The synthesis of conjugated polymers specifically for organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) has attracted much attention recently for their great potential in biological applications. In this case, not only the carrier mobility but also the ionic conduction capability and redox stability of the polymers in an aqueous environment are critical to the device performance. Here, we report a series of dithienyldiketopyrrolopyrrole (DTDPP) based polymers used in organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). With the combination of ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) and glycolated side chains, the optimized polymers present low ionization potential and ultrahigh volumetric capacitance. The resultant OECTs show high transconductance, a high on/off ratio, low threshold voltage, fast response time and remarkably high stability in aqueous solutions. Furthermore, various short-term synaptic functions are successfully mimicked through the optimization of electrolytes and operation modes, indicating that the DPP-based polymer is promising for broad applications in bioelectronics.


When consumer choices have inertia, firms have incentives to use dynamic pricing by first reducing the price to build a large market share, and then by increasing prices. This strategy may reduce consumer welfare through increases in the prices for incumbents, while also changing the patterns of entry and exit in the market. Although the presence of inertia in health care markets has been well established, little is known about the welfare implications of dynamic pricing in these markets. In order to assess these implications, in this paper I develop and estimate a dynamic model of supply and demand for Medicare Part D prescription drug insurance plans, where multi-product firms consider consumer inertia in their decisions about premiums, offerings of new plans, and exit of plans. Using the model and the estimated parameters, I conduct counterfactual exercises where I explore the welfare effects of a policy that limits dynamic pricing by imposing fixed markups. I find that this policy, given the actual consumer inertia present in this market, would improve consumer welfare by 3.1%, through a reduction in premiums that is partially off-set by a reduction of entry into the market. When the same policy is implemented in a counterfactual scenario without inertia, it has a larger positive effect, increasing consumer welfare by 9.4% relative to the benchmark. This difference indicates that policies that limit dynamic pricing can be more effective in improving consumer welfare in markets with lower levels of consumer inertia, where they are less likely to harm market entry.


We report on the observation of the bright, long gamma-ray burst, GRB 090902B, by the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) instruments on-board the Fermi observatory. This was one of the brightest GRBs to have been observed by the LAT, which detected several hundred photons during the prompt phase. With a redshift of z = 1.822, this burst is among the most luminous detected by Fermi. Time-resolved spectral analysis reveals a significant power-law component in the LAT data that is distinct from the usual Band model emission that is seen in the sub-MeV energy range. This power-law component appears to extrapolate from the GeV range to the lowest energies and is more intense than the Band component both below $\sim$ 50 keV and above 100 MeV. The Band component undergoes substantial spectral evolution over the entire course of the burst, while the photon index of the power-law component remains constant for most of the prompt phase, then hardens significantly towards the end. After the prompt phase, power-law emission persists in the LAT data as late as 1 ks post-trigger, with its flux declining as $t^{-1.5}$. The LAT detected a photon with the highest energy so far measured from a GRB, $33.4_{-3.5}^{+2.7}$ GeV. This event arrived 82 seconds after the GBM trigger and $\sim$ 50 seconds after the prompt phase emission had ended in the GBM band. We discuss the implications of these results for models of GRB emission and for constraints on models of the Extragalactic Background Light.


Flower calyces Rosela (Hibiscus sabdariffa L) is a traditional medicine as anti-hypertension is now widely used in various preparations. This research alms to create effervescent tablets of flower calyces extract Rosela (Hibiscus sabdariffa L) with a stable characteristic of simplex lattice design method. Formula optimization used simplex lattice design because this method does not require much effort and money. Then extracts are tested their physical properties including appearance, viscosity, and moisture content. Granules obtained are tested it flow time. While testing physical properties include the effervescent tablet weight uniformity, tablet hardness, friability, and time dissolve tablet in water. To get the equation to obtain the profile properties - the physical properties of effervescent tablets, then the simplex lattice design based on the formula that made three Fl (aspartame 50%: 50% Tropicana Slim®), Fll (aspartame 100%: 0% Tropicana Slim®) and Fill (0%aspartame: 100% Tropicana Slim®). Formula optimization is done by using variable hardness, friability, and time dissolve with each - each coefficient of 0.33, 0.32, 0.35. From the results of optimization using simplex lattice design method obtained a total response value (R)Is the concentration of aspartame 40%: 60% Tropicana Slim® which is the optimum formula. Besides the active compounds of flavonoids routine can still be found in the effervescent tablet is produced. Respondents most preferred formula is formula II, with 50% aspartame and 50% Tropicana Slim®.


The East Toronto Health Partners (ETHP) include more than 50 organizations working collaboratively to create an integrated system of care in the east end of Toronto. This existing partnership proved invaluable as a platform for a rapid, coordinated local response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Months after the first wave of the pandemic began, with the daily numbers of COVID-19 cases finally starting to decline, leaders from ETHP provided preliminary reflections on two critical questions: (1) How were existing integration efforts leveraged to mobilize a response during the COVID-19 crisis? and (2) How can the response to the initial wave of COVID-19 be leveraged to further accelerate integration and better address subsequent waves and system improvements once the pandemic abates?


Extracted from text ... 4 May 2006 Moneyweb's PERSONAL FINANCE
BONDS
How bond
investments work
What are the factors that influence them, and how do
you get into them?
By ANA MONTEIRO
FOR a long time, the bond market
was an investment arena reserved
for the super-rich, insurance companies
and unit trust funds, with the
nominal value of a single bond running
into hundreds of thousands of
rands.
However, with the introduction
of government retail bonds by the
National Treasury in May 2004,
individuals are now able to effectively
'lend' their money to the
government, receiving bi-annual
interest payments, and get their initial ..


Interoperability among government agencies at national borders, also known as coordinated border management (CBM), is a fundamental component of a nation's modernized customs and border control strategy. It comprises the streamlining of parallel processes and technologies enabling different government agencies to effectively work together on border issues. By 4 implementing CBM strategies at both the domestic and international levels, countries can reduce internal costs and inefficiencies, improve security, and increase their ability to facilitate trade and generate revenue at the border.


The recent emergence of Chinese digital platform firms whose size rivals that of the US platform giants has attracted much popular interest. Given the size and increasing technical sophistication of these firms, there has been increasing interest in whether they have developed sufficient capacities and resources to become global-class competitors for the reigning US platform giants. We assembled a database of all overseas operations of the Chinese platform firms. Nine of them as have foreign operations, with Tencent and Alibaba being the most important offshore investors. We describe the globalization patterns of these firms and analyze the strengths and obstacles to their globalization. Their globalization has proceeded on a number of vectors: First, these firms, with a few exceptions, when they have global strategies, have largely invested in firms with useful technology or content. Another common strategy has been to follow Chinese customers abroad. Second, Chinese firms have made equity investments in a number of foreign domestic internet firms. And yet, in nearly all foreign markets, Chinese websites and apps still trail US firms in market share and salience. Finally, Chinese investments are concentrated investments in proximate countries, Chinese platform firms, while having some state-of-the-art technologies, have a far smaller foreign presence than do their US competitors. Finally, we consider the implications of our research for discussions of whether emerging nation multinational firms require new theories for explaining their globalization.


SUMMARY Type IV secretion systems (T4SS) translocate DNA and protein substrates across prokaryotic cell envelopes generally by a mechanism requiring direct contact with a target cell. Three types of T4SS have been described: (i) conjugation systems, operationally defined as machines that translocate DNA substrates intercellularly by a contact-dependent process; (ii) effector translocator systems, functioning to deliver proteins or other macromolecules to eukaryotic target cells; and (iii) DNA release/uptake systems, which translocate DNA to or from the extracellular milieu. Studies of a few paradigmatic systems, notably the conjugation systems of plasmids F, R388, RP4, and pKM101 and the Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirB/VirD4 system, have supplied important insights into the structure, function, and mechanism of action of type IV secretion machines. Information on these systems is updated, with emphasis on recent exciting structural advances. An underappreciated feature of T4SS, most notably of the conjugation subfamily, is that they are widely distributed among many species of gram-negative and -positive bacteria, wall-less bacteria, and the Archaea. Conjugation-mediated lateral gene transfer has shaped the genomes of most if not all prokaryotes over evolutionary time and also contributed in the short term to the dissemination of antibiotic resistance and other virulence traits among medically important pathogens. How have these machines adapted to function across envelopes of distantly related microorganisms? A survey of T4SS functioning in phylogenetically diverse species highlights the biological complexity of these translocation systems and identifies common mechanistic themes as well as novel adaptations for specialized purposes relating to the modulation of the donor-target cell interaction.


Instructions: 1.3 contact hours will be awarded by Villanova University College of Nursing upon successful completion of this activity. A contact hour is a unit of measurement that denotes 60 minutes of an organized learning activity. This is a learner-based activity. Villanova University College of Nursing does not require submission of your answers to the quiz. A contact hour certificate will be awarded once you register, pay the registration fee, and complete the evaluation form online at http://goo.gl/gMfXaf. To obtain contact hours you must:


Hurricane Matthew (2016) caused significant beach and dune erosion from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, USA, to Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. At Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the storm caused beach recession, and much of the southern half of the city's beaches appeared to be overwashed in post-storm surveys. Around half of the city's beaches appeared overwashed following the storm; however, the Storm Impact Scale (SIS; Sallenger 2000) applied to a pre-storm elevation model suggests less than 10% of the city's beaches should have experienced overwash. Spatial analysis of elevation and land cover data reveals dunes that were "overwashed" during Matthew drain from watersheds that are >35% impervious, where those showing only dune recession are <5% impervious. The densely developed downtown of Myrtle Beach sits on a low seaward-sloping terrace. Additionally, indurated strata beneath the downtown area can prevent groundwater from draining during excessive rain events. As a result, the most continuous impervious surface cover and near-surface strata lie within a half-kilometer of the beach and drain directly to the backshore. Along the U.S. Southeast coast, this is somewhat rare; many coastal systems feature a lagoon or low-lying bottomland along their landward border, which facilitates drainage of upland impervious surfaces following storm passage. At Myrtle Beach, all of the stormwater runoff is drained directly to the beach through a series of outfall pipes. Many of the outfall pipes are located along the backshore, near the elevation of storm surge during Matthew. Runoff from Matthew's heavy rains was observed causing ponding on the landward side of the foredune and scouring around beach access walkways. Based on these observations, the severe dune erosion experienced near downtown Myrtle Beach during Hurricane Matthew may have been caused by runoff and/or groundwater flux rather than overwash. These results highlight an unexpected relationship between upland conditions and dune erosion on a developed shoreline. That is, dune erosion can be caused by mechanisms beside overwash during storm events.


Responding to concerns about burden-sharing and aiming to improve internal defence cooperation, act more quickly and harness resource synergies, the European Union (EU) initiated the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in 2017. PESCO, however, is controversial. On the one hand, the United States (US) wants greater burden-sharing by European allies whilst concerned about greater European military autarky that would undermine US influence over NATO, Europe/EU and EU member states. Onthe other hand, at least one European NATO ally wants to leverage PESCO precisely as an instrument to shore up European "strategic autonomy". This tension over competing European defence futures leaves participation by third countries in limbo. Arguably, third-country participation would hinder greater European defence autarky. The article makes the case for the mutual benefits of third-country participation, focusing on Canada. Canada has a major stake in the outcome. NATO is Canada's most important multilateral institution and Europe is Canada's second-most important strategic partner, after the US. Canada's unequivocal strategic interests in Europe have long informed its expeditionary priorities -- from the two world wars, when Canada coming to Europe's defence long before the USproved existential for both parties, to nowadays. Since the 1970s, Canada and Europe have worked consistently together bilaterally beyond NATO to advance regional stability and mutual security interests. Canada's and Europe's defence futures are thus interdependent. Excluding third countries from participating in PESCO would have detrimental consequences for Canadian, European and transatlantic defence interests. In contrast, with third country participation, PESCO will be instrumental to effective transatlantic and transeuropean defence integration.


In a book that blends anecdote with analysis, Kathleen Hall Jamieson-author of the award-winning Packaging the Presidency-offers a perceptive and often disturbing account of the transformation of political speechmaking. Jamieson addresses such fundamental issues about public speaking as what talents and techniques differentiate eloquent speakers from non-eloquent speakers. She also analyzes the speeches of modern presidents from Truman to Reagan and of political players from Daniel Webster to Mario Cuomo. Ranging from the classical orations of Cicero to Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, this lively, well-documented volume contains a wealth of insight into public speaking, contemporary characteristics of eloquence, and the future of political discourse in America.


Starbucks. McDonald's. Target and Wal-Mart. Ford, Chevy and Toyota. John Deere and Caterpillar. It doesn't take long for images of these American icons to enter our thoughts when we see their logos. They each have brand power, a strong reputation with consumers and the power to influence the way we think. Does your agricultural program have the same characteristics? This thought may not have crossed your mind before, but as we continue to face more urbanization, shrinking production agriculture and the continued challenge of limited educational resources, it is essential that we think of our programs as many of the aforementioned companies do. Great! Yet another thing I have to put on my plate as an agricultural science educator! The classroom, FFA Activities, CDE's, fundraising, alumni and parents, my involvement in my agricultural teachers' association and my school... and now there is more? Believe me, I am right there with you. Agricultural science educators should be teachers first and foremost, but we usually have a long list of additional responsibilities - and these are in addition to our personal lives. Can it all work? Can I really do more? I believe you can, and that a few simple strategies can actually help save you time and energy while building your program! Let's keep it simple! The strategies you can apply to "brand" your program and chapter don't need to be complicated. Take one or two of them on each year until they are a part of your program's recognized routine. Customize them to meet the needs of your individual program, staff, community and students. You may even find that some of these suggestions cause you to think of your own better ideas. Get your students involved, as they can play a vital role in your program's branding too! In fact, aren't they truly your agricultural education program's brand? So, why shouldn't they be involved? OK! OK! So I'm on board, but where do I begin? The simple answer to that question is: what is your program's role in the lives of your students? How are you perceived in the community? What are some strengths you can capitalize on while addressing some of your weaknesses? A great way to guide this train of thought is through a staff discussion about your program's mission statement. If the program already has a clearly articulated mission statement, great... feel free to skip down to the next paragraph for step two. If not, creating one is a very simple process. There are many web sites that can help; search "creating a mission and vision statement" on your favorite search engine, and you will find ample help. It is important to define what you are all about before you try to "brand" your program. The companies above have done it. When we think of Wal-Mart, we think low prices; when we think of Starbucks, a good cup of coffee in a unique environment. What do you want your program to be known for? These are the questions to ask yourself as you create your program's mission and vision. Step Two: Your Target Audience. Agricultural programs are unique when compared to the companies listed above in that they are many things to many people. Ask your students, parents, administrators and supporters what your agricultural science program means to them, and you will likely get as many answers. Most of us would agree that we are in the business of educating students, but we do have other roles. Here are a few of the stakeholders we need to keep in mind: * Students *Parents * Sponsors/supporters (this usually includes the local agricultural industry) * Booster clubs * Alumni * Teachers, administrators and school board members * Advisory committees Other (university programs, state staff, National FFA) I'm sure you can think of others, too. As stated before, most of us agree that students come first. But beyond that, individual programs will dictate the remaining order. …


Annotations are a means to make critical remarks, to explain and
comment things, to add notes and give opinions, and to relate objects.
Nowadays, they can be found in digital libraries and collaboratories,
for example as a building block for scientific discussion on the one
hand or as private notes on the other. We further find them in product
reviews, scientific databases and many "Web 2.0" applications; even
well-established concepts like emails can be regarded as annotations
in a certain sense. Digital annotations can be (textual) comments,
markings (i.e. highlighted parts) and references to other documents
or document parts. Since annotations convey information which is
potentially important to satisfy a user's information need, this
thesis tries to answer the question of how to exploit annotations for
information retrieval. It gives a first answer to the question if
retrieval effectiveness can be improved with annotations.

A survey of the "annotation universe" reveals some facets of
annotations; for example, they can be content level annotations
(extending the content of the annotation object) or meta level ones
(saying something about the annotated object). Besides the annotations
themselves, other objects created during the process of annotation can
be interesting for retrieval, these being the annotated fragments.
These objects are integrated into an object-oriented model comprising
digital objects such as structured documents and annotations as well
as fragments. In this model, the different relationships among the
various objects are reflected. From this model, the basic data
structure for annotation-based retrieval, the structured annotation
hypertext, is derived.

In order to thoroughly exploit the information contained in structured
annotation hypertexts, a probabilistic, object-oriented logical
framework called POLAR is introduced. In POLAR, structured annotation
hypertexts can be modelled by means of probabilistic propositions and
four-valued logics. POLAR allows for specifying several relationships
among annotations and annotated (sub)parts or fragments. Queries can
be posed to extract the knowledge contained in structured annotation
hypertexts. POLAR supports annotation-based retrieval, i.e. document
and discussion search, by applying an augmentation strategy (knowledge
augmentation, propagating propositions from subcontexts like annotations,
or relevance augmentation, where retrieval status values are propagated)
in conjunction with probabilistic inference, where P(d -> q), the probability
that a document d implies a query q, is estimated.

POLAR's semantics is based on possible worlds and accessibility
relations. It is implemented on top of four-valued probabilistic Datalog.

POLAR's core retrieval functionality, knowledge augmentation with
probabilistic inference, is evaluated for discussion and document
search. The experiments show that all relevant POLAR objects, merged
annotation targets, fragments and content annotations, are able to
increase retrieval effectiveness when used as a context for discussion
or document search. Additional experiments reveal that we can determine
 the polarity of annotations with an accuracy of around 80%.


Scalable in-memory key-value stores provide low-latency access times of a few microseconds and perform millions of operations per second per server. With all data in memory, these systems should provide a high level of reconfigurability. Ideally, they should scale up, scale down, and rebalance load more rapidly and flexibly than disk-based systems. Rapid reconfiguration is especially important in these systems since a) DRAM is expensive and b) they are the last defense against highly dynamic workloads that suffer from hot spots, skew, and unpredictable load. However, so far, work on in-memory key-value stores has generally focused on performance and availability, leaving reconfiguration as a secondary concern. We present Rocksteady, a live migration technique for the RAMCloud scale-out in-memory key-value store. It balances three competing goals: it migrates data quickly, it minimizes response time impact, and it allows arbitrary, fine-grained splits. Rocksteady migrates 758 MB/s between servers under high load while maintaining a median and 99.9th percentile latency of less than 40 and 250 μs, respectively, for concurrent operations without pauses, downtime, or risk to durability (compared to 6 and 45 μs during normal operation). To do this, it relies on pipelined and parallel replay and a lineagelike approach to fault-tolerance to defer re-replication costs during migration. Rocksteady allows RAMCloud to defer all repartitioning work until the moment of migration, giving it precise and timely control for load balancing.


Mycobacterium tuberculosis and other members of the actinomycete family produce mycothiol (MSH or acetylcysteine-glucosamine-inositol, AcCys-GlcN-Ins) to protect the organism against oxidative and antibiotic stress. The biosynthesis of MSH proceeds via a five-step process that involves four unique enzymes, MshA-D, which represent specific targets for inhibitor design. Recombinant Mycobacterium smegmatis MshC catalyzes the ATP-dependent condensation of glucosamine-inositol (GlcN-Ins) and cysteine to form Cys-GlcN-Ins. The 1.6 A three-dimensional structure of MshC in complex with a tight binding bisubstrate analogue, 5'-O-[N-(L-cysteinyl)sulfamonyl]adenosine (CSA), has suggested specific roles for T46, H55, T83, W227, and D251. In addition, a catalytic role for H55 has been proposed on the basis of studies of related aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. Site-directed mutagenesis was conducted to evaluate the functional roles of these highly conserved residues. All mutants exhibited significantly decreased k(cat) values, with the exception of T83V for which a <7-fold decrease was observed compared to that of the wild type (WT). For the T46V, H55A, W227F, and D251N mutants, the rate of cysteine activation decreased 100-1400-fold compared to that of WT, consistent with the important roles of these residues in the first half-reaction. The approximately 2000-fold decrease in k(cat)/K(m) as well as the approximately 20-fold decrease in K(m) for cysteine suggested a significant role for T46 in cysteine binding. Kinetic studies also indicate a function for W227 in cysteine binding but not in substrate discrimination against serine. H55 was also observed to play a significant role in ATP binding as well as cysteine adenylation. The activity of H55A was partially rescued with exogenous imidazole at acidic pH values, suggesting that the protonated form of histidine is exerting a catalytic role. The pH dependence of the kinetic parameters with the WT enzyme suggests an additional requirement for a catalytic base in cysteinyl ligation.


Magneto-optical methods were applied for the first time in millimeter wavelength range for characterization of anisotropic ferrites. The principles of the free-space magneto-optical method are presented and the new experimental procedures leading to the determination of millimeter-wave permeability and permittivity in anisotropic ferrite materials are described. The measurements were performed with a computer-controlled W-band (70-120 GHz) quasi-optical-waveguide bridge. A backward-wave oscillator was used as a source of tunable millimeter wave radiation. The oriented Sr-hexaferrite ceramic was selected for the verification of millimeter-wave magneto-optical method. The magneto optical measurements in transverse configuration revealed strong anomalous dispersion in the millimeter-wave refractive index spectrum for Sr hexaferrite, mainly due to the frequency variation of magnetic permeability. Computer simulations revealed a good agreement of measured parameters with known data for Sr hexaferrite. It was shown that the free-carrier absorption (/spl sigma//spl sim/0.05 /spl Omega//sup -1/ cm/sup -1/) and magnetic permeability contribute to the relatively high millimeter-wave losses in hexaferrite ceramics. The frequency dependence of Faraday rotation in the millimeter-wave range was measured, and the experimental results are discussed. The results presented in this paper demonstrate that this new magneto-optical method is capable of providing accurate dielectric and magnetic data in the millimeter-wavelength range.


Profile guided optimisation is a common technique used by compilers and runtime systems to shorten execution runtimes and to optimise locality aware scheduling and memory access on heterogeneous hardware platforms. Some profiling tools trace the execution of low level code, whilst others are designed for abstract models of computation to provide rich domain-specific context in profiling reports. We have implemented mean shift, a computer vision tracking algorithm, in the RVC-CAL dataflow language and use both dynamic runtime and static dataflow profiling mechanisms to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in our naive initial version. We use these profiling reports to tune the CPU scheduler reducing runtime by 88%, and to optimise our dataflow implementation that reduces runtime by a further 43% - an overall runtime reduction of 93%. We also assess the portability of our mean shift optimisations by trading off CPU runtime against resource utilisation on FPGAs. Applying all dataflow optimisations reduces FPGA design space significantly, requiring fewer slice LUTs and less block memory.


We study the optimal lockdown policy for a planner who wants to control the fatalities of a pandemic while minimizing the output costs of the lockdown. We use the SIR epidemiology model and a linear economy to formalize the planner's dynamic control problem. The optimal policy depends on the fraction of infected and susceptible in the population. We parametrize the model using data on the COVID19 pandemic and the economic breadth of the lockdown. The quantitative analysis identifies the features that shape the intensity and duration of the optimal lockdown policy. Our baseline parametrization is conditional on a 1% of infected agents at the outbreak, no cure for the disease, and the possibility of testing. The optimal policy prescribes a severe lockdown beginning two weeks after the outbreak, covers 60% of the population after a month, and is gradually withdrawn covering 20% of the population after 3 months. The intensity of the lockdown depends on the gradient of the fatality rate as a function of the infected, and on the assumed value of a statistical life. The absence of testing increases the economic costs of the lockdown, and shortens the duration of the optimal lockdown which ends more abruptly. Welfare under the optimal policy with testing is higher, equivalent to a one-time payment of 2% of GDP.


The research undertaken in this thesis is concerned with the design and development of Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells and provides a body of information for continued PEM fuel cell development, which will ideally aid in the future commercialisation of these electrochemical devices.
Through a combination of numerical analysis, computational fluid dynamic modelling and experimental work, effective flow plate designs, flow field configurations and materials are analysed and new innovative designs are proposed.
The flow plate of a PEM fuel cell is one of the most important structures in these devices. Effective design of the flow plate will aid in the optimisation of PEM fuel cell technology. Due to the low operational temperature of PEM fuel cells, water species can form in the flow field and this can affect their performance. Two phase flow models were used to study this phenomena. These models show how the water flooding in flow field channels can hinder the mass transport if these are not properly designed, leading to reduced performance, increased heat and reduced fuel utilisation. A high speed camera technique in an ex situ apparatus was used to validate the model and water mitigation methods are proposed.
From the culmination of the analysis performed a novel application of open pore cellular metal foam as a flow plate material is proposed in this thesis. A model is developed, to simulate this relatively new material and extensive pressure analysis and flow modelling has been completed using this model. Computational fluid dynamic modelling, with an additional electrochemical PEM fuel cell module, has been carried out on conventional double channel flow plates and open pore cellular foam flow plates. Flow regimes, pressure analysis, water accumulation, oxygen concentration, fuel utilisation, current & voltage curves and cell temperature profiles are analysed.
The PEM fuel cell model with open pore cellular metal foam flow plate performs in excess of a 55% improvement on the current density of the bench mark double serpentine flow plate under the same operating conditions at 0.7 volts.
All of the above multi physical phenomena match very well to the experimental results. This information is new to the area and should help optimise PEM fuel cell performance.


Mitigating and adapting to future changes in climate in the context of urban growth has focused the attention of Australian governments, planners, business and community interests alike. In this landscape we see a proliferation of frameworks and initiative s for governing carbon, from Australian state and local governments as well as a wide array of other actors including the private and not-for-profit sectors. Currently no clear picture of their architecture or workings exists. In this paper we use urban local governments a central actor in these frameworks as an entry point. Drawing on recent research aimed to document urban carbon governance across Australia's capital cities in particular, an audit of carbon reduction initiatives across government, business and community actors at the urban scale we explore urban local governments as sites of climate change response and experimentation. Our analysis reveals the existence of both conventional and experimental actions assessment techniques, technologies of go vernance and forms of social organization operating at local and extra-local scales. Moreover, the networks assembled to produce this climate governance capacity involve similarly conventional and experimental actors, practices and scales. This complex amalgam of conventional and experimental, we suggest, will shape Australian city futures.


We use survey data from a sample of 4000 adult financial consumers in Zimbabwe to analyse the determinants of financial literacy and its effect on individual's savings decisions. Results show that women have lower financial literacy than men. Furthermore, individuals' residing in rural areas exhibit lower financial literacy compared with urban financial consumers. Financial literacy and financial services interventions targeting women and rural individuals should be strengthened. Econometric results show that financial literacy positively influences savings behaviour for both rural and urban individuals. Furthermore, financial literacy positively influences informal and formal savings. Policy interventions that foster financial literacy are needed to improve individuals saving behaviours.


Techniques for analysing polymer mechanics were used to describe quantitatively the time-dependent mechanical properties of the body-wall connective tissue (mesogloea) and to indicate macromolecular mechanisms responsible for the mechanical behaviour of two species of sea anemones, Metridium senile and Anthopleura xanthogrammica .

1. 1. The mesogloea of M. senile is more extensible and less resilient than that of A. xanthogrammica when stressed for periods comparable to the duration of flow forces the anemones encounter and the postural changes they perform.

2. 2. Polarized light microscopy and SEM reveal that the reinforcing collagen fibres in the mesogloea are aligned parallel with the major stress axes in the body wall.

3. 3. Mechanical tests and observations of composition and microstructure indicate that the mesogloea of A. xanthogrammica is less extensible than that of M. senile because molecular entanglements (due to more closely packed parallel collagen fibres and to a higher concentration of polymers in the interfibrillar matrix) retard the extension of A. xanthogrammica mesogloea.

This study illustrates how structural features on the macromolecular and microscopic levels of organization of an organism can equip that organism for the particular mechanical activities it performs and the environmental forces it encounters.


We propose a scheme for outsourcing Private Information Retrieval (PIR) to untrusted servers while protecting the privacy of the database owner as well as that of the database clients. We observe that by layering PIR on top of an Oblivious RAM (ORAM) data layout, we provide the ability for the database owner to perform private writes, while database clients can perform private reads from the database even while the owner is offline. We can also enforce pricing and access control on a per-record basis for these reads. This extends the usual ORAM model by allowing multiple database readers without requiring trusted hardware; indeed, almost all of the computation in our scheme during reads is performed by untrusted cloud servers. Built on top of a simple ORAM protocol, we implement a real system as a proof of concept. Our system privately updates a 1 MB record in a 16 GB database with an average end-to-end overhead of 1.22 seconds and answers a PIR query within 3.5 seconds over a 2 GB database. We make an observation that the database owner can always conduct a private read as an ordinary database client, and the private write protocol does not have to provide a "read" functionality as a standard ORAM protocol does. Based on this observation, we propose a second construction with the same privacy guarantee, but much faster. We also implement a real system for this construction, which privately writes a 1 MB record in a 1 TB database with an amortized end-to-end response time of 313 ms. Our first construction demonstrates the fact that a standard ORAM protocol can be used for outsourcing PIR computations in a privacy-friendly manner, while our second construction shows that an ad-hoc modification of the standard ORAM protocol is possible for our purpose and allows more efficient record updates.


Traditional methods for evaluating corporate credit risk rarely consider the impact of the macro economy on corporate value and performance. We argue that lenders and management can obtain valuable information about the need for and approach to restructuring by decomposing default predictions into intrinsic and macroeconomic factors. We apply a method previously used for measuring macroeconomic exposures on default predictions in order to filter out macroeconomic factors. In this paper the method is applied on an analysis of the Z-scores for GM and Ford for the period 1996-2005. The macro-economy has affected the two firms in different ways with implications for managements and creditors approaches to restoring their financial health.


Information use of police force occurs when information acquired by the police to satisfy an information need based on task assigned to them is actually put to use. Information is therefore useful and valuable if after receiving it, it changes things, decisions, behaviour or one's character and solves the problem for which the information is sought.
Survey research design was adopted for the study. The study population comprised 2,305 police officers in Alimosho Local Government Police Division. Stratified random sampling method was used to select 227 police officers. Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. Data collected was analyzed using frequency distribution, mean, standard deviation; and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) was used for the test of hypotheses.
The study established that the police officers use information for three major situations; victims and suspects, unusual circumstances and actualities and quotes (mean=3.72) for all. The result of the quality of service showed that the police ensured that clients' voices count in all cases (mean=2.98). There was positive significant relationship between the information use and quality service of Nigeria police (r =.117, p >.05).
A large proportion of use of relevant and adequate information has helped the police to solve problems needed on security and protection of individual citizens and also improve their services. This has helped in the delivery of quality service to the citizens. The study therefore recommended that the Government should create a policy that will enable free flow of information between the citizens and the police force, and make available access to internet facilities in their various stations for relevant information needed for their effective use on tasks as this will lead to achieving quality of their services to the citizen, and increase the achievement of their goals and objectives.


Mouse Embryonic Stem (ES) cells are pluripotent, as they have the ability to differentiate into all cell types of the embryo. Many protocols have been established to differentiate ES cells into the desired cell type in vitro. However, the identification of molecular machinery involved in ES cell biology will increase the knowledge of embryo development and will improve the use of ES cell for regenerative medicine. To identify genes involved in pluripotency and differentiation we developed a systematic approach based on the screening of a shRNA library. The results of the screening shed light on an uncharacterized gene, we named Dies1 (Differentiation of Embryonic Stem cells) given its effect on ES cell differentiation. Dies1 knock-down affected proper ES cell differentiation into neurons, astrocytes and cardiomyocytes. Dies1 knock-down cells, in fact, maintained the expression of undifferentiated markers such as Oct3/4, Nanog and Alkaline Phosphatase in conditions promoting differentiation. In addition, the growth of Dies1 knock-down cells was independent from LIF. Dies1 suppression exerted its effect on ES cell differentiation in vivo and in vitro, giving rise to teratoma smaller than controls when Dies1 knock-down cells are injected into nude mice. The in silico analysis of Dies1 sequence indicated that it possesses a trans-membrane domain and an Ig-like domain in the putative extra-cellular domain of the protein, like many membrane receptors. This analysis was confirmed by the staining of Dies1 on cell surface of mouse ES cell and blastocyst. The possible role for Dies1 as receptor was also supported by the dominant negative function of Dies1 extra-cellular domain, whose effect resembled Dies1 suppression. Thus, we investigated the involvement of Dies1 in the signaling pathways controlling ES cell pluripotency: LIF and BMP4. Dies1 knock-down did not affect the expression of undifferentiated markers such as Oct3/4, Nanog, Sox2 and Rex1 and of LIF down-stream targets such as Kruppel like factors in undifferentiated conditions. On the other hand, Inhibitory of Differentiation (Id) genes, which are BMP4 targets, were down-regulated in Dies1 knock-down cells. This down-regulation was dependent on a decreased response to BMP4, as shown by luciferase assays and occurred in a Smad dependent manner, as the amount of phosphorylated Smad 1/5/8 complex was decreased in Dies1 knock-down cells. Moreover, the involvement of Dies1 in BMP4 signaling was supported by the direct interaction between Dies1 and BMP4 in vitro. The down-regulation of BMP4 targets induced also the up-regulation of Nodal/Activin targets, such as Cripto and Lefty1/2. Such a regulation between Nodal/Activin and BMP4 was observed also in consequence of the suppression by RNA interference of the BMP4-type I receptor Alk3. This phenomenon was not surprising because Nodal/Activin and BMP4 belong to the TGF- superfamily and share the common mediator Smad4 which balances the transcriptional activity of Smad 2/3 (dependent on Nodal/Activin) and Smad 1/5/8 (dependent on BMPs). Thus, we hypothesized that the up-regulation of Nodal/Activin signaling was responsible for the effect of Dies1 suppression. To verify this hypothesis we treated Dies1 knock-down cells with the specific Nodal/Activin inhibitor SB-431542. The treatment with SB-431542 restored proper differentiation ability in the absence of LIF, leading to the rescue of Dies1 knock-down effect. Taken together our results suggest that the balance between BMP4 and Nodal/Activin exerts a crucial role in regulating ES cell pluripotency and differentiation.
In summary, we have identified Dies1 as novel component of BMP4 signaling pathway required for proper ES cell differentiation.


The pattern coarsening dynamics in symmetric polystyrene-b-polymethylmethacrylate (PS-b-PMMA) block copolymer thin films under conventional thermal treatments is extremely slow, resulting in limited correlation length values even after prolonged annealing at relatively high temperatures. This study describes the kinetics of symmetric block copolymer microphase separation when subjected to a thermal treatment based on the use of a Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) system. The proposed methodology allows self-organization of symmetric PS-b-PMMA thin films in few seconds, taking advantage of the amount of solvent naturally trapped within the film during the spinning process. Distinct and self-registered morphologies, coexisting along the sample thickness, are obtained in symmetric PS-b-PMMA samples, with periodic lamellae laying over a hexagonal pattern of PMMA cylinders embedded in the PS matrix and perpendicularly oriented with respect to the substrate. The ordering dynamics and morphological evolution of the coexisting dual structures are delineated and the intimate mechanism of the self-assembly and coarsening processes is discussed and elucidated.


The kinodynamic planning problem is to synthesize a robot motion obeying simultaneous kinematic and dynamics constraints. To maximize robot performance we can consider optimal kinodynamic planning: for a given robot system, find a minimal-time trajectory that goes from a start state to a goal state, avoids obstacles by a speed-dependent safety margin, and respects the dynamics laws and dynamics bounds governing the system. In general, previous work on algorithmic motion planning does not address dynamics; furthermore, even in simple cases, finding exact globally-optimal solutions is ${\cal NP}$-hard. In response, we obtain provably-good, polynomial-time approximation algorithms that synthesize optimal kinodynamic trajectories. These algorithms forge new mathematical links between control theory and complexity theory, and our analysis investigates how discrete-control trajectories can approximate optimal solutions.
We cast optimal kinodynamic planning into the form of an $\epsilon$-approximation problem, in which $\epsilon >$ 0 characterizes closeness to optimality in terms of trajectory time, observance of the safety margin, and closeness to the start and goal states. If $T\sb{opt}$ is the time of an optimal trajectory, then an $\epsilon$-optimal trajectory takes at most (1 + $\epsilon$)$T\sb{opt}$ time. We present (pseudo)-polynomial-time $\epsilon$-approximation algorithms for a family of robot classes, including fully-controllable open kinematic chains. These algorithms run in time polynomial in $1\over \epsilon$ and the geometric complexity of the constraints.
The basic idea behind the algorithms is to reduce the trajectory planning problem to a shortest-path problem on a polynomial-sized reachability graph embedded in the robot state space. These graphs are generated by control primitives and a timestep that the algorithm chooses to ensure $\epsilon$-optimality. To obtain our complexity and approximation results, we introduce both continuous and combinatorial tools to analyze the robot's dynamical system. These include scaling-tracking proof methods that capture the key insight necessary for provably-good results, tracking lemmas on how closely we can approximate an optimal or time-rescaled optimal trajectory, constructive trajectory proofs, adversary game proofs, and Time-Safety planning trade-offs. We also describe an implementation and experiments in a restricted domain.


Migration typically leads to higher income, but its association with life satisfaction remains unclear. Is migration accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction? If it is, is the increase in income responsible or are other life domains driving the satisfaction changes? These two questions are addressed using longitudinal data from a Swedish Young Adult Panel Study for 1999 and 2009. Comparing migrants to non-migrants, it is found that internal migration is accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction. This increase is observed for both, migrants who move due to work and those who move due to non-work reasons. This finding holds regardless of other life transitions that may accompany migration, such as marriage and joining the labor market. However, different factors account for the increase in life satisfaction for work and non-work migrants. For non-work migrants, it is greater housing satisfaction that leads to an improvement in life satisfaction. Moreover, no increase in income relative to non-migrants is found for this group. For work migrants, although their income increases compared with non-migrants, this increase does not seem to explain the differential improvement in life satisfaction because of a lack of improvement in their economic satisfaction (compared to non-migrants). Rather, it is the higher relative status arising from occupational advancement that seems to contribute to the higher life satisfaction for work migrants.


Objectives: Undetected congenital hearing loss negatively affects the development of child's speech, language, social and cognitive skills. Children who are identified early as having hearing loss and receive intensive early intervention perform better. In our study the objective was to compare hearing screening protocols for infants who has risk factors for hearing loss. Materials and Methods: In this study, infants who have risk factors for hearing loss, hospitalized in Hacettepe University Newborn Intensive Care Unit, included regarding the criteria issued by Joint Committee on Infant Hearing Position Statement 2007. Control group was comprised infants born in Hacettepe University and not having those risk factors for hearing loss. A hundred infants in each group, totally 200 (400 ears) were screened by three different protocols. First protocol used Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emission, second protocol used Automated Auditory Brainstem Response and the third protocol used two tools in combination. Tympanometric assessment was done by multi frequency tympanometry in each protocol. Results: Following the statistical comparison of protocols, it has been found that the 1st and 2nd protocols and also the 1st and 3rd protocols cannot be used in place of the other while the 2nd and 3rd protocols can be used in place of one another (p<0,05). Conclusion: It is more effective to use the 3rd protocol which consists of Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions, Automated Auditory Brainstem Response in combination and tympanometric measurements.


Corrugated polypropylene storm sewer pipe has been available on the U.S. market since 2007. The manufacturing process and structural design are similar to the more widely used high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe; however, polypropylene has advantages over HDPE in applications that require higher bending resistance and operating temperatures and greater longitudinal beam strength and stress crack resistance. In 2011, ASTM and AASHTO both adopted specifications for corrugated polypropylene pipe materials and products for use in nonpressure surface and subsurface drainage applications. These standards included some requirements for polypropylene material properties related to structural design, such as the minimum initial modulus and long-term creep modulus, but not all parameters required by AASHTO for the structural design of thermoplastic pipe were addressed. This paper presents the test methods and sampling conventions required to arrive at such structural design properties, as well as test results for four candidate poly propylene resins commercially available in the United States. The paper also uses these test results as the basis for proposed structural design properties for polypropylene storm sewer pipe for adoption into the AASHTO Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD) Bridge Design Specifications.


Hypophosphatasia is a rare inborn error of metabolism resulting from mutations in the gene for the tissue-nonspecific isozyme of alkaline phosphatase (TNSALP). There is deficiency of alkaline phosphatase activity leading to severe rickets/osteomalacia. Severely affected babies die from respiratory insufficiency. There is no licenced medical treatment available. We report a case diagnosed recently with hypophosphatasia who is receiving pioneering enzyme replacement treatment. Baby I was born at 34/40 and required ventilatory support from birth due to respiratory insufficiency. She was noted to have short limbs, hypotonia, and thin ribs on x-rays. Her serum alkaline phosphatase was low; urinary phosphoethanolamine and serum calcium were elevated confirming hypophosphatasia. In a recent multinational study of 11 patients with severe hypophosphatasia, treatment with recombinant human bone targeted TNSALP (ENB 0040) has been shown to improve bone mineralization. This was associated with healing of rickets, improved developmental milestones and pulmonary function. Under guidance from the regional Metabolic Bone team at Manchester and with parental consent, Baby I was commenced on ENB 0040 (Asfotase alfa) at the age of 4 weeks with subcutaneous injections three times a week. The drug is being offered to this infant on compassionate grounds by the manufacturer (Alexion pharmaceuticals). Within 6 weeks of treatment calcium requirement of infant has increased and X-rays have demonstrated remarkable improvement in mineralisation. She remains ventilator dependant with a tracheostomy in situ but, we anticipate that with ENB 0040 treatment, improvement in bone mineralisation and muscle function will facilitate weaning from ventilation.


Land surface temperature is a significant parameter for identifying micro-climatic changes and their spatial distributions relative to the urban environment. This paper examined and identified the urban heat islands and their spatial and temporal variability along the I-85/I-40 corridor in central North Carolina between 1990 and 2002. More specifically, the study focused on: (1) understanding the behavior of the spectral and thermal signatures of various land cover and land use types and their relationships with UHI development, and (2) applying digital remote sensing techniques to observe and measure the temporal and spatial variability of these surface heat islands. An assemblage of remotely sensed imagery (Landsat data), land surface temperature data, land cover and land use classifications, vegetation indices, and archived weather data was used to create maps, charts and statistical models to indicate and display the magnitude and spatial extent of these thermal climates. The data revealed that urbanization in the I-85/I-40 corridor region increased significantly between 1990 and 2002. Quantitative results from the satellite imagery also indicated that differences in land cover/ land use types, anthropogenic heat sources, and land surface temperature variability likely contributed to a temperature rise in the corridor study area thus thermal climate development.


OBJECTIVE
To identify autotransfusion strategies and their basis in elective surgery patients.

DESIGN
A cross sectional prospective study.

SETTING
General surgery and orthopaedic wards, Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi.

SUBJECTS
Adult patients of both sexes planned for elective surgery.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Forevery patient, the following were enquired about and documented: age in years, sex, ethnicity, religion, occupation and educational standard. Blood values of haemoglobin, platelet counts, total and differential white cell counts, urea, electrolytes and liver function tests were assayed. Others were the number of units of blood donated before the operation, the type of surgery performed, time taken from diagnosis to performing the operation and whether the blood was transfused preoperatively, intraoperatively and postoperatively.

RESULTS
A total of sixty three cases constituting five per cent of all surgical patients admitted during the period of study were evaluated. Of these 53 (84%) were males and ten (16%) females. The age range was 15 to 65 years with a peak at 45-49 years. There were more Christians (90%) than Muslims (10%). In all, 32 (51.6%) had primary school education, 23 (36.5%) secondary school education, seven (11.3%) no formal education and one (1.6%) had attained college level. Employment pattern showed 50% were civil servants, 30% were self employed and 20% were unemployed. The duration of disease ranged from 1-24 weeks with two peaks at two weeks and six weeks. Orthopaedic cases constituted 78.7% and general surgery 21.3%. Preoperative haemoglobin ranged from 13.5-14.2 g/dl. Transfusions were given intraoperatively to 41 (66.1%) and to 12 (33.9%) postoperatively. Mean duration of hospitalisation was 13 days (range 5 to 21 days). 98.4% deposited only one unit while 1.6% deposited four units of blood. Only one patient required additional transfusion from homologous donors.

CONCLUSION
The strategies and basis for autotransfusion have been demonstrated among a majority of adult patients requiring orthopaedic procedures. Major determinants are shown to be baseline blood count profiles and time to operation.


Novel Approaches for the Performance Enhancement of Cognitive Radio Networks by Kenneth Ugonna Ezirim Adviser: Professor Ping Ji This research is dedicated to the study of the challenges faced by Cognitive Radio (CR) networks, which include self-coexistence of the networks in the spectral environment, security and performance threats from malicious entities, and fairness in spectrum contention and utilization. We propose novel channel acquisition schemes that allow decentralized CR networks to have multiple channel access with minimal spectrum contentions. The multiple channel acquisition schemes facilitate fast spectrum access especially in cases where networks cannot communicate with each other. These schemes enable CR networks to self-organize and adapt to the dynamically changing spectral environment. We also present a self-coexistence mechanism that allows CR networks to coexist via the implementation of a risk-motivated channel selection based deference structure (DS). By forming DS coalitions, CR networks are able to have better access to preferred channels and can defer transmission to one another, thereby mitigating spectrum conflicts. CR networks are also known to be susceptible to Sybil threats from smart malicious radios with either monopolistic or disruptive intentions. We formulate novel threat and defense mechanisms to combat Sybil threats and minimize their impact on the performance of CR networks. A dynamic reputation system is proposed that considerably minimizes the effectiveness of intelligent Sybil attacks and improves the accuracy of spectrum-based decision-making processes.


More and more news report on water-related extreme environmental phenomena. Some of these are natural, which are often beyond the human race. But others are definitely due to anthropogenic effects. I think the water footprint index is able to highlight national and international water-use processes and gives us the opportunity of organizing a sustainable, consumer-, environmental- and governancefriendly management. 81% of the fresh water withdrawal is from surface water bodies in the EU. In Europe as a whole, 44% of abstraction is used for energy production, 24% for agriculture, 21% for public water supply and 11% for industry. Public water supply is confined to ground waters. To the water resources related human activity caused qualitative and quantitative amortisation will grow worse in the foreseeable future due to the climate change. Beside seasonal differences the sectoral differences are increasingly becoming critical between different areas, such as Southern and Western Europe. The former, wrong agricultural support system has worsened the situation since it gave financial aid for the used improper techniques of water-intensive crop cultivation. By today, this seems to be solved. Public water abstraction is affected by many factors, of which mostly are based on social situation and habits, but technological leakage receives a big role as well. Interesting, that for example the residents'water consumption in Eastern Europe decreased because price were raised and regular measurements were introduced. But in Southern Europe it increased due to tourism in the past period. Industrial water withdrawal decreased across Europe because of the decline of industry and the development of technologies. According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), the Union needs a sustainable, demand-driven leadership which focuses on the preservation and use efficiency. This have already appeared in politics and legal administration as well. Current research calls the attention to the significance and difficulties of this kind of domestic estimation presented trough the water footprint calculation of bread and pork in Hungary. The received data indicate the domestic water consumption trends in a modern approach. There is no doubt for me about the urgent necessity of water footprint calculation because as a result innovative, sustainability supported environmental, social, economical, and political relationships can be created – not just on local, regional or national level, but on interregional, European and even global stage.


This article describes the programmatic ways in which the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools® program develops culturally responsive teaching practices amongst its summer interns, particularly in the area of developing sociopolitical consciousness. This paper places specific focus on the role that historical knowledge, the acknowledgement of a 'we' discourse and instilling a lifelong commitment to service plays in cultivating teacher sociopolitical consciousness. The research reported here aims to serve as a case for lessons to be learned by traditional, university-based teacher education programs committed to preparing teachers to teach in culturally responsive ways.


During the Middle Miocene, Earth's climate transitioned from a relatively warm phase (Miocene climatic optimum) to a colder mode with reestablishment of permanent ice sheets on Antarctica, thus marking a fundamental step in Cenozoic cooling. Carbon sequestration and atmospheric CO2 drawdown through increased terrestrial and/or marine productivity have been proposed as the main drivers of this fundamental transition. We integrate high-resolution (1-3 k.y.) benthic stable isotope data with X-ray fluorescence scanner-derived biogenic silica and carbonate accumulation estimates in an exceptionally well preserved sedimentary archive, recovered at Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site U1338, to reconstruct eastern equatorial Pacific productivity variations and to investigate temporal links between high- and low-latitude climate change over the interval 16-13 Ma. Our records show that the climatic optimum (16.8-14.7 Ma) was characterized by high-amplitude climate variations, marked by intense perturbations of the carbon cycle. Episodes of peak warmth at (Southern Hemisphere) insolation maxima coincided with transient shoaling of the carbonate compensation depth and enhanced carbonate dissolution in the deep ocean. A switch to obliquity-paced climate variability after 14.7 Ma concurred with a general improvement in carbonate preservation and the onset of step-wise global cooling, culminating with extensive ice growth over Antarctica ca. 13.8 Ma. We find that two massive increases in opal accumulation ca. 14.0 and ca. 13.8 Ma occurred just before and during the final and most prominent cooling step, supporting the hypothesis that enhanced siliceous productivity in the eastern equatorial Pacific contributed to CO2 drawdown.


This paper reanalyzed research previously conducted with Spanish-speaking childcare providers who participated in an educational literacy program. The women in the program were generally framed as the deficient other – illiterate, immigrant women. The authors used a critical framework and Chicana/Latina feminist methodologies, namely pláticas y encuentros (talks and encounters), to investigate, reanalyze, and reinterpret the data. Through the process, the authors not only revealed the inner flame of the participants in the study, but through the collision of their own worldviews, they also exposed more deeply the assumptions buried within their epistemologies, methodologies, and positionalities. The results speak to the importance of critical examinations of power and discourses in education that often reside unexamined, or perhaps examined but largely unpublished, in our research.


Introduction of the subcloned nodO gene of Rhizobium sp. BR816 into R. meliloti 1021, R. leguminosarum bv. trifolii ANU843, and Azorhizobium caulinodans ORS571 significantly stimulated nodulation and infection of Leucaena leucocephala by these transconjugants. The BR816 nodO gene was also shown to suppress the nodulation defect of the nodU mutants of Rhizobium sp. NGR234 and R. tropici CIAT899 on L. leucocephala and of the nodE mutant of R. leguminosarum bv. trifolii ANU843 on white clover. Overproduction of NodO in BR816 extended its host range to Trifolium repens. While a Rhizobium sp. BR816 strain, mutated in nodO, had reduced nodulation and competitiveness on P. vulgaris, no altered phenotype was observed for this mutant on L. leucocephala. Analysis of the transcriptional activation of nodO in BR816 revealed enhanced expression in the presence of apigenin, under both aerobic and microaerobic conditions. Moreover, nodO was also expressed in the bacteroids of L. leucocephala nodules.


A photonic true-time delay beamforming system for phased array antennas based on superstructured fiber Bragg gratings (SFBGs) with linearly increasing equivalent chirps is proposed and demonstrated. The theory behind SFBGs with equivalent chirps is detailed and a closed-form equation for the equivalent dispersion is presented for the first time. Array factors, calculated based on the experimentally measured time delays are shown for different wavelengths of the photonic beamformer. An analysis of the errors present in the group delay responses of the fabricated SFBGs is also presented.


We assessed water-body use by elephants through monitoring elephant signs around them. Elephant footprints and dung piles were recorded at 25 water bodies fortnightly for one year. Elephants preferred perennial water bodies and avoided those with temporary human dwellings. Human activities did not significantly affect elephant use of water bodies, suggesting low incidence of activities and behavioral adaptation to them by elephants. Elephant signs at perennial water bodies increased in the dry season. The monitoring technique was able to detect differences in elephant densities in two areas and establish the presence of herds even at low densities. We conclude that outside protected areas, large perennial water bodies represent a preferred resource for elephants, and that assessing elephant signs around water bodies is a useful technique for monitoring elephant presence for management and research purposes.


No one brews up a better Java guide than Cay Horstmann and in this Third Edition of Big Java he's perfected his recipe. Thoroughly updated to include Java 6, the Third Edition of Horstmann's bestselling text helps you absorb computing concepts and programming principles, develop strong problem-solving skills, and become a better programmer, all while exploring the elements of Java that are needed to write real-life programs. A top-notch introductory text for beginners, Big Java, Third Edition is also a thorough reference for students and professionals alike to Java technologies, Internet programming, database access, and many other areas of computer science. Features of the Third Edition: The 'Objects Gradual' approach leads you into object-oriented thinking step-by-step, from using classes, implementing simple methods, all the way to designing your own object-oriented programs. A strong emphasis on test-driven development encourages you to consider outcomes as you write programming code so you design better, more usable programs Helpful "Testing Track" introduces techniques and tools step by step, ensuring that you master one before moving on to the next New teaching and learning tools in WileyPLUS--including a unique assignment checker that enables you to test your programming problems online before you submit them for a grade Graphics topics are developed gradually throughout the text, conveniently highlighted in separate color-coded sections Updated coverage is fully compatible with Java 5 and includes a discussion of the latest Java 6 features


Starting from the surprise caused by the careful reading of the contributions provided in (Bjorner, 2006a) and (Bjorner, 2006b), it has become clear that the modelling activity in the software engineering is a dynamic kind of intellectual engagement, which requires numerous internal clarifications. Furthermore, it claims the right to use the fundamental cognitive abilities in order to add rigour and efficiency to the sterotypes that are used in the software industry in order to abstract various artefacts, which constitute the solution of a software system. The authors of this paper are pleased to find out that the exploration of the human thinking's limits and subtleties create valuable results in all scientific fields, including the engineering of the software systems. This paper describes the ICS (Intuitive, Circumstantial, Speculative) modelling paradigm, which aims to make the development process of the software systems more efficient.


Palaeogene and Cretaceous palaeoceanography has been the focus of intense international interest in the last few years, spurred by deep ocean drilling at Blake Nose in the North Atlantic as well as the need to use past climate change as input for modelling future climate change. This book brings together a number of review papers that describe ancient oceans and unique events in the Earth's climatic history and evolution of biota. The papers show evidence of periods characterized by exceptional global warmth such as the Late Palaeocene Thermal Maximum and Cretaceous anoxic events. Geochemical records and modelling will make the reader aware that these periods were forced by greenhouse gases. This information is essential for understanding the response of the ocean—climate system to the current input of fossil fuels. In this sense, the book contributes to the understanding of fundamental aspects of Earth's climate, the carbon cycle, and marine ecosystems. A number of papers describe massive mass wasting deposits resulting from the energy released by the bolide impact at the Cretaceous—Tertiary boundary as well as the geochemistry of the boundary itself. Additional papers cover aspects of cyclostratigraphy and biostratigraphy of Palaeogene and Cretaceous records. This book will be of interest to a broad audience of Earth Scientists interested in Palaeogene—Cretaceous palaeoceanography, extreme climate modelling, Cretaceous—Tertiary boundary, Late Palaeocene Thermal Maximum, Cretaceous anoxic events, as well as those specifically interested in radiolarian, dinoflagellate and coccolithophorid stratigraphy.


In this paper, we adopt the representation learning approach to align users across multiple social networks where the social structures of the users are exploited. In particular, we propose to learn a network embedding with the followership/ followee-ship of each user explicitly modeled as input/output context vector representations so as to preserve the proximity of users with "similar" followers/followees in the embedded space. For the alignment, we add both known and potential anchor users across the networks to facilitate the transfer of context information across networks. We solve both the network embedding problem and the user alignment problem simultaneously under a unified optimization framework. The stochastic gradient descent and negative sampling algorithms are used to address scalability issues. Extensive experiments on real social network datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach compared with several state-of-the-art methods.


The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the problematic authorship of "Admonition for the Flower King" ("Hwawang kye" [inline-graphic 01i]) and to discuss its literary, political, and horticultural significance. The story of three flower characters is conventionally attributed to So˘l Ch'ong [inline-graphic 296i]) (ca. 670–730), and subsequently, modern Korean scholarship has interpreted the story in association with the history of the Unified Silla Dynasty (676–935). My analysis, however, shows that it remains unknown when the story was first conjured up, nor do we know how it circulated up until the twelfth century. The story was likely to have first circulated as a folk legend, which was embellished and finally textualized by the historian Kim Pusik [inline-graphic 02i] (1075–1151) in his Samguk sagi [inline-graphic 03i]. I emphasize the role of Kim who assured the subject of moral suasion, a core Confucian value, on his own taste; this might be one reason that the story is not included by the Buddhist monk Iryo˘n [inline-graphic 04i] (1206–89) in his Samguk yusa. I also would like to turn here to the Korean literary tradition of flower metaphors itself. It is easy to assume that these images and associations derive from Chinese literature, yet when one looks at the floral image, attributes, and uses of the three flowers in Sino-Korean literature in the context of ethnobotany, horticulture, and garden culture they turn out to be quite distinct from what is found in Chinese literature. The legend of So˘l Ch'ong, thus, piques one's interest as one of the earliest examples of this distinct Korean flower imagery.


Arguments in favor of liberalizing the market for services are becoming increasingly widespread. These arguments particularly apply to financial services, telecommunications, and transportation, which are key sectors that significantly contribute to a nation's economic development. However, the challenges of liberalizing the market for services to foreign competition are evident. Furthermore, this liberalization entails a broad and complex set of policies, regulatory instruments, institutions and constituencies, domestically and in the foreign arena, in the public and the private sector. Experience has shown that considerable care must be given to the assessment of the nature, pace and sequencing of regulatory reform and liberalization in order to meaningfully enhance a nation's economic growth and development. Morocco has signed, ratified, and implemented several Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and is engaged in discussions with other partners. Issues that concern the market of services are gaining in importance in Morocco's foreign trade policy. Moreover, Morocco has continued to reform its sectoral policies, making notable progress in services sector performances in a bid to diversify its economy. This paper tries to outline some features that concern the trade in services policies and reforms in Morocco and its negotiation process adopted by enforcing bilateral, regional and multilateral agreements.


Significance Human beings care a great deal about the fairness of the procedures that are used to allocate resources, such as wealth, opportunity, and power. But in a series of experiments, we show that those to whom resources are allocated often care less about fairness than those who allocate the resources expect them to. This "allocator's illusion" results from the fact that fairness seems more important before an allocation is made (when allocators are choosing a procedure) than afterward (when receivers are reacting to the procedure that allocators chose). This illusion has important consequences for policy-makers, managers, health care providers, judges, teachers, parents, and others who are charged with choosing the procedures by which things of value will be allocated. Do those who allocate resources know how much fairness will matter to those who receive them? Across seven studies, allocators used either a fair or unfair procedure to determine which of two receivers would receive the most money. Allocators consistently overestimated the impact that the fairness of the allocation procedure would have on the happiness of receivers (studies 1–3). This happened because the differential fairness of allocation procedures is more salient before an allocation is made than it is afterward (studies 4 and 5). Contrary to allocators' predictions, the average receiver was happier when allocated more money by an unfair procedure than when allocated less money by a fair procedure (studies 6 and 7). These studies suggest that when allocators are unable to overcome their own preallocation perspectives and adopt the receivers' postallocation perspectives, they may allocate resources in ways that do not maximize the net happiness of receivers.


The objective of the study was to identify appropriate analytical scenarios to assess the release of emerging toxins in water resources and manage the risk for drinking water. A comprehensive toolbox was developed for the monitoring of cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins in ten water resources used for drinking water production and known for regular algae blooms. Six toxins - microcystins, cylindrospermopsin, anatoxins, nodularin, saxitoxin and BMAA - were targeted. High performance HPLC-MS/MS methods were implemented in parallel with rapid kits and a real-time PCR method was developed to identify specifically the microcystin producing species. Those analytical methods were found in good agreement and very sensitive and selective. Low levels of eutrophication were obtained during those campaigns leading to limited occurrence of toxins. Results obtained on one site are detailed in this paper. Finally, recommendations could be drawn to manage the risk related to various emerging algae toxins, based on the use of a phycocyanin probe on-site as early-warning system. When a threshold value is reached, treatment and monitoring strategies are implemented in parallel.


Asthma attack can cause hypoxemia. One of the methods to detect hypoxemia is by using pulse oximetry. However, this tool is not always available in some health care centres. Therefore, a more rapid and simple diagnostic tool is needed as an alternative method to detect hypoxemia. This study aimed to assess signs and symptoms as diagnostic tools for hypoxemia in children with asthma. This was an analytical observational with cross-sectional design performed in Department of Pediatrics, Dr. Sardjito General Hospital/Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta. The study was started in Februari 2010 until the sample size was sufficient. Seventy seven children with asthma between 0 – 18 years old who were presented to Emergency Department and Respiratory Outpatient Clinic were involvoled in this study. All subjects were examined for clinical signs and oxygen saturation as the gold standard. The prevalence of hypoxemia in children with asthma in this study was 18.2%. The best single clinical predictor of hypoxemia was tachycardia that yielded a sensitivity of 86% (95%CI: 67 – 100%) and specificity of 59% (95%CI: 49 – 71%), and nasal flaring yielded a sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 79%. The combination of 2 clinical signs namely chest wall retraction-nasal flaring increased a sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 71%, chest wall retraction-tachycardia increased a sensitivity of 86% and a specificity of 76%, chest wall retraction-tachypnoe increased a sensitivity of 86% and a specificity of 51%, tachycardia-tachypnoea increased a sensitivity of 79% and a specificity of 76%. The combination 3 clinical sign namely chest wall retraction-tachycardia-tachypnoea yielded a sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 79%. In conclusion, chest wall retraction and tachycardia have higher diagnostic score than other clinical signs to assess hypoxemia in children with asthma on acute exacerbation. Keywords: asthma - hypoxemia - clinical signs - children - assessment


Capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2) can provide a route to partial mitigation of climate change associated with anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Here we report a comprehensive theoretical study of CO2 adsorption on two phases of boron, α-B12 and γ-B28. The theoretical results demonstrate that the electron deficient boron materials, such as α-B12 and γ-B28, can bond strongly with CO2 due to Lewis acid-base interactions because the electron density is higher on their surfaces. In order to evaluate the capacity of these boron materials for CO2 capture, we also performed calculations with various degrees of CO2 coverage. The computational results indicate CO2 capture on the boron phases is a kinetically and thermodynamically feasible process, and therefore from this perspective these boron materials are predicted to be good candidates for CO2 capture.


This Letter reports a polymer optical fiber (POF) based large strain sensor based on the multimode interference (MMI) theory for the application of structural health monitoring. A section of POFs is sandwiched between two silica single mode fibers to construct a single-mode-multimode-single-mode structure that produces a MMI spectrum. The strain sensing mechanism of the device was investigated and experimentally verified. A large dynamic range of 2×10(4) με (2%) and a detection limit of 33 µε have been demonstrated.


In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the use of agricultural biomass for energy purpose in many northern countries. This has created demand for novel, high biomass yielding, specific quality crops for sustainable use. The aim of the current study was to examine Artemisia dubia Wall. for biomass yield and biomass characteristics important for combustion in the temperate climate conditions. The crops were grown on an EndocalcariEpihypogleyic Cambisol (CMg-p-w-can) without fertilization and with mineral nitrogen fertilization at 90 and 170 kg ha-1 N rates. Nitrogen fertilization slightly increased plant height and accumulation of biomass. Moisture content in the biomass of swards applied with a higher rate of mineral N decreased more slowly compared with the lower rate. Biomass annual yield in the second and third years ranged from 15.8 to 17.1 t ha-1; however, significant effect of nitrogen fertilization was not observed. Nitrogen fertilization had a significant influence on N content and lignin in the biomass. The variation of values of the elements relevant for combustion (carbon and sulphur) in the biomass was negligibly influenced by nitrogen fertilization. The relatively low ash content and heating value, amounting to 8.5 MJ kg-1 achieved even without nitrogen fertilization, makes A. dubia a promising energy crop in the northern part of the temperate climate zone. More studies and analyses on A. dubia are needed to ascertain the fertilization effect on biomass yield, biomass quality and biomass properties for combustion in senescent plants.


We propose a new class of hidden Markov model (HMM) called asynchronous-transition HMM (AT-HMM). Opposed to conventional HMMs where hidden state transition occurs simultaneously to all features, the new class of HMM allows state transitions asynchronized between individual features to better model asynchronous timings of acoustic feature changes. In this paper, we focus on a particular class of AT-HMM with sequential constraints based on a novel concept of "state tying along time". To maximize the advantage of the new model, we also introduce a feature-wise state tying technique. Speaker-dependent speech recognition experiments demonstrated error reduction rates more than 30% and 50% in phoneme and isolated word recognitions, respectively, compared with conventional HMMs.


Hiding technology is a newly developed discipline that concludes many subjects and covers many fields, and it hides the transferring information in the carrier, which greatly increases the safety of information transmission. In order to hide and transfer information more effectively, the paper researched the cloud algorithm in the model of information hiding. It also studied the model of information and improvement of the algorithm. With experiments, the algorithm proved to be applicable and could improve the safety and reliability of information hiding.


Forestry agencies must ensure that the views of all citizens in our increasingly diverse society are included in decisionmaking. But gaining clear insights into the perspectives of ethnic and minority communities is often difficult. This article summarizes an analysis of news articles about resource management issues written by American Indians and published in Indian newspapers and finds ways in which their attitudes differ from those of many other Americans?particularly in the importance of spiritual values and the validity of traditional knowledge. The news stories also indicate a deep lack of trust in land management agencies. This approach?analyzing perspectives on natural resource management as expressed in a community?s own words?can be used to learn about the attitudes of other minority populations. Managers who know how all their constituents think about natural resources will better understand the social context in which decisions need to be made.


Based on the theory of orthogonal color mixture curves first published by D. L. MacAdam, a quality factor q of color filters can be defined which is unity for color mixture curves and a positive proper fraction for all the other filters. The difference 1−q measures the average amount of errors when an arbitrary filter is used instead of one whose spectral energy response is a color mixture curve. The theory leads to a rather precise definition of photographic filters that match the usual primaries of color photography and introduce less errors than other filters due to the fact that they fail to be color mixture curves.


We the undersigned law students and law professor offer this response to the USPTO's request for comments on studying and promoting the participation of underrepresented demographic groups in the U.S. patent system. We write based on personal and professional experiences in our own respective science and engineering fields and in the patent system, as well as based on our academic study of these issues. We appreciate the USPTO's attention to the value of studying and promoting diversity in the patent system, especially through evidence-based policymaking. For the reasons that follow, we believe the USPTO should, indeed, collect demographic information on patent inventors, do so at the time of application, and do so on a mandatory rather than voluntary basis in compliance with relevant laws and subject to proper safeguards. The USPTO should also play a central role among public and private institutions to promote the participation of women in patenting and entrepreneurial activities. We address questions 1–3, 5–8, and 10–11. Among the demographic groups of interest, we focus in particular on women.


Spatially structured microfluidic channels in a state far from thermal equilibrium have been developed to address three fundamental problems in modern (bio-)analytics: the usually fixed separation criterion (e.g. a gel density is not changeable on the fly), the usually unknown polarizability properties of samples for dielectrophoretic manipulation and the requirement of a specifically designed chiral selector for chiral separation.

1) Typical biotechnological separation techniques like filters, chromatography, or gel electrophoresis have a fixed implemented separation criterion, e.g. defined by pore size, affinity of the steady phase, or gel density. To overcome this limit, the aim of the first project is the development and functional characterization of a microfluidic ratchet device with a dynamically changeable separation criterion. Depending on the applied voltage scheme, an arbitrarily selectable sub-group of the available species in the analyte solution is forced to migrate into opposite direction than the remaining species. Changing the voltage scheme will immediately switch the separation criterion. The device is based on a sophisticated interplay between electrophoresis and dielectrophoresis and operates with any charged and polarizable material in solution such as e.g. micro- and nanoparticles, cells, or biomolecules.

2) Many microfluidic systems rely on dielectrophoresis to immobilize, manipulate, or sort a somehow polarizable sample. However, the actual polarizability value usually remains unknown and appropriate electric fields to trigger dielectrophoresis are found via trial and error. The second project uses dielectrophoretic traps in a tilted potential implemented in a microfluidic channel to automatically quantify single molecule (here DNA) polarizabilities via fluorescence video microscopy. The approach is tested by reproducing a well-known scaling law between the buffer solution's ionic strength and the polarizability for two different DNA types. In a second experiment the influence of the required fluorescence staining on the polarizability is investigated. Besides the pure quantification of polarizability in basic research, this system could be used to automatically tune dielectrophoretic traps in a final product to broaden its range of possible analyte classes.

3)When chiral molecules are about to be separated after synthesis, a chromatography setup is used which typically requires chiral selection or derivatization agents. Usually these chemicals have to be redeveloped for every new analyte. The third project's aim is the implementation of a generic and continuously operating principle to separate chiral molecules in microfluidic channels without the need for any chiral selection or derivatization agent. Two conceptually different microfluidic approaches with excellent sorting performance were developed and experimentally evaluated. Following Curie's principle, both approaches rely on microfluidic structures that somehow break the symmetry in the channel in every relevant dimension. Injected model enantiomers are demonstrated to split up according to their chirality and to accumulate near opposite channel walls.


Although the number of healthcare assistants (HCA) in employment has continued to increase, the provision of training and development for this role has, to date, been largely dependent upon the discretion of individual employers. In response to this, the Department of Health and Children in Ireland decided to establish a national training course for HCAs and commission its evaluation. As part of this evaluation, the views of the trainees on the national training course were explored. The behaviour, attitudes and experience of these trainees were explored, as was their perception of the relevance of the training course to their role in employment as a HCA. One-to-one semistructured interviews with 22 randomly selected trainees were conducted. All interview respondents felt that the training course had been beneficial. Findings indicated positive changes in practice following their training. The interview respondents indicated that they felt more confident in their ability to undertake delegated duties and believed that the skills learned on the course would be useful to them in their future work. Other issues, such as course duration, selection procedure and level of assessment, caused some dissatisfaction. The training course led to a significant improvement in the trainees' knowledge and care skills. Suggestions for changes to the course from the trainee's perspective include amending the trainee selection procedure and improving the organization and content of the course and follow-up support.


This article considers how to manage longevity risk using longevity derivatives products. We review the potential counterparties that naturally have exposure to this type of risk and we provide details on two very simple products, the survivor forward and the survivor swap, that can be used to trade this type of risk. We then discuss how such products can be priced using a simulation-based approach that has been shown to be successful in pricing financial derivatives. To illustrate the flexibility of the approach we price survivor forwards and swaps using the simple dynamics of the Lee and Carter [1992] mortality model. Our results show that premiums are generally increasing in maturity and in the assumed risk premium. Moreover, prices are more sensible to the future realized survivor index than to the risk premium, making the former more important to assess correctly.


Introduction Time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) spectroscopy is an important tool which can be used to characterize optical materials such as LEDs and photovoltaic (PV) materials. Temporal information as well as spectral information can be used to understand the dynamics of excitonic transitions in such semiconductor materials. Analysis of TRPL contributes to understanding the competition between radiative and non-radiative energy transfer processes1. When steady state PL is not enough, PL lifetime can often provide the additional information to uniquely identify a material and may help distinguish isomers or very similar materials from one another. Furthermore PL lifetime measurements can provide information about the dynamics of a material process, information that is not readily obtained from steady state PL.


We study different notions of blow-up of a scheme X along a subscheme Y, depending on the datum of an embedding of X into an ambient scheme. The two extremes in this theory are the ordinary blow-up, corresponding to the identity, and the `quasi-symmetric blow-up', corresponding to an embedding into a nonsingular variety M. We prove that this latter blow-up is intrinsic of Y and X, and is universal with respect to the requirement of being embedded as a subscheme of the ordinary blow-up of some ambient space along Y.
We consider these notions in the context of the theory of characteristic classes of singular varieties. We prove that if X is a hypersurface in a nonsingular variety and Y is its `singularity subscheme', these two extremes embody respectively the conormal and characteristic cycles of X. Consequently, the first carries the essential information computing Chern-Mather classes, and the second is likewise a carrier for Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson classes. In our approach, these classes are obtained from Segre class-like invariants, in precisely the same way as other intrinsic characteristic classes such as those proposed by William Fulton and by W. Fulton and Kent Johnson.
We also identify a condition on the singularities of a hypersurface under which the quasi-symmetric blow-up is simply the linear fiber space associated with a coherent sheaf.


In my doctoral thesis I have focused on the suprasegmental level of language in order to find out which combinations of prosodic features convey not only content information but also information about our personality, our attitudes and our emotions, that is, information about our identity.
After considering different definitions of the term "identity", I come to the conclusion that "identity" is a relational term that establishes a parallelism between two domains: the domain of individuality and the domain of collectiveness. In this regard, theories from cognitive linguistics, radical constructivism and radical experientialism are studied and applied to show how our identity is a necessary construction expressed through different means. Moreover, the theoretical part of the dissertation bases itself on the notion of embodiment from the cognitive field and gives great importance to the role played by perception in the use of our voice.
The theoretical implications are then verified in an empirical part: 60 female voices (20 German, 20 American, 20 Spanish) are recorded in interviews and analysed phonetically with Praat. After classifying the voices in terms of nationality and in terms of personality groups (introversion/extroversion) vocal aspects such as length, average pitch, intensity and speech rate are measured. Although the results show nationality differences in pitch and speech rate there are no concrete tendencies observed for the personality parameters of introversion/extroversion, even though we do have common expectations about how an introvert or an extrovert speaks. These results are also checked statistically.
In a second step, all the voice labels used by the candidates interviewed are collected, classified according to their frequency and compared with results given by certain corpora tools. This shows clear vocal stereotypes: for the three nationalities studied, deep and raspy voices are judged to be sexy and high and squeaky voices are considered unpleasant. Phonetic voice labels are preferred to impressionistic voice labels. Certain voice labels such as sweet or soft seem more language dependant.
A comparison between judgements made on the own voice (in terms of frequency, intensity and speech rate) and the results from the phonetic analysis proves that non-experts have an accurate self perception of voice, which is then confirmed in a perception test by using high and deep voices as stimuli. This test proves that independently of whether we understand the language heard or not, we are capable of guessing correctly basic emotions and attitudes by interpreting the prosodic cues available. For certain voice correlations between vocal cues and identity cues a verticality schema has been found.
As a conclusion, by contrasting theory and practice it can be stated that our voice encodes the dichotomy of our identity very well (as unique beings and as members of a collectivity) and that voice production cannot be understood without voice perception and vice-versa. Both phenomena are linked to our embodied condition and our cognition.