Mutations in the gene encoding copper/zinc superoxide dismutase enzyme produce an animal model of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (FALS), a fatal disorder characterized by paralysis. Overexpression of the proto-oncogene bcl-2 delayed onset of motor neuron disease and prolonged survival in transgenic mice expressing the FALS-linked mutation in which glycine is substituted by alanine at position 93. It did not, however, alter the duration of the disease. Overexpression of bcl-2 also attenuated the magnitude of spinal cord motor neuron degeneration in the FALS-transgenic mice.


Abstract Organic farming in the European Union has been supported widely since 1994. Against the background of discussions concerning the design and level of organic farming support, and the relevance of organic payments for the economic success of organic farms, the question emerges as to the impact of support payments on the sustainable development of organic farming in Europe. Different databases and methodological approaches have been chosen to demonstrate the role of organic farming payments for the viability of organic farms for selected Western and Eastern European study countries. Economic analyses are based on national Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) in the Western European countries and on 'typical farms' in the Eastern European group. As a supplement to the modeling analyses, a detailed survey of 50 organic farms was carried out in each of the study countries. Organic farming payments were assessed to be 'important' or 'very important' to the economic situation on farms by the majority of the farmers surveyed. The outcome of the economic analyses shows that organic farming payments contribute on average 4–6% of gross output in the Western European countries and 4–19% in the Eastern European countries studied. The results put the level of specific support for organic farming into perspective, as other support payments and market returns contribute larger shares of total farm revenue in all the countries analyzed. Organic farming payments account for 10–30% of family farm income plus wages in Western European study countries and—after EU accession—up to three-quarters in some of the Eastern European countries, thus highlighting the considerable vulnerability of organic farms to changes in organic farming policy. As a general trend in both the West and the East, it can be observed that the policy dependency of farms has increased over recent years. Changes in organic area support, which are actually under discussion in some countries, must be carried out with a sense of proportion, since support payments will continue to play an important role in the profitability of organic farms. Nevertheless, in order to reduce dependency on area payments, organic farming support should follow an integrated approach, using a mix of support measures including, e.g., the improvement of processing and marketing facilities, support for farm cooperation and activities designed to enhance demand.


We address the problem of instance-level semantic segmentation, which aims at jointly detecting, segmenting and classifying every individual object in an image. In this context, existing methods typically propose candidate objects, usually as bounding boxes, and directly predict a binary mask within each such proposal. As a consequence, they cannot recover from errors in the object candidate generation process, such as too small or shifted boxes. In this paper, we introduce a novel object segment representation based on the distance transform of the object masks. We then design an object mask network (OMN) with a new residual-deconvolution architecture that infers such a representation and decodes it into the final binary object mask. This allows us to predict masks that go beyond the scope of the bounding boxes and are thus robust to inaccurate object candidates. We integrate our OMN into a Multitask Network Cascade framework, and learn the resulting boundary-aware instance segmentation (BAIS) network in an end-to-end manner. Our experiments on the PASCAL VOC 2012 and the Cityscapes datasets demonstrate the benefits of our approach, which outperforms the state-of-the-art in both object proposal generation and instance segmentation.


This report presents a methodology to link national medium-term (up to 2030) with global long-term (beyond 2050) emission scenarios. Such a linkage is relevant for estimating impacts of global long-term climate change scenarios on local and regional air pollution in the next few decades.

We present a methodology for the linkage that combines results from two models developed at IIASA: the GAINS air pollution model and the MESSAGE model of long-term energy system dynamics. We calculate for energy scenarios developed by the MESSAGE model future emissions of air pollutants (SO2, NOx, PM, BC/OC, NH3, VOC and CO), taking into account air pollution control legislation that is in place in the various countries.

Example results are provided for the middle-of-the-road B2 baseline scenario. Under the B2 scenario global emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide decline continuously between 2000 and 2100, largely due to widespread implementation of air pollution control technologies. On the other hand, in Asian developing countries sulfur emissions will increase significantly up to 2030 due to the strong increase in coal use for power generation. In contrast, a climate stabilization scenario highlights synergies from the co-control of air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, the role of shipping emissions is discussed within the global context, and resulting emission projections are compared with other analyses.


Pitch changes perceived across the transition from a driven room sound field to a freely decaying room sound field were studied in a subjective experiment. Spectrally dense organ chords were recorded in a church and later gated to provide samples from both the driven and the decaying sound fields. Terhardt's dynamic pitch algorithm was used to analyze the chord samples for comparison with experimental results. On average, when choosing a lower octave sinusoid for tuning, subjects tuned flatter than when choosing a higher octave. This result is consistent with the predictions of Terhardt's algorithm. Second, there was a consistent trend to perceive the reverberant sound field an average of about 20 cents flatter than the corresponding driven sound field. This effect is not predicted by Terhardt's pitch model. [Work supported by the ASA's Hunt postdoctoral fellowship of 1987–88.]


During the last stages of the eruption of syn-rift basalts along the East Greenland Margin, debris flows and/or pyroclastic deposits were emplaced at Ocean Drilling Program Sites 915 and 916. The deposits and the tops of the lava flows at Site 918 were altered by subaerial weathering processes as indicated by downhole changes in mineral and chemical composition, and by the mineral paragenesis. Kaolinite and goethite, which form in acidic waters, are abundant at the tops of the weathering profiles and decrease in abundance downward. They are replaced by a smectite-hematite-opal assemblage at the bases of the weathered profiles. Gibbsite is a minor component in the upper parts of the profiles. Good preservation of parent structure and stratifica-tion indicate that only the bases of paleosols are preserved at all sites. The upper parts were probably eroded when these sites subsided below sea level. Abundant gibbsite in marine sediment overlying the paleosols and of middle to late Eocene age is probably derived from the erosion of highly weathered soils formed in a subtropical to tropical climate. A highly weathered basaltic terrane supplied abundant iron oxides in addition to gibbsite, kaolinite, illite/mica, and quartz through fluvially dominated deltaic systems on the shelf through at least the late Eocene. Only small amounts of sediment spilled over into the adjacent Irminger Basin through the Eocene, as indicated by the presence of felsic terrane-derived minerals (quartz, illite, and/or mica). Sedimentation rates were low enough in the Irminger Basin to allow Mn oxide crusts to develop until quartzose turbidites spilled over in the late Oligocene. Gibbsite was not detected in sediment of early Oligocene age and younger, suggesting a regional cooling, increased aridity, and/or leveling of the source area at this time.


The dissertation was a performance of a theater art piece, Sculptolinear Kintinuum. The concert presentation took place March 13, 14, 1969, at Taylor Theatre on the University of North Carolina at Greensboro campus. It is recorded in a l6mm film. The theater art piece is supported by a written documentation which is a development and validation of the directing artist's personal experiences resulting from the dissertation. In Sculptolinear Kintinuum some of the sculptural aspects of the human body and the human body in combination with others were explored as stimulus for the choreographed motion and design. This statement was further motivated by the influence of a particular group of sculptural objects used at different times in the theater piece to: change the shape of the human body; restrict and augment the possibilities of motion; delineate space in ways not possible with the human body alone or in a group; and connect, relate, and isolate the performers in their relationship to one another and to the sculptural forms. The sculptural forms were used at different times as sets, props, costumes, or a combination of these. The intent of all work with the sculptural forms and with the human bodies was to elicit motion that was inherent in the new form resulting from the union of the performers and the sculptural forms, or of the performers as a small group or mass. The integration of the theater elements of color, sound, light, time, shape, space, and motion into a visual and auditory continuum made up the statement which is this work. The piece was presented as a kinetic continuum of sculptural form and linear statement. Intensive training sessions in improvisation preceded actual rehearsals. The objectives of these sessions were to increase individual sensitivity, to establish group awareness and rapport, and to encourage compatibility and ease of working relationships between the performing and directing artists. The training sessions were a series of experiences designed to increase awareness of relative body position, shape, space, phrasing, focus, rhythm, kinetic flow, resistance, and counterbalance. The students were trained not only to become aware of these elements as they worked individually, but as they worked with another person, two other people, and so on up to seven—the total number of Sculptolinear Kintinuum performers. Improvisation was allowed to affect all aspects of the statement, the title, the collaboration with other artists, the costuming, the color selection, and the development of the motion passages with the performers. The belief that the artist can and must train himself to think beyond the obvious, to find many solutions to everything, to formulate his own criteria of judgment, to develop a flexible and fluent mind, to be ultrasensitive to perceptual stimuli and to make technical discoveries that lead him to new avenues of exploration, became the guiding ideal for this dissertation and led to the performing and directing of the theater art piece, Sculptolinear Kintinuum.


Computers were first conceived as "thinking machines," but in the twenty-first century they have become social machines, online places where people meet friends, play games, and collaborate on projects. In this book, Judith Donath argues persuasively that for social media to become truly sociable media, we must design interfaces that reflect how we understand and respond to the social world. People and their actions are still harder to perceive online than face to face: interfaces are clunky, and we have less sense of other people's character and intentions, where they congregate, and what they do. Donath presents new approaches to creating interfaces for social interaction. She addresses such topics as visualizing social landscapes, conversations, and networks; depicting identity with knowledge markers and interaction history; delineating public and private space; and bringing the online world's open sociability into the physical world. Donath asks fundamental questions ab ut how we want to live online and offers thought-provoking designs that explore radically new ways of interacting and communicating.


Biallelic mutations in the cyclin‐dependent kinase 5 regulatory subunit‐associated protein 2 gene CDK5RAP2 cause autosomal recessive primary microcephaly type 3 (MCPH3). MCPH is characterized by intellectual disability and microcephaly at birth, classically without further organ involvement. Only recently, congenital cataracts were reported in four patients of one pedigree with MCPH3. Given the lack of a further pedigree with this phenotype, it remained unclear whether this was a true causal relationship. Here we support the link between CDK5RAP2 and eye development by showing that most Cdk5rap2 mutant mice (an/an) exhibit eye malformations ranging from reduced size of one or both eyes (microphthalmia) to total absence of both eyes (anophthalmia). We also detected increased apoptosis in the an/an retinal progenitor cells associated with more mitotic cells. This indicates an important role of Cdk5rap2 in physiologic eye development.


Introduction Written registers in English have undergone extensive stylistic change over the past four centuries, in response to changes in the purposes of communication, the demographics of the reading public and attitudinal preferences of authors. For example, Biber and Finegan (1989, 1997) document the way in which written prose registers in the seventeenth century were already quite different from conversational registers, and how those registers evolved to become even more distinct from speech over the course of the eighteenth century. Informational expository registers like medical prose and science prose have continued to develop more 'literate' styles over the last two centuries, including increasing use of passive verbs, relative clause constructions and elaborated noun phrases generally (see Atkinson 1992, 2001, Biber 1995: 280–313, Biber and Finegan 1997). These linguistic developments correspond to the development of a more specialized readership, more specialized purposes, and a fuller exploitation of the production possibilities of the written mode. That is, in marked contrast to the general societal trends towards a wider lay readership and the corresponding need for popular written registers, readers of medical research prose and science prose have become increasingly more specialized in their backgrounds and training, and correspondingly these registers have become more specialized in linguistic form. Surprisingly, even some more 'popular' registers, such as newspaper reportage, have followed a similar historical path (see Biber 2003). One linguistic domain that reflects these historical developments is the choice among structural devices used to modify noun phrases.


ABSTRACT Root architectural traits are of fundamental importance for plant performance, especially under unfavorable soil conditions. This study examined the effect of aluminum (Al) toxicity in different growing media (nutrient solutions and soil) on root architecture of two wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars with different Al tolerances. Seedlings were grown in acidic and limed soil and in two contrasting nutrient solutions. Root systems of soil-grown plants were scanned using x-ray microcomputed tomography (µCT) while that of nutrient solution–grown plants were assesses using WinRhizo, 3 and 5 days after planting (DAP), respectively. Aluminum caused significant reduction of all examined root traits (number of seminal roots, root length, length of the longest seminal root, root surface area, and root volume). Growth in acidic soil caused significant reduction in root length, length of the longest seminal root, and root surface area at 5 DAP. Soil-grown plants produced a larger root system compared to plants grown in nutrient solutions. Aluminum toxicity–induced differences of root traits were also found between different nutrient solutions. Beside the well-known reduction of root length, Al toxicity had a profound effect on other root architectural traits. X-ray µCT has revealed root architectural changes under specific conditions of acidic, Al-toxic soil. Differences obtained in Al-induced effects on root architecture between different nutrient solutions as well as between different growing systems emphasize the need for further study of root architecture, especially under specific conditions of Al toxicity in acidic soils.


Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to understand the differences between proactive and reactive market research techniques during the development of new market offerings. The study focused on the financial and innovative performance of traditional market research techniques, such as focus groups and in-depth interviews, in comparison to more co-creation-oriented techniques that are designed to capture customers value-in-use. Design/methodology/approach - The study was a two-stage process. Study I, an empirical investigation of 195 development projects in European companies, examined how these companies use different market research techniques and how this relates to the profit margins of new products and services. Study II designed an experiment with 50 users of a consumer good and evaluated the contribution of different market research techniques, based on the degree of originality and customer value. Findings - Significant differences were found, in terms of both content and originality, between the technique based on customer co-creation and the two traditional market research techniques (Study II). These findings can help to explain why the relationship between the use of market research techniques and profit margin (Study I) is stronger for co-creation techniques than it is for traditional market research techniques. Originality/value - Despite empirical evidence that the application of market research techniques based on co-creation can lead to original ideas, there is a lack of valid studies regarding how co-creation techniques perform in relation to more traditional methods of collaboration with customers.


A theoretical study is presented for parametric compensation of power losses in surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) along single metal–dielectric interfaces. An optical or near-infrared signal SPP with subwavelength transverse confinement and an idler SPP with 2–3 times longer wavelength are amplified parametrically by a broadside laser pump. Despite the fact that Drude losses are much higher than parametric gain, there is more than tenfold enhancement of the signal SPP propagation length, albeit at a reduced but detectable signal power level. Numerical results are presented for a silver surface interfaced with a polymer/dye or porous silicon layer that allow phase matching of the noncollinear parametric process.


Human d-3-phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (PHGDH), the first enzyme in the serine biosynthetic pathway, is genomically amplified in tumors including breast cancer and melanoma. In PHGDH-amplified cancer cells, knockdown of PHGDH is not fully rescued by exogenous serine, suggesting possible additional growth-promoting roles for the enzyme. Here we show that, in addition to catalyzing oxidation of 3-phosphoglycerate, PHGDH catalyzes NADH-dependent reduction of α-ketoglutarate (AKG) to the oncometabolite d-2-hydroxyglutarate (d-2HG). Knockdown of PHGDH decreased cellular 2HG by approximately 50% in the PHGDH-amplified breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-468 (normal concentration 93 μM) and BT-20 (normal concentration 35 μM) and overexpression of PHGDH increased cellular 2HG by over 2-fold in non-PHGDH-amplified MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, which normally display very low PHGDH expression. The reduced 2HG level in PHGDH knockdown cell lines can be rescued by PHGDH re-expression, but not by a catalytically inactive PHGDH mutant. The initial connection between cancer and d-2HG involved production of high levels of d-2HG by mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase. More recently, however, elevated d-2HG has been observed in breast cancer tumors without isocitrate dehydrogenase mutation. Our results suggest that PHGDH is one source of this d-2HG.


In May 1974, a committee appointed by the newly founded Institute of Medicine ("IOM") of the National Academy of Sciences published a report on health maintenance organizations ("HMOs") entitled HMOs: Toward a Fair Market Test. (1) That report was notable as an early endorsement, by an organization somewhat representative of the health care establishment, of HMOs as desirable additions to the health care scene. Perhaps more significantly, the report went beyond merely embracing HMOs as promising alternative vehicles for financing and delivering health care, and emphasized the potentially bracing effects that HMO competition might have on the health care system as a whole. (2) The use of the word "market" in the report's title was another precursor of the new departure that would occur in American health policy in the late 1970s, in the direction of greater reliance on competition and consumer choice. In retrospect, one might see the IOM report, with its suggestive title, as helping to launch a quarter-century -long natural experiment to determine the value not only of HMOs and other forms of managed care (3) but also of free-market principles in caring for people's health. (4) I END OF AN EXPERIMENT? If one were in fact to view the last two and a half decades as an experimental trial of managed care and market mechanisms in the health care sector, the measured results of that "fair market test" would appear moderately encouraging. In the 1990s, when managed care finally became dominant in many health care markets, the rate at which health care costs in the United States rose, relative to other costs was, for the first time in modern history, brought into line with the growth of gross domestic product ("GDP"). Thus, from 1993 through 1998, the share of GDP devoted to health care stabilized around 13.6%, after having claimed more than a quarter percent more of GDP, on average, in each of the twenty-eight years since 1965. (5) Although GDP itself grew especially fast in the period from 1993 to 1998 (making it easier to absorb the increases in health costs that did occur), (6) inflation-adjusted health spending was under unprecedented restraint, growing less than 3% each year from 1995 to 1997; premiums for p rivate health coverage rose only 2.8% in 1995, 3.3% in 1996, and 3.5% in 1997, after growing at double-digit. rates in most of the 1980s. At the same time that cost increases were seemingly under effective control, (7) studies of industry performance detected no net adverse effects of managed care on the outcomes of health care or on other measures of overall quality. (8) To be sure, one might have expected increasingly hands-on management of the health care enterprise to yield net quality improvements as well as cost control, rather than merely holding the line against deterioration. (9) But the objective evidence at least reassures us that the money saved in the experiment with managed care probably came without a net lowering of quality. Notwithstanding these promising results from two decades of experimentation with market mechanisms, recent market and policy developments make it seem that managed care flunked its "fair market test." (10) The role of managed care has been, or is currently being, drastically curtailed as both employers and government take action to limit the tools that managed care firms can use to resist cost increases. On the one hand, some employers, responding to employee perceptions and complaints, have begun to question the methods employed by health plans and to press plans to adopt less restrictive arrangements. (11) On the other hand, the greatest restrictions on health plans are not those imposed voluntarily by the industry's customers but the mandatory ones increasingly found in state and federal legislation, including pending federal patient protection legislation. (12) The latter bill not only would impose new regulatory requirements at the federal level but would also lift some previous bars to state authority o ver employer-sponsored managed care plans. …


The growth of multimedia collections - in terms of size, heterogeneity, and variety of media types - necessitates systems that are able to conjointly deal with several forms of media, especially when it comes to searching for particular objects. However, existing retrieval systems are organized in silos and treat different media types separately. As a consequence, retrieval across media types is either not supported at all or subject to major limitations. In this paper, we present vitrivr, a content-based multimedia information retrieval stack. As opposed to the keyword search approach implemented by most media management systems, vitrivr makes direct use of the object's content to facilitate different types of similarity search, such as Query-by-Example or Query-by-Sketch, for and, most importantly, across different media types - namely, images, audio, videos, and 3D models. Furthermore, we introduce a new web-based user interface that enables easy-to-use, multimodal retrieval from and browsing in mixed media collections. The effectiveness of vitrivr is shown on the basis of a user study that involves different query and media types. To the best of our knowledge, the full vitrivr stack is unique in that it is the first multimedia retrieval system that seamlessly integrates support for four different types of media. As such, it paves the way towards an all-purpose, content-based multimedia information retrieval system.


Infrared absorption measurements of molecular water in sheared Cambrian quartzites in the footwall to the Moine thrust reveal a decrease in water content from 4080 to 1570 ppm with increasing recrystallization traced toward the overlying thrust at the Stack of Glencoul in northwest Scotland. These results are contrary to the expected correlation between shear strain and water content for quartz deformed by dislocation creep and water-weakening processes. The observed inverse correlation indicates that fluid inclusions and hydrous defects within grains were lost by mobile grain boundary sweeping and grain boundary diffusion. Although reduced water contents might lead to hardening as chemical weakening is diminished, quartz mylonites in the immediate footwall (5 mm) to the thrust are characterized by intense strain localization and contain the least water, and there is little evidence of shear zone widening. Water weakening appears to have been important throughout the quartz mylonites, controlled by the presence of water, not by water concentration. Fluids present within relict inclusions and at grain boundaries may have governed the high water fugacities critical for water weakening.


A full isentropic vertical motion (?�??) has long been difficult to calculate in an operational forecasting environment. However, recent interactions with the Springfield, MO National Weather Service Office spurred the development of the current method of estimating the total ?�??. During the winter of 2012-13, this expression was developed into its current form, and initial tests were undertaken to test its usefulness. Using output from NCEP's operational WRF-NAM model, individual points were evaluated for isentropic surfaces RH values > 95% and compared against the existing isobaric omega (?�) as a truth value. Results show that the difference between ?�?? and ?�, or ADER, performed best on isentropic surfaces closer to the ground, with an overall trend of better performance the further the forecast was from the initialization time. As the area of calculations decreased from 17x17 to a 7x7 grid-space each at 80km apart, errors were reduced by nearly an order of magnitude. The inclusion of the diabatic term to the isentropic vertical motion equation has been demonstrated to reveal average over-estimated errors of 2??bs?�???.


N-body simulations of collisionless collapse have offered important clues for the construction of realistic stellar dynamical models of elliptical galaxies. Understanding this idealized and relatively simple process, by which stellar systems can reach partially relaxed equilibrium configurations ( characterized by isotropic central regions and radially anisotropic envelopes), is a prerequisite to more ambitious attempts at constructing physically justified models of elliptical galaxies in which the problem of galaxy formation is set in the generally accepted cosmological context of hierarchical clustering. In a previous paper we have discussed the dynamical properties of a family of models of partially relaxed stellar systems ( the f((nu)) models), designed to incorporate the qualitative properties of the products of collisionless collapse at small and at large radii. Here we revisit the problem of incomplete violent relaxation, by making a direct comparison between the detailed properties of such family of models and those of the products of collisionless collapse found in N-body simulations that we have run for the purpose. Surprisingly, the models thus identified are able to match the simulated density distributions over nine orders of magnitude and also to provide an excellent fit to the anisotropy profiles and a good representation of the overall structure in phase space. The end-products of the simulations and the best-fitting models turn out to be characterized by a level of pressure anisotropy close to the threshold for the onset of the radial-orbit instability. The conservation of Q, a third quantity that is argued to be approximately conserved in addition to total energy and total number of particles as a basis for the construction of the f (.) family, is discussed and tested numerically.


This book review asserts that Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement ("Cops Across Borders") is the first book to attempt a systematic analysis of the role that the United States has played in the field of international law enforcement. For that reason, the book represents a major step forward in understanding this rapidly evolving area. While many people have examined different aspects of international law enforcement, such as extraterritorial jurisdiction, extradition, and international evidence gathering, not until this book has the entire field been subjected to historical and scholarly research. Mr. Nadelmann's book has forged a new road in this rapidly growing, but often confusing, area. The book is not without defects, however. The basic problem with Cops Across Borders is that the general theme of international law enforcement is not strong enough to hold together the different chapters to form a cohesive whole. Each chapter is a self-contained study of a particular facet of law enforcement, and the reader is left with the feeling that Mr. Nadelmann has forced the parts together to form a single text. Given the importance of his endeavor, however, the effort can be readily defended as the exercise of justifiable force. Indeed, the sections of the book are well-suited to use in an academic setting as the basis for an extended study of the issues raised.


In supervised learning, many techniques focus on optimizing training phase to increase prediction performance. Active inference, a relatively novel paradigm, aims to decrease overall prediction error via selective collection of some labels based on relations among instances. In this research, we use dynamic Bayesian networks to model temporal systems and we apply active inference to dynamically choose variables for observation so as to improve prediction on unobserved variables.


Between 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 there was a sharp fall in female labor force participation (LFP) in rural India. Why did this occur? We look at the four standard explanations: that more women in rural areas are now pursuing higher education and are therefore not available for work (education effect), that household incomes are rising quickly enough that there is a tendency for women to withdraw from the labor force to attend to domestic duties (income effect), that employment opportunities for women are decreasing, and that social and cultural factors may be interacting with these three factors and amplifying their effects. Our findings suggest that the decline in rural women's LFP could potentially be due to an income effect and partly due to an education effect. We find no evidence of changes in employment opportunities or of social and cultural interaction effects that could explain the decline in rural female LFP.


In this study, the fabrication of a high-performance electrothermal and anticorrosive transparent heating sticker employing a novel Ni/Ag hybrid microgrid electrode is reported. The proposed sticker not only exhibits an excellent optoelectronic performance (a sheet resistance of 4.3 Ω sq−1 at a transmittance of 96%) but also has a uniform heat distribution over its entire area owing to the electrical uniformity of the honeycomb-structured microgrid electrode. The transparent heating sticker reveals outstanding thermal and chemical stability with no electrode damage even in harsh environments such as high temperatures (300 °C) and atmospheres containing sulfur in excess, due to the anti-corrosion properties of nickel (Ni). The transparent heating sticker also exhibits a high saturation temperature of over 100 °C even at a low operating voltage (5 V) because highly thermally/electrically conductive silver (Ag) is employed as a base electrode material underneath Ni. Furthermore, a successful defogging test is demonstrated with an automobile side-view mirror using the transparent heating sticker, confirming its practical applicability. Accordingly, the proposed transparent heating sticker presents a unique opportunity for developing transparent heaters with superior chemical stability and a high electrothermal performance.


This study explores the impact of changes in environmental conditions on intrahousehold labor allocation to the collection of environmental goods such as fuelwood and leaf fodder for a sample of rural Nepali households. Using household-level panel data collected in 1982 and 1997, the study finds that household collection time significantly increases with measures of environmental resource scarcity, and that the increase appears to come almost equally from men and women. Additionally, the results of this study indicate that household collection burdens are significantly lower in 1997 than in 1982, and that women have seen the largest decrease in their time spent collecting. The picture is not an entirely rosy one, however, as consumption of environmental goods is also significantly lower in 1997 compared to 1982. The results taken together indicate that one should not hastily attribute decreases in collection labor burdens to successful forest rehabilitation in areas managed by forest user groups. In this case it appears that lower collection times are principally due to reduced consumption and increased collection from private land.


Introduction. Analysis of the literature suggests that the particular nature of the interplay between a person's creativity and intelligence is determined not only by the conditions in which a person develops and their personality traits, but also their age. Objective. The purpose of this study was to compare the interaction between the levels of creativity and intelligence of 7 to 8 year-old children and 12 to 13 yearold teenagers, by studying how 7–8 year-old children and young teenagers (12–13 years old) with different levels of intelligence and creativity assimilate stochastic signals. Design. A total of 160 children took part in the study, 80 firstand secondgraders who were 7–8 years old (37 boys and 43 girls), and 80 fifth-graders, aged 12–13 (40 boys and 40 girls). We used the following procedures: Raven's Progressive Matrices; a battery of creative thinking tests, amounting to a modification of the Guilford and Torrance's tests in a Russian adaptation created by E. Tunik; and the computer reflexometric method. Results. Our findings showed that the relationship between the level of intelligence and the level of creativity is different in the two age groups. With 7–8 year-olds, the two parameters are independent of each other, whereas with 12–13 year-olds, there is a weak but significant link between them. With the 7–8 year-old children, the level of creativity predetermines the child's ability to detect the structure of a sensory stream that is organized in a complex way. At the ages of 12–13, neither the level of creativity nor the level of intelligence is correlated with the parameters of sensorimotor integration, but the two parameters are interconnected.


Version francaise de l'articleThe livestock sector will need to provide meat and milk for a growing population, while at the same time limiting its environmental impacts. To meet this challenge, more and more studies are being conducted to identify the most efficient systems from an environmental perspective, especially those that use the fewest nonrenewable resources in relation to their output. In 2006, an FAO report thus called attention not only to the environmental damage they cause, but also to the lack of efficiency of livestock systems, especially extensive systems in developing countries, whose level of food production remains low. Questioning this report, a recent study conducted by CIRAD in four different regions shows that extensive dairy systems in Mali can be more efficient than intensive systems in Reunion Island, and just as efficient as semi-intensive systems in western France. This result was obtained using the emergy methodology, which uses one type of unit to evaluate all the resources consumed to generate food or non-food products. This methodology takes into account the complex and multifunctional nature of livestock systems, especially extensive ones. Emergy could be a useful tool enabling decision-makers to develop livestock policies adapted to suit individual contexts, and to thereby meet the growing demand for livestock products.


A wide-ranging survey of the theoretical and practical problems of economic development, "Challenge of Development" demonstrates how effective development theory, planning and programming derive from and are tested in firsthand field experience. Covering all aspects of development, Richard J. Ward presents chapters by leading authorities who have combined academic teaching and research with years of effort in underdeveloped countries or in the administration of foreign aid programs.The materials in "The Challenge of Development" are divided into six sections, providing logical, coherent coverage of each major segment of development programs: methodology, strategy and decision-making criteria in development; manpower needs and projections; the intrinsic value of land, including its agricultural potential; promoting the industrial sector; the development of infrastructure power, transportation and communications; and the social problems created by modern growth trends. In this way, it provides a balanced, practical approach to studying development problems and to working successfully in development programs.Encompassing a broad spectrum of material and illustrating the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems of development, "The Challenge of Development" is essential reading for all students of development at every level, is a useful sourcebook for the practitioner's library and an excellent handbook for business and political officials concerned with development.


Purpose of the article: The author's interest focuses on human factor of brand managers, as brands and their added value are considered to be among the most important sources of competitive advantage for business in a competitive marketplace. There is no doubt that for succeeding in their job role, brand managers must have knowledge, dispositional traits and concomitant soft skills that arise from these traits. The purpose of the article is to provide the insight into the offering of brand manager posts in the Czech Republic and in the U.S.A. and to analyse the collected data with the special interest in finding the answer whether the employers are searching the brand managers possessing personal dispositions and skills of knowledge workers, and if there is no significant difference in the requirements between the Czech and American recruitment advertisers.
Methodology/methods: For a successful empirical research, the content analysis method by Berelson was used to study the texts in the advertisements publicly available on career portals. The statistical verifications of results were conducted using the chi-square test.
Scientific aim:The goal of the primary survey was to provide the answers to the research questions that arise from the following research assumptions: (1) employers do not publish different requirements for candidates for the job of Brand Manager in the U.S.A. and in the Czech Republic, (2) the set of requirements for candidates for the job of Brand Manager in the U.S.A. will confirm that a brand manager is one of the workers who has skills and personality prerequisites expected from knowledge workers.
Findings: The results of the actual research project confirmed the fundamental need for excellent communication skills (69.0%) and presentation skills (65.5%). Unlike employers in the Czech Republic, the American companies are more interested in people with a high degree of responsibility (41.4%) that is the third highest relative frequency of identified traits. About one third of American advertisements had requirements for the high degree of creativity, conceptual thinking and analytical skills of candidates for the position of Brand Manager. During the comparison of the data results gathered in both countries, there were recorded significant differences practically in all analysed groups of personality traits, behavioural competencies and so-called soft skills. Statistical verification confirmed the shift of requirements in the group of performance prerequisites and abilities, as well as in the group of interpersonal skills and abilities.
Conclusions: Comparison of frequencies of requirements placed on candidates for the position of Brand Manager in the U.S.A. and in the Czech Republic indicated differences, but it does not mean that the US employers are less demanding. The differences in the employers' expectations supported by a set of psychological requirements placed on candidates for the position of Brand Manager inspire the discussion and are the reason for a deeper investigation of the job roles in product management. The findings indicated that employers are looking for employees possessing personal dispositions and skills of a knowledge worker nevertheless the ability to innovate is not presented in the American job advertisements as often as in the Czech Republic.


Soft biometrics are biometric traits that do not offer exact human identification, however, they can provide adequate information to narrow-down the search space and give valuable insights for the subject in question. In this work, we examine the issues that emerge by analysing CCTV videos for soft biometrics and propose a methodology for extracting soft biometrics from low-quality and low-resolution video footage taken from real, street CCTV cameras. The proposed approach is based on the concept of Exemplars, that is, to find matches of the examined subject over a labelled dataset, which is able to encode the quality, colour and light variations of the surveillance images. Experiments have been conducted in a new challenging dataset that we introduce in this paper. It has been created using real CCTV footage, enhanced with a wide range of annotations from multiple people, and a manually created segmentation mask for each detection/person. This dataset is made available to scientific community for comparison and improvement of their methodologies in real-world scenarios.


Carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization of a femtosecond chirped-pulse amplification system featuring a compact transmission grating compressor is demonstrated. The system includes two amplification stages and routinely generates phase-stable (approximately 250 mrad rms) 2 mJ, 25 fs pulses at 1 kHz. Minimizing the optical pathway in the compressor enables phase stabilization without feedback control of the grating separation or beam pointing. We also demonstrate for the first time to the best of our knowledge, out-of-loop control of the CEP using an acousto-optic programmable dispersive filter inside the laser chain.


Numerous freshwater ecosystems, dense concentrations of humans along the eastern seaboard, extensive forests and a history of intensive land use distinguish the New England/Mid-Atlantic Region. Human population densities are forecast to increase in portions of the region at the same time that climate is expected to be changing. Consequently, the effects of humans and climatic change are likely to affect freshwater ecosystems within the region interactively. The general climate, at present, is humid continental, and the region receives abundant precipitation. Climatic projections for a 2 x CO1 atmosphere, however, suggest warmer and drier conditions for much of this region. Annual temperature increases ranging from 3-5°C are projected, with the greatest increases occurring in autumn or winter. According to a water balance mode!, the projected increase in temperature will result in greater rates of evaporation and evapotranspiration. This could cause a 21 and 31% reduction in annual stream flow in the southern and northern sections of the region, respectively, with greatest reductions occurring in autumn and winter. The amount and duration of snow cover is also projected to decrease across the region, and summer convective thunderstorms are likely to decrease in frequency but increase in intensity. The dual effects of climate change and direct anthropogenic stress will most likely alter hydrological and biogeochemica! processes, and, hence, the flora! and fauna! communities of the region's freshwater ecosystems. For example, the projected increase in evapotranspiration and evaporation could eliminate most bog ecosystems, and increases in water temperature may increase bioaccumulation, and possibly biomagnification, of organic and inorganic contaminants. Not a!! change may be adverse. For example, a decrease in runoff may reduce the intensity of ongoing estuarine eutrophication, and acidification of aquatic habitats during the spring snowmelt period may be ameliorated. Recommendations for future monitoring efforts include: (1) extending and improving data on the distribution, abundance and effect of anthropogenic stressors (non-point pollution) within the region; and (2) improving scientific knowledge regarding the contemporary distribution and abundance of aquatic species. Research recommendations include: (1) establishing a research centre(s) where field studies designed to understand interactions between freshwater ecosystems and climate change can be conducted; (2) projecting the future distribution, activities and direct effects of humans within the region; (3) developing mathematical analyses, experimental designs and aquatic indicators that distinguish between climatic and anthropogenic effects on aquatic systems; (4) developing and refining projections of climate variability such that the magnitude, frequency and seasonal timing of extreme events can be forecast; and (5) describing quantitatively the flux of materials (sediments, nutrients, metals) from watersheds characterized by a mosaic of land uses. 0 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


A team of astronomers has found a gas cloud that existed when the universe was 13% of its current age that appears to be made of the pristine gas produced in the big bang but with just a wisp of heavier elements: 1/3000 of the level in our solar system. This tiny impurity suggests that it contains the ashes of some of the very first generation of stars. These primordial stars, which first formed about 150 million years after the big bang, were unlike any today. With masses a hundred times or more that of our sun, they burned hot and fast, forging hydrogen into heavier elements in their fusion furnaces then spewing them out into space when they exploded at the end of their lives. Astronomers are just beginning to be able to study this process, which ultimately produced the materials for planets and life.


Initially developed for gaming and 3-D rendering, graphics processing units (GPUs) were recognized to be a good fit to accelerate deep learning training. Its simple mathematical structure can easily be parallelized and can therefore take advantage of GPUs in a natural way. Further progress in compute efficiency for deep learning training can be made by exploiting the more random and approximate nature of deep learning work flows. In the digital space that means to trade off numerical precision for accuracy at the benefit of compute efficiency. It also opens the possibility to revisit analog computing, which is intrinsically noisy, to execute the matrix operations for deep learning in constant time on arrays of nonvolatile memories. To take full advantage of this in-memory compute paradigm, current nonvolatile memory materials are of limited use. A detailed analysis and design guidelines how these materials need to be reengineered for optimal performance in the deep learning space shows a strong deviation from the materials used in memory applications.


Penicillin VK, a widely used antibiotic for treatment of gram-positive coccal infections, was nominated for study by the National Cancer Institute because rodent carcinogenicity studies for this drug had not been performed. The chemical (94% or 98% pure, USP grade) was administered orally (by gavage in corn oil) because oral administration is the primary route used to treat infections in humans. Fourteen-day, 13-week, and 2-year studies were conducted in F344/N rats and B6C3F1 mice. Additional studies were performed to evaluate the potential for genetic damage in bacteria and mammalian cells. Fourteen-Day and Thirteen-Week Studies: In the 14-day studies, penicillin VK was administered at doses of 150-2,400 mg/kg. No compound-related deaths or dose-related histopathologic lesions were seen in rats or mice. Final mean body weights of dosed male rats were 5%-17% lower than that of controls; weights of dosed and control female rats were comparable. Final mean body weights of dosed mice were 5%-9% lower than those of controls. Diarrhea was observed in all dosed groups of rats and mice. In the 13-week studies, male and female rats received doses of 180-3,000 mg/kg and male and female mice received doses of 250-3,000 mg/kg. No compound-related deaths were seen in rats or mice. Final mean body weights of rats that received 3,000 mg/kg were 11% lower than those of the vehicle controls for males and 6% lower for females. For mice, mean body weights were comparable. Diarrhea occurred in male rats at doses of 750 mg/kg and above and in female rats at doses of 1,500 and 3,000 mg/kg. Mucous cell metaplasia of the glandular stomach was observed in male and female rats receiving 1,500 and 3,000 mg/kg. Lesions of the glandular stomach (inflammation, mucous cell metaplasia, and eosinophilic cytoplasmic change) and the forestomach (papillary hyperplasia and hyperkeratosis) were seen in all groups of dosed mice. The severity of lesions at 1,000 mg/kg or below was considered minimal. Based on these results, doses selected for rats and mice in the 2-year studies were 0, 500, or 1,000 mg/kg. Body Weight and Survival in the Two-Year Studies: Mean body weights of dosed and vehicle control male and female rats and male mice were comparable. Mean body weights of dosed female mice were 4%-16% lower than those of the vehicle controls from week 28 to the end of the study. Diarrhea was observed for dosed male and female rats and for dosed male mice. Survival of low and high dose male rats and high dose female rats was reduced (male rats: vehicle control, 34/50; low dose, 19/50; high dose, 16/50;female rats: 29/50; 26/50; 16/50). Survival of male and female mice was comparable to that of the vehicle controls (male mice: 24/50; 36/50; 26/50; female mice: 36/50; 32/50; 32/50). Nonneoplastic and Neoplastic Effects in the Two-Year Studies: Nonneoplastic lesions occurred at low incidences in the nasal mucosa, lung, and forestomach of dosed male rats and in the nasal mucosa and lung of dosed female rats. Congestion and aspiration pneumonia occurring in dosed rats dying before week 104 was the principal cause of death in these animals. Nonneoplastic lesions of the gastric fundal gland (eosinophilic cytoplasmic change and dilatation) and glandular stomach (cyst, chronic focal inflammation, hyperplasia, fibrosis, and squamous metaplasia) were seen in dosed male and female mice, and lesions of the gallbladder (eosinophilic cytoplasmic change) were seen in male mice. Slight increases in the incidences of adenomas of the pituitary gland in high dose male rats and of fibroadenomas or adenomas (combined) of the mammary gland in low dose female rats were observed. These were not considered to be compound-related lesions. The incidence of hepatocellular adenomas was decreased in high dose male mice (14/50; 15/49; 4/49). No compound-related neoplasms were seen in female mice. Genetic Toxicology: Penicillin VK was not mutagenic in Salmonella typhimurium strains TA98, TA100, TA1535, or TA1537 with or without exogenous metabolic activation. The chemical was mutagenic onl exogenous metabolic activation. The chemical was mutagenic only with activation in the mouse lymphoma L5178Y/TK± forward mutation assay. Incubation of Chinese hamster ovary cells with penicillin VK resulted in increased frequencies of sister chromatid exchanges and chromosomal aberrations in the absence of metabolic activation under the conditions of delayed harvest to compensate for chemical-induced cell cycle delay, no effects from penicillin VK exposure were observed in these cells in the presence of S9. Audit: The data, documents, and pathology materials from the 2-year studies of penicillin VK were audited. The audit findings show that the conduct of the studies is documented and support the data and results given in this Technical Report. Conclusions: Under the conditions of these 2-year gavage studies, there was no evidence of carcinogenic activity of penicillin VK for F344/N rats or for B6C3F1 mice administered 500 or 1,000 mg/kg penicillin VK in corn oil gavage, 5 days per week for 2 years. Nonneoplastic lesions were seen in the glandular stomach of dosed mice. Decreased survival of low and high dose male rats and of high dose female rats reduced the sensitivity of the studies for determining the presence or absence of a carcinogenic response in this species. Synonyms: 4-thia-1-azabicyclo(3.2.0)heptane-2-carboxylic acid, 3,3-dimethyl-7-oxo-6-(2-phenoxy-acetamide)-, monopotassium salt; penicillin V potassium; penicillin V potassium salt; D-a-phenoxymethylpenicillinate K salt; phenoxymethylpenicillin potassium; PVK Trade Names: Antibiocin; Apsin VK; Aracil; Arcasin; Aspin VK; Beromycin; Beromycin 400; Betapen VK; Calciopen K; Cliacil; Compocillin VK; Distakaps V-K; Distaquaine V-K; Dowpen V-K; DQV-K; Fenoxypen; Icipen; Isocillin; Ispenoral; Ledercillin VK; Megacillin oral; Oracil-VK; Orapen; Ospeneff; Pedipen; Penagen; Pencompren; Pen-Vee K; Pen-V-K powder; Penvikal; Pfizerpen VK; Qidpen VK; Robicillin VK; Rocillin-VK; Roscopenin; SK-Penicillin VK; Stabilin VK Syrup 125; Stabilin VK Syrup 62.5; Sumapen VK; Suspen; Uticillin VK; V-Cil-K; V-Cillin K; Veetids; Vepen


Some of the most significant breakthroughs in the biological sciences this century will emerge from the development of next generation sequencing technologies. The ease of availability of DNA sequence made possible through these new technologies has given researchers opportunities to study organisms in a manner that was not possible with Sanger sequencing. Scientists will, therefore, need to embrace genomics, as well as develop and nurture the human capacity to sequence genomes and utilise the 'tsunami' of data that emerge from genome sequencing. In response to these challenges, we sequenced the genome of Fusarium circinatum, a fungal pathogen of pine that causes pitch canker, a disease of great concern to the South African forestry industry. The sequencing work was conducted in South Africa, making F. circinatum the first eukaryotic organism for which the complete genome has been sequenced locally. Here we report on the process that was followed to sequence, assemble and perform a preliminary characterisation of the genome. Furthermore, details of the computer annotation and manual curation of this genome are presented. The F. circinatum genome was found to be nearly 44 million bases in size, which is similar to that of four other Fusarium genomes that have been sequenced elsewhere. The genome contains just over 15 000 open reading frames, which is less than that of the related species, Fusarium oxysporum, but more than that for Fusarium verticillioides. Amongst the various putative gene clusters identified in F. circinatum, those encoding the secondary metabolites fumosin and fusarin appeared to harbour evidence of gene translocation. It is anticipated that similar comparisons of other loci will provide insights into the genetic basis for pathogenicity of the pitch canker pathogen. Perhaps more importantly, this project has engaged a relatively large group of scientists including students in a significant genome project that is certain to provide a platform for growth in this important area of research in the future.


Background: Currently there are more adolescents (10-19 years old) and young adults (20-24 years old) than ever. Reproductive health among this age group is often overlooked, although it can have a profound impact on the future. This is especially the case in conflict zones and refugee settings, where there is a heightened need for reproductive health care, and where both the resources and possibility for data collation are usually limited. Methods: Here we report on pregnancies, birth outcomes and risk factors for repeat pregnancies among adolescent and young adult refugees and migrants from antenatal clinics on the Thailand-Myanmar border across a 30 year time span. Results: Pregnancy and fertility rates were persistently high. Compared with 20-24-year-olds, 15-19-year-olds who reported being unable to read had 2.35 (CI: 1.97 – 2.81) times the odds for repeat pregnancy (gravidity >2). In primigravidae, the proportion of small for gestational age (SGA) and preterm births (PTB), and neonatal deaths (NND) decreased with increasing maternal age (all p <0.001). After adjustment, this association retained significance for PTB (cut-off point, ≤18 years) but not for SGA and NND. Conclusions: There is considerable room for improvement in adolescent pregnancy rates in these border populations, and educational opportunities may play a key role in effective interventions.


ABSTRACT In 1968, the British/Swedish architect Ralph Erskine published an article 'Architecture and town planning in the north' in this journal, in which he called for a particular Arctic approach to the design of buildings and cities that is distinct from mainstream architecture due to conditions such as harsh climate, resident indigenous or sparse population and remoteness. One hundred years after his birth (in 1914), Erskine is still considered the authoritative 'Arctic architect', and his approach is paradigmatic among many architects dealing with the built environment in the Arctic, sub-Arctic and northern regions. However, a study of the literature on architectural practice and the built environment in the north reveals a number of varying conceptions of Arctic architecture. These different perspectives are social in nature and construct the architectural technologies, the natural environment and society in different configurations. This article finds that architectural discourses and readings of the Arctic change under the influence of social, cultural, political and architectural paradigms. The perspectives identified in the article are seen to be critical supplements to Erskine's utopian approach to developing new sustainable forms of urbanism and architecture in the Arctic. They also reveal that new conceptions do not necessarily replace previous ones but often overlap and place earlier ideas into fresh concepts and that certain conceptions appear to perpetuate over the decades, such as the Arctic as an 'empty space'. The thinking on Arctic futures is, in many ways, trapped in certain modernist and utopian modes, and this article contributes to widening the range of possible relationships between people and the Arctic environment, using architecture as an aperture.


OBJECTIVE. To assess the long-term cost-effectiveness of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for mature newborn infants with severe respiratory failure. METHODS. A prospective economic evaluation was conducted alongside a pragmatic randomized, controlled trial in which 185 infants were randomly allocated to ECMO (n = 93) or conventional management (n = 92) and then followed up to 7 years of age. Information about their use of health services during the follow-up period was combined with unit costs (£, 2002–2003 prices) to obtain a net cost per child. The cost-effectiveness of neonatal ECMO was expressed in terms of incremental cost per additional life year gained and incremental cost per additional disability-free life year gained. The nonparametric bootstrap method was used to present cost-effectiveness acceptability curves and net benefit statistics at alternative willingness-to-pay thresholds held by decision-makers for an additional life year and for an additional disability-free life year. RESULTS. Over 7 years, neonatal ECMO was effective at reducing known death or severe disability. Mean health service costs during the first 7 years of life were £30270 in the ECMO group and £10229 in the conventional management group, generating a mean cost difference of £20041 that was statistically significant. The incremental cost per life year gained was estimated at £13385. The incremental cost per disability-free life year gained was estimated at £23566. At the notional willingness-to-pay threshold of £30000 for an additional life year, the probability that neonatal ECMO is cost-effective at 7 years was estimated at 0.98. This translated into a mean net benefit of £24362 for each adoption of neonatal ECMO rather than conventional management. CONCLUSIONS. This study provides rigorous evidence of the cost-effectiveness of neonatal ECMO during childhood.


Over the last few years, interaction of humans with noisy power-driven agricultural tools and its possible adverse after effects have been realized. Grass-trimmer engine is the primary source of noise and the use of motorized cutter, spinning at high speed, is the secondary source of noise to which operators are exposed. In the present study, investigation was carried out to determine the effect of two types of grass-trimming machine engines (SUM 328 SE and BG 328) noise on the operators in real working environment. It was found that BG-328 and SUM-328 SE produced high levels of noise, of the order of 100 and 105 dB(A), respectively, to which operators are exposed while working. It was also observed that situation aggravates when a number of operators simultaneously operate resulting in still higher levels of noise. Operators should be separated 15 meters from each other in order to avoid the combined level of noise exposure while working with these machines. It was found that SPL, of the grass-trimmer machine engines (BG-328 and SUM-328 SE), were higher than the limit of noise recommended by ISO, NIOSH, and OSHA for an 8-hour workday. Such a high level of noise exposure may cause physiological and psychological problems to the operators in long run.


Soy protein (and associated carbohydrate) (SOY) is graft copolymerized with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) to synthesize novel low cost dielectric materials for multifunctional applications. Graft copolymerization of methyl methacrylate onto pre-activated SOY is carried out using a simple reflux method to form covalently bonded PMMA-g-SOY copolymers. The resulting PMMA-g-SOY is processed into films without employing any toxic chemical solvents. The PMMA-g-SOY films exhibited enhanced storage modulus and a low loss tangent together with promising dielectric properties compared to the pristine PMMA polymer. This strategy may open a new avenue to efficiently use green co-products for multifunctional applications in traditional and structural capacitors.


Energy management is one of the great challenges of the industry in the next years. Energy becomes more and more to a critical resource. Until now, enterprises need to implement energy management system with nearly no guidance. In the following paper we present the foundation of a reference model-based method that serves for setting up energy management systems in various industrial sectors. The goal is to support reduction emission and cost reduction as well as certification needs. In contrast to previous approaches, this approach enables a model-based certification and allows an automation of activities of the process of supervision of the consumption of energy and the appropriate reengineering of business processes.


This paper aims to reveal the features of subjective well-being of employees of statutory organizations, as subjective well-being of employees has been identified by many authors to be contributing to work efficiency. In Lithuania, this kind of research has not been carried out before, even though there have been several attempts to analyze subjective well-being of students or medical workers. This article presents a survey (n=120), which was conducted in Lithuania in 2014. The aims of this survey were to find out features of subjective wellbeing of employees of statutory organizations as well as to identify some factors contributing to it. The questionnaire used in this research consisted of several standardized scales: Lithuanian Subjective Well-being Scale (Bagdonas, 2013), Lithuanian Locus of Control Scale (based on the Rotter model, Bagdonas, 1988), Lithuanian Coping with Stress Scale (Valickas, Grakauskas, 2006). The results demonstrated statistically significant relationships between subjective well-being and internal locus of control. It also showed some significant relationships between subjective well-being and coping strategies. However, some additional research is needed to understand better the factors contributing to subjective well-being of employees of statutory organizations.


Despite major accomplishments of the modern era, the protection of women, children, and the environment remain vulnerable. In response, there has been increasing growth of social justice protests that use social media to express the need for social change. This article provides a discussion of the rise of several social movements and their attempts to address issues of injustice, particularly focusing on sexual violence and environmental destruction. The increased use of social media prompted a global response, within the context of popular culture, which was then followed by mainstream news coverage of the protests. This technological shift in news sharing promoted increased awareness about issues of sexual violence and environmental destruction. The lasting impact, however, is unknown. Yet there may be links between current social justice movements and Riane Eisler's Cultural Transformation Theory that could foster social change. This article formulates a more direct connection between social movements and Eisler's Cultural Transformation Theory in a manner that intentionally urges progressive social justice groups to understand and move toward partnership in general, and specifically toward a cultural transformation that protects the environment and eliminates violence against women and children.


The study investigated the determinants of national savings by employing the Johansen cointegration technique and error correction model to examine the short run and long run dynamics of the system using time-series data for Ghana over the 1975-2008 period. The study found all the variables to be integrated of order one and the existence of co integration indicated a valid long run economic relationship among the determinants of national saving in Ghana. The empirical results established that in the long run, income and terms of trade have a positive and significant impact on savings while dependency ratio, political instability and the real interest rate have a negative impact on savings. In the short run however, only terms of trade positively affects savings. The other variables namely dependency ratio, political instability, financial deepening, income and interest rate have an insignificant impact on savings. The error correction term has a coefficient of -0.830376 which shows that there will be about 83.04 percent speed of adjustment toward long run equilibrium when there is any imbalance in the short run.


As the educational use of computer mediated communication (CMC) increases there is growing interest among researchers as to social processes evolving within the varied models of group work using Internet, e.g., special interest groups, topical discussion groups, discussion forums attached to virtual courses, and learning communities. In this paper we present a synthetic summary of five studies that explored social climate issues in synchronous and asynchronous online activities in academic courses, focusing on the following questions: Does a social atmosphere develop in online learning discussion groups? What are the different modes of social interaction are manifest in online learning discussion groups? What is the role of the virtual teacher with regards to the social climate in online learning discussion groups? Discussed are the implications of these five studies' on the design of virtual-learning-discussion-groups, and the results for the characterization of teacher moderation functions.


Hash functions represent a fundamental building block of many network security protocols. The SHA-3 hashing algorithm is the most recently developed hash function, and the most secure. Implementation of the SHA-3 hashing algorithm in Hardware Description Language (HDL) is time demanding and tedious to debug. On the other hand, High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools offer potential solutions to the hardware design. HLS tools provide us with advanced capabilities for design evaluation and a wide variety of optimization techniques. In this paper, the SHA-3 hashing algorithm and its implementation onto a Xilinx® Zynq-7000 SoPC is explored. The SHA-3 hashing algorithm is initially coded in C programming language and then implemented with Xilinx Vivado HLS. The HLS tool enabled us to quickly analyze our design to make suitable optimizations which led to increased throughput of the SHA-3 hashing algorithm, up to 2000 Mbps. After pipelining the synthesized hardware design, it was capable of hashing a block of 1088 bits in 70 clock cycles.


We choose the high-performance nonfullerene acceptor ITIC-Th as an example, and incorporate electron-donating methoxy and electron-withdrawing F groups onto the terminal group 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (IC) to construct a small library of four fused-ring electron acceptors. With this series, we systematically investigate the effects of the substituents on the end-groups on the electronic properties, charge transport, film morphology, and photovoltaic properties of the ITIC-Th series. The electron-withdrawing ability increases from methoxylated to unsubstituted, fluorinated, and difluorinated IC, leading to a downshift of energy levels and a redshift of absorption spectra. Optimized organic solar cells based on the ITIC-Th series show power conversion efficiencies ranging from 8.88% to 12.1%.


We present the design and evaluation of ITMgen, a tool for generating synthetic but representative Interdomain Traffic Matrices (ITMs). ITMgen is motivated by the observation that gravity-based models do not reflect application level or regional characteristics of Internet traffic. ITMgen works at the level of connections, taking into account the relative sizes of ASes, their popularity with respect to various applications, and the relation between forward and reverse traffic for different application types. The necessary parameters for integrating application types and the distribution of content popularity can be realistically estimated by combining public sources like Alexa that capture traffic trends at a macro level with local traffic sampling (NetFlow, DPI) for providing an additional enhancement layer at the micro level. Using the above philosophy we demonstrate that we can synthesize ITMs that match real-world measurements closer than the current state of the art. In addition, the modular design philosophy of ITMgen makes it easy to integrate additional enhancement layers that improve the accuracy of our existing implementation.


Since the 1970s along with the resurgence in practical philosophy new possibilities opened up in our understanding of the place for and purpose of practical theology. The repositioning of practical theology as a fully worthy discipline was important to find its voice amongst theological peer disciplines. Against this background, it was argued that the full measure of what the discipline can contribute, especially outside of the ministry context, has not yet been fully developed or practiced. Towards this end the presentation's main contention was put forward, in that it is vital for the practical theologian to take up a role of an inscribed facilitator. It signifies a shift from practical theology to practical theologian and is exemplified by the practice of a facilitative approach in, and to practical theology.


The first part of the thesis covers the theoretical background for computational fluid dynamics; specifically, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Some general solution methods are reviewed, as well as the most common discretization techniques, which form the basis of modern CFD codes. The second part is a report of a series of numerical experiments, including a short description of the computational method applied in the Navier-Stokes solver. The following flow cases are computed:• Laminar flow around a fixed, three-dimensional circular cylinder at a Reynold number Re=u∞d/u = 265. Different cylinder lengths are tested. The onset of three-dimensionality in the wake flow is given particular attention. The sensitivity to time step and grid refinement is investigated. • Subcritical turbulent flow around a cylinder at Re = 3900. The turbulence is modeled using large-eddy simulations (LES). The effects of using the wall damping and different time integration schemes are investigated.• Turbulent flow around two fixed circular cylinders arranged in tandem at Re = 21600. This test is a model problem for flow around marine risers. Drag and lift of the two cylinders are compared with experimental data; both mean values and standard deviation. Laminar cross flow around a 6:1 ellipsoid at Re = 100. An initial calculation is performed.The three first cases can be seen as steps towards the VIV problem, taking a bottom-up approach. A logical next step could be, for example, adding forced motion to the downstream cylinder in the tandem case. In all the flow simulations performed in this thesis work, we have aimed for high fidelity, obtaining a higher level of accuracy than in most engineering calculations. Computational tools currently under development at SINTEF Applied Mathematics in collaboration with NTNU have been used.


We investigate the effects of civic norms and associational networks on crime rates. Civic norms may attach guilt and shame to criminal behavior, thus increasing its opportunity cost. Associational networks may increase returns to noncriminal activities and raise detection probabilities, but they may also work as communication channels for criminals and may offer official cover to criminal activities. The empirical assessment of these effects poses serious problems of endogeneity, omitted variables, measurement error, and spatial correlation. Italy's great variance in social and economic characteristics, its homogeneity in policies and institutions, and the availability of historical data on social capital in its regions allow us to minimize the first two problems. To tackle the last two problems, we use report‐rate‐adjusted crime rates and estimate a spatial lag model. We find that both civic norms and associational networks have a negative and significant effect on property crimes across Italian provinces.


In this study, the importance of pre-concentration is clearly demonstrated for the covalent immobilization of various proteins to magnetic nanoparticles through mild carbodiimide activation. Additionally, the covalently biofunctionalized magnetic nanoparticles are employed in a double-bead sandwich assay, using gold nanoparticles. The magnetic nanoparticles allow specific capturing of the analyte in biological samples (serum), while the optical properties of the gold nanoparticles provide the signal transduction. We demonstrated that a major improvement in the assay sensitivity was obtained by selecting an optimal gold nanoparticle size (60 nm). A detection limit of 5-8 ng/mL, a sensitivity of 0.6-0.8 (pg/ mL) and a dynamic range of 3 orders of magnitude were achieved without any further amplification using the detection of prostate specific antigen in serum as a model system. The proposed assay has the ability to be easily implemented within a microfluidic device for point-of-care applications whereby the readout can be executed by a fast and cheap optical measurement.


The primary purpose of the thesis is to fill the existing gaps in our understanding of various theological and political aspects of the controversy that took place in both Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire in the seventh century, the main theological point of which was wether Christ had one or two energeiai and wills. Before coming to any conclusions on this subject, I shall investigate the preliminary forms of Monenergism and Monothelitism i.e., belief in a single energeia and will of Christ, which were incorporated in the major Christological systems developed by Apollinarius of Laodicea, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severus of Antioch (chapters 1-3).Against this background, it becomes obvious that the Chalcedonian Monenergism and later Monothelitism emerged from the movement of neo- Chalcedonianism. It was an attempt by the political and ecclesiastical authorities to achieve a theological compromise with various non-Chalcedonian groups, mainly Severian, but also 'Nestorian'. Their ultimate goal was to reconcile these groups with the Catholic Church of the Empire (chapter 4). However, this project of reconciliation on the basis of the single-energeia formula was contested by the representatives of the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition and consequently condemned at the Councils of Lateran (649) and Constantinople (680/681). Thus, the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition produced two self-sufficient and antagonistic doctrines. A major concern of the thesis is to expose and compare systematically their doctrinal content per se and in the wider context of the principles of neo-Chalcedonianism (chapter 5).


Brand scholarship traditionally resides within the marketing literature and focuses on organizations' external relationships with customers. However, increasing critical attention in organization studies has focused on the brand in order to understand its impact on the internal dynamics of employment relations in contemporary organizations. Drawing on an ethnography of frontline service work in an IT consultancy call centre, we explore the brand as an internal organizational resource sustaining the process of employee meaning-making activities. Documenting the 'work of the brand', we outline what the brand offers both employees and employers and, in doing so, we theorize the brand at work as a connecting mechanism between processes of identity formation/re-formation and regulation. While employees are encouraged to internalize particular brand meanings (in this case prestige, success and quality), we found that they often willingly buy into these intended brand meanings as a palliative to 'cope' with mundane work. In this way brand meanings are central to producing a self-disciplining form of employee subjectivity.


The U.S. retirement system, and the workers and retirees it was designed to help, face major challenges. Traditional pensions have become much less common, and individuals are increasingly responsible for planning and managing their own retirement savings accounts, such as 401(k) plans. Yet research shows that many households are ill-equipped for this task and have little or no retirement savings. In this special report, GAO examines these challenges, drawing from prior work and others' research, as well as insights from a panel of retirement experts on how to better ensure a secure and adequate retirement, with dignity, for all.


There has been a proliferation of real-time sensing application due to the recent technological improvements in small, inexpensive, low-power, and distributed "smart" sensor nodes capable of doing a small amount of data processing and storage. Sensor network coordinates a collection of these sensor nodes to enable a high quality detection and measurement network in great details. Sensors come in great variety with different capabilities from different vendors. Besides, there exists a variety of sensors interfaces i.e. analog (capacitive, inductive, and resistive readout), I2C, SPI, UART, for communicating sensor signals.  Therefore, it is difficult to provide the required level of integration and functional flexibility which are of great importance in smart-sensor systems. Due to these various interfaces, the design of the versatile sensor interface bus is of great importance. This paper presents a Versatile Sensor Interface Bus (VSIB) architecture which offers network-independent communication interfaces for connecting sensors to microprocessors, instrumentation systems, and control/field networks. It is shown that it is easier to deploy commonly available sensors with various communication interfaces to a multi-sensor module.


Kindler syndrome is a rare, autosomal recessive genodermatosis, caused by mutations in the FERMT1 gene. It is thought to be primarily a skin disease, but other organs may also be involved. We report a case of a novel mutation of FERMT1 gene in a patient with a probable new phenotype of Kindler syndrome, including colitis and primary sclerosing cholangitis. A 42-year-old man, born to first cousin parents, was referred to our outpatient dermatology clinic with an unknown dermatosis since birth. He presented with neonatal blistering and developed photosensitivity and changes in skin pigmentation during childhood. Since the age of 20, he has had regular follow-up in the gastroenterology clinic, owing to esophageal stenosis, ulcerative colitis, and primary sclerosing cholangitis. Clinical examination revealed jaundice, poikiloderma, diffuse cigarette paper-like atrophy on dorsal surfaces of the hands, and palmoplantar hyperkeratosis. Skin biopsy showed epidermal atrophy covered by orthokeratotic hyperkeratosis. DNA molecular analysis revealed FERMT1 homozygous mutation c.1179G>A, p.W393X, which has not been reported before. The intestinal phenotype of Kindler syndrome has already been defined previously. However, to the best of our knowledge, no other case of primary sclerosing cholangitis in a patient with Kindler syndrome has been reported.


In comparison to other countries in the rest of the world, Germany (as one of the industrialized countries) is characterized by relatively high living standards in terms of GDP per capita and wages. German politicians often argue that exports and innovation are important fields for the German economy to sustain these welfare achievements. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Germany has ranked as one of the three top exporters (in US value) since 1953 in their time
series of trade statistics. Therefore, the exporting economy is important from a historical perspective. In addition, Germany achieves a high position (15th out of 141 countries) for the global innovation index in 2012, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (2012).

In the following, this dissertation sheds light on the impact of finance on trade and the determinants of innovating activities within start-ups. The economic literature emphasizes an existing relationship between the innovating behavior of firms and their foreign operations. Many authors distinguish the participation in international trade between the probability of starting to export and the propensity (exports relative to total sales) of it in their analysis. Several empirical papers which examine this interrelation typically find a positive relationship between innovation and trading patterns of firms (e.g., Damijan et al. (2010), Roper and Love (2002), Sterlacchini
(2001), Wagner (2001) or Wakelin (1998)) but the direction of causality remains unclear. Here, the focus is not on this explicit link between both fields but on different aspects within them.

Chapter 2 starts with the provision of a comprehensive and detailed literature review on finance and trade. In particular, we concentrate on various aspects which are relevant for the subsequent three chapters: the general differences between exporters and non-exporters, the interrelation between finance and trade flows and the literature on trade in services. The following three chapters rely on a data set (MiMiK) which collects data on bank-firm relationships and is provided by Deutsche Bundesbank. The massive decline in international trade in 2008/09 (known as the 'Great Trade Collapse') is often attributed to the global deterioration in financial conditions after the bankruptcy
of a US investment bank, Lehman Brothers. In a first step, Chapter 3 estimates the exporter premium in bank lending and highlights potential differences between exporters and non-exporters (independent of the financial crisis). We examine credit relationships in Germany, covering all loans of more than 1.5 million euro over the period from 2005 to 2010. The MiMiK data base itself provides only information
about the (quarterly) credit exposure between borrower and lender. Therefore, we establish a unique data match with another data set which is also provided by Deutsche Bundesbank, Ustan. It contains (yearly) balance sheet information of firms, including export sales. The results show that there is an export premium in bank lending of about 16%.

Chapter 4 primarily focuses on the empirical importance of external (bank) finance for exporters during (and after) the financial crisis. The previous MiMiK-Ustan match is extended with bank balance sheet data from BAKIS. We use this information to identify banks which are especially 'affected' by the financial crisis. The chapter investigates in a descriptive manner whether a correlation between exports and credit supply exists and whether banks which are classified as 'affected' decreased their credit exposures. Finally, we perform a nearest neighbor matching to identify similar firms which engage in foreign operations. Then, we show that firms which exhibit credit relationships with 'affected' banks do not export less than comparable firms which receive finance from healthy banks.

Chapter 5 extends the previous analysis by estimating the exporter premium in bank lending for goods and service exporters separately. The MiMiK-Ustan match is enlarged with detailed transaction level data about service exports, the German International Trade in Services (SITS) statistics. Therefore, we are able to identify firms which primarily export services or goods and can evaluate our previous
results on a more disaggregated level. First, we estimate the export premium in bank lending for goods exporters vs. non-exporters. Then, we examine whether service exporters depend more on external finance than goods exporters which would coincide with higher entry barriers for service exporters. Goods exporters have an export premium of 16% vs. non-exporters and service exporters a premium of 17% relative to goods exporters.

Furthermore, we analyze the determinants of innovations within start-ups in a separate section. Chapter 6 deals with the question whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative than economists in high-tech industries. Until now, the field of entrepreneurship has been relatively unexplored due to data limitations. To analyze this question, we examine a novel data set (KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel) which contains a random cross-section of German start-up companies for 2007 and 2008. It provides information about entrepreneurial characteristics, especially details about the subject that was studied prior to the foundation of the start-up.
In addition, the KfW/ZEW Start-Up Panel was exclusively designed to analyze research questions in the field of innovation. For this reason it contains multiple proxies to measure the innovating behavior of entrepreneurs. We show that natural scientists indeed are more engaged in R&D activity and more likely to release something new on the market than economists. The results depend largely on the definition of innovation and on the form of start-up (single vs. team).


Results are presented from a reanalysis of the entire five-tower data set acquired with the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory, with an exposure of 969 kg-days. The analysis window was extended to a recoil energy of 150 keV, and an improved surface-event background-rejection cut was defined to increase the sensitivity of the experiment to the inelastic dark matter (iDM) model. Three dark matter candidates were found between 25 keV and 150 keV. The probability to observe three or more background events in this energy range is 11%. Because of the occurrence of these events, the constraints on the iDM parameter space are slightly less stringent than those from our previous analysis, which used an energy window of 10–100 keV.


During the tapping of liquid steel from Electric Arc Furnace (EAF), some slag is carried over into the ladle. High levels of FeO and MnO in slag carryover increase the oxygen activity in steel melt leading to oxide inclusion formation during the ladle treatment. The demand on cleaner steels requires minimization of carryover slag. In this work, the effect of EAF slag carryover on ladle slag-steel equilibrium calculations for a hot working tool steel was studied. Steel and slag sampling were done in Uddeholm Tooling AB in Sweden. XRF and OES techniques were used to determine chemical composition of samples. The quantity of slag carryover was calculated based on a mass balance followed by thermodynamic calculations on metal-slag equilibrium using Thermo-Calc software. The agreement between predictions and experimentally determined compositions was good. This leads to the development of a prediction method for optimizing the production of other tool steel grades.


Background: COT (Tpl2/MAP3K8) is a Serine/ Threonine protein kinase which plays a crucial role in the production of TNF-alpha through the phosphorylation of MEK, ERK pathway and the production of other pro-inflammatory cytokines. Its inhibition has been shown as important to reduce inflammatory diseases and cancer. Material and Methods: Combined Ligand-based and Structure-based pharmacophore model was developed for finding out the potential anticancer agents. These combined pharmacophore model was used as 3D-query for searching the matching pharmacophore features against chemical structure databases such as DrugBank, MDPI, ZINC, Maybridge HitFinder. Docking was performed using Schrodinger software as well as selected Hits were filtered by ADMET properties. Results: Among all the selected Hits Compound 3,5,7-trihydroxy-2-(3,4,5trihydroxyphenyl)-4H-chromen-4-one was found to be more potent according to the docking score. Conclusion: A step by step computational pipeline was used to find out the potential anticancer agents. This study suggests that these Hits could be used as anticancer agents against death leading diseases.


Abstract Matching a commercial real-time operating system to a particular application is a problem for which there is no obvious solution strategy. Factors such as estimated production volume, likely processor involved, mission criticality, cost, reliability, software support, ease-of-use, and maintainability need to be considered, yet often the selection is based merely on the preferences of the design team or management, or the intensity of vendor marketing. This article examines the selection of real-time operating systems. A set of criteria and an associated metric are presented that rely only on published marketing information. To demonstrate the application of this metric, information from several existing commercial real-time operating systems is collected and analyzed. Five hypothetical applications are then matched with the most appropriate real-time operating system, using the criteria and metric. The contribution of this research is a set of criteria, a metric, and a methodology for matching real-time operating systems to applications based on marketing information, without the need for intensive performance testing.


We demonstrate that images of flux vortices in a superconductor taken with a transmission electron microscope can be used to measure the penetration depth and coherence length in all directions at the same temperature and magnetic field. This is particularly useful for MgB2, where these quantities vary with the applied magnetic field and values are difficult to obtain at low field or in the c direction. We obtained images of flux vortices from a MgB2 single crystal cut in the ac plane by focused ion beam milling and tilted to 45 degrees. with respect to the electron beam about the crystallographic a axis. A new method was developed to simulate these images that accounted for vortices with a nonzero core in a thin, anisotropic superconductor and a simplex algorithm was used to make a quantitative comparison between the images and simulations to measure the penetration depths and coherence lengths. This gave penetration depths Lambda(ab) = 100 +/- 35 nm and Lambda(c) = 120 +/- 15 nm at 10.8 K in a field of 4.8 mT. The large error in Lambda(ab) is a consequence of tilting the sample about a and had it been tilted about c, the errors on Lambda(ab) and Lambda(c) would be reversed. Thus obtaining the most precise values requires taking images of the flux lattice with the sample tilted in more than one direction. In a previous paper [J. C. Loudon et al., Phys. Rev. B 87, 144515 (2013)], we obtained a more precise value for Lambda(ab) using a sample cut in the ab plane. Using this value gives Lambda(ab) = 107 +/- 8 nm, Lambda(c) = 120 +/- 15 nm, xi(ab) = 39 +/- 11 nm, and xi(c) = 35 +/- 10 nm, which agree well with measurements made using other techniques. The experiment required two days to conduct and does not require large-scale facilities. It was performed on a very small sample, 30 x 15 mu m and 200-nm thick, so this method could prove useful for superconductors where only small single crystals are available, as is the case for some iron-based superconductors.


Abstract. Atmospheric concentrations of dichloromethane, CH2Cl2, a regulated toxic air pollutant and minor contributor to stratospheric ozone depletion, were reported to have peaked around 1990 and to be declining in the early part of the 21st century. Recent observations suggest this trend has reversed and that CH2Cl2 is once again increasing in the atmosphere. Despite the importance of ongoing monitoring and reporting of atmospheric CH2Cl2, no time series has been discussed in detail since 2006. The CARIBIC project (Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container) has analysed the halocarbon content of whole-air samples collected at altitudes of between ~ 10–12 km via a custom-built container installed on commercial passenger aircraft since 1998, providing a long-term record of CH2Cl2 observations. In this paper we present this unique CH2Cl2 time series, discussing key flight routes which have been used at various times over the past 15 years. Between 1998 and 2012 increases were seen in all northern hemispheric regions and at different altitudes, ranging from ~ 7–10 ppt in background air to ~ 13–15 ppt in regions with stronger emissions (equating to a 38–69% increase). Of particular interest is the rising importance of India as a source of atmospheric CH2Cl2: based on CARIBIC data we provide regional emission estimates for the Indian subcontinent and show that regional emissions have increased from 3–14 Gg yr−1 (1998–2000) to 16–25 Gg yr−1 (2008). Potential causes of the increasing atmospheric burden of CH2Cl2 are discussed. One possible source is the increased use of CH2Cl2 as a feedstock for the production of HFC-32, a chemical used predominantly as a replacement for ozone-depleting substances in a variety of applications including air conditioners and refrigeration.


In this paper, we introduce Yedda, a lightweight but efficient and comprehensive open-source tool for text span annotation. Yedda provides a systematic solution for text span annotation, ranging from collaborative user annotation to administrator evaluation and analysis. It overcomes the low efficiency of traditional text annotation tools by annotating entities through both command line and shortcut keys, which are configurable with custom labels. Yedda also gives intelligent recommendations by learning the up-to-date annotated text. An administrator client is developed to evaluate annotation quality of multiple annotators and generate detailed comparison report for each annotator pair. Experiments show that the proposed system can reduce the annotation time by half compared with existing annotation tools. And the annotation time can be further compressed by 16.47% through intelligent recommendation.