compounds were studied for exploring potential health benefits.


Today, new media enter our lives faster than ever before. This volume provides a complete, state-of-the-art overview of the newest media technologies and how they can be used in marketing communications - essential information for any organization that wants to maintain an effective advertising program, as well as for experts and students in the fields of advertising and mass communications. Advertising, Promotion, and New Media offers crucial insights on the use of cutting-edge techniques including 3-D advertising, mobile advertising, advergames, interactivity, and netvertising images, as well as more familiar Internet advertising formats such as banner ads and pop-ups. It also discusses such important topics as how to select online affiliates, and how to assess the effectiveness of new media advertising and compare it with traditional formats. Throughout the book, the chapter authors offer up-to-date information and thought provoking ideas on emerging technology and how it can be used effectively for advertising and promotion in the future.


The contracting-out of public services has often been accompanied by a strong academic focus on the emergence of new governance forms, and a general neglect of the processes and practices through which contracted-out services are controlled and monitored. To fill this gap, we draw on contracting-out and inter-organizational control literatures to explore the adoption of control mechanisms for public service provision at the municipal level and the variables that can explain their choice. Our results, based on a survey of Italian municipalities, show that in the presence of contracting-out, market-, hierarchyand trustbased controls display different intensities, can co-exist and are explained by different variables. Service characteristics are more effective in explaining marketand hierarchybased controls than relationship characteristics. Trust-based controls are the most widespread, but cannot be explained by the variables traditionally identified in contractingout and inter-organizational control studies.


This review treats the concepts concerning the age of granitoid magmatism in southern Bulgaria and considers the age assessments of the large granite intrusions in the metamorphic complexes known as "South Bulgarian granites". In terms of the available contributions, this analysis encloses a long period, from 1836, the time of Ami Boué, the first geologist who visited Bulgarian land, to 2000. The review discusses both ideas and geochronological data on a large time-span, from the Archean to the "Tertiary". The emphasis is on the progress of Bulgarian researchers' views that had been made prior to the first pioneering attempts at radiological determinations (i.e., using He and Pb quantitative methods), and especially after the advent of modern equipment for radioisotope dating, based on various isotope systems (e.g., K-Ar, U-Th-Pb, Rb-Sr) and mathematical models of lead isotopes (Pb-Pb) following the basic model of "plumbotectonics" and the fission track method. The bulk of radioisotope data (more than 300 dates on feldspar and 500 dates on galena and other ore minerals) have been made by using the Pb-Pb method, which was introduced by Blagoy Amov and improved by the same worker via his "dynamic model of a continuous lead-isotope evolution" in the Earth's crust. From 1969, when pegmatites that are genetically linked to granite intrusions of southern Bulgaria were dated as "Tertiary", until 2000, all of the above-mentioned methods were tested. These methods confirmed the "Tertiary" ages of the granitoids of the Rhodope Massif and their difference in age from the Hercynian granitoids of the Srednogorie Zone. Owing to this, two groups of granitoids of dissimilar ages, previously referred to as "South Bulgarian granites", were determined. This distinction was corroborated by varieties of mineralogical, petrological and geochemical studies, which were carried out by collaborators from the Department of Geochemistry of the Geological Institute. The "magical boundary", defined by Acad. Strashimir Dimitrov and followed by the majority of Bulgarian geologists, that "the South Bulgarian granites are pre-Mesozoic in age, since fragments of them are present in the Permian–Triassic conglomerates of the Lozen Mountain" has been overcome, mainly due to the results of geochemical studies. Also, the absence of Archean and Proterozoic metamorphism in the Rhodope Massif has been revealed by U-Th-Pb and Pb/Pb radiogeochronological investigations. The analysis of available mineralogical, geochemical and radiogeochronological data, supported by the ages of the migmatites from Ardino area (63–32 Ma), allowed to assume that both migmatized gneisses and the South Bulgarian granites of the Rila and Rhodope Mountains, as well as the volcanic rocks and associated intrusions and ore mineralizations, were a product of a single and prolonged stage of the Alpine activation of the Rhodope crystalline complex that started during the Cretaceous.


One of the key challenges of energy research is finding solid electrolytes with high lithium conductivities comparable to those of liquid electrolytes. In this context, developing new structural families of potential Li+ ion conductors and identifying structural descriptors for fast Li+ ion conduction to occur is key to expand the scope of viable Li+ ion conductors. Here, we report that the layered material Li0.6[Li0.2Sn0.8S2] shows a Li+ ion conductivity comparable to the currently best lithium superionic conductors (LISICONs). Li0.6[Li0.2Sn0.8S2] is composed of layers comprising edge-sharing Li/SnS6 octahedra, interleaved with both tetrahedrally and octahedrally coordinated Li+ ions. Pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR studies on powder samples show intragrain (bulk) diffusion coefficients DNMR on the order of 10−11 m2 s−1 at room temperature, which corresponds to a conductivity σNMR of 9.3 × 10−3 S cm−1 assuming the Nernst–Einstein equation, thus putting Li0.6[Li0.2Sn0.8S2] en par with the best Li solid electrolytes reported to date. This is in agreement with impedance spectroscopy on powder pellets, showing a conductivity of 1.5 × 10−2 S cm−1. Direct current galvanostatic polarization/depolarization measurements on such samples show negligible electronic contributions (less than 10−9 S cm−1) but indicate significant contact resistance (d.c. conductivity in a reversible cell is 1.2 × 10−4 S cm−1 at 298 K). Our results suggest that the partial occupation of interlayer Li+ positions in this layered material is beneficial for its transport properties, which together with tetrahedrally coordinated Li sites provides facile Li+ ion diffusion pathways in the intergallery space between the covalent Sn(Li)S2 layers. This work therefore points to a generic design principle for new layered Li+ ion conductors based on the controlled depletion of Li+ ions in the interlayer space.


The PLOTINA Gender Audit was the first audit regarding gender equality conducted in UNIBO. The data collected refer to the A.Y. 2015/16 (for teaching data) and to the 31st of December 2015 (for human resources data). The data collection have been done from September and December 2016.
The data of the dataset were collected by using a specific tool divided in different tasks devoted to collect information on the following elements:
Key area 1 - The governance bodies, key actors and decision-makers;
Key area 2 - Recruitment, career progression and retention;
Key area 3 - Work and personal life integration;
Key area 4 - Researchers and research: gender equality and sex and gender perspective;
Key area 5 - Integration of sex and gender dimension in teaching curricula.
The dataset contains data mostly collected through the Data Warehouse of the University of Bologna, as well as data generated through manual collection and surveys. As regarding the data, they are collected through 20 tables, that showed absolute values as well as percentages, and they are saved in a tabular format. For each collected and generated data, the dataset contain a specific protocol which explain how the data are collected and reported (i.e. the period of reference, the degree level, etc.).
These data allow to understand first what is the gender distribution in term of academic staff, and analyses this in term of advancement, as well as the gender distribution on the government and position of the University of Bologna. Second, they allow to measure the attention given to gender aspects in research and teaching at the University of Bologna (UNIBO).
Potential users of the dataset are the decision making body of UNIBO, the researchers at UNIBO and in Italy working on the state of gender balance in science and universities. National and international researchers conducting comparative research on the same subject can also benefit from the data collected.

Key area 1: 3 tables showing the gender composition of the governing and decision-making bodies and the presence and the gender composition of gender equality structures at UNIBO. The data were manually collected by the UNIBO gender audit team through institutional UNIBO reports and the website.
Key area 2: 9 tables. Tables from 1 to 3 show the gender composition of UNIBO students (new enrollments in the academic year 2015-16 in the undergraduate, master's and Ph.D. programs). The figures also include number of applications, acceptance and graduation rates in 2015-16 for the master's, Ph.D. and undergraduate programs (Data Warehouse).
Tables from 4 to 9 regard: a) the career selection and recruitment of academics in 2015 by gender; b) the last selection process carried out from 7 UNIBO Departments (see the README file); c) the carrier progression of a group of academics of UNIBO from 2005 to 2015 by gender and grade; d) the number of staff by age scale and gender in 2015; e) programmers that the RPO has to help/facilitate the career progression of women; f) data on gender pay gap for UNIBO academics by gender and grade. The data source were manual and digital collected by the human research area as well as the programming and support for evaluation area of UNIBO.
Key area 3: 4 tables on the measures to keep the link with people on parental leave and to promote joint responsibility in care at UNIBO.
The data source were manual and digital collected by the human research area as well as the programming and support for evaluation area (thought the Data Warehouse) of UNIBO.
Key area 4: 3 tables aimed to show:
i) gender composition of academic staff in 7 UNIBO Departments (Data Warehouse);
ii) gender in research project management and funding; integration of the sex/gender variables in UNIBO scientific publications. The data were manual and digital collected mostly by the research and third mission division of UNIBO.
iii) gender integration in research projects. The data was collected through a survey submitted to all the scientific coordinator of the 66 funded research project.
Key area 5: by 1 table on the degree to which gender/sex dimension is integrated into the teaching curricula in 7 Departments. The data were collected through a content analysis developed in the titles of all the UNIBO courses taught in A.Y. 2015/16. Also a survey was submitted in order to investigate the presence of gender-mixed groups, students gender-sensitiveness and methodology.


Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles are extremely attractive materials for numerous applications, especially in the anatase form. We have made these shaped, <10 nm anatase nanoparticles (NPs) via the supercritical (SC) drying of a titania sol, made by a "green" aqueous sol–gel nanosynthesis route. The SC drying was carried out in alcohol at 255–260 °C, and no further heating or processing of the NPs was required. The true phase composition (crystalline and amorphous phases) and the microstructure of the NPs was thoroughly characterised by the advanced X-ray methods, such as Rietveld-reference intensity ratio (RIR) and the whole powder pattern modelling (WPPM) technique, and HR-TEM analysis. Furthermore, the NPs were also characterised by Raman, FT-IR and optical spectroscopy. These anatase NPs showed themselves to exhibit a truncated tetragonal bipyramidal shape, exposing the {101} (side) and {001} (top) faces. They had a euhedral crystal habit, with sharply defined and easily recognised faces, and were very homogeneous and monodisperse in both shape and size. The photocatalytic activity (PCA) of the samples was assessed in gas–solid phase by monitoring the degradation of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a major atmospheric pollutant. Results showed that the particular shape of these anatase NPs played a key role in their photocatalytic behaviour. In fact, these truncated tetragonal bipyramidal nanocrystals exhibited an enhanced photocatalytic activity, double that of spherical anatase NPs of a similar size reported previously by the authors. This was attributed to the exposure of mainly the {101} and, to a lesser extent, {001} crystal faces, which are more reactive under photocatalysis for redox reactions.


INTRODUCTION: Otitis media remains one of the most common reasons for childhood primary health care presentations. Indigenous children are at the highest risk, but there are scarce data on how they are managed. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine how Australian primary health care medical practitioners diagnose and manage otitis media in Indigenous and non-Indigenous children. METHODS: We contacted all of Australia's Aboriginal Medical Services by using the national government's register to identify their medical practitioners. We mailed a pilot 5-page clinical vignette questionnaire instrument to these primary health care practitioners (N = 257). Responses for Indigenous children were compared with those for non-Indigenous children. RESULTS: Questionnaires were returned from 40.9% of medical practitioners (105 of 257) and 64.8% (57 of 88) of the nation's Aboriginal Medical Services. When examining children, practitioners used otoscopy (99.0% often/always) but not pneumatic otoscopy (67.0% never) or tympanometry (55.8% never). When practitioners diagnosed acute otitis media, they were more likely to use antibiotics (104 of 113 [92.0%]) when the child was Indigenous versus non-Indigenous (53 of 112 [47.3%]) (odds ratio: 12.9 [95% confidence interval: 5.9–27.9]). Amoxicillin was the most common antibiotic used (309 of 356 [86.8%]). The major factors that determined the practitioners' otitis media antibiotic use were Indigenous status (65.7%), wet perforations (63.7%), bulging tympanic membranes (58.3%), and fever (56.3%). The major factors for choosing no antibiotics were dry perforations (35.3%) and a well child (24.8%). Most practitioners were aware of the national guidelines (97.1%) but not the guidelines for Indigenous children (47.0%). CONCLUSIONS: Aboriginal Medical Service practitioners rely on otoscopy alone to diagnose otitis media and are more likely to use antibiotics for Indigenous children despite not knowing the guidelines.


Four years after the beginning of the Great Recession, the labor market remains historically weak. Many observers have concluded that "structural" impediments to recovery bear some of the blame. The author reviews such structural explanations, but after analyzing U.S. data on unemployment and productivity, he finds there is little evidence supporting these hypotheses. He finds that the bulk of the evidence is more consistent with the hypothesis that continued poor performance is primarily attributable to shortfalls in the aggregate demand for labor.


When new pipeline construction requires the crossing of highways and railroads, a pipeline is generally installed in pipe or tunnel linear plate encasement which has been installed by bore-jack or tunnel methods under the highway or railroad right-of-way to avoid disruption of traffic and to avoid open-cut patches which often have settlement problems. Two projects are discussed which involved large diameter water transmission pipelines crossing highways and railroads: the installation of 121.9-centimeter (48 - inch) diameter tape-coated steel pipe in 167.6-centimeter (66-inch) diameter reinforced concrete pipe encasement in El Paso, Texas; and the installation of 152.4-centimeter (60-inch) diameter pretensioned concrete cylinder pipe in 243.8-centimeter (96-inch) diameter tunnel liner plate near San Angelo, Texas.


On the May 20, 2012 (04:03:52 local time; 02:03:52 UTC), a moderate earthquake (Ml 5.9) [Scognamiglio et al. 2012, this volume] with a focal mechanism showing E-W-trending, S-dipping, reverse-faulting occurred in the eastern sector of the alluvial plain of the Po River, close to the border between the Regions of Emilia-Romagna and Lombardia (northern Italy). The tectonic structure is completely blind, but it was well known from a dense grid of seismic profiles for hydrocarbon explorations [e.g., Pieri and Groppi 1981, Toscani et al. 2009]. The earthquake triggered extensive liquefaction-induced ground effects at the surface, and caused severe structural damage to nonreinforced masonry and precast industrial buildings within the broader epicentral area. The hypocenter was at 44.89 ˚N, 11.23 ˚E, at a depth of 6.3 km [Scognamiglio et al. 2012], while the maximum acceleration was recorded in Mirandola, with peak ground acceleration 310 cm/s2 and 264 cm/s2 along the vertical and horizontal components, respectively [Bozzoni et al. 2012, this volume]. In this report, we focus on a zone including the Sant'A-gostino, San Carlo and Mirabello villages (west Ferrara Province), which were built along an abandoned reach of the Reno River and where liquefaction phenomena were particularly diffuse, with very intense local effects. […]


This paper describes dopants, apparatus, and procedures which can be used for planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) imaging of the fuel/oxygen equivalence ratio, the most important mixture parameter in combustion studies. The lifetime imaging techniques described here provide data beyond the data available from conventional intensity imaging, and should allow the equivalence ratio to be determined in real time in a two-dimensional slice of a fuel spray. Lifetime imaging methods require the sequential gating of two 2-D detectors during the fluorescence decay. Proof-of-concept experiments indicate that lifetimes ranging from 5 to 50 ns can be imaged with good accuracy. The requirements for fluorescent dopants and considerations for use under flame conditions are also discussed.


While technical skills and professional qualifications will continue to play an important role in the identification and selection of people to join our organisations, the development of life-long learning skills will be the corner-stone of an organisation's ongoing success and capacity to develop and adapt in a constantly shifting market place. Change is the only constant is the catch phrase of the moment. In a climate of everaccelerating, and often overwhelming change, the ability of individuals to develop suites of skills and knowledge that promote flexibility, innovation and creativity will be a key determinant of an organisation's future success or failure. However, these sets of skills, knowledge and attitudes are often not represented in position descriptions or profiles of attitudes. Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details This article was originally published as Jantti, M, Investing in people to develop the Ideal Culture, Momentum, The Quality Magazine, 1, June 2000. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/asdpapers/111


Tor is a large and popular overlay network providing both anonymity to its users and a platform for anonymous communication research. New design proposals and attacks on the system are challenging to test in the live network because of deployment issues and the risk of invading users' privacy, while alternative Tor experimentation techniques are limited in scale, are inaccurate, or create results that are difficult to reproduce or verify. We present the design and implementation of Shadow, an architecture for efficiently running accurate Tor experiments on a single machine. We validate Shadow's accuracy with a private Tor deployment on PlanetLab and a comparison to live network performance statistics. To demonstrate Shadow's powerful capabilities, we investigate circuit scheduling and find that the EWMA circuit scheduler reduces aggregate client performance under certain loads when deployed to the entire Tor network. Our software is open source and available for download.


Chronic Disease and The World Health Organization It is estimated that 35,000,000 people died from chronic diseases around the world in 2008. Every year, more than 60% of all deaths worldwide are because of chronic disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that for the first time in history deaths from chronic diseases will soon exceed deaths from communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal conditions, and nutritional deficiencies combined in low-income countries. According to WHO, comprehensive and integrated action is the means to prevent and control chronic disease. In developing countries, such as Ethiopia, chronic disease is a growing problem. Like many other chronic diseases, the incidence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Ethiopia is rising because of increased risk factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes mellitus. Despite the high prevalence of HIV in Africa (25% in some antenatal clinics), HIV nephropathy incidence is fairly low. In Africa, End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) remains a mostly fatal disease. Treatment considered the norm in industrialized countries is limited in Africa: dialysis is dependent on the availability of funding and charitable contributions. Few governments cover the cost of renal replacement therapy. For a variety of reasons, primarily financial, medical care in third world countries is inadequate at best, especially for expensive chronic illness treatment therapies such as dialysis and transplantation.


This thesis concerns mainly in deriving new 2-point and 3-point block
methods for solving a single equation of first order ODE directly using constant
step size in both explicit and implicit methods. These methods, which calculate the
numerical solution at more than one point simultaneously, are suitable for parallel
implementations.The programs of the methods employed are run on a shared
memory Sequent Symmetry SE30 parallel computer. The numerical results show
that the new methods reduce the total number of steps and execution time.The
accuracy of the parallel block and I-point methods is comparable particularly when
finer step size are used.The stability of the new methods also had been
investigated.


contract, electronic community, governance, e-commerce architecture We present work-in-progress towards a high -level e-commerce architecture for the electronic marketplace. We separate out the main components responsible for trading based on contractual relationships and trusted service delivery. In this setting, we view an enterprise as an autonomous entity that interacts with others according to their private utility function and a set of shared goals expressed as normative statements contained within contracts. The Governance component provides a regulated environment where the citizen's behaviour can be monitored and compared against agreed contracts. Regulatory mechanisms can be deployed by the Governance to maintain contractual integrity of transactions.


The mixing ratio of atmospheric methane (CH4) over the two large cities of Osaka and Kyoto achieves its maximum in the central part of the city and decreases toward the suburbs, with the same distribution patterns for nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHC) and carbon monoxide (CO). It is shown that CH4 is emitted from the same sources as NMHC and CO, whose contribution amounts to about 4% of the yearly mean of observed methane. The emission ratio of CH4 to total hydrocarbons is estimated to be 8.3±1.0%, calculated in terms of carbon number. The emission ratio of CH4 to CO is estimated to be 0.034±0.006 in volume.


Even though culture is seen as an important aspect of deliberation, empirical research on culture's effects on deliberation is almost completely absent. This paper offers one of the first systematic empirical studies of cultural underpinnings on deliberation. It explores two conceptions of culture, namely 'holistic' vs. 'contextual'. In the 'holistic' approach, culture is assumed to be a constant, while the 'contextual' approach assumes adaptive rationality of actors to different contexts. As an extension of the 'contextual' approach, this paper also explores the effects of different compositions of cultural groups on the quality of deliberation. The effects of the two approaches are evaluated by linking linguistic groups in the committee and plenary debates of the Swiss parliament to a broad variety of deliberative standards. The findings reveal that linguistic groups do not differ much in their deliberative behaviour, which defies 'holistic' approaches to culture. Rather, the results underline that speech culture is highly context-driven, which is indicative of a 'contextual' approach to culture. However, culture still plays a role, but mainly in the context of group composition: the proportion of minority-language speakers affects several deliberative indicators such as respect, common good orientation and clarifying questions.


The transformation from Kyoto to Paris has been analysed by international relations scholars, international law, and transnational governance theory. The international relations literature looks at the climate regime from a perspective of power distribution, state interests, institutions, and multilateral negotiations. International law theory focuses on legal analysis and design of international climate agreements. The transnational governance literature examines the participation of transnational actors at different levels of governance. However, each of these theories overlooks a bilateral trend of cooperation in a multilateral setting that arises as a part of construction or reconstruction of the international regime. Cooperation on climate change between the European Union and the United States deserves special scientific attention. Over the last 30 years of climate negotiations, these nations have met many challenges. However, these challenges currently give opportunities to revise the New Transatlantic Agenda and build a fruitful bilateral partnership and policy coordination in the area of climate change.


Framing study is getting more popular among the communication scholars. Many studies have been conducted to examine the frame building from the outlook of media framing rather than source framing. The role of news sources as an external factor in the frame-building process has thus far very much been neglected. The scrutiny of news sources – government, ruling political parties, education movement and interest groups, opposing political parties, general public, and editorial – for their predominant generic frames is believed to have made significant contribution to the school of framing study. This empirical research aims at comparing the framing of news stories by both newspapers and news sources. In addition, these two communication elements are to ascertain their relationships with news slants. Content analysis will be employed to meet the above research objectives. Five Chinese daily newspapers that are available at the research location are selected and their coverage on the educational issue of teaching and learning of mathematics and science subjects in two languages is chosen as it is thought to be relevant to the Malaysian Chinese community. Two significant events in this bilingual educational issue have been identified, i.e. the first announcement of using English as the medium of instruction for these two subjects by the then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 2002 and the announcement of retaining the examination format for 2008 Primary School Achievement Test by the then Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in 2007. The sampling procedure applies a three-week period after the abovementioned announcements by the country premiers. All paragraphs pertaining to the issue during the study periods are taken into scrutiny. A total of 2,374 units of analysis have been measured for the visibility of five predetermined generic frames. Source frames have been ascertained to emerge by means of favourable frame prominently portrayed by various news sources, who act as frame sponsors in building the news stories. The findings of this research profoundly claim that source frames do exist and they have more impact than media frames. Sources of information initiate and promote a certain frame in the news while media workers depend on the situation to quote the sources with both objective and subjective judgements for newsworthiness. In other words, the existence of frames in any news story is indeed crafted by sources while the media workers just process and get them printed on paper. In addition, the research results reveal that news sources are found to coalesce by way of slanting their news directions. This pattern of news slants is maintained throughout different periods.


Dipmeter data, core data, stratigraphic isochore data and seismic data provide the geologist with several different tools to obtain information on the orientation of bedding. When these data are integrated into a single database, the seismic interpreter can significantly improve the structural control of seismic interpretation by using all of the available information. In addition, any inconsistencies in orientation measurements from one or more data types are easily recognized, and the cause of the mismatch can be further examined. Experiences from the Gullfaks Field, northern North Sea, show that inconsistencies related to core data include non-optimal slabbing of cores, poorly developed bedding and misinterpreting sedimentary features as structural dip. Estimates of the orientation of bedding from stratigraphic isochore/isopach thickness estimates are poorly understood, or if repeated or missing sections related to faulting are not recognized. Bedding orientations from dipmeter data may be erroneous if the quality of the data are poor and the data points show significant scatter. Local variations in bedding orientation may be at a scale that will not be reflected in the seismic interpretation. In addition, in areas of poor seismic quality, seismic noise may interfere with real reflections and cause erroneous interpretation.


Melkersson-Rosenthal syndrome is an uncommon disorder which is presented by a triad of lip swelling, facial nerve palsy, and a fissured tongue. A number of treatments have been reported for this syndrome with variable outcomes. We have reported a 38-year-old female patient with lower lip swelling and a fissured tongue on clinical examination. She was also suffering from facial nerve paralysis since 8 years ago. A significant improvement of the signs was achieved with a combination of intralesional corticosteroid injection and oral azithromycin. Although our patient showed the triad, she had an atypical clinical course due to the initiation of syndrome with facial nerve palsy, resulting in a delay in definite diagnosis of her disease. The anti-inflammatory and immuno-modulatory effects of azithromycin and the therapeutic properties of the intralesional injection of corticosteroid have an important role in managing this syndrome.


Bliss* blocks sperm; Offspring of male geezers: a new wrinkle. Evidence suggests that human male fertility is impacted by long-term exposure to marijuana. Indeed, endocannabinoids and their receptors are present in the male reproductive tract, further suggesting a functional role in fertility, but there has been no genetic test to clarify mechanisms. Now, in a paper on p. 235 of this issue, Sun et al. characterize the phenotype of mice genetically lacking FAAH, fatty acid amide hydrolase. Male mice homozygous for the Faah knockout have elevated levels of anandamide, an endocannabinoid, in the reproductive system, and their sperm have decreased ability to fertilize due to poor penetration of the egg's zona pellucida. These results point to previously unsuspected pathways regulating sperm function. But perhaps more importantly, they are of great clinical significance: because sperm of chronic marijuana users, as well as sperm in Faah-mutant males are exposed to enhanced cannabinoid/endocannbinoid signaling, clinically beneficial effects of anandamide must be weighed against potentially harmful effects on fertility. (*Note: The term anandamide for the endocannabinoid N-arachidonoylethanolamide was coined by the discoverer of this compound, Dr. Mechoulam; ''ananda'' means bliss or ecstasy.)


Background: Reports of waning vaccine-induced immunity against COVID-19 have begun to surface. With that, the comparable long-term protection conferred by previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 remains unclear. Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study comparing three groups: (1)SARS-CoV-2-naive individuals who received a two-dose regimen of the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine, (2)previously infected individuals who have not been vaccinated, and (3)previously infected and single dose vaccinated individuals. Three multivariate logistic regression models were applied. In all models we evaluated four outcomes: SARS-CoV-2 infection, symptomatic disease, COVID-19-related hospitalization and death. The follow-up period of June 1 to August 14, 2021, when the Delta variant was dominant in Israel. Results: SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naive vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.


Abstract Conclusion Neck dissection after radiotherapy increased the risk of aspiration as a late effect in a sub-sample of patients treated for head and neck cancer in the ARTSCAN study. Patients treated with accelerated fractionation (AF) developed aspiration, with or without coughing, more frequently than patients treated with conventional fractionation (CF). Objectives A long-term follow-up study was conducted to determine the frequency of aspiration as a late effect in patients with head and neck cancer treated with AF or CF. Method One-hundred and eight patients were recruited from two centres of the Swedish multi-centre study, ARTSCAN, where AF and CF were compared. Patients with positive lymph nodes were treated with neck dissection after completing radiotherapy. The follow-up was performed at a median of 65 months after initiation of radiotherapy and included an ENT and a videofluoroscopic examination. Results Aspiration was found in 51/108 (47%) and silent aspiration in 34/96 (35%) patients. Neck dissection (n = 47 patients) was significantly associated with both aspiration and silent aspiration. Aspiration was more common among patients treated with AF (34/61; 56%) compared to CF (17/47; 36%; p = 0.053). Silent aspiration was also more common after AF (24/54; 44%) than after CF (10/42; 24%; p = 0.052).


Visible light communications (VLC) use modern solid-state light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to broadcast information. Emerging white-light LEDs allow the combination of lighting and optical wireless communication in one optical source. In this paper, a new LED lighting design using one-chip-type white LEDs is proposed for efficient illumination and optical wireless communications under the existence of several obstacles. Lighting and communication performance are analyzed to show the effectiveness of the proposed LED lighting. Specifically, the signal-to-noise ratio considering intersymbol interference and the bit-error rate of variable pulse position modulation (VPPM) with dimming control are considered.


An emission spectrographic method has been developed that has been found suitable for the determination of iron, silicon, chromium, lead, titanium, zinc, and tin in a concentration range of 0 07–1.0% The method consists of dissolving the sample in hydrochloric and sulfuric acids and converting it to the sulfate. One percent nickel is added as an internal standard and the sample is mixed with 2 parts of graphite. The procedure is found to have an average coefficient of variation of 5.1% for all determinations and has been found suitable is a rapid production control method for magnesium-aluminum alloys of 65/35 and 50/50 compositions.


We describe a biophysically motivated model of auditory salience based on a model of cortical responses and present results that show that the derived measure of salience can be used to identify the position of perceptual onsets in a musical stimulus successfully. The salience measure is also shown to be useful to track beats and predict rhythmic structure in the stimulus on the basis of its periodicity patterns. We evaluate the method using a corpus of unaccompanied freely sung stimuli and show that the method performs well, in some cases better than state-of-the-art algorithms. These results deserve attention because they are derived from a general model of auditory processing and not an arbitrary model achieving best performance in onset detection or beat-tracking tasks.


Bootstrapping trust assessment where there is little or no evidence regarding a subject is a significant challenge for existing trust and reputation systems. When direct or indirect evidence is absent, existing approaches usually assume that all agents are equally trustworthy. This naive assumption makes existing approaches vulnerable to attacks such as Sybil and whitewashing. Inspired by real‐life scenarios, we argue that malicious agents may share some common patterns or complex features in their descriptions. If such patterns or features can be detected, they can be exploited to bootstrap trust assessments. Based on this idea, we propose the use of frequent subgraph mining and state‐of‐the‐art knowledge representation formalisms to estimate a priori trust for agents. Our approach first discovers significant patterns that may be used to characterize trustworthy and untrustworthy agents. Then, these patterns are used as features to train a regression model to estimate the trustworthiness of agents. Last, a priori trust for unknown agents (e.g., newcomers) is estimated using the discovered features based on the trained model. Through empirical evaluation, we show that the proposed approach significantly outperforms well‐known trust approaches if trustworthiness of agents is correlated with patterns in their descriptions or social networks. Furthermore, we show that the proposed approach performs at least as good as the existing approaches if such correlations do not exist.


Low dimensional silicon, where quantum size effects play significant roles, enables silicon with new photonic functionalities. In this short review, we discuss the way that silicon nanocrystals are produced, their optoelectronic properties and a few device applications. We demonstrate that low dimensional silicon is an optimum material for developing silicon photonics.


The dominant explanatory/justificatory framework informing scholarly commentary on copyright law, policy and theory today – certainly in the US – is law and economics. From this perspective, copyright law exists to underpin markets in certain categories of 'information good' (copyright works). These markets in turn function to ensure that the private costs and benefits of information production and consumption line up (more or less) with the social costs and benefits of these activities, ie that 'free-riding' on the efforts of information producers is (more or less) curtailed. A widely held view is that this tradition of what might be called 'copyright-law-and-economics' is now deeply divided – between adherents to what Glynn Lunney has called 'copyright's incentives-access paradigm' on the one hand, and proponents of what Mark Lemley has called the 'full value' or 'absolute protection' paradigm on the other. Absolute protection theorists tend towards the view that all uses of copyright works should be capable of being controlled (and so priced) by the right-owner; incentives-access theorists distinguish between uses the control of which would affect the information producer's incentives ex ante, and those that would not, and recommend that copyright protection should extend to the former category only. This paper examines the features that are said to distinguish the two paradigms from each other, focusing especially on the approach each recommends to copyright's scope (ie the issue of what uses of copyright works properly constitute copyright infringements). Particular attention is paid to the efforts of critical economists of intellectual property law such as Lemley and Brett Frischmann to retrieve and advance versions of the incentives-access paradigm with a view to counteracting the disadvantages for society they believe are associated with the absolute protection paradigm. Ultimately, however, I conclude that too much has been made of the distinction, and that the debate over which paradigm should have priority in determining the contours of copyright policy distracts attention from a more fundamental issue – the hegemony of economic analysis generally in organising the conceptual and normative universe of legal scholars working in this area. Thus while sympathetic to the impulse underlying the efforts of Lemley and Frischmann – a concern to resist the seemingly relentless expansion of copyright towards the horizon of absolute right-holder control of all uses of copyright material – I argue that their lingering adherence to the presuppositions of economic analysis has stymied their well-meaning efforts to account for the social value of 'information' in terms distinct from the merely economic measure of price. My overall aim here is to suggest that, because of its presuppositions, economic analysis – in whatever paradigm it may be packaged – offers at best a blinkered perspective on both copyright law and the field of social life that copyright law affects. I conclude by proposing Jurgen Habermas's social theory as an alternative framework in relation to which critics of copyright expansionism might fruitfully orient themselves in the future.


We contribute to the literature investigating the relationship between subjective wellbeing and income inequality by testing the nexus between the two variables using regional inequality indicators and individual data from the cross-country European Social Survey sample. We find evidence for a nonlinear relationship where life satisfaction is higher in correspondence with low to medium levels of inequality, while the effect becomes negative when inequality passes an intermediate threshold. Our findings are robust when estimated in sample splits based on relative income position and individual preferences for inequality and redistribution policies. A likely rationale for our nonlinear finding is that the Hirshmann's tunnel effect (and the positive effect of social mobility) prev ails for low levels of inequality, while inequality aversion and negative relative income effects hit when inequality becomes more serious.


This paper provides an updated summary of the research being conducted at the University of Manchester, UK, in the area of remote characterisation through the use of robotic systems, in support of the decommissioning plan for the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, UK. The research is being conducted in collaboration with a number of companies including Sellafield Ltd, the National Nuclear Laboratory and Forth Engineering Ltd. The progress of a number of novel mobile robotic platforms being developed at the University of Manchester is presented including the AVEXIS underwater vehicles, ground and sub-surface vehicles and alpha glove box decontamination robots. Also presented is the ongoing work on the remote sensing technologies and techniques which will be deployed on the robotic platforms.


We recorded an explosively induced, 320-m-deep mine collapse and subsequent aftershocks at White Pine, Michigan, using an array of 12 seismic stations, sited within 1 km of surface ground zero. The collapse, which followed the rubblizing of a 2 × 104 m2 panel of a room-and-pillar copper mine, was induced to facilitate leaching operations. The explosions produced little seismic energy; however, fracturing and collapse stages produced large signals that were observed at distances up to 900 km, yielding a magnitude (mbLg) of 2.8. Previous work showed the initial collapse to be an expanding seismic source, interpreted as an opening tensile crack, opposite to the implosional character most often observed for natural mine collapses (Yang et al., 1998). We counted over 4000 aftershocks; their occurrence rate followed the modified Omori law: rate = 560 (time − 0.01)−1.3, with time in hours. Based on P-wave polarities, we identified events of shear-slip, implosional, and tensile character in the aftershock sequence. For shear-slip events, we found stress drops of 1 bar or less, seismic moments of 1015−1017 dyne cm, (Mw−0.8−0.5) and source radii of 10-50 m. Corner frequencies for implosional events were relatively low, an indication that the collapsed cavity played a role in the source process. This caused implosional events to separate from other events in source parameter plots, providing a technique for classifying events of unknown type. We obtained locations of 135 aftershocks using P- and S-wave data. The aftershock zone was less than 100-m thick, situated just above and along the western, mined edge of the collapsed mine panel. Implosional events occurred at the bottom of the active volume, while shear-slip events were distributed throughout. Shear-slip focal mechanisms indicated thrusting along north-striking planes, consistent with the high, eastwest regional compressive stress, coupled with a local decrease in vertical stress. The inferred deficit of vertical stress above the western panel edge following collapse indicated that overburden load shifted preferentially to the surrounding, unmined areas, consistent with lower-than-predicted stresses measured in the first row of intact pillars.


The research described in this thesis addresses "hot" electron diodes, otherwise known as Bulk Unipolar Diodes (BUD's), which require the formation of narrow, highly doped layers in a semiconductor with abrupt transitions from one doping level to another. A review of the properties of this family of devices is undertaken and since a BUD is formed by a narrow plane of ionised impurities within a semiconductor, analysis show that it is possible to control the in-built barrier electrostatically via a gate located in the vicinity of the barrier region (p-plane region). A study of the role of injected minority carriers has been applied in two areas, deployed in the two-state switch and the photodetector applications.
An investigation of the switching characteristics of the Bulk Unipolar Switch (BUS) and various device design parameters using an empirical formula, is presented for Computer-Aided-Design (CAD). The model has been shown to simulate all the critical points on the I/V characteristic and the reconstruction is in good agreement with published results.
The p-plane BUD structure is analysed in detail and the results from numerical methods are given for the device by modifying various design parameters. Objective assessment has lead to the development of a novel p-plane photodetector where the internal gain is due to optical modulation of the potential barrier inside the bulk material via the diffusion and thermionic emission theories for the first time. Qualitative analysis of how optically generated holes in the vicinity of the p t-plane have the effect of lowering the height of the potential barrier, are presented. Results from analysis show the
dependence of the high gain on the modulation of the barrier.


A coupled surface graph cut algorithm for airway wall segmentation from Computed Tomography (CT) images is presented. Using cost functions that highlight both inner and outer wall borders, the method combines the search for both borders into one graph cut. The proposed method is evaluated on 173 manually segmented images extracted from 15 different subjects and shown to give accurate results, with 37% less errors than the Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) algorithm and 62% less than a similar graph cut method without coupled surfaces. Common measures of airway wall thickness such as the Interior Area (IA) and Wall Area percentage (WA%) was measured by the proposed method on a total of 723 CT scans from a lung cancer screening study. These measures were significantly different for participants with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) compared to asymptomatic participants. Furthermore, reproducibility was good as confirmed by repeat scans and the measures correlated well with the outcomes of pulmonary function tests, demonstrating the use of the algorithm as a COPD diagnostic tool. Additionally, a new measure of airway wall thickness is proposed, Normalized Wall Intensity Sum (NWIS). NWIS is shown to correlate better with lung function test values and to be more reproducible than previous measures IA, WA% and airway wall thickness at a lumen perimeter of 10 mm (PI10).


Many reinforcement learning (RL) environments consist of independent entities that interact sparsely. In such environments, RL agents have only limited influence over other entities in any particular situation. Our idea in this work is that learning can be efficiently guided by knowing when and what the agent can influence with its actions. To achieve this, we introduce a measure of \emph{situation-dependent causal influence} based on conditional mutual information and show that it can reliably detect states of influence. We then propose several ways to integrate this measure into RL algorithms to improve exploration and off-policy learning. All modified algorithms show strong increases in data efficiency on robotic manipulation tasks.


We describe a postgrowth method to produce passband filters with different center wavelengths from a single growth run by irreversibly changing the refractive index of a layer or a series of layers within the filter. This leads to a new type of filter, the passband-shifting filter, whose center wavelength can be irreversibly shifted from lambda0 to lambda0 - deltalambda after the filter has been grown. The passband shift can be controlled exactly by proper design of the multilayer. We present the theory behind passband-shifting-filter design along with transfer-matrix simulations and preliminary experimental results for a two-cavity filter, using lateral oxidation of AlxGa1-x As-based materials to effect the passband shift.


Abstract. We compare Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) versions 3 and 4, V003 and V004, respectively, nadir-stare ozone profiles with ozonesonde profiles from the Arctic Intensive Ozonesonde Network Study (ARCIONS, http://croc.gsfc.nasa.gov/arcions/ during the Arctic Research on the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS) field mission. The ozonesonde data are from launches timed to match Aura's overpass, where 11 coincidences spanned 44° N to 71° N from April to July 2008. Using the TES "stare" observation mode, 32 observations are taken over each coincidental ozonesonde launch. By effectively sampling the same air mass 32 times, comparisons are made between the empirically-calculated random errors to the expected random errors from measurement noise, temperature and interfering species, such as water. This study represents the first validation of high latitude (>70°) TES ozone. We find that the calculated errors are consistent with the actual errors with a similar vertical distribution that varies between 5% and 20% for V003 and V004 TES data. In general, TES ozone profiles are positively biased (by less than 15%) from the surface to the upper-troposphere (~1000 to 100 hPa) and negatively biased (by less than 20%) from the upper-troposphere to the lower-stratosphere (100 to 30 hPa) when compared to the ozonesonde data. Lastly, for V003 and V004 TES data between 44° N and 71° N there is variability in the mean biases (from −14 to +15%), mean theoretical errors (from 6 to 13%), and mean random errors (from 9 to 19%).


Estuaries are the interface between freshwater systems and the sea, with clearly recognizable changes in the distribution of organisms along various environmental gradients from riverine to fully marine conditions. This thesis studied ecological processes affecting the distribution of marine species along estuarine gradients using both field and laboratory experiments with barnacles as a tractable model system. Elminius modes/us Darwin, Semibalanus balanoides Linneaus, Chthamalus montagui Southward are the most common barnacle species found in the intertidal of British estuaries. Surveys performed in the Plym and the Yealm Estuaries revealed that E. modes/us occurred furthest up estuaries and was dominant along most of their length, with the exception of sites closest to the sea; C. montagui had the most restricted degree of penetration up-estuary; and S. balanoides occurred at low abundances, with limits of penetration located between those of C. montagui and E. modestus. Transplants of adult specimens to sites along the marine-to-freshwater gradient revealed that E. modes/us was better adapted to environmental conditions found in inner areas of the estuaries than C. montagui and S. balanoides. Survival of the latter two species was negatively correlated with deposition of silt and decreasing salinity. Laboratory experiments showed that, in contrast to the other two species, E. modestus was highly tolerant to burial by silt. A comparison of observed distributions along the gradients with survivability showed that C. monlagui was able to survive in areas where adults were absent, indicating that early life cycle stages were a potential limiting factor to the distribution of this species. Examination of patterns of cyprid settlement and recruitment to the benthic phase reinforced the suggestion that pre-settlement processes contribute to restrictions in the distribution of both C. monlagui and S. balanoides. The abundance of these species, post-settlement, was also affected by physico-chemical conditions in the upper estuary. Pre-settlement processes did not limit the distribution of E. modes/us and post-settlement processes appeared to be more important in limiting its abundance at sites closest to the sea.


The 2004 Global Labor Survey (GLS) is an Internet-based survey that seeks to measure de facto labor practices in countries around the world, covering issues such as freedom of association, the regulation of work contracts, employee benefits and the prevalence of collective bargaining. To find out about de facto practices, the GLS invited labor practitioners, ranging from union officials and activists to professors of labor law and industrial relations, to report on conditions in their country. Over 1,500 persons responded, which allowed us to create indices of practices in ten broad areas for 33 countries. The GLS' focus on de facto labor practices contrasts with recent studies of de jure labor regulations (Botero et al., 2004) and with more limited efforts to measure labor practices as part of surveys of economic freedom (Fraser Institute) and competitiveness (World Economic Forum). Although our pool of respondents differs greatly from the conservative foundations and business leaders who contribute respectively to the Fraser Institute and World Economic Forum reports, the GLS and the labor market components of the economic freedom and competitiveness measures give similar pictures of labor practices across countries. This similarity across respondents with different economic interests and ideological perspectives suggests that they are all reporting on labor market realities in a relatively unbiased way. As a broad summary statement, the GLS shows that practices favorable to workers are more prevalent in countries with high levels of income per capita; are associated with less income inequality; are unrelated to aggregate growth rates; but are modestly positively associated with unemployment.