Oxygen-ion transport in La2−xSrxNi1−yFeyO4+δ complex oxides (x = 0.5, y = 0.1–0.4 and x = 0.8, y = 0.1, 0.2, and 0.4) was studied by steady-state oxygen permeation and modified Hebb–Wagner polarization methods. The samples were obtained by a decomposition of citrate–nitrate precursors followed by three times subsequent annealing at 1100 °C in air, pelletizing and sintering at 1300–1350 °C for 20 h in air. The phase purity of the samples was confirmed by an X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis of the pellets after the steady-state oxygen permeation measurements revealed negligible diffusion of dopant cations and an almost constant oxygen gradient along the samples' thickness. Strontium was shown to decrease the oxygen permeation through the overstoichiometric La2−xSrxNi1−yFeyO4+δ (δ > 0) membranes and to increase it for the oxygen deficient ones (δ < 0). Iron promoted bulk diffusion in all studied samples. The oxygen surface exchange in the series La1.5Sr0.5Ni1−yFeyO4+δ was slightly deteriorated by iron doping up to y = 0.3 but significantly enhanced at y = 0.4. The values of oxygen-ion conductivity calculated from the oxygen permeation data were in good agreement with those measured by the modified Hebb–Wagner polarization method. The highest oxygen permeation flux was obtained for the La1.5Sr0.5Ni0.6Fe0.4O4+δ membrane. La1.5Sr0.5Ni0.6Fe0.4O4+δ showed lower oxygen-ion conductivity compared with undoped La2NiO4+δ, but substantially improved oxygen surface exchange. The latter factor plays a crucial role in the cathode performance of the studied La2NiO4+δ-based oxides and makes La1.5Sr0.5Ni0.6Fe0.4O4+δ a promising candidate for IT-SOFC application.


Although the expression of Smac/DIABLO has been reported in various cancers, little is known about its clinical significance in bladder cancer. The present study was designed to evaluate the relationship between progression of disease and Smac/DIABLO expression by clinical pathological analysis of patients with bladder cancer. The level of Smac/DIABLO expression was quantified by Western blot analysis using non-fixed fresh frozen tissues derived from patients with bladder cancer. All normal bladders expressed Smac/DIABLO. However, 64/84 (76%) of bladder cancers expressed Smac/DIABLO and 24% were negative. In Ta and T1 superficial bladder cancers, 98% expressed Smac/DIABLO, whereas only 41% expressed Smac/DIABLO in muscle-invasive bladder cancers. Smac/DIABLO expression inversely correlated with the grade of bladder cancer. Patients with Ta and T1 superficial bladder cancer with higher Smac/DIABLO expression had a longer postoperative recurrence-free period than those with lower Smac/DIABLO expression after transurethral resection in the 5-year follow-up. Patients with invasive bladder cancer expressing Smac/DIABLO had a longer postoperative disease-specific survival than those without Smac/DIABLO expression after radical cystectomy in the 5-year follow-up. The cisplatin-resistant T24 bladder cancer line (T24/CDDP) and the adriamycin-resistant T24 line (T24/ADR) showed lower level of Smac/DIABLO expression, compared with the T24 parental line. In conclusion, the present study demonstrates for the first time that Smac/DIABLO expression was downregulated in bladder cancer, especially in high grade muscle-invasive bladder cancer, and that lower Smac/DIABLO expression in bladder cancer predicted a worse prognosis. In addition, the cisplatin-resistant T24/CDDP line and the adriamycin-resistant T24/ADR line expressed lower level of Smac/DIABLO expression. These results suggest that Smac/DIABLO expression in bladder cancer may be used as a prognostic parameter, and that low Smac/DIABLO expression in bladder cancer may be associated with resistance to chemotherapy.


Modern management philosophies as lean construction emphasize continuous flow for processes and operations throughout contract duration. However, many sites are still plagued with discontinuity, erratic flows and overlapping of activities, what occurs in increasing stances as construction activities came to an end and project is overhand to the client. This research work purports to define such concepts and illustrate them in a case study taking as an example a 16,800sqm building development in Fortaleza. A host of methodological avenues are pursued, including photography documentation, line of balance representation, cost evaluation and clients' questionnaires in connection to the disrupted activities. The hypotheses of this study are related to finding the problematic issues intrinsic to the final stages of construction work. It was found that despite their potential impact to trouble management activities on site, costs associated with their correction were small. Notwithstanding their major outcome was to deliver a fragile and unsatisfactory building as it is signaled by client claims when the project was finally commissioned. Lessons are related to suggest greater efforts in evaluating indirect costs of disrupted activities and the reasons why clients are able to associate them with low quality work and increased maintenance costs.


Over the last few years, Web services and the service-oriented architecture (SOA) have become dominant themes in IT across many industries. Web-based computing, serviceorientation, and cloud computing increasingly displace the client/server approach favored by libraries in the past. In library automation, one major trend involves evolving or rebuilding automation systems to adopt this new approach to software. Purveyors of both open source and proprietary library automation products increasingly emphasize the ways in which they embrace openness, support application programming interfaces (APIs), or implement Web services. Libraries increasingly need to extract data, connect with external systems, and implement functionality not included with the delivered systems. Rather than relying on the product developers for enhancements to meet these needs, libraries increasingly demand the ability to exploit their systems using APIs, Web services, or other technologies. The demand for openness abounds, particularly in libraries that exist in complex environments where many different systems need to interact. As libraries develop their IT infrastructure, it's imperative to understand the extent to which their automation products are able to interoperate and thrive in this growing realm of Web services. This report aims to assess the current slate of major library automation systems in regard to their ability to provide openness through APIs, Web services, and the adoption of SOA.


Dating, while providing an opportunity for necessary emotional
development in adolescents can also lead to disturbing sociological
consequences. Rising levels of sexual pro miscuity, teenage
pregnancy, abortion and other negative consequences of dating has
been widely observed. Based on this scenario, this descriptive case
study attempts to identify the general dating patterns and attitudes
of female fifth formers (N=206) in an inner-city school in Kuala Lumpur. The following aspects of dating are examined: reasons for
dating, dating code, dating preferences, intimacy, effects on selfesteem,
consequences of dating and effects of parental restrictions.
It was found that widespread dating occurs among
adolescents at a young age, and it quickly becomes a central part of
their social lives. This is generally consistent among all three
major races in Malaysia, and many will date secretly to avoid
censure from their parents. Though most dating begins in groups,
adolescents express a desire to date exclusively with one partner
after only a short period of time.
The level of sexual activity, however, does not correspond
with the high level of dating. The vast majority still believes that
sex should be reserved for marriage, and many refrained from
almost all intimate relations. Conservative parents will be relieved
to know that Malaysian adolescents are not as liberal as they may
seem. One must still remain painfully aware, however, of the
minority who are sexually active, and are not necessarily aware of
the risks involved. This study revealed that many students are completely unaware of how to practice safe sex or avoid
pregnancy.


In order to study carefully the configuration of response areas of auditory neurons in the medial geniculate body (MGB), we have examined an interaction between two tones known as "two-tone inhibition". This entails suppression of response activity to one tone by a second tone which is selected from a restricted range of frequencies and intensities. Single units were extracellulary recorded from non-paralyzed, lightly anaesthetized (pentobarbital, nitrous oxygen) adult cats. For each unit the discharge pattern, response latency, response area (RA), characteristic frequency (CF) and response-intensity functions were determined by binaural stimulation with pure sinusoids (0.1-25.6 kHz separated by Πoctave steps; stimulus duration 200 ms). During two-tone stimulation those tone bursts were delivered at fixed amplitude (usually 20 dB suprathreshold at CF) and a second tone of selected frequency and variable amplitude was presented simultaneously. Recording sites were defined electrophysiologically and localization was confirmed histologically.


The paper examines the effectiveness of Skype as a medium for communication, support and internationalisation of student nurse programmes. The researchers sought to examine whether online face to face contact via Skype improved support and communication with students nursing overseas and if the use of Skype for online communications with students in action learning sets within the home university, developed cultural awareness of those nursing students who stayed on native soil. The study comprised of focus groups and online questionnaires of staff and students. 22 students were included in the study, 18 who had experienced physical mobility and 4 who had experienced virtual mobility. 12 lecturers also contributed in their role as a personal tutor, module team member or international link lecture for the countries in which the students visited. 4 themes arose from the thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke's (2006) 6 stage model) of the narratives of the participants and included operational issues, pastoral care, academic and peer support and cultural awareness and development. The use of Skype was found to be extremely beneficial in terms of online communication and support for students undertaking an international placement. However the development of cultural awareness needs further work, using Skype to engage students abroad in discussions with students in action learning sets did allow students at home to take into account social and cultural differences between practices in England and the country their peer was on placement, it did not however allow examination of their own beliefs, biases and prejudices to practice skills of self awareness as would occur in students who experienced international mobility.


Abstract The importance and risk of vector-borne diseases (e.g., leishmaniasis, West Nile Virus, Lyme borreliosis) is going to increase in the European temperate areas due to climate change. Our previous studies have shown that the potential distribution of Leishmania infantum and some Phlebotomus (sand fly) species - a parasite of leishmaniasis, and its vectors - may be expanded even to the southern coastline of the Baltic Sea by the end of the 21st century. The lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin and the main part of Hungary are projected to be suitable for the studied sand fly vectors in the near future. It is important to find some indicator plants to examine whether the sand flies are able to live in a certain climate at a certain time. We studied several Mediterranean and Sub-Mediterranean plant species, and we found that the aggregated distribution of three ligneous species (Juniperus oxycedrus L., Quercus ilex L. and Pinus brutia Ten.) shows high correlation with the union distribution of five sand flies (Phlebotomus ariasi Tonn., Ph. neglectus Tonn., Ph. perfiliewi Parrot, Ph. perniciosus Newst. and Ph. tobbi Adler, Theodor et Lourie). Since these Mediterranean species are highly tolerant of the edaphic characteristics of the planting site, they may prove to be good indicators. The present and upcoming climate of Hungary is seen to be suitable for the selected indicator plant species, and it draws attention to and verifies the potential of the expansion of sand flies, which has been proved by some recent observations of the vectors in Southern Hungary.


Objective: To evaluate the relation between transcutaneous bilirubin (TcB) by BiliChek and total serum bilirubin (TSB) in the Chinese neonates compared with another transcutaneous Bilirubinometer (VanHou).
Methods: TcB measurements were performed on the forehead by Bilichek and VanHou. Total serum bilirubin (TSB) was determined within 5 minutes after TcB measurement. The correlation and agreement between the two devices and TSB were assessed.
Results: A total of 172 babies were recruited. The mean TSB (± SD) was 11.1 ± 4.6 mg/dl, and the mean TcB (± SD) was respectively 13.4 ± 3.5 mg/dl (VanHou), 12.3 ± 4.5 mg/dl (Bilichek). When the TSB was lower than 9 mg/dl, the difference of VanHou TcB and TSB was much higher than that of Bilichek (3.51 vs. 1.28 mg/dl, p<0.01). When the TSB was 9 ~ 12 mg/dl, the bias of TcB and TSB was 2.31 mg/dl (VanHou) vs. 1.39 mg/dl (Bilichek) (p<0.01). The correlation between the TcB (Bilichek) and TSB was a little higher than the VanHou (0.94 vs. 0.92). Bilichek had a greater area under the ROC curve than VanHou when a threshold value of TSB was chosen at 9, 12 or 15 mg/dl. The Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated that TcB tended to overestimate the TSB, and compared with VanHou, Bilichek had a better agreement with the TSB.
Conclusions: Bilichek has a good correlation with TSB. Furthermore, when TSB was lower than 12 mg/dl, Bilichek is superior to the VanHou obviously.


Following recent work of Beigi and Shor, we investigate positive partial transpose (PPT) states that are heavily entangled. We first exploit volumetric methods to show that in a randomly chosen direction, there are PPT states whose distance in trace norm from separable states is (asymptotically) at least 1/4. We then provide explicit examples of PPT states which are nearly as far from separable ones as possible. To obtain a distance of 2 - c from the separable states, we need a dimension of 2(poly[log(1/epsilon)]), as opposed to 2(poly(1/epsilon)) given by the construction of Beigi and Shor [J. Math. Phys. 51, 042202 (2010)]. We do so by exploiting the so-called private states, introduced earlier in the context of quantum cryptography. We also provide a lower bound for the distance between private states and PPT states and investigate the distance between pure states and the set of PPT states.


Workers' reciprocal behavior is one argument used to explain why firms invest in employee human capital. We explore the relation between firm-sponsored training and reciprocity by providing evidence that workers reciprocate employer training investments by making greater effort. Using a field experiment with random assignment to a training program, we show that reciprocal workers have significantly higher performance than their non-reciprocal peers after participation in the training course. This result suggests that reciprocal workers exert greater effort in response to the firm's investment.


The Hyperloop concept is proposed as a faster, cheaper alternative to high-speed rail and traditional short-haul aircraft. It consists of a passenger pod traveling through a tube under light vacuum while being propelled and levitated by a combination of permanent and electro-magnets. The concept addresses NASA's research thrusts for growth in demand, sustainability, and technology convergence for high-speed transport. Hyperloop is a radical departure from other advanced aviation concepts, however it remains an aeronautics concept that tackles the same strategic goals of low-carbon propulsion and ultra-effcient vehicles. System feasibility was investigated by building a multidisciplinary vehicle sizing model that takes into account aerodynamic, thermodynamic, structures, electromagnetic, weight, and mission analyses. The sizing process emphasized the strong coupling between the two largest systems: the tube and the passenger pod. The model was then exercised to examine Hyperloop from a technical and cost perspective. The structural sizing analysis of the travel tube demonstrates potential for signi cant capital cost reductions by considering an underwater route. Examination of varying passenger capacity indicates that the system can be operated with a wide range of passenger loads without significant change in operating expenses. Lastly, a high-level sizing study simulated variations in tube area, pressure, pod speed, and passenger capacity showing that there is a tube pressure that minimizes operating energy usage. The value of this optimal tube pressure is highly sensitive to numerous design details. These combined estimates of energy consumption, passenger throughput, and mission analyses all support Hyperloop as a faster and cheaper alternative to short-haul flights. The tools and expertise used to quantify these results also demonstrate how traditional aerospace design methods can be leveraged to handle the complex and coupled design process. Much of the technology development required for the Hyperloop is shared with next-generation aircraft. Furthermore, the substantial public interest and active commercial development make it an ideal candidate as an aircraft technology driver and test bed.


Object-oriented programming encourages extensive use of fields in objects. Most object-oriented programs are also concurrent, due to a finalizer or user interface thread. The combination of concurrency and frequent use of fields presents an optimization challenge: it is difficult for an optimizer to establish invariants between fields at different points in the program and recognize redundancy introduced by synchronization primitives. In this paper, we describe techniques to optimize code for field access in concurrent object-oriented programs. We leverage the fact that for correctness, programmers must use some form of concurrency control. We adapt several techniques for analyzing the synchronization properties of fields, including identifying fields associated with objects that are always locked before their use and identifying fields that are accessed from only one thread, to locate optimization opportunities that remain sound, even for concurrent programs. We extend existing optimizations, including redundant-load elimination, array-bounds check elimination, and null check elimination, to use these analyses. We show that extending these optimizations with a combination of analysis techniques is straightforward and relatively inexpensive, using analyses that already exist in mature object-oriented compilers. We also find that concurrency in our benchmarks does not substantially reduce the benefits of the original optimizations.


Introduction and Literature Review Unfortunately, the dominant narrative of the civil rights struggle still rests, in part, on the premise that the integrationist racial liberalism of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the separatist black nationalism of Malcolm X were the only significant strands of black thought between 1954 and 1965 (Theoharis and Woodard, 2003, p. 2). This false binary, which still shapes popular understandings of the era, obscures the myriad perspectives black intellectuals held during the mid-1960s. Thus, it is more useful to speak of a "spectrum" of black intellectual thought because it allows scholars to more easily grasp that there was a range of ideological perspectives among blacks-- from conservative to socialist--like the blended, yet distinct colors of a rainbow. Historically, black intellectuals have never thought in a singular fashion. Neither have they confined themselves to only two ways of seeing the world. Constructing black thought in this bipolar way also maintains other false binaries that recent scholars have been working to break down. Namely, that the civil rights movement suddenly shifted northward and became more urban, angry, and less-deserving of public support after 1965. And that the northern movement represented a distinct break from the rural, southern, and more moral movement of the previous decade (Theoharis and Woodard, 2003, pp. 5-7; Singh, 2004, pp. 5-11). Scholars of the civil rights movement in the South have often characterized it as springing entirely from the types of social, political, and economic structures considered to have been present only in the South. However, conceptualizing the movement as a solely southern phenomenon introduces severe limits for effectively analyzing the trajectory of the black freedom struggle in other regions of the country. It becomes much easier to dismiss the existence of civil rights activism in the North and more difficult to produce an accurate historical narrative of the black freedom struggle. In the last twenty years scholars have hammered away at the argument that there was no northern civil rights movement before 1965 and, therefore, no significant relationship between what was happening in the South and in the North (Countryman, 1996; Sugrue, 1996, 2008). Books such as Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, edited by Jeanne E Theoharis and Komozi Woodard (2003), for example, explicitly dispel the "southern paradigm" in civil rights movement scholarship. They argue that our typical ways of thinking "miss the systems of racial caste and power--pervasive and entrenched across the North--that denied people of color equitable education, safe policing, real job opportunities, a responsive city government, regular sanitation services, quality health care, and due process under the law" (p.3). Examining the movement in the North and from an ideological perspective also allows for a better understanding of why, and how, Black Power ideology gained more traction throughout the country by the mid-1960s. Indeed, "black power" did not merely spring fully formed into the consciousness of black people in 1966. By the mid-1960s, however, the movement's legislative successes, the increasing difficulty that liberals were having plotting the future direction of the movement, continuing grinding poverty, systematic discrimination in black ghettoes throughout the country, and the political challenges to liberalism in the wider society combined to allow for Black Power to gain more adherents in urban areas throughout the country (Joseph, 2006, p. 3). Therefore, this article takes ideology seriously, arguing that there were four major political ideologies present among black intellectuals during the civil rights era: socialism, racial liberalism, black nationalism, and black conservatism. Through their application by Bayard Rustin, Kenneth Clark, Malcolm X, and George Schuyler, each of these ideological perspectives influenced the proposals put forth to achieve racial equality in the United States. …


Colombian professional political consultants couple information technologies and local political brokering to circumvent strict voter privacy regulations that limit campaigns' access to voters' personal data. I argue that political consultants use information technologies to bolster traditional vertical, personality-centered political organizations, and to produce tightly controlled "cyborg political machines." I challenge widespread notions that oppose media-based politics to traditional face-to-face politics (known also as clientelism). Instead, I show that although political elites introduced American political marketing methods hoping to modernize campaigns, the American way provided a new framework to preserve traditional authoritarian political arrangements after the extensive democratic reforms of the early 1990s.


A total of 68 frame-mounted fascia lata valves were inserted in 59 patients between November 1969 and September 1970. The valves were all constructed by one or other of the authors with only minor variations in technique during the period of 10 months when this type of valve replacement was practised. All were mounted on cloth-covered metal frames whose geometry also remained substantially unaltered throughout the series. This report is concerned with the natural history of this type of valve substitute in the aortic and mitral positions. The evidence to date indicates that the frame-mounted fascia lata valve continues to function well in the aortic position for periods of more than two years, whereas in the mitral position the behaviour of the valve is unpredictable with a significant incidence of degenerative change and loss of function within one year of insertion.


The severe financial crisis that grips Spain has multiple causes. One has been the massive and continued expansion of the money supply since Spain's accession to the Eurozone, and the non-negligible effects of this expansion on asset prices as well as on the structure of the economy. We analyse the main hypotheses underlying the mainstream macroeconomic models used in recent years to explain inflation and its relation to money. We then apply an 'unobserved component model' to test for the cyclical relation between money growth, inflation, asset (stock and real estate) prices and real GDP in Spain from 1998 to 2013. Based on the Spanish experience, our main finding is that, even though the money supply has become endogenous within the monetary strategy developed by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank in recent times, the broad money supply and asset prices have shared the same cyclical component in the latest business cycle (1998–2013).


I. FACTS & PROCEDURAL HISTORY 955 A. NOW v. Scheidler: Round One 956 B. NOW v. Scheidler: Round Two 957 II. THE SUPREME COURT DECISION 958 III. COMMENT 963 A. Defining Extortion: What Constitutes "Obtaining"? 964 B. What is RICO's Purpose Anyway? 966 C. Catching the Court in a Contradiction? 969 IV. CONCLUSION 971 The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) (1) has recently become the preferred legal weapon for establishing criminal and civil liability in a panoply of situations involving allegedly extortionate conduct. (2) Prosecutions for extortion under RICO originally targeted so-called "organized crime enterprises" that intimidate legitimate business owners for money. Increasingly, RICO has been applied more expansively, most notably as a tool for alleging extortion against pro-life protesters who block access to abortion clinics. (4) As a result, many organizations, representing perspectives from the entire political spectrum, have become alarmed that the threat of civil RICO litigation might inhibit their ability to engage in political and social protest. (5) Some jurists have even worried that it would seem to follow logically from this expansive interpretation of extortion under RICO that the protesting of invidious racial discrimination and segregated restaurants using "sit-down" demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement would have constituted extortion. (6) Addressing this ambiguity regarding the definition of extortion, the Supreme Court, in Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, Inc., (7) held that petitioners, Joseph Scheidler and a coalition of pro-life activists, did not commit extortion because they did not obtain property from respondents as required by the Hobbs Act. (8) That is, an extortionate act cannot occur unless the offending party actually acquires the victim's property. (9) In clarifying the definition of extortion, the Supreme Court ensured that the legal system will be able to draw a reasonable distinction between organized criminals who acquire money by force and civil rights leaders, pro-life activists, and future protesters whose objectives are not profit but the promulgation of their political messages. I. FACTS & PROCEDURAL HISTORY The Supreme Court's decision in Scheidler is the final battle of a tumultuous seventeen-year litigation war waged between the National Organization for Women (NOW) and pro-life activists. The case, initiated in 1986 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, first reached the Supreme Court in 1994. The case was remanded to the trial court, which awarded treble damages of over $257,000 (10) and granted a nationwide injunction against the protesters. (11) The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's decision in favor of NOW, and the case was again appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 2002. U.S. 1057 (2003). See also Matthew C. Blickensderfer, Note, Unleashing RICO, 17 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 867, 886 n.104 (1994) ("Had RICO ... been conceived in the 1960s, it is possible that RICO could have been used against the civil rights movement."). For a sample of cases during the Civil Rights Movement in which "sit-in" protesters were eventually exonerated but might have been convicted for extortion under RICO, see e.g., Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226 (1964) (vacating judgment against students arrested for criminal trespass after "sit-in" demonstration at privately-owned restaurant that refused to serve members of their race); Lombard v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 267 (1963) (reversing criminal convictions of students who refused to leave having been denied service at refreshment counter); Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157 (1961) (reversing defendants' convictions for engaging in "sit-in" and refusing to leave lunch counters that were reserved for people of another race). …


Global financial crisis and colossal sovereign debt has resulted in the need for radical cuts in public expenditure in many countries. Against this background, the contributions in Third Sector Performance acknowledge that, as a result, more imaginative ways of delivering public services are being sought. In countries like the UK, the new concept of The Big Society envisages third sector, or not-for-profit, or charitable organizations and social enterprises stepping in to mitigate the loss of vital public services. This development also gives rise to the likelihood that third sector financial institutions such as credit unions and a possible 'Big Society Bank' will grow in importance. The performance of all these enterprises looks set to become a much more critical issue than it has been in the past. The editors have gathered in this volume, chapters reflecting the fact that third sector organizations are not the same as conventional businesses and are also subtly different from the public sector. There is currently a dearth of knowledge and a lack of research into issues around performance in the Third Sector or Civil Society. This book begins to fill a void in the knowledge base. The internationally sourced contributions represent a balanced offering of academic research findings and practitioner accounts from the Third Sector, together with a section devoted specifically to third sector finance institutions. This book will appeal, internationally, to policy makers within the third sector or involved in the management of n-f-p and voluntary organisations, as well as to those with responsibility for wider public policy, scholars teaching or researching in this area, and students of business and management preparing for roles in social enterprises.


This article addresses the question of the proper international standard for war reparations. War reparations are especially hard on the credibility and efficacy of international law. Wars are hard because the suffering is so great and reparations so onerous that often there is no mutuality of interest between the victorious governments and their own constituent victims. Wars force victorious States to make hard choices between looking backward to repair the harm caused to constituent victims and looking forward to a relationship with a potential strong and strategic ally. Just as the conduct of war, in its great features, is...policy itself, so too it often appears that war reparation schemes have almost everything to do with international relations, and very little to do with international law. The victorious States must choose either wholly to embrace compensation to the victims, future peace and stability with the vanquished, or a balance of both that will satisfy neither the victims nor the vanquished. If revolutions are easy, wars are hard because if the victorious countries only focus on reparations for the war, they will do so at the expense of any future relationship with the vanquished countries. Second, wars are hard because if the victorious focus only on the future relationship with the vanquished, it will do so at the expense of the victims of the war. Third, wars are hard because if the victorious countries attempt to strike a middle ground and balance reparation to victims with nurturing a potential relationship with the vanquished, both the victims and the vanquished will remain unsatisfied with the result. International law has well-established principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, but it has yet to embrace principles for jus post bellum. International law should develop broad theories for jus post bellum, including principles of war reparations. Such principles would clearly establish that, while a victorious country has the legal right to claim full compensation for damages directly caused by unlawful acts of war conducted by a state (or by non-state actors with a state's knowledge, acquiescence, or ratification), it also has the right on behalf of its nationals to waive claims for full compensation. And in making any claim it has the obligation to prioritize among categories of claimants and to provide concrete evidence of all injuries sustained. The difficulties in establishing such broad principles should not be insurmountable. After all, if international law has succeeded in establishing laws for the engagement and conduct of war and laws of war crimes, why can it not establish clear principles for war reparations?


The in vitro synthesis of allotypes of b4/b5 offspring obtained from b4/b4 mothers immunized against paternal allotype b5/b5 was studied in comparison to similar offspring that had escaped from suppression and normal heterozygous b4/b5 rabbits. Nocardia water-soluble mitogen-a rabbit B-cell mitogen which is known to induce the differentiation of small lymphocytes into plasma cells and polyclonal activation of Ig, was able to break in vitro the allotypic suppression induced in vivo.


Acut e otitis media with facial paralysis is not a very frequent association. Aim: the goal of the present investigation was to asses the evolution of facial paralysis caused by acute otitis media. Study format: clinical-retrospective. Materials and Methods: we studied 40 patients with this association, from a total of 2758 cases of facial paralysis seen during this time in the department of facial nerve disorders. All the patients were clinically assessed and had epidemiological data, prognostics and evolution. Results and conclusion: the paralysis was of sudden onset in 95% of the cases. Recovery was of 85% for grade I (House-Brackman) and 15% for grade II (House-Brackman). Treatment was clinical, with antibiotics and steroids-yielding good results. In those patients with electrical bad prognosis, facial nerve decompression turned their evolution into a favorable one.


There were two abrupt warming events during the last deglaciation, at the start of the Bolling-Allerod and at the end of the Younger Dryas, but their underlying dynamics are unclear. Some abrupt climate changes may involve gradual forcing past a bifurcation point, in which a prevailing climate state loses its stability and the climate tips into an alternative state, providing an early warning signal in the form of slowing responses to perturbations, which may be accompanied by increasing variability. Alternatively, short-term stochastic variability in the climate system can trigger abrupt climate changes, without early warning. Previous work has found signals consistent with slowing down during the last deglaciation as a whole, and during the Younger Dryas, but with conflicting results in the run-up to the Bolling-Allerod. Based on this, we hypothesise that a bifurcation point was approached at the end of the Younger Dryas, in which the cold climate state, with weak Atlantic overturning circulation, lost its stability, and the climate tipped irreversibly into a warm interglacial state. To test the bifurcation hypothesis, we analysed two different climate proxies in three Greenland ice cores, from the Last Glacial Maximum to the end of the Younger Dryas. Prior to the Bolling warming, there was a robust increase in climate variability but no consistent slowing down signal, suggesting this abrupt change was probably triggered by a stochastic fluctuation. The transition to the warm Bolling-Allerod state was accompanied by a slowing down in climate dynamics and an increase in climate variability. We suggest that the Bolling warming excited an internal mode of variability in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation strength, causing multi-centennial climate fluctuations. However, the return to the Younger Dryas cold state increased climate stability. We find no consistent evidence for slowing down during the Younger Dryas, or in a longer spliced record of the cold climate state before and after the Bolling-Allerod. Therefore, the end of the Younger Dryas may also have been triggered by a stochastic perturbation.


As the population of disabled people continues to grow, designing accessible applications is still a challenge, since most applications are incompatible with assistive technologies used by disabled people to interact with the computer. This accessibility issue is usually caused by the reluctance of software engineers or developers to include complete accessibility features in their applications, which in turn is often due to the extra cost and development effort required to dynamically adapt applications to a wide range of disabilities. Our aim to resolve accessibility issues led to the design and implementation of the "Johar" framework, which facilitates the development of applications accessible to both disabled and non-disabled users. In the Johar architectural model, the ability-based front-end user interfaces are called interface interpreters, while the application-specific logic or functionality implemented by application developers are called applications or apps. The seamless interaction between each interface interpreter and app is made possible by Johar. In this thesis, we assure the quality of Johar by detecting and resolving many inconsistencies, omissions, irrelevancies, and other anomalies that can trigger unexpected or abnormal behaviour in Johar, and/or alter the smooth operation of interface interpreters and apps. Our approach to conducting the quality assurance involved reviewing the two components of Johar, johar.gem and johar.idf, by critically examining the functionality of classes in each component, including how classes interrelate and how functions are allocated or distributed among the classes. We also performed an exhaustive comparative review of four documents IDF Format Specification document, XML Schema Document or XSD, the Interface Interpreter Specification document, and the johar.idf package which are vital to the smooth running of all interface interpreters and apps. We also developed an automated testing tool in order to determine whether all errors or violations in an IDF (Interface Description File) are detected and reported. As part of this thesis, we designed and implemented an interface interpreter, called Star that presents WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers) graphical user interfaces to users, which is based on the "new version" of Johar. This new version evolved as a result of the redesign activities carried out on the Johar components and the various modifications effected during the quality assurance process. We also demonstrated the usage of Star on two apps to prove Johar's ability to guarantee smooth interaction between interface interpreters and apps. Finally, in this thesis, we designed two other interface interpreters which will be implemented in the near future.


The link between employee involvement (EI) and organizational performance is not clear-cut, and the diffusion of information technology (IT) in the workplace complicates this relationship. The author argues that new technologies offer an important avenue by which EI can improve firm performance. He also contends that those studies that do consider EI in the context of technological change may be focusing exclusively on workplace-level features of the employment relationship, ignoring variation in functional- and strategic-level aspects of employment relations. To test this hypothesis, he uses Kaiser Permanente Northwest Region's patient scheduling module as an exemplar to investigate the extent to which this particular technology interacts with EI to affect clinic-level improvements in patient satisfaction. He studies the impact of the technology over the period October 2004 to August 2007 across 16 clinics to identify variation across sites. Measuring outcomes from a dataset that includes employee and patient surveys, interviews, archival data, and clinic observations, he finds that the use of IT is associated with performance increases and that these effects are greater in those clinics achieving higher mean levels of EI. This study presents the first empirical evidence of the potential of EI to enhance the effectiveness of health IT.


The increase in the use of mobile & embedded devices, coupled with ad-hoc, short range wireless networking is enabling pervasive computing. This pervasive computing environment and the wired Grid infrastructure can be com-bined to make the Computation and Information Grid truly pervasive. This paper identifies some of the interesting research issues and challenges in creating such a pervasive Grid, and describes some preliminary work we have done to that end. We propose a runtime environment for the Pervasive Grid that utilizes a multi agent framework, and provides for discovery of services being offered by sensors, embedded and mobile devices, and their composition. The computation in this environment needs to be dynamically partitioned between the traditional Grid and elements that constitute the pervasive environment, like sensors, with limited computing and communication capabilities.


In this paper we develop a model of the economic value of a credit rating system. Increasing international competition and changes in the regulatory framework driven by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel II) called forth incentives for banks to improve their credit rating systems. An improvement of the statistical power of a rating system decreases the potential effects of adverse selection, and, combined with meeting several qualitative standards, decreases the amount of regulatory capital requirements. As a consequence, many banks have to make investment decisions where they have to consider the costs and the potential benefits of improving their rating systems. In our model the quality of a rating system depends on several parameters such as the accuracy of forecasting individual default probabilities and the rating class structure. We measure effects of adverse selection in a competitive one-period framework by parametrizing customer elasticity. Capital requirements are obtained by applying the current framework released by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Results of a numerical analysis indicate that improving a rating system with low accuracy to medium accuracy can increase the annual rate of return on a portfolio by 30 to 40 bp. This effect is even stronger for banks operating in markets with high customer elasticity and high loss rates. Compared to the estimated implementation costs banks could have a strong incentive to invest in their rating systems. The potential of reduced capital requirements on the portfolio return is rather weak compared to the effect of adverse selection.


Experimental tests and numerical calculations of replenishment at sea operations for two Fridtjof Nansenclass frigates have been performed. A Fridtjof Nansen-class frigate has been model with the use of empirical formulas for the hull, propeller and rudder properties. The hull is based on hull description from a VERES model. Turning circle and zigzag maneuvers have been performed with a maneuvering simulation program from the work of Skejic (2008). The results of these numerical maneuvering tests with the model does not correspond entirely with the results from model tests and full scale test of the ship class. The reason for this might be due to the hull description the model is based on, which lacks the appendices and has been manipulated to fit the program. But the differences in results are in an order of magnitude such that it is possible use the model for the further calculations. Full scale tests were performed with two Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates. Measurements of position, rudder angles, course, heading and other parameters was done with on board equipment from both ships. The most distinctive result is the oscillations of the rudder angles of the approaching ship. This effect is most evident in the wake of the other ship, but carries on during the replenishment as well. The effect was seen on both ships when being in the wake of the other. The effect of these oscillations might lead to a reduction in the rudder lift. Which means there is little effect of the rudder oscillations. When using these rudder angles in a simulation of the maneuvering, we get a course close to the one being measured. Due to these oscillations it is hard to get some comparable rudder data from the replenishment maneuver. The positioning measurements for the RAS maneuver from GPS is not accurate, and other methods for measuring the transverse distance should be used in addition to the GPS. Numerical calculations have been performed with the simulation program from the work of Skejic (2008). Two Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates have been modeled in the program and various runs have been performed. First in calm water conditions to see the effect without the disturbance of waves. For replenishment maneuvers at transverse distances according to the given procedures, that is between 30 and 50 meters, only small rudder angles are needed to account for the sway force and yaw moment due the presence of the other ship. Both the rudder angle and the drift angle are less than 1o . With other external loads, like waves, wind current, working on the ships during the maneuver, the interaction forces would be difficult to distinguish from the others. We see that the approaching speed is of significance, especially when the delivering ship is relatively small compared with the receiving ship. A larger ship will get little effect of presence of a smaller approaching vessel. From the sensitivity analysis we see a strong dependency on the thrust deduction factor, in addition to the location of the COG. When including waves in the calculations, we see that the waves makes an equally large contribution on the ships as the presence of an other, at transverse distance of 45 meters and 55 meters.


Any pharmacist who is even vaguely interested in pharmacy trends or what the immediate future of pharmacy will look like, would agree that our traditional way of dispensing medication is becoming increasingly inadequate, and that a growing need for therapy management is expected from our clients. Some pharmacists are already providing wider counselling services that extend beyond the traditional notion of how and when to take medication, and potential associated side-effects. Additionally, these pharmacists are increasingly providing a wider range of services, and are being reimbursed for them. If I could simplify this trend, it would be to move away from a dispensing-centric function towards a services-centric function.


How the everyday activities of surgery mediate and reproduce
surgical authority and privilege is studied by ethnographic
study and interview material in and around the operating
theatres of a large district general hospital, on surgical
wards, and in a day surgery unit, using a case study approach.
Routinised movements of staff, patients and instruments within
the operating theatre suite (0T) order the activities by which
patients pass through surgery. These movements are structured,
and culturally designated, to ensure the safety of the patient
during the dangerous transgression of boundaries in surgery.
The history of surgical sterility indicates the symbolic
significance of sterile garb, to mask the polluting bodies of
the surgical staff and designate them purifiers of corrupting
nature. Sterile techniques signify the superiority of cultural
definitions over those based in 'nature'.
While the surgeon is concerned with a patient's Illness, the
anaesthetist is concerned with her/his Fitness. This interaction
enables all operations other than those where both Fitness
is reduced and Illness is not reduced, to be proclaimed
'successful'. Consequently, patients may be allocated a
socially defined status of 'healed', despite no improvement in
physiological status.
Cross-cultural comparison suggests that surgical healing
involves a social status passage from a negative status of
victim to a positive one of survivor. Healing is socially reintegrative:
it re-creates apparent congruence between the
life-scales of the sick person and social structure, which is
destroyed by illness.
Case studies refine the hypothesis that this social recategorisation
legitimates surgical authority and privilege.
Both the operation's 'success' and patient discharge are found
to be necessary for a full claim to have healed.
The potential to generalise the model to all medical
intervention, and the implications for surgery and the
sociology of health and healing are discussed.


Based on a representative survey of German subsidiaries in the UK, their parent companies and a comparative analysis to the Workplace Employee Relations Survey 1998, the article examines the impact of nationality of ownership on employee relations (ER) in German multinational companies (MNCs) operating in an Anglo‐Saxon setting. It also assesses whether in light of heightened international competition and the problems in the German ER model, there has been a weakening of the home country effect over time. The study finds little evidence of a home country effect in relation to ER structures but reveals a pronounced country‐of‐origin effect in the ER approach and style. There is also evidence that German MNCs have responded to the globalisation pressures of the 1990s by a heightened emphasis on the country‐of‐origin collective approach in their UK subsidiaries, whilst at the same time developing comprehensive direct human resource management employee involvement schemes to complement, rather than substitute collective ER.


At some point in the future, if mankind hopes to settle planets outside the Solar System, it will be crucial to determine the range of planetary conditions under which human beings could survive and function. In this article, we apply physical considerations to future exoplanetary biology to determine the limitations which gravity imposes on several systems governing the human body. Initially, we examine the ultimate limits at which the human skeleton breaks and muscles become unable to lift the body from the ground. We also produce a new model for the energetic expenditure of walking, by modelling the leg as an inverted pendulum. Both approaches conclude that, with rigorous training, humans could perform normal locomotion at gravity no higher than 4 $g_{\textrm{Earth}}$.


The study investigates the main factors considered by South African telecommunications firms when making a decision to undertake Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This encompasses the reasons for investing, the methods of entry into the identified market and the factors influencing their decision. The methodology employs a survey questionnaire which was sent to telecommunication firms representing more than 70% of the revenue generated by this sector in SSA. The research reveals that market size, regulatory environment and government policy are the three most important factors influencing the decision to undertake FDI. Furthermore, the main reasons for deciding to enter SSA are for market and profit growth due to saturation in their existing markets, as well as for diversification of risk. Telecommunications firms wishing to enter SSA must be prepared for an unstable and uncertain policy environment and understand that the cost of starting a new venture in SSA is high.


This paper models two-sided market platforms, which connect third-party suppliers (developers) of many different products and services to users who demand a variety of these products. From a positive perspective, our model provides a simple explanation for the stark differences in platform pricing structures observed across a range of industries, including software for computers and an increasing number of electronic devices, videogames, digital media, etc. We show that the optimal platform pricing structure shifts towards making a larger share of profits on developers when users have a stronger preference for variety and also when there is uncertainty with respect to the availability, or a limited supply, of third-party (high-quality) products. From a normative perspective, we show that the increasingly popular public policy presumption that open platforms are inherently more efficient than proprietary ones -in terms of induced product diversity, user adoption and total social welfare- is not justified in our framework. The key welfare tradeoff is between the extent to which a proprietary platform internalizes business-stealing, product diversity and indirect network effects and the two-sided deadweight loss it creates through monopoly pricing.


This chapter considers the landmark decision in Alcock v Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police [1992] 1 AC 310 concerning liability for psychiatric injury, or 'nervous shock'. Alcock is the single most important English authority on liability for nervous shock, since although its implications for so-called 'primary victims' and rescuers may have been diluted by later case law, as far as 'secondary victims' are concerned, it remains the controlling decision. In this chapter, I argue that Alcock was an essentially conservative decision, rather than the reactionary one which it is often assumed to have been, and hence that it is a landmark case not so much because it represented a significant change in the law's direction, but because it codified or systematised what had come before. I also argue that the conservatism of Alcock was likely to have been influenced, not only by the facts of the case itself, but also by the large number of other man-made disasters that occurred in the UK in the late 1980s, by developments in Australia and the United States, and by broader trends in English tort law. Finally, I critique the claim that in Alcock the House of Lords overstepped the proper limits of adjudication, and engaged in 'judicial legislation'. My analysis begins with the development of the English law relating to nervous shock up until Alcock and continues with some important cases in Australia and the United States, before considering the wider context in which Alcock was decided. There follows a detailed analysis of the Alcock litigation itself. I conclude by making some general observations about the House of Lords' decision.


This short paper illuminates certain fundamental aspects of the nature of normal (Gaussian) mixtures. Thinking of each mixture component as a class, we focus on the corresponding a posteriori class probability functions. It is shown that the relationship between these functions and the mixture's parameters, is highly degenerate { and that the precise nature of this degen-eracy leads to somewhat unusual and counter-intuitive behavior. Even complete knowledge of a mixture's a posteriori class behavior, reveals essentially nothing of its absolute nature, i.e. mean locations and covariance norms. Consequently a mixture whose means are located in a small ball anywhere in space, can project arbitrary class structure everywhere in space. The well-known expectation maximization (EM) algorithm for Maximum Likelihood (ML) optimization may be thought of as a reparameterization of the problem in which the search takes place over the space of sample point weights. Motivated by EM we characterize the expressive power of similar reparameterizations, where the objective is instead to maximize the a posteriori likelihood of a labeled training set. This is relevant to, and a generalization of a common heuristic in machine learning in which one increases the weight of a mistake in order to improve classiication accuracy. We prove that EM-style reparameterization is not capable of expressing arbitrary a posteriori behavior, and is therefore incapable of expressing some solutions. However a slightly diierent reparameterization is presented which is almost always fully expressive { a fact proven by exploiting the degeneracy described above.


That parents in China greatly value higher education for their children is a well-known aspect of contemporary Chinese culture, but the intensity and effects of their desire to achieve this goal have largely gone unexamined - until now. "Governing Educational Desire" explores this universal desire for a college education and its vast consequences, which include household and national economic priorities, birthrates, ethnic relations, and patterns of governance. Where does this desire come from? Andrew B. Kipnis approaches this question in four different ways. First, he focuses in detail on one Chinese county, Zouping. Then, he widens his scope to examine the provincial and national governmental policies that affect educational desire. Digging into the history of education in East Asia, Kipnis moves on to explore the way contemporary governing practices were shaped by the Confucian examination system. Finally, to discover the universal in the local, he compares the social dynamics of a cross-section of Zouping communities. In doing so, Kipnis provides not only an illuminating analysis of education in China but also a thought-provoking reflection on what educational desire can tell us about the relationship between culture and government.


This book is the first to bring together essential information on the application of ozone in food processing, providing an insight into the current state-of-the-art and reviewing established and emerging applications in food processing, preservation and waste management. The chemical and physical properties of ozone are described, along with its microbial inactivation mechanisms. The various methods of ozone production are compared, including their economic and technical aspects. Several chapters are dedicated to the major food processing applications: fruit and vegetables, grains, meat, seafood and food hydrocolloids, and the effects on nutritional and quality parameters will be reviewed throughout. Further chapters examine the role of ozone in water treatment, in food waste treatment and in deactivating pesticide residues. The international regulatory and legislative picture is addressed, as are the health and safety implications of ozone processing and possible future trends.


Aims To perform immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis of molecular drivers related to the development and maintenance of melanoma and to assess their value as diagnostic and prognostic melanoma biomarkers in routine clinical practice. Methods Tissue microarrays constructed from a cohort of primary melanomas (n=355), benign naevi (n=37) and melanoma metastases (n=14) were evaluated for IHC expression of c-KIT, BRAFV600E, MITF, p16, p53 and PTEN, as well as for pERK, a surrogate marker for mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway activation. The results were correlated with clinicopathological parameters and clinical outcome. Results Absent p16 expression and reduced MITF expression were both associated with the adverse prognostic markers ulceration (p=0.009 and p<0.0001, respectively), advanced tumour stage (p<0.0001 and p=0.001, respectively) and higher Breslow thickness (both p<0.0001), as well as with an adverse overall relapse-free survival (p<0.0001 and p=0.003, respectively). Absence of p16 expression predicted overall relapse-free (p=0.02) and distant metastasis-free (p=0.04) survival, independently of Breslow thickness, ulceration and tumour stage. Conclusions IHC determined p16 expression is an independent prognostic biomarker of potential value in routine melanoma diagnostic practice.


This paper presents an automatic speaker recognition system for intelligence applications. The system has to provide functionalities for a speaker skimming application in which databases of recorded conversations belonging to an ongoing investigation can be annotated and quickly browsed by an operator. The paper discusses the criticalities introduced by the characteristics of the audio signals under consideration - in particular background noise and channel/coding distortions - as well as the requirements and functionalities of the system under development. It is shown that the performance of state-of-the-art approaches degrades significantly in presence of moderately high background noise. Finally, a novel speaker recognizer based on phonetic features and an ensemble classifier is presented. Results show that the proposed approach improves performance on clean audio, and suggest that it can be employed towards improved real-world robustness.


Abstract Jupiter's moon Europa may harbor an ocean beneath its ice cover, but the composition of that ocean and the overlying ice is nearly entirely unknown. Regardless of uncertainties in models for Europa's formation, we estimate lower limits for Europa's inventory of biogenic elements (such as C, N, O, and P) by investigating the contribution to the inventory of impact events over Europa's geologic history. A series of high-resolution hydrocode simulations were carried out over a range of comet densities (1.1, 0.8, and 0.6 g/cm3, corresponding to porosities between 0 and 45%) and impact velocities (16, 21.5, 26.5, and 30.5 km/s). We found that at typical impact velocities on Europa most impactor material reaches escape velocity, and it is assumed to be lost from Europa. For a nonporous comet, some fraction (20% or higher) of the projectile is retained by Europa even at the highest impact velocity modeled, 30.5 km/s. For porous comets, however, a significant fraction of the projectile (above 25%) is retained only for the lowest impact velocity modeled, 16 km/s. Integrated over solar system history, this suggests that 1 to 10 Gt of carbon could have been successfully delivered to Europa's surface by impacts of large comets (around 1 km in diameter). This is a few times more carbon than is contained in the procaryotic biomass of the upper 200 meters of the Earth's oceans, but about 2 orders of magnitude less if the whole depth of the oceans is considered. Therefore, regardless of its initial formation conditions, Europa should have a substantial inventory of "biogenic" elements, with implications for the chemistry of its oceans, ice cover, and the possibility of life.


Tuning hardwired compiler optimizations for rapidly evolving hardware makes porting an optimizing compiler for each new platform extremely challenging. Our radical approach is to develop a modular, extensible, self-optimizing compiler that automatically learns the best optimization heuristics based on the behavior of the platform. In this paper we describe MILEPOST 1 GCC, a machine-learning-based compiler that automatically adjusts its optimization heuristics to improve the execution time, code size, or compilation time of specific programs on different architectures. Our preliminary experimental results show that it is possible to considerably reduce execution time of the MiBench benchmark suite on a range of platforms entirely automatically.


Right wing populism has typically consisted of anti-statist/elitist mobilizations by the 'common people' opposed to government policies and/or various out-groups. Such cycles of contention, typically prompted by various social changes and/or crises, have long been an essential feature of American society. The Tea Party (Parties) appeared in 2009 as a response to economic stagnation and crisis, secular challenges to traditional religious identities and the election of an African American president. The Tea Partiers were generally highly conservative, highly religious, rural/suburban, lower middle class Republicans. Such movements might be best understood as reactionary 'resistance movements' that attempt to defend and retain traditional identities and statuses based on race, patriarchy and hetero-normativity that have been under assault by late modern 'network' society. Such movements, prompted by anger, rage and ressentiment may garner attention and even wider support, but if/when they gain power, they foster 'buyer's remorse' and eventually wane.


Many detrital and diagenetic minerals show a large variety of cathodoluminescence colours (CL) due to their chemical composition and/or defects in the crystallographic structure. Digitized colour images of the emitted CL allow to distinguish and quantify detrital and authigenic phases with high accuracy. Quantification leads to a better knowledge of the detrital minerals and the paragenesis of diagenetic phases. As an example, Triassic siliciclastics, carbonates and sulfates cored in two deep wells in the Ardeche region were studied. These sediments contain both detrital and authigenic minerals which often show luminescence. More than 1300 CL images and plane-polarised light microphotographs were taken from samples of the GPF Ardeche Ba1 and MM1 wells using a Technosyn MKII cold cathodoluminescence device. The images were digitized at high resolution and stored on CD-ROM. The different mineral phases have been segmented and their area proportion were calculated using modern image analysis software packages. Quantification of the detrital components (e.g. quartz, feldspar) their degree of alteration and the amount of diagenetic phases (e.g. dolomite, magnesite, celestite and phosphate) can be used to determine the chemical composition of the rock.


Graphic designers encounter particular difficulties when undertaking work for small business clients. Identifying the core business values is an essential step to ensure that a successful design solution results. An initial case study involving the merger of two established businesses, highlighted difficulties that arose as a result of poor communication and a failure to identify the core business values and subsequently translate these into the design brief. The research aimed to gain an understanding of the key influences that surround the communication exchange concerning small business core values that inform the graphic design process. Graphic design, communication theory, business models and small business practice were drawn upon to inform this study. The literature review found that little formal research had previously been conducted on this topic. Participant observation and action research were the selected methodological approaches adopted, involving the author as researcher and also graphic design practitioner. Following a series of nine case studies that focused on the SME sector, a graphic design communication tool (CDT) was developed and evaluated with the help of four professional graphic designers. The CDT consists of a detailed questionnaire conducted with key stakeholders, developed through a formalised process of analysis, including the author as action researcher, graphic designer and facilitator. The resulting CDT represents an original contribution to the field. Using the CDT resulted in the responsibility for providing relevant information, which could be used to inform the design brief, moving away from the designer to the small business stakeholders. In addition, the role of a specialist facilitator/analyst might be developed in order to provide expert interpretation of core business values aligned to graphic design elements. The results of this research have particular significance for those working in the graphic design industry, educators and business advisors.


BACKGROUND
The effects of sibship size and structure on delinquency are well established. Specifically, having a large family and many brothers has been shown to predict offending. However, despite strong links between delinquency and alcohol use, the contribution of sibship factors to drinking behaviors remains largely unexplored. The current study investigated the impact of sibship size and composition on younger brothers' and sisters' ages of drinking and intoxication onset.

METHODS
We employed a sample of 4,281 same-sex twins from the Australian Twin Register to examine whether (i) large sibship size facilitates earlier age at first drink (AFD) and age at first intoxication (AFI) in males and females, (ii) having many older brothers predicts earlier ages of AFD and AFI in males, and (iii) having many older brothers results in later AFD and AFI in females. We tested whether effects were moderated by parental divorce and alcohol misuse and mediated by familial religion.

RESULTS
Sibling effects were minimal before accounting for family context. However, when parental divorce and excessive parental drinking were included as moderators, sibling effects were significantly amplified among individuals from homes of divorce, and effects were strongest when siblings were close in age.

CONCLUSIONS
Strong close in age older sibling effects indicate that proximal sibling attitudes and behaviors about alcohol likely interact with structural factors to influence younger siblings' drinking. Sibship factors were much more influential in one population (individuals from homes of divorce) than another (respondents with a parental history of excessive drinking), suggesting that sibling effects vary depending on the type of co-occurring familial risk. Prevention efforts performed at the family level, and introduced before first use of alcohol, are likely to delay drinking initiation and help prevent future alcohol problems.


In many medical, financial, industrial, e.t.c. applications of statistics, the model parameters may undergo changes at unknown moment of time. In this thesis, we consider change point analysis in a regression setting for dichotomous responses, i.e. they can be modeled as Bernoulli or 0-1 variables. Applications are widespread including credit scoring in financial statistics and dose-response relations in biometry. The model parameters are estimated using neural network method. We show that the parameter estimates are identifiable up to a given family of transformations and derive the consistency and asymptotic normality of the network parameter estimates using the results in Franke and Neumann Franke Neumann (2000). We use a neural network based likelihood ratio test statistic to detect a change point in a given set of data and derive the limit distribution of the estimator using the results in Gombay and Horvath (1994,1996) under the assumption that the model is properly specified. For the misspecified case, we develop a scaled test statistic for the case of one-dimensional parameter. Through simulation, we show that the sample size, change point location and the size of change influence change point detection. In this work, the maximum likelihood estimation method is used to estimate a change point when it has been detected. Through simulation, we show that change point estimation is influenced by the sample size, change point location and the size of change. We present two methods for determining the change point confidence intervals: Profile log-likelihood ratio and Percentile bootstrap methods. Through simulation, the Percentile bootstrap method is shown to be superior to profile log-likelihood ratio method.


This book teaches how to develop Java applications at the professional level. It starts by showing how to code, test, and debug everyday business applications that won t crash. It presents object-oriented features like classes, inheritance, interfaces, and polymorphism in a way that s both understandable and useful in the real world...perspective that s often missing in Java training. It presents essential Java skills such as working with data types, control statements, arrays, collections, generics, enumerations, exceptions, threads, Swing components, applets, and text and binary files. It covers new Java SE 6 features such as new JDBC features, the StAX XML API, and the built-in Derby database. And it s all done in the distinctive Murach style that has been training professional programmers for more than 30 years.


How much does Zambia benefit from its rich forests, wildlife, soils and water – and what more could it do to ensure the protection and wise use of these environmental assets? Where environment and poverty problems are becoming increasingly severe, such questions need to be answered urgently. To begin this, the Environmental Council of Zambia and the Ministry of Finance and National Planning, facilitated by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), decided to bring together a dozen highly experienced Zambian professionals who work in environment and development in government, business, civil society and academia. The authors offer a positive, lessons-learned approach – identifying what has worked in key sectors and through institutional innovations. They conclude that Zambia could produce higher levels of income and welfare if its environmental assets are planned, allocated, managed and governed better. Their recommendations herald a new era of integrated environment-development planning that is not just 'pushed' by environment interests, but is now also 'demand-pulled' by development and finance authorities.


Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) larvae were collected from field crops and wild hosts in India, Nepal and Pakistan from 1991 to 1995, and ninety eight laboratory cultures established. Cypermethrin, fenvalerate, endosulfan, quinalphos, monocrotophos and methomyl insecticides were topically applied to 30–40 mg, first laboratory generation larvae and resistance determined from log dose probit bioassays. Significant levels of cypermethrin and fenvalerate resistance were found in all field strains, demonstrating that resistance to at least some pyrethroids is now ubiquitous in H. armigera populations in the Indian subcontinent; cypermethrin and fenvalerate resistance levels ranged from 5– to 6500–fold and 16– to 3200–fold respectively. Pyrethroid resistance levels were highest in the intensive cotton and pulse growing regions of central and southern India where excessive application of insecticide is common. In all field strains assayed, pre-treatment with the metabolic synergist piperonyl butoxide (pbo), resulted in significant suppression of pyrethroid resistance. However, in nearly all cases, full suppression of resistance was not achieved. This residual non-pbo-suppressible resistance was most likely due to a nerve-insensitivity resistance mechanism. Pbo-insensitive resistance was highest in regions of India where insecticides were frequently applied to cotton and legume crops. In some regions where insecticides were heavily overused, a second high order nerve-insensitivity mechanism (possibly a Super -Kdr type mechanism), may have been present. Incipient endosulfan resistance (1–28-fold), was present throughout India, Nepal and Pakistan. Low to moderate levels of resistance (2–59–fold), were reported to the phosphorothionate group organophosphate, quinalphos, in India and Pakistan, but there was no evidence of significant resistance (0.4–3–fold), to the phosphate group organophosphate, monocrotophos, under our bioassay conditions between 1993 and 1994. H. armigera strains collected in Nepal in 1993 and 1994 were susceptible to quinalphos, but by 1995, 4–5–fold resistance was detected. It is probable that much of the resistance to pyrethroid, organophosphate and carbamate insecticides in the Indian subcontinent can be attributed to an inherited or inducible mixed function oxidase complex. Non-pbo-suppressible resistance becomes significant in regions and periods in the season when insecticide selection pressure on resistant H. armigera larvae on cotton and legume crops is very high.


The huge number of markers in comparison with the phenotypes available represents one of the main issues in genomic selection. In the present work Principal Component Analysis has been used to reduce the dimensionality of predictors. The method has been tested on three Italian cattle breeds (Holstein, Brown and Simmental) with different production aptitudes, dairy and dual purpose, and population size. Bulls were genotyped with the 54K Illumina beadchip and a data editing has been carried out. Remaining SNP have been used for further analysis. PC extraction was carried out separately for each chromosome and new variables able to explain different percentages of total variance were obtained. Bulls were sorted by birth year or randomly shuffled to create reference and prediction populations. The effect of principal components on polygenic EBV or Deregressed Proof in reference animals was estimated with a BLUP model. Results were compared to those obtained by using SNP genotypes as predictors either with BLUP or Bayes_A estimation methods. No substantial differences in correlations between DGV and EBV (or Deregressed Proof) were observed between the three methods in all experimental contributions. The PC method allows for a relevant reduction in the number of independent variables when predicting DGV, with a huge decrease in calculation time and without losses in accuracy.


Studies the fatigue behaviour of Al-7Si-0.3 Mg sand cast alloys at varying iron levels and with beryllium and manganese trace additions and when the alloy is stircast and extruded. From the stress (S)-number of cycles to failure (N)-(S-N) curves it is observed that the presence of higher amount of iron (0.76%) in sand cast alloys leads to a shorter fatigue life. Beryllium and manganese additions to a higher iron containing alloy (0.76%) show better fatigue properties than low (0.29%) and high (0.76%) iron containing sand cast alloys, thus countering the detrimental effect of iron. The better fatigue life of beryllium and manganese added high iron alloy is due to the presence of (Be,Mn)-Fe phases only inside α-Al dendrites. The fatigue life of stircast and extruded low iron (0.44%) alloy is superior to sand cast low (0.29%) iron alloys. Observation of fractured surfaces reveals that porosity/inclusions is the high stress concentrating point where the crack originates (stage-I) and then propagates (stage-II) depending on the presence of the second phases. In the case of low iron alloys (sand and extruded stircast) a crack propagates along eutectic silicon, while in the high iron alloys a crack propagates through the brittle β-phase. In beryllium and manganese added alloys, even though a crack nucleates on the (Be,Mn)-Fe phase, it will be arrested as it approaches α-Al dendrites and hence, the crack has to propagate along silicon particles. The fractured surface of the stircast and extruded alloys has revealed fine fatigue fracture with striation as compared to sand cast alloys. This aspect of crack nucleation and propagation is explained schematically.


Readings in Renaissance Women's Drama is the most complete sourcebook for the study of this growing area of inquiry. It brings together, for the first time, a collection of the key critical commentaries and historical essays - both classic and contemporary - on Renaissance women's drama. Specifically designed to provide a comprehensive overview for students, teachers and scholars, this collection combines: * this century's key critical essays on drama by early modern women by early critics such as Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot * specially-commissioned new essays by some of today's important feminist critics * a preface and introduction explaining this selection and contexts of the materials * a bibliography of secondary sources Playwrights covered include Joanna Lumley, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Sidney, Mary Wroth and the Cavendish sisters.


The genus Paragorgia was established by Milne Edwards & Haime in 1857 to receive the large, boreal scleraxonian octocoral from the "Norwegian Ocean", called Alcyonium arboreum by Linnaeus (1758). In subsequent years, that species was reported also from localities in the northern Pacific Ocean (Kinoshita, 1913; Hickson, 1915) and from high southern latitudes off the Falkland Islands (Broch, 1957). In 1883, Koren & Danielssen described two new species from Batalden, Norway, Paragorgia nodosa and Briareum frielei, which generally have been treated as synonyms of P. arborea. Nutting (1908, 1912), however, reported P. nodosa from deep waters off Hawaii and Japan and, furthermore, established a new Japanese species, Paragorgia regalis. Kinoshita (1913) also reported P. nodosa from Japan and proposed two more new species from that area, P. granulosa and P. tenuis. The first record of the genus Paragorgia from tropical waters was established by Thomson & Henderson (1906) for specimens which they called Paragorgia splendens, collected in the Indian Ocean by the "Investigator". Nutting (1911) and Stiasny (1937) reported the same species, probably in error, from deep water off the Sulu Islands. In 1956, I suggested that Nutting's (1908) record of P. nodosa from Hawaii was incorrect and established his material as a new species, P. dendroides. Although it is definitely not the same as P. nodosa from Norwegian waters, I now am inclined to believe that P. dendroides belongs to the species that Nutting called P. regalis from Japan. Since Paragorgia arborea and related forms have been collected repeatedly in cold, northern waters, but only a few records of the genus are known


What would happen if we could stroll through the revolutionary history of the 20th century and, without any fear of the possible responses, ask the main protagonists – from Lenin to Che Guevara, from Alexandra Kollontai to Ulrike Meinhof – seemingly naive questions about love?

Although all important political and social changes of the 20th century included heated debates on the role of love, it seems that in the 21st century of new technologies of the self (Grindr, Tinder, online dating, etc.) we are faced with a hyperinflation of sex, not love. By going back to the sexual revolution of the October Revolution and its subsequent repression, to Che's dilemma between love and revolutionary commitment and to the period of '68 (from communes to terrorism) and its commodification in late capitalism, the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat gives a possible answer to the question of why it is that the most radical revolutionaries like Lenin or Che were scared of the radicality of love. What is so radical about a seemingly conservative notion of love and why is it anything but conservative?

This short book is a modest contribution to the current upheavals around the world –from Tahrir to Taksim, from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong, from Athens to Sarajevo –in which the question of love is curiously, surprisingly, absent.


Besides the recognition task, today's biometric systems need to cope with additional problem: spoofing attacks. Up to date, academic research considers spoofing as a binary classification problem: systems are trained to discriminate between real accesses and attacks. However, spoofing counter-measures are not designated to operate stand-alone, but as a part of a recognition system they will protect. In this paper, we study techniques for decision- level and score-level fusion to integrate a recognition and anti-spoofing systems, using an open-source framework that handles the ternary classification problem (clients, impostors and attacks) transparently. By doing so, we are able to report the impact of different spoofing counter-measures, fusion techniques and thresholding on the overall performance of the final recognition system. For a specific use- case covering face verification, experiments show to what extent simple fusion improves the trustworthiness of the system when exposed to spoofing attacks.


Inefficient and irrational use of medicines is a widespread problem at all levels of health care. Lack of discretely documented policies and procedures in respect of medicines management in hospitals is unnecessarily straining the meagre resources resulting into poor inflow of benefits to the patients. Per capita wastage from inefficient and irrational use of medicines tends to be greatest in hospitals. Many of these sources of wastage could be reduced if some basic principles of medicine management and use are followed and a comprehensive medicines management policy framework is developed. An efficient and robust medicines management in hospitals ensures rational selection, quantification, procurement, storage, distribution, use and thereby availability of the right drugs in the right quantities, at reasonable prices, and at recognized standards of quality throughout the year without any stock-out periods in between. Effective medicines management is a collaborative process involving many stakeholders that is required for providing the health care system with a road map for continuous improvement in pharmaceutical supply chain including expense containment with specific goals and outcome measures of success. Existing medicines management and supply chain systems within hospitals have several gaps and shortcomings particularly lack of resources and well documented policy framework. Urgent steps are required to assess, evaluate, and monitor the functioning of supply chain system for bridging up the gaps and rectification of shortcomings. Priority needs to be accorded towards engaging well-qualified manpower, suitably trained in medicines management across the different levels of care.


Tony Gaddiss accessible, step-by-step presentation helps beginners understand the important details necessary to become skilled programmers at an introductory level. Gaddis motivates the study of both programming skills and the C++ programming language by presenting all the details needed to understand the how and the whybut never losing sight of the fact that most beginners struggle with this material. His approach is both gradual and highly accessible, ensuring that readers understand the logic behind developing high-quality programs. In Starting Out with C++: Early Objects, Gaddis covers objects and classes early after functions and before arrays and pointers. As with all Gaddis texts, clear and easy-to-read code listings, concise and practical real-world examples, and an abundance of exercises appear in every chapter. This text is intended for either a one-semester accelerated introductory course or a traditional two-semester sequence covering C++ programming. MyProgrammingLab for Starting Out with C++ is a total learning package. MyProgrammingLab is an online homework, tutorial, and assessment program that truly engages students in learning. It helps students better prepare for class, quizzes, and examsresulting in better performance in the courseand provides educators a dynamic set of tools for gauging individual and class progress. And, MyProgrammingLab comes from Pearson, your partner in providing the best digital learning experiences. Note: If you are purchasing the standalone text or electronic version, MyProgrammingLab does not come automatically packaged with the text. To purchase MyProgrammingLab, please visit: myprogramminglab.com or you can purchase a package of the physical text + MyProgrammingLab by searching the Pearson Higher Education web site. MyProgrammingLab is not a self-paced technology and should only be purchased when required by an instructor.


In this paper we study post-penalized estimators which apply ordinary, unpenalized linear regression to the model selected by first-step penalized estimators, typically LASSO. It is well known that LASSO can estimate the regression function at nearly the oracle rate, and is thus hard to improve upon. We show that post-LASSO performs at least as well as LASSO in terms of the rate of convergence, and has the advantage of a smaller bias. Remarkably, this performance occurs even if the LASSO-based model selection "fails" in the sense of missing some components of the "true" regression model. By the "true" model we mean here the best s-dimensional approximation to the regression function chosen by the oracle. Furthermore, post-LASSO can perform strictly better than LASSO, in the sense of a strictly faster rate of convergence, if the LASSO-based model selection correctly includes all components of the "true" model as a subset and also achieves a sufficient sparsity. In the extreme case, when LASSO perfectly selects the "true" model, the post-LASSO estimator becomes the oracle estimator. An important ingredient in our analysis is a new sparsity bound on the dimension of the model selected by LASSO which guarantees that this dimension is at most of the same order as the dimension of the "true" model. Our rate results are non-asymptotic and hold in both parametric and nonparametric models. Moreover, our analysis is not limited to the LASSO estimator in the first step, but also applies to other estimators, for example, the trimmed LASSO, Dantzig selector, or any other estimator with good rates and good sparsity. Our analysis covers both traditional trimming and a new practical, completely data-driven trimming scheme that induces maximal sparsity subject to maintaining a certain goodness-of-fit. The latter scheme has theoretical guarantees similar to those of LASSO or post-LASSO, but it dominates these procedures as well as traditional trimming in a wide variety of experiments. First arXiv version: December 2009.


The quantitative feedback theory (QFT) of Horowitz is theoretically well developed for multivariable systems but there is not sufficient knowledge on its application to practical problems. A "flying machine" consisting of an airframe with two independently controlled sets of wings has been designed and constructed as a 2-input 2-output control problem. The airframe is constrained to move vertically on guide wires and to rotate about a pivot . Air flow over the wings is provided by two 7.SkW fans operated without any attempt at providing non-turbulent flow . The arrangement of the wings is such that in open loop, the dynamic behaviour of the airframe from the rear set of wings to the height is non-minimum phase. Additionally, the airframe is unstable for some flight conditions. This uncertain, non-linear and highly disturbed plant provides an ideal practical environment in which to test controller design theory. The construction, modelling, parameter estimation and simulation of the flying machine is described. Three different controller structures are disGussed, with actual controller designs arrived at from QFT understanding. The controller designs for the flying machine take into account parameter uncertainty and trade off disturbance attenuation against rate and amplitude saturation at the wing angle inputs.


Fat content and composition are determinant factors affecting pork production and meat quality
(Wood et al., 2003). Fat composition is commonly presented as the percentage of each individual
fatty acid relative to total fatty acids and then some pork quality traits are described in terms of
some fatty acid percentages (see for example the review by Wood et al., 2008). Despite being
compositional in nature, to our knowledge there is no reference in the literature where specific
compositional data analysis methods had been applied to analyze fatty acid composition. A first
objective of this contribution is to analyze fatty acid composition as compositional data.
In meat quality research, it is common to analyze the effect of some influential factors (such as
diet, genotype, gender, live weight or age, among others) on fat content and composition, usually
the subcutaneous (SF) or the intramuscular (IMF) fats. In these studies, the aim is mostly to
estimate and then test the differences among treatments for fatty acid percentages. The pattern of
fatty acid deposition may differ among tissue (for instance, SF or IMF) or muscle (Kloareg et al.,
2007; Duran-Montge et al., 2008), and even between localization within a specific tissue. A second
objective of this manuscript is to better know the differences between fatty acid deposition pattern
between tissues, localization within a tissue, and muscles.
Thus, the purpose of the present study is, first, to describe a data set of fatty acid composition
collected specifically for doing research on IMF content and composition and assess the main
differences among IMF of three muscles and SF using compositional data methods, and, second, to
apply, as a case study, specific compositional data methods to discriminate between samples of IMF
and SF by fatty acid composition and compare the results with the obtained when using the
traditional approach.


Prisoners and ex-prisoners have played a prominent role in modern Irish history. Yet despite using their prison experience for political advancement, on release, few political leaders became vocal advocates of penal reform in general or prisoner enfranchisement in particular. Prior to the passing of the Electoral (Amendment) Act in 2006, Irish prisoners were in an anomalous position: they were allowed to register, but no facility existed, for them to vote. However, this did not prevent prisoners from engaging with, and at times, challenging the political system, both north and south throughout the 20th century. Much has been written about political activity among prisoners in Northern Ireland but relatively little about their endeavors in the Irish Republic. This article begins with an examination of political participation among prisoners in the early decades of the Irish State. Despite the legal and political struggle by prisoners and penal reformers to achieve enfranchisement, when it was granted, it was in the context of electoral, rather than penal reform. Prisoner enfranchisement did not become a major issue in Ireland in contrast to other countries and reasons are examined from a historical and political perspective.


The validity of regulations promulgated by the Department of Treasury is a principal battleground in contemporary federal taxation. So far, the clash has had two phases: establishment and implementation. Phase one entailed the destruction of the citadel of tax insularity, the bastion within which tax specialists thought to keep themselves safe from having to learn and apply general administrative law. In cases such as Swallows, Mannella, Lantz, Mayo, and the welter of cases culminating in Home Concrete, the old guard was defeated. It is now firmly established that tax, no less than other regulatory areas, is subject to the rules of administrative law. That proposition having been settled, we are now in phase two: implementation, the application of specific administrative law rules in particular tax contexts.


Herein, we investigated the effects of grape pomace (GP) in diet on body weight, blood lipid profile, and expression of liver genes associated with lipid metabolism using a young rat model. In this study, twenty female Sprague-Dawley rats at 7 weeks of age were randomly divided into 4 groups, which were fed modified AIN-93G diets containing 0% (control), 6.9%, 13.8%, and 20.7% of GP for 10 weeks. Feed consumption and body weight were weekly determined. Blood samples were obtained at the beginning and end of the feeding period for cholesterol, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and glucose analysis. At the end of the feeding period, all rats were fasted overnight and euthanized. Heart, kidney, and liver samples were obtained and weighed. Liver tissues were used for gene expression analysis. GP-containing diet did not influence the body weight of the rats. As GP content increased, blood triglyceride and very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) decreased (P < 0.05), high density lipoprotein (HDL) slightly increased but was not statistically significant, total cholesterol (TC) and low density lipoprotein (LDL) significantly increased (P < 0.05), blood glucose decreased, and ALT level slightly increased. The expressions of liver genes associated with fatty acid synthesis and lipid hydrolysis/metabolism were moderately downregulated by the GP diet. The study suggests that regular consumption of a diet containing appropriate amount of GP may help in the reduction of body fat accumulation and prevention of obesity. This is the first study revealing the change in gene expression caused by long-term consumption of GP-containing diet.


Few longitudinal studies have examined the changes over time in international students' wellbeing. This study aimed to explore any change in wellbeing from the beginning of the first semester until the end of the academic year and the impact of using 'wellbeing away' strategies on international students' wellbeing. The survey used the Smith Wellbeing Questionnaire (SWELL), a 'quality of university life' questionnaire, a 'being away strategies' questionnaire and three open-ended questions focused on difficulties, coping strategies and the respondents' most demanding time during their study period in the UK. A total of 104 participants completed the three phases. Repeated measurements showed no significant difference in students' wellbeing over the academic year. A hierarchical regression analysis showed that positive effects were predicted by positive personality, lower level of course demands, by unwinding after study and by quality of life in the second phase. Themes derived from open-ended responses showed that participants found the hardest parts were pre-arrival and the first few weeks in the UK: 48% of the students reported academic difficulties such as exams, deadlines and lack of adjustment to the education system. Time management and study-life balance were the next most difficult issues, especially for those who reported themselves married. Finally, students reported getting social support from family and friends and used exercise as a coping strategy. Results give support to the value of 'studying away' strategies that can help students who are away from home to maintain wellbeing.