Tree cavities are a globally important structural element of forest ecosystems that host numerous cavity-dwelling vertebrates, but they have received little research in Pakistan. We investigated cavity-bearing trees, the attributes of their cavities, and their associated vertebrate fauna in a coniferous forest of Pakistan. We recorded 1140 trees in a 2-km 2 sampled area. We found 211 cavities (64% decay-formed and 36% excavated cavities) in 83 trees (41% live and 59% snags). Of the cavities found, 74% were recorded in trunks and 26% were in branches. Only 28% of the cavities showed signs of recent use by any vertebrate species. We observed 19 vertebrate species using cavities: 2 mammals, 13 birds (including 5 woodpecker species as primary excavators), and 4 reptiles. Height from the ground, entrance diameter, and depth of the cavities used by mammals were greater than those measurements of the cavities occupied by birds and reptiles. Our study shows that tree cavities have a critical role in providing nesting sites to many vertebrate species of Pakistan that require tree cavities in order to breed. We recommend such research be done in other forests of the country to investigate cavity availability and requirements of cavity users. We suggest that certain minimum populations of cavity-bearing trees should be maintained during silviculture practices to support populations of tree-dwelling vertebrates in the coniferous forests of Pakistan.


Good teaching at the middle grades comes out of a deep understanding of the unique cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and moral needs of young adolescents. Specialized preparation therefore is necessary to help teacher candidates understand how to operationalize the intersection of young adolescent development and the effective pedagogy that addresses their needs. This paper focuses on a qualitative study of experienced middle school teachers who graduated from a middle level preparation program or an elementary or secondary preparation program in terms of how well prepared they felt and feel to meet the widely varied needs of young adolescents. Confidence in preparation leads to high self-efficacy, which is important for perseverance and effectiveness. Graduates of a middle level preparation program reported higher levels of confidence in their preparation to teach young adolescents.


In India, adulteration and contamination are encountered in food consumed at the household level, in the food service establishments and business firms, and also when sold as street foods. Non-permitted colors are the most common additives to foods. Contamination of mycotoxins, metals and pesticides in daily foods and milk has been found highly toxic and carcinogenic, and about 70% of deaths are supposed to be of food-borne origin. In this paper, food safety measures are emphasized with an objective of prevention of health hazards and strengthening of regulatory system. It is possible to prevent food adulteration and contamination if people are made aware of health hazards. If food inspectors are vigilant and active, the risk of food toxicity can be minimized at all levels of food supply and consumption. Further, simple measures can prevent further complications, particularly those caused by microbiological contaminants. Fatal diseases and health hazards prevalent in India can be minimized and consumers can live happily with good health. The social life in the communities is strengthened resulting in less expense on health related problems. Citizens aware of food adulteration and contamination can arrange camps/campaigns through local bodies and safe food can be the goal for all concerned.


Objective: Tooth mobility, which is a common problem among patients seeking dental health-care attention, causes occlusal instability, masticatory disturbances, esthetic challenges, and impaired quality of life. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and pattern of tooth mobility among patients attending a Nigerian specialist periodontology clinic. Materials and Methods: All the patients who visited the Periodontology Clinic of University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City, from January to December 2014, were retrospectively studied. Those with recorded tooth mobility assessed using Miller tooth mobility index were further analyzed. Results: Of the 736 records assessed, 75 patients, aged between 18 and 94 years with median age of 56 years and mean age of 53.89 ± 17.82 years, had tooth mobility, giving a prevalence of 10.2%. The greater proportion of the patients were elderly (32.0%), females (58.7%), ever married (82.7%), indigenous (61.3%), and completely dentate (53.3%). The leading primary presenting complaints were toothache (37.3%), teeth replacement (14.7%), and shaking teeth (13.3%). Nearly half (48.0%) of the patients had one or more underlying medical condition. About two-thirds (61.3%) cleaned their teeth once daily, and 58.7% had previous visits to the dentist. The total number of mobile teeth was 202. Incisors (59.4%) and first molars (7.4%) were found to be the dominant mobile teeth. The mean debris score, calculus score, and oral hygiene score were 1.40 ± 0.09, 1.49 ± 0.12, and 2.78 ± 0.18, respectively, using simplified oral hygiene index. Conclusion: Data from this study revealed that one out of every ten patients attending Nigerian periodontology clinic had tooth mobility of varying grades, and teeth of esthetic (incisors) and masticatory ( first molars) value were mainly affected. Prompt and effective care should be rendered to facilitate retention of the affected teeth.


This study investigated seven core subjects of ISO 26000 to explore the way in which new product development (NPD) links corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy with product development planning. This study thoroughly discussed the implementation of policies that achieve social responsibility within the context of NPD planning. Rapid changes in science and technology mean customer needs are changing faster than ever before, making it increasingly difficult to identify critical customer needs in a timely manner. NPD therefore is essential to enhance enterprise competitiveness. The construction of a CSR-based NPD model can help enterprises in NPD. Using the CSR based NPD model to plan materials selection, specification setting, manufacturing procedures and methods, distribution, servicing and recycling increases enterprise friendliness and happiness, and benefits their sustainable development. The findings of this study suggest that traditional enterprise activities focus on profit maximization and cost minimization. The profit-oriented strategy influences product design, purchase, production, manufacture and delivery. Poor working environment, overtime, low wages, neglect of health and safety, and various deficiencies in CSR frequently occur. If a CSR based perspective is initially adopted to implement public expectations regarding product design, it can be both beneficial and environmentally friendly.


Value alignment is a property of an intelligent agent indicating that it can only pursue goals that are beneficial to humans. Successful value alignment should ensure that an artificial general intelligence cannot intentionally or unintentionally perform behaviors that adversely affect humans. This is problematic in practice since it is difficult to exhaustively enumerated by human programmers. In order for successful value alignment, we argue that values should be learned. In this paper, we hypothesize that an artificial intelligence that can read and understand stories can learn the values tacitly held by the culture from which the stories originate.We describe preliminary work on using stories to generate a value-aligned reward signal for reinforcement learning agents that prevents psychotic-appearing behavior.


Based on historical data of abundance, we report evidence of changes in zooplankton abundance in the 0-200 m layer related to the moon cycle confirming that this phenomenon is produced in the marine environment, similarly to the one described for freshwater ecosystems. A clear decrease in the abundance of copepodites plus copepods was observed from the second to the fourth quarter of the moon when the seasonal variability was suppressed. During the full moon phase the large zooplankton and micronekton of the deep scattering layers (DSL) would not reach the upper mixed layer in order to avoid predation because of the relatively high level of illumination. Thus epipelagic zooplankton abundance increases as the effect of a lower predatory pressure. Conversely, during the new moon phase the diel migrants reach the surface waters and epiplankton abundance considerably decreases. Recent oceanic sediment trap data in subtropical waters indicate that the particle flux increases at about 30 days period. Thus, the effect of diel vertical migrants could promote not only the variability in their resources and the intensity of the active flux, but could also drive the variability in the gravitational flux.


Mac OS X Leopard introduces a fantastic new technology that makes writing applications with animated and cinematic user interfaces much easier. We'll explore this new technology by starting with the familiar concepts you already know from the pre-Leopard development kits. Then we'll see how they apply to the new frameworks and APIs. We'll build on your existing knowledge of Cocoa and bring you efficiently up to speed on what "Core Animation" is all about. With this book in hand, you can add "Core Animation" to your Cocoa applications, and make stunning user interfaces that your user's will be showing off to their friends.


Traffic loading for pavement deterioration should be modeled as a dynamic indicator based on trip distribution derived from spatial economics. The estimation of modal distribution of trips and land development has been the main focus of integrated land use and transport models. However, no connection with transportation asset management has been established. This paper proposes the use of spatial economic simulation to forecast freight-traffic distribution to improve pavement-deterioration modeling. A case study of trade flows between Canada's Atlantic Provinces and Quebec is used to show the pitfall of current management models in estimating rates of deterioration, underfunding maintenance, and rehabilitation strategies. It was found that a total cost of $25 million could maintain adequate levels of condition under the current performance modeling; however, such a budget is inadequate when performance is based on forecasted truck traffic. It was also found that aggregation of pavements in a few homogeneous groups resulted in the inability to prioritize investments considering the economic relevance of the road in the region. This study suggests the use of individual deterioration models for strategic roads.


The "Visigothic" slates are a group of texts that have been found in different archaeological sites of the central part of Iberian Peninsula. Although they are one of the rare remains of late antique private documentation, there is not any social analysis of them, due to the problems of their interpretation. In spite of this, some philological works has been carried out, making some aspects about the language and culture clear. This paper tries to achieve a first approach to a social explanation of the slates through three hypothesis: the tributary meaning of great part of the pieces, the connection of the remains with some intermediate places of the countryside and the view of the slates as a trace of the implementation of channels that linked the central authority with the local powers.


The main goal of this study is to provide empirical evidence for a theoretical mechanism underlying cross-informant discrepancies (CID), which occur between reports of different informants (e.g., children/adolescents and parents) of children's/adolescents' problem behavior. Studies comprehensively corroborate the existence of CID. However, an explanation of CID is rudimentary and inconsistent. Respective research often suffers from methodological problems and is often atheoretical. Addressing these critics, this study uses polynomial regression and is based on research on mind perception and anchoring-and-adjustment theory. It was assumed that higher CID are associated with parents' perceived similarity to their children, whereas lower CID are related to parents' perspective-taking efforts. Analyses were based on N = 168 parent–child dyads (children's mean age: 12.50 years). Reports on problem behavior displayed substantial mean differences and medium-sized correlations. Polynomial regressions on CID partly supported the influence of parents' perceived similarity and perspective taking efforts on CID. Results are discussed in the context of a possible theoretical fundament for CID.


Controlling the pose of a manipulator involvesfinding the correct configuration of the robot's elementsto move the end effector to a desired position and orientation.In order to find the geometric relationshipsbetween the elements of a robot manipulator, it is necessaryto define the kinematics of the robot. We presenta synthesis of the kinematical model of the pose forthis type of robot using the conformal geometric algebraframework. In addition, two controllers are developed,one for the position tracking problem and another for theorientation tracking problem, both using an error feedbackcontroller. The stability analysis is carried out forboth controllers, and their application to a 6-DOF serialmanipulator and the legs of a biped robot are presented.By proposing the error feedback and Lyapunov functionsin terms of geometric algebra, we are opening a newvenue of research in control of manipulators and robotlegs that involves the use of geometric primitives, suchas lines, circles, planes, spheres.


A rigorous study of polarization rotation in a novel design of high-tunable polarization rotator based on soft glass photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is introduced and analyzed. The suggested PCF has a central hole infiltrated with nematic liquid crystal. At a wavelength of 1.55 μm, nearly 100% polarization conversion ratio is obtained, with a device length of 558 μm. The simulation results are evaluated using the full-vectorial finite-difference method along with the full-vectorial finite-difference beam propagation method.


The introduction of cable television (CATV) in the 1940s and 1950s has significantly influenced communications technology. Originally supplying only one-way television programming, the CATV industry recognized the potential of two-way communications. Starting with the introduction of pay-per view services in the 1980s, two-way communications over CATV networks eventually expanded into supplying internet access services. The increased demand for CATV services, and thus the increased demand for CATV equipment, has led the CATV industry to develop interoperability standards. The primary standard now used by the CATV industry is the Data Over Cable Service Specification (DOCSIS). DOCSIS defines both the upstream (data towards the CATV provider) and downstream (data towards the CATV customer) transmission channels. This includes specifications for the modulators and demodulators used in these channels. The number of manufacturers of CATV modulators and demodulators has greatly increased over the last twenty years and continues to do so. As the number of competitive CATV equipment suppliers increases, these manufacturers must look to ways to remain competitive by reducing time-to-market and costs associated with equipment design, as well as allowing their designs to be flexible so that they may adapt to the improvements in DOCSIS. In the past, manufacturers have primarily used Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to implement digital hardware designs for CATV equipment. ASICs have a very high initial setup cost and do not allow for system modifications without a complete redesign. Recently, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology has been introduced that allows manufacturers to both modify their designed digital hardware structures without a complete physical hardware redesign, as well as providing a reduced initial setup cost. Although in the long term, ASICs provide a cheaper alternative to FPGAs when produced in quantity, FPGAs provide quicker time-to-market in new product development and allow changes to made after initial release. This ability to change designs after release and the quicker time-to-market has led manufacturers to adopt FPGAs in new products. A critical component in the upstream channel of a DOCSIS compliant system is the Quadrature Amplitude Modulated (QAM) receiver. The data received at the QAM receiver iii have undergone several impairments including additive noise, timing offset, and frequency and phase mismatches between the transmitted modulated signal and the signal received at the demodulator. It is the function of the front-end of the receiver to correct for these impairments. This thesis presents methods for, and an example of, the design and implementation of a DOCSIS compliant QAM receiver front-end that corrects for timing, phase and frequency impairments experienced in the upstream communication channel when additive noise is present. The circuits presented are designed and implemented to reduce hardware costs when using FPGA technology. In addition, the circuits designed do not use proprietary logic, which gives designers more flexibility when implementing their own demodulator front-end circuitry. The FPGA implementation presented in this thesis achieves an average MER of 54.3 dB in a no-noise channel and close to 31 dB MER in a 25 dBc AWGN channel. The overall design uses 65 dedicated 18-bit by 18-bit multipliers and 2,970 bytes of RAM to implement the digital front-end of the receiver.


http://ctt.canterbury.ac.nz Abstract: This paper focuses on the way in which the student loan system in the United States functions as a means of value-generation via the creation of indebted students. In order to exhibit the way in which the student loan system functions in this manner, the first section focuses on the relationship between labor and value, by discussing Marx's analysis of labor-power and the generation of surplus value and Althusser's notion of Ideological State Apparatuses. For both Marx and Althusser, value-generation relates directly to labor, but this changes as we shift from disciplinary societies to what Deleuze calls societies of control, which is the subject of the second part of the paper. In control societies, value is not just generated piecemeal, via labor, but permanently, via debt. Drawing on the work of Lazzarato and Serres, the third section folds the student loan system into this framework, showing how it functions immanently and parasitically on students to generate value outside of the sphere of work. The conclusion suggests that, despite its ubiquity, such indebtedness can also function as a locus for struggle.


This paper analyzes the impact of the 2012 crisis in Mali on internally displaced people, refugees and returnees. It uses information from a face-to-face household survey as well as follow-up interviews with its respondents via mobile phones. This combination was found to present a good and robust way to monitor the impact of conflict on hard-to-reach populations who at times live in areas inaccessible to enumerators. Results indicate that better educated and wealthier households as well as those exposed to less violence fled the crisis. Significant amounts of durable goods (20–60 percent) and animals (75–90 percent were lost and the welfare of the displaced declined considerably as a result of the crisis. Yet over time its impact has diminished. By February 2015, most eligible children were going to school and employment levels and number of meals consumed were at pre-crisis levels. The paper finds that different ethnic groups chose different places of refuge. Depending on location, the narrative of the crisis and the solutions that are envisaged differ diametrically.


Uncle Sam in Barbary: A Diplomatic History. By Richard B. Parker. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. Pp. xxviii, 285; 1 map; 14 illustrations. $59.95. It may come as a surprise to readers that North Africa, specifically the "Barbary Coast" of the Maghrib stretching from Tripolitania to Morocco, played a crucial formative role in the development of American diplomacy and the United States Navy. In a meticulously researched book, distinguished by the use of American, European, and Maghribi archives and sources, Ambassador Richard B. Parker presents a remarkable diplomatic history, which examines the period from 1785 to 1815. Although the fledgling American republic's principal diplomatic interests were in Europe, Parker recounts an array of international challenges posed by the Barbary states, which included hostage seizures, tribute negotiations, and wars. According to the author, "North Africa was a field of pioneering endeavor for American diplomacy" (p. 162). Furthermore, his last chapter argues that the Barbary experience has significant contemporary relevance. A brilliant constellation of historical stars appears in the book, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, James Madison, and James Monroe, who were deeply involved in Barbary relations. As Parker points out, Jefferson was concerned with North African affairs for twenty years. Renowned for his suspicion of a standing military, Jefferson was one of the earliest advocates for the construction of a navy to reinforce diplomacy with the Barbary states. After the Preface, which also serves as an introduction, Parker describes the Algiers Regency and its policies, which is very valuable since this veritable Ottoman state has received scant historiographical attention. Its notorious "pirates" were actually "privateers," authorized by the state to seize ships and cargo. Hostages were also prized as a source of labor. Tributes to prevent predations and ransoms were significant sources of income for the Barbary states. James Cathcart, one of the first Americans to be seized in 1785, eventually served as the Christian secretary of the dey of Algiers. Fellow hostages were less fortunate, however, enduring hard labor and often succumbing from epidemics. Initial efforts to redeem the hostages by Jefferson and Adams, while they served as diplomatic representatives in Europe, revealed their lack of understanding of Maghribi political, cultural, and economic realities. Furthermore, American representatives such as John Lamb and Joseph Donaldson, Jr., who directly negotiated for the hostages' release with the Regency, are assessed as "men of limited imagination" (p. 32). Diplomatic failures also signaled American political weakness, economic parsimony, and military vulnerability. Although Donaldson achieved a peace treaty with Algiers in 1795, it was Joel Barlow who evinced rare sensibilities in perceiving the political nature of the dey and his government and managed to secure the release of the hostages in 1796, with the assistance of Swedish diplomats and local Jewish merchants. The book principally concentrates on Washington-Algiers affairs, but relations with Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco are also concisely covered. In 1800, the arrival of American warships, to patrol the Mediterranean and to protect American commerce, did not deter Barbary crises and clashes. From 1801 to 1805, Tripoli and the United States were at war. The conflict featured a stout Tripolitanian defense against American blockade and bombardment, a daring raid led by Stephen Decatur that destroyed the captured U.S. frigate Philadelphia, and a courageous if somewhat quixotic campaign by William Eaton and his 400-man army, including U.S. Marines and sailors, resulting in the capture of the city of Dema (in Cyrenaica, far from "the shores of Tripoli" as extolled by the "Marines' Hymn"). Peace was achieved in 1805 and the crew of the Philadelphia was freed. …


This paper proposes a method for moving switching functions to continuous domain. The benefits of this approach are twofold. First, the elementary calculus works with the transformed functions. Second, this transformation approach facilitates various analyses relying on Boolean algebra and other existing Boolean-based calculi like Boolean difference. We present one of the potential applications and show how MCDC test pairs can be computed solely by means of elementary calculus.


This paper uses panel data to analyze factors that contributed to the rapid decline in poverty in India between 2005 and 2012. The analysis employs a nonparametric decomposition method that measures the relative contributions of different components of household livelihoods to observed changes in poverty. The results show that poverty decline is associated with a significant increase in labor earnings, explained in turn by a steep rise in wages for unskilled labor, and diversification from farm to nonfarm sources of income in rural areas. Transfers, in the form of remittances and social programs, have contributed but are not the primary drivers of poverty decline over this period. The pattern of changes is consistent with processes associated with structural transformation, which add up to a highly pro-poor pattern of income growth over the initial distribution of income and consumption. However, certain social groups (Adivasis and Dalits) are found to be more likely to stay in or fall into poverty and less likely to move out of poverty. And even as poverty has reduced dramatically, the share of vulnerable population has not.


Supersonic engine intakes operating supercritically feature shock wave / boundary layer interactions (SBLIs), which are conventionally controlled using boundary layer bleed. The momentum loss of bleed flow causes high drag, compromising intake performance. Micro-ramp sub-boundary layer vortex generators (SBVGs) have been proposed as an alternative form of flow control for oblique SBLIs in order to reduce the bleed requirement. Experiments have been conducted at Mach 2.5 to characterise the flow details on such devices and investigate their ability to control the interaction between an oblique shock wave and the naturally grown turbulent boundary layer on the tunnel floor. Micro-ramps of four sizes with heights ranging from 25% to 75% of the uncontrolled boundary layer thickness were tested. The flow over all sizes of microramp was found to be similar, featuring streamwise counter-rotating vortices which entrain high momentum fluid, locally reducing the boundary layer displacement thickness. When installed ahead of the shock interaction it was found that the positioning of the micro-ramps is of limited importance. Micro-ramps did not eliminate flow separation. However, the previously two-dimensional separation was broken up into periodic three-dimensional separation zones. The interaction length was reduced and the pressure gradient across the interaction was increased.


Received August 3, 2007 Abstract Background and Aim: The significance of serum gamma glutamyltransferase activity and its dynamics have not been well investigated in Asian patients with idiopathic neonatal hepatitis. This study aimed to explore the significance in Mainland China. Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed in 38 cases with a diagnosis of idiopathic neonatal hepatitis. Their prognosis was compared between low or high gamma glutamyltransferase groups, and the mechanics of biochemical parameters were analysed. Results: Poor prognosis was found in 5 out of 6 patients with low gamma glutamyltransferase, compared to 3 out of 32 patients with high gamma glutamyltransferase (P=0.001). Dynamic analysis found that serum gamma glutamyltransferase levels gradually rose to a peak and then normalised along with a remission of jaundice in patients with good prognosis. However, the serum gamma glutamyltransferase level was consistently low in spite of the fluctuations of bilirubin and aminotransferases level in 5 cases with poor prognosis. The gamma glutamyltransferase level was high at presentation and then decreased along with their clinical deterioration in the other 3 cases with poor prognosis. Conclusions: Gamma glutamyltransferase can be used as a prognostic parameter in Chinese infants with intrahepatic cholestasis. Serum gamma glutamyltransferase being consistently low or decreased along with jaundice persistence or deterioration predicts poor prognosis.


An automated image analysis system was used to monitor sediment surface feeding activity of 2 bivalves (Abra ovata and A. nitida) inhabiting contrasting environments. A larger variety of feeding behaviours was recorded in A. nitida, whereas A. ovata mostly fed at the sediment surface. There were also clear differences in the behaviour of the 2 species during surface deposit feeding (i.e. a wider extension of the inhalant siphon in A. ovata, and the exhalant siphon being located below the sediment-water interface in A. ovata and above this interface in A. nitida). In A. nitida, increase in feeding activity resulted mostly from an increase in feeding intensity, and not from an increase in the amount of time devoted to feeding. In A. ovata, the most active bivalves tended to increase their activity mostly by increasing the amount of time devoted to feeding. This suggests that feeding inten- sity was limited in A. ovata but not in A. nitida. Food dilution and food addition experiments were car- ried out to assess the functional response in the 2 species. The results of the food dilution experiments were statistically insignificant due to high inter-individual variability. Food addition significantly affected feeding activity in A. ovata and A. nitida, although in different ways. In A. ovata, feeding activity was highest at intermediate food concentrations, and inhibited at the highest ones. In A. nitida, increased feeding activity was induced at higher concentrations than in A. ovata, and feeding activity was greatest at the highest food concentration. Such discrepancies in feeding behaviour and functional response in closely related species characterise the difficulty in delineating functional groups in benthic deposit-feeders.


Gastrostomy feeding tubes are commonly placed in patients with dysphagia after stroke. The subsequent removal of the tube is a primary goal during rehabilitation. The purpose of our review was to identify predictors and factors associated with gastrostomy tube removal in patients with dysphagia after stroke. We conducted a literature review following the PRISMA statement and included the search databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and CINAHL. Articles were included in the final analysis per predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Our search retrieved a total of 853 results consisting of 416 articles (after eliminating duplicates). Six articles met our final eligibility criteria. The following factors were identified in at least 1 article as being significantly associated with gastrostomy tube removal: reduced age, decreased number of comorbidities, prolonged inpatient rehabilitation stay, absence of bilateral stroke, nonhemorrhagic stroke, reduced dysphagia severity, absence of aspiration, absence of premature bolus loss, and timely initiation of pharyngeal swallow. Aspiration was the only factor that was investigated by 2 studies—both using multiple regression and both showing stable results, with absence of aspiration increasing the chances for tube removal. In conclusion, little is known about factors associated with gastrostomy tube removal in patients with dysphagia after stroke. Most of the identified factors are associated with stroke or disease severity; however, the role of the individual factors remains unclear. The strongest predictor appears to be absence of aspiration on modified barium swallow studies emphasizing the importance of instrumental swallow studies in this patient population.


Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) is critically involved in the pathogenesis of several chronic inflammatory diseases. Monoclonal antibodies against TNF-alpha are currently used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. This report describes a simple and effective method for active immunization against self TNF-alpha. This vaccination approach leads to a T-cell-dependent polyclonal and sustainable anti-TNF-alpha autoantibody response that declines upon discontinuation of booster injections. The autoantibodies are elicited by injecting modified recombinant TNF-alpha molecules containing foreign immunodominant T-helper epitopes. In mice immunized with such molecules, the symptoms of experimental cachexia and type II collagen-induced arthritis are ameliorated. These results suggest that vaccination against TNF-alpha may be a useful approach for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic inflammatory diseases.


Coronitic metagabbros occur as small isolated bodies along the contact between the Mariánské Lázně and the Teplá Crystalline complexes in the northwestern part of the Teplá–Barrandian Unit in the Bohemian Massif. Metagabbros show variable metamorphic and textural characteristics with respect to their magmatic mineral assemblage and degree of metamorphism. The aim of this study has been to characterize the mineralogical, chemical, and microstructural changes related to metamorphism in selected samples. Magmatic mineral assemblages in the metagabbros represented by plagioclase, orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene, amphibole, biotite, ilmenite and occasionally involving olivine, spinel or quartz are generally well preserved. Metamorphism is mainly reflected by the formation of single or multiple coronas at the contact of plagioclase with the other primary minerals. The coronas typically consist of amphibole, garnet and orthopyroxene. The progressive breakdown of magmatic plagioclase is reflected by the formation of a mixture of An40 and An90 plagioclase associated with spinel, corundum and locally also kyanite. The calculated P–T conditions show an increase in metamorphic grade towards the structural footwall, i.e. from the east–southeast (~600 ± 50 °C; 10 ± 1.5 kbar) to the west–northwest (~700 ± 50 °C; 13.5 ± 1.5 kbar), which corresponds to the previously reported Variscan metamorphic field gradient in this area. Since there is no gap in P–T conditions between metagabbros included in MLC and TCC and showing similar age and geochemical signature, it is concluded that both complexes were brought together before the gabbro intrusion at ~500 Ma. In addition, the maximum pressure of ~14 kbar estimated for the metamorphism of the gabbro occurring in the eclogite-bearing Mariánské Lázně Complex suggests that the eclogite-facies metamorphism might have been pre-Variscan. The chemistry of the studied metagabbros corresponds to subalkaline basalts with traceelement signatures characteristic of E-MORB, which is consistent with an interpretation that the intrusion of these rocks was related to an intracontinental rifting of the Teplá–Barrandian Unit during Late Cambrian and was not connected to any subduction processes.


Abstract Odor emissions from biosolids limit opportunities for their beneficial reuse by land application. Odorous emissions are affected by the operation of stabilization processes via methods such as anaerobic digestion, aerobic digestion, alkaline treatment, thermal drying, or composting. Commonly used sampling and measurement methods for assessing odor emissions were identified and key odorants reported for biosolids produced using different stabilization methods. Generally, dominant odorants from biosolids were volatile sulfur compounds; however other odorants such as trimethylamine, ammonia, indole, p-cresol and pinene may also be sensorially important in different types of stabilized biosolids. Therefore, initial studies should target a range of odorants potentially emitted at different sites. The use of sensory analysis, which was limited in many studies, coupled with analytical methods can be effectively used to characterize nuisance emissions. The processing of the biosolids both before and after stabilization was shown in many studies to affect the resultant biosolids odorous emissions. These findings suggest that not only should the operational performance of biosolids processing before, during and after stabilization should be reported but that the biosolids management systems should consider the whole biosolids processing train, rather than just the operation of the chosen stabilization method.


ABSTRACT Background: Deficiencies in the provision of evidence-based obstetric care are common in low-income countries, including Mozambique. Constraints relate to lack of human and financial resources and weak health systems, however limited resources alone do not explain the variance. Understanding the healthcare context ahead of implementing new interventions can inform the choice of strategies to achieve a successful implementation. The Context Assessment for Community Health (COACH) tool was developed to assess modifiable aspects of the healthcare context that theoretically influence the implementation of evidence. Objectives: To investigate the comprehensibility and the internal reliability of COACH and its use to describe the healthcare context as perceived by health providers involved in maternal care in Mozambique. Methods: A response process evaluation was completed with six purposively selected health providers to uncover difficulties in understanding the tool. Internal reliability was tested using Cronbach's α. Subsequently, a cross-sectional survey using COACH, which contains 49 items assessing eight dimensions, was administered to 175 health providers in 38 health facilities within six districts in Mozambique. Results: The content of COACH was clear and most items were understood. All dimensions were near to or exceeded the commonly accepted standard for satisfactory internal reliability (0.70). Analysis of the survey data indicated that items on all dimensions were rated highly, revealing positive perception of context. Significant differences between districts were found for the Work culture, Leadership, and Informal payment dimensions. Responses to many items had low variance and were left-skewed. Conclusions: COACH was comprehensible and demonstrated good reliability, although biases may have influenced participants' responses. The study suggests that COACH has the potential to evaluate the healthcare context to identify shortcomings and enable the tailoring of strategies ahead of implementation. Supplementing the tool with qualitative approaches will provide an in-depth understanding of the healthcare context.


What makes a man like John, in every respect a cultured and charming man, successful in his career and liked by his friends and acquaintances, behave violently towards a woman he says he loves? Is he sick? Is he different from other men? Is it, as he says, Jane's fault? Does she like being beaten? Otherwise why would she go on doing what she knows upsets him? Adam Jukes hopes that by the end of his demanding but gripping book, the reader will be able to answer these questions. Adam Jukes works with men who are abusive and violent to women. In the last five years he has been involved in the London Men's Centre, which offers dedicated programmes to men who are violent. He began working with abusive men as a psychodynamic psychotherapist, but as his work continued he found that the work of feminists in the refuge movement and in the 'speaking bitterness' literature could not be ignored. He integrates these two perspectives in his work. The way in which he presents men in this book will generate distress for those men who experience their masculinity as a burden - for he argues that misogyny, the hatred of women, is an inescapable element in the development of masculinity. But he also shows how the model of misogyny which informs the book is applied to an intervention programme to stop male abusiveness. This is a shocking book. Its thought-provoking view of the issues will be of great interest to mental health professionals and all concerned readers.


This study explores how researchers at a major Midwestern university are managing their data, as well as the factors that have shaped their practices and those that motivate or inhibit changes to that practice. A combination of survey (n=363) and interview data (n=15) yielded both qualitative and quantitative results bearing on my central research question: In what types of data management activities do researchers at this institution engage? Corollary to that, I also explored the following questions: What do researchers feel could be improved about their data management practices? Which services might be of interest to them? How do they feel those services could most effectively be implemented? In this paper, I situate researchers' data management practices within a theory of personal information management. I present a view of data management and preservation needs from researchers' perspectives across a range of domains. Additionally, I discuss the implications that understanding research data management as personal information management has for introducing services to support and improve data management practice.


Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) is a promising technology for boosting areal densities (ADs) using sophisticated signal processing algorithms within a systems framework. The read/write channel architectures have to effectively tackle 2-D inter-symbol interference (ISI), 2-D synchronization errors, media and electronic noise sources, as well as thermal asperities resulting in burst erasures. The 1-D low-density parity check (LDPC) codes are well studied to correct large 1-D burst errors/erasures. However, such 1-D LDPC codes are not suitable for correcting 2-D burst errors/erasures due to the 2-D span of errors. In this paper, we propose construction of a native 2-D LDPC code to effectively correct 2-D burst erasures. We also propose a joint detection and decoding engine based on the generalized belief propagation algorithm to simultaneously handle 2-D ISI, as well as correct bit/burst errors for TDMR channels. This paper is novel in two aspects: 1) we propose the construction of native 2-D LDPC codes to correct large 2-D burst erasures and 2) we develop a 2-D joint signal detection-decoder engine that incorporates 2-D ISI constraints, and modulation code constrains along with LDPC decoding. The native 2-D LDPC code can correct >20% more burst erasures compared with the 1-D LDPC code over a 128  $\times $  256 2-D page of detected bits. Also, the proposed algorithm is observed to achieve a signal-to-noise ratio gain of >0.5 dB in bit error rate performance (translating to 10% increase in ADs around the 1.8 Tb/in2 regime with grain sizes of 9 nm) as compared with a decoupled detector-decoder system configuration over a small 2-D LDPC code of size 16  $\times $  16. The efficacy of our proposed algorithm and system architecture is evaluated by assessing AD gains via simulations for a TDMR configuration comprising of a 2-D generalized partial response over the Voronoi media model assuming perfect 2-D synchronization.


Pressure tunnels are in operation subjected to internal water pressure. When the hoop tensile stress acting at the lining intrados exceeds the tensile strength of concrete, longitudinal cracks occur in the concrete lining. As a consequence of crack openings, the internal water pressure will act at the lining extrados and cause high local water losses. If left untreated, these losses will induce the washing out of joint fillings and increase the risk of hydro-jacking of the surrounding rock mass. When pressure tunnels are situated close to valley slopes, excessive water losses can endanger the stability of the rock mass and provoke landslide. Whether or not the internal water pressure is fully effective at the lining extrados, it depends predominantly on the number of cracks and the width of crack openings. The width of cracks can be estimated based on the total circumferential deformation of the rock mass, which is governed not only by mechanical boundary pressures, but also by seepage pressures. In turn, seepage pressures generate water losses from the tunnel, which are depending not only on the permeability of the rock mass, the grouted zone, and the concrete lining, but also, if any, on the width of the crack openings. The estimation of pressures transmitted to the rock mass requires therefore solutions using iterative methods dealing with this coupling behaviour. This paper presents a method to estimate the distribution of seepage pressures and water losses around concretelined pressure tunnels pre-stressed by grouting, which considers the lining cracking process due to a high internal water pressure. The mechanical and hydraulic behaviour of cracked concrete-lined pressure tunnels is presented so as a first step for more elaborate numerical studies.


The present invention relates to a boarding bridge with a minute approaching device and a shock absorbing part and an operation method thereof. The boarding bridge comprises a rotunda; a tunnel which contractably extends from the rotunda and forms a passage; a cab which is rotatbly coupled to the tunnel and connects the tunnel and aircraft; a main moving device which moves the cab by contraction and extension of the tunnel from a standby location of the cab and an adjacent location of the aircraft; and a minute approaching device which is provided in an end part of the cab and minutely moves the end part of the cab from the adjacent location to a contact location of the aircraft while the contraction and extension of the tunnel stops. Accordingly, the present invention enables an operator to operate the boarding bridge more comfortably, prevents damage to the boarding bridge or a fuselage, absorbs more shock and reduces or prevents a space between the boarding bridge and the fuselage when the boarding bridge moves upwards or downwards.


In this paper, a transform domain processing (TDP) based channel estimation method for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) systems is proposed. Theoretically investigation shows that TDP can greatly reduce the number of required training symbols. An 8 x 4.65 Gb/s multi-user OFDM RoF system over 40 km fiber link and 60 GHz wireless link is experimentally demonstrated utilizing TDP scheme. Compared with conventional time domain averaging (TDA) scheme, the overhead can be reduced from several tens of training symbols to merely one symbol and the receiver sensitivity has been improved by 1.8 dB at BER of 3.8 x 10(-3). The calculated BER performance for 8 wireless users clearly validates the feasibility of this TDP-based channel estimation method.


Context: Studies have been conducted to measure the fracture resistance of restored teeth with the current restorative materials. However, most of those studies disregard the cavity size as an influencing variable. Aims: To evaluate the fracture resistance of prepared and restored maxillary premolars with medium and large preparations. Materials and Methods: Seventy superior and sound premolars were randomly divided: G1 (control) – sound tooth; G2, G3, and G4 received a Class II mesial-occlusal-distal (MOD) preparation with an occlusal box width 1/3 of the intercuspal distance, and were restored with Filtek Z350 XT, IPS Empress Direct, and Charisma Diamond, respectively; G5, G6, and G7 received a Class II MOD preparation with an occlusal box width 2/3 of the intercuspal distance, and were restored with Filtek Z350 XT, IPS Empress Direct, and Charisma Diamond, respectively. After storage in water, at 37°C, the specimens were subjected to a fracture test under compression in a universal testing machine where the loads were applied vertically and at a speed of 0.5 mm/min. Statistical Analysis Used: Data were analyzed with two-way ANOVA and Tukey's multiple comparison post hoc test (P < 0.05). Results: G1 presented a fracture resistance significantly higher (P = 0.005) than any other experimental groups. Among the experimental groups, only G5 showed a significantly low fracture resistance (P = 0.019) when compared to the other groups. For the other resins, the change in intercuspal distance from 1/3 to 2/3 the intercuspal distance did not significantly reduce the fracture resistance (P > 0.05). Conclusions: The cavity preparation weakens the remaining tooth structure; however, its resistance could be partially restored using direct adhesive restorations.


The media has played a significant role in disseminating feminist ideas and politics over the last two decades. Early studies in the field often suggested that all media coverage was anti-feminist and criticized popular cultural texts for degrading women by constructing conventional and subordinate subjectivities that reinforced patriarchal values. This view conceives popular culture as an enemy and stems from a belief that all media is corrupt and unable to construct anything but the most dominant stereotypical images. Since the last decade, as work in cultural studies and post-structuralist theory demonstrates, however, the whole notion of corruption masks the ways in which culture industries and political struggles work in the late twentieth century. All texts, knowledge, and political practices are constructed within competing social, political, and economic contexts of culture industries. As some feminist researchers acknowledged in the 1970s, it is not enough to dismiss popular culture as merely serving the complementary systems of capitalism and patriarchy, they argued that "popular culture can also be seen as site where meanings are contested and where dominant ideologies can be disturbed" (Gamman and Marshment 1). Following this argument, I would further argue that popular culture allows ways of disseminating feminist ideas and theories without placing them in total opposition to contemporary culture. To demonstrate the possible ways in which feminist discourses can engage with the "popular," I will proceed in two stages: first, an overview of the development of feminist critique within cultural studies, which challenged the early work done by the pioneers of cultural studies; second, an examination of some popular cultural texts, aiming to show that feminist discourses have been incorporated into popular and commercial discourses to the extent that they help discard the myth of female passivity. This interaction with the popular has opened up a space for women to represent a female point of view in a male-dominated sphere. I would argue that some popular cultural forms allow ways and provide an outlet for women's voices which might then serve as a basis from which to develop feminist politics among shifting definitions of feminism. Among a range of popular cultural forms, I have chosen to examine a particular one, the women's magazine, to illustrate my argument. Two Turkish women's magazines are the focus of the examination. Emergence of Feminist Critique of Popular Culture within Cultural Studies Feminism and popular culture have had an ambiguous relation, and as Morag Shiach puts it, the terms are not parallel: "one designates a political space, the other an object of study" (331). Yet Shiach points out that "popular culture" is a broad term which carries within it a series of debates about political legitimacy, class identity, and cultural value, which inform the theoretical framework and the methodological procedures of cultural studies. She finds these associations problematic for feminism and states that "'popular culture' as an institutional space, and as a political concept, embodies definitions of class identity, historical change and political struggle which are often blind to the questions of feminism" (331). This view was also dominant in the early works of cultural studies scholars. In order to understand the terms in which feminist critics have intervened in these studies, it is important to start with the history of cultural studies. In relation to popular culture, the pioneering work of cultural studies, such as Richard Hoggart (The Uses of Literacy), Raymond Williams (Culture and Society), or E. P. Thompson (The Making of the English Working Class) emphasizes distinctive ways of theorizing cultural hierarchies, which select cultural forms that exclude or marginalize women, and describe them as "representative of the typical working-class condition" (Shiach 335). Their work played a significant role in shaping the work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, whose analyses of popular culture as a site of resistance appeared to form the institutional and academic understandings of popular culture in the 1970s. …


Foreword The accumulation of the data for a geologic map of Brazil was begun by me in 1874, when I first went to that country, and has been kept up, as opportunities offered, down to the present time. The gathering and study of the material and the preparation of the map may therefore be said to represent the work of a considerable portion of a lifetime. The data brought together on the map and in the accompanying text are published by the Geological Society of America primarily as a contribution to the world's knowledge of the geology of America; but, so far as I am concerned, it is meant especially to be of service to the Brazilian people, among whom I have spent many years, to whom I am strongly attached, and in whose welfare I am deeply interested. It has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life that . . .


Nutrigenomics or diet-gene interactions have become the focus of much nutritional research
in recent years. However, little is known about Malaysian dietitians' involvement and education
needs regarding nutrigenomics. The aim of this survey was to assess the awareness and continuing
education needs for registered dietitians regarding nutrigenomics. A validated questionnaire
was developed to assess involvement, knowledge, chances, barriers and continuing education
needs on nutrigenomics among Malaysian dietitians. The questionnaire was distributed to all
(n=90) registered dietitians who attended the Malaysian Dietitians' Association Scientific Conference
in year 2007 which resulted in a 46% response rate (n=41). The majority of the respondents (91.5%)
graduated from local universities between the years 1988 to 2007. All respondents used information
on dietary pattern, lifestyle and body mass index for composing dietary advice. For the same
purpose, a high percentage of respondents (91.4%) used family history but only two respondents (5.7%) experienced relying on genetic tests. Although 85.7% of respondents are aware of
nutrigenomics, only 22.3% understood its definition. More than 80% of dietitians are interested in
learning and increase their knowledge on human genetics, nutrigenomics and ways to communicate
this knowledge to the public. Three highest barriers to the application of nutrigenomics are lack
of patient education materials (91.5%), lack of background knowledge among dietitians (85.7%)
and lack of continuing education for dietitians (80%). The most preferred learning activity for
continuing education was seminars. This survey revealed great interest among dietitians to increase
and update their knowledge on nutrigenomics. There is a need to include genetics and nutrigenomics
knowledge in the continuing education programmes for dietitians in Malaysia. This may help
dietitians to make informed decision about the possible use of nutrigenomics in their practice.


Data are the infrastructure of science and they serve as the groundwork for scientific pursuits. Data publication has emerged as a game-changing breakthrough in scholarly communication. Data form the outputs of research but also are a gateway to new hypotheses, enabling new scientific insights and driving innovation. And yet stakeholders across the scholarly ecosystem, including practitioners, institutions, and funders of scientific research are increasingly concerned about the lack of sharing and reuse of research data. Across disciplines and countries, researchers, funders, and publishers are pushing for a more effective research environment, minimizing the duplication of work and maximizing the interaction between researchers. Availability, discoverability, and reproducibility of research outputs are key factors to support data reuse and make possible this new environment of highly collaborative research. An interoperable e-infrastructure is imperative in order to develop new platforms and services for to data publication and reuse. DataCite has been working to establish and promote methods to locate, identify and share information about research data. Along with service development, DataCite supports and advocates for the standards behind persistent identifiers (in particular DOIs, Digital Object Identifiers) for data and other research outputs. Persistent identifiers allow different platforms to exchange information consistently and unambiguously and provide a reliable way to track citations and reuse. Because of this, data publication can become a reality from a technical standpoint, but the adoption of data publication and data citation as a practice by researchers is still in its early stages. Since 2009, DataCite has been developing a series of tools and services to foster the adoption of data publication and citation among the research community. Through the years, DataCite has worked in a close collaboration with interdisciplinary partners on these issues and we have gained insight into the development of data publication workflows. This paper describes the types of different actions and the lessons learned by DataCite.


A look at the revolution in game live streaming and esports broadcasting Every day thousands of people broadcast their gaming live to audiences over the internet using popular sites such as Twitch, which reaches more than one hundred million viewers a month. In these new platforms for interactive entertainment, big esports events featuring digital game competitors live stream globally, and audiences can interact with broadcasters-and each other-through chat in real time. What are the ramifications of this exploding online industry? Taking readers inside home studios and backstage at large esports events, Watch Me Play investigates the rise of game live streaming and how it is poised to alter how we understand media and audiences. Through extensive interviews and immersion in this gaming scene, T. L. Taylor delves into the inner workings of the live streaming platform Twitch. From branding to business practices, she shows the pleasures and work involved in this broadcasting activity, as well as the management and governance of game live streaming and its hosting communities. At a time when gaming is being reinvented through social media, the potential of an ever-growing audience is transforming user-generated content and alternative distribution methods. These changes will challenge the meaning of ownership and intellectual property and open the way to new forms of creativity. The first book to explore the online phenomenon Twitch and live streaming games, Watch Me Play offers a vibrant look at the melding of private play and public entertainment.


Abstract In this work, a multiple speech source separation method using inter-channel correlation and relaxed sparsity is proposed. A B-format microphone with four spatially located channels is adopted due to the size of the microphone array to preserve the spatial parameter integrity of the original signal. Specifically, we firstly measure the proportion of overlapped components among multiple sources and find that there exist many overlapped time-frequency (TF) components with increasing source number. Then, considering the relaxed sparsity of speech sources, we propose a dynamic threshold-based separation approach of sparse components where the threshold is determined by the inter-channel correlation among the recording signals. After conducting a statistical analysis of the number of active sources at each TF instant, a form of relaxed sparsity called the half-K assumption is proposed so that the active source number in a certain TF bin does not exceed half the total number of simultaneously occurring sources. By applying the half-K assumption, the non-sparse components are recovered by regarding the extracted sparse components as a guide, combined with vector decomposition and matrix factorization. Eventually, the final TF coefficients of each source are recovered by the synthesis of sparse and non-sparse components. The proposed method has been evaluated using up to six simultaneous speech sources under both anechoic and reverberant conditions. Both objective and subjective evaluations validated that the perceptual quality of the separated speech by the proposed approach outperforms existing blind source separation (BSS) approaches. Besides, it is robust to different speeches whilst confirming all the separated speeches with similar perceptual quality. Abstract: In this work, a multiple speech source separation method using inter-channel correlation and relaxed sparsity is proposed. A B-format microphone with four spatially located channels is adopted due to the size of the microphone array to preserve the spatial parameter integrity of the original signal. Specifically, we firstly measure the proportion of overlapped components among multiple sources and find that there exist many overlapped time-frequency (TF) components with increasing source number. Then, considering the relaxed sparsity of speech sources, we propose a dynamic threshold-based separation approach of sparse components where the threshold is determined by the inter-channel correlation among the recording signals. After conducting a statistical analysis of the number of active sources at each TF instant, a form of relaxed sparsity called the half-K assumption is proposed so that the active source number in a certain TF bin does not exceed half the total number of simultaneously occurring sources. By applying the half-K assumption, the non-sparse components are recovered by regarding the extracted sparse components as a guide, combined with vector decomposition and matrix factorization. Eventually, the final TF coefficients of each source are recovered by the synthesis of sparse and non-sparse components. The proposed method has been evaluated using up to six simultaneous speech sources under both anechoic and reverberant conditions. Both objective and subjective evaluations validated that the perceptual quality of the separated speech by the proposed approach outperforms existing blind source separation (BSS) approaches. Besides, it is robust to different speeches whilst confirming all the separated speeches with similar perceptual quality.


Obtaining high quality, realistic motions of articulated characters is both timeconsuming and expensive, necessitating the development of effective and easy-touse tools for motion editing and reuse. We propose a new simple technique for generating constrained variations of different lengths from an existing captured or otherwise animated motion. Our technique is applicable to textural motions, such as walking or dancing, where the motion sequence can be decomposed into shorter motion segments without an obvious temporal ordering among them. Inspired by previous work on texture synthesis and video textures, our method essentially produces a re-ordering of these shorter segments. Discontinuities are eliminated by carefully choosing the transition points and applying local adaptive smoothing in their vicinity, if necessary. The user is able to control the synthesis process by specifying a small number of simple constraints.


[Excerpt] Under federal law, corporations or most other legal entities may be criminally liable for the crimes of their employees and agents. This is true in the case of regulatory offenses, like crimes in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; it is true in the case of economic offenses, like crimes in violation of the securities laws; and it is true in the case of common law crimes, like keeping a house of prostitution in violation of the Mann Act. Ordinarily, the agents and employees who commit the crimes for which their principals and employers are liable also face prosecution and punishment. Individual criminal statutes, Justice Department policies, and the Sentencing Guidelines largely dictate the circumstances under which, and the extent to which, agents, employees, corporations, and similar unincorporated entities are prosecuted and punished. This is a brief overview of federal law in the area.


Interfaces for collaborative tasks, such as multiplayer games can enable more effective and enjoyable collaboration. However, in these systems, the emotional states of the users are often not communicated properly due to their remoteness from one another. In this paper, we investigate the effects of showing emotional states of one collaborator to the other during an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) gameplay experience. We created two collaborative immersive VR games that display the real-time heart-rate of one player to the other. The two different games elicited different emotions, one joyous and the other scary. We tested the effects of visualizing heart-rate feedback in comparison with conditions where such a feedback was absent. The games had significant main effects on the overall emotional experience.


This paper contributes to the timely debate on research into boards and their effectiveness by focusing on context, process and time, which are crucial to understanding board dynamics. It also explores key principles of board process research, and advocates the need to strengthen its theoretical and methodological foundations in order to challenge the analytically particular assumptions of agency theory. The paper concludes that there is still much more to be researched in this area and encourages work that explores variation in board process and director effectiveness in different organizational contexts, as well as seeking to go beyond the board to address their impact and effectiveness in the broader organizational and external context.


Revenue management is the art of selling a fixed and perishable
capacity of a product to those customers that generate the highest
revenue. In recent years, revenue management has gained a lot of
attention among both academics and practitioners and has grown into
one of the most successful applications of operations research. This
thesis provides an overview of revenue management techniques presented
throughout the literature. More importantly, new techniques
are constructed for hotel, airline and cargo revenue management problems
to account for new features such as a rolling horizon, convertible
seats and unique booking requests. Mathematical, stochastic and
dynamic programming techniques are used to construct solution
techniques which are evaluated in a simulated environment chosen in
correspondence with practitioners. The results provide useful insights
for practitioners and can be used to further develop and extend
current revenue management techniques.


This study was aimed at estimating the impacts of changing land use patterns on food security for the farm households in Bangladesh. It was based on primary data collected from 730 households of different farm categories with direct interview method, which covered 14 existing most important land use patterns. The study revealed that households of alternate shrimp (bagda) and rice farming consumed the highest amounts of food followed by year round shrimp (bagda) farming whereas the highest per capita calorie intake was observed in households of alternate rice and wheat production. But households of year round shrimp (bagda) farming generated the highest amount of income followed by households of alternate shrimp (bagda) and rice farming, year round banana production and year round floriculture, respectively. But there were no systematic and regular patterns of relationships among income, food, protein and calorie intakes in different land use patterns. Large households consumed the highest amount of food and protein followed by medium, small and marginal households, respectively. All the land use patterns were found to increase major food security indicators and reduced poverty. All the 14 land use patterns should be made sustainable to the farmers by properly addressing environmental factors and by easing access of farmers to inputs and outputs markets by the government. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjnut.v24i0.14036 Bangladesh J. Nutr. Vol. 24-25 Dec 2011-2012 pp.49-64


In some areas of the U.S. transmission constraints are a limiting factor in deploying new wind and concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. Texas is an example of one such location, where the best wind and solar resources are in the western part of the state, while major demand centers are in the east. The low capacity factor of wind is a compounding factor, increasing the relative cost of new transmission per unit of energy actually delivered. A possible method of increasing the utilization of new transmission is to co-locate both wind and concentrating solar power with thermal energy storage. In this work we examine the benefits and limits of using the dispatachability of thermal storage to increase the capacity factor of new transmission developed to access high quality solar and wind resources in remote locations.


Hybridization of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with other inorganic materials offers the opportunity to enhance their properties or open new windows for potential applications. Formation of core/shell structures, in which the core is the inorganic particle and the shell is the surface-deposited MOF, is one of the rational methodologies to create such hybrid materials. Here, we present the facile creation of metal oxide-core/MOF-shell structures by applying a solution-based step-by-step modification of the core surface using a framework compound. The modification procedure includes alternate immersion of LiCoO2 (LCO) – a catalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction – into oxalic acid and ferrous solutions, resulting in the formation of iron(II) oxalate (Fe(ox), ox = oxalate anion) – one of the simplest MOFs with short unit frameworks – nanolayers on the LCO surface (Fe(ox)NL@LCO). The amount of deposited Fe(ox) does not increase monotonically with the number of the modification cycles, but tends to saturate rapidly, implying that the Fe(ox) framework grows laterally on the LCO surface. An increase of the electrical resistivity of the LCO particles that influences adversely catalytic activity is suppressed when a high coverage of the LCO surface by the Fe(ox) framework is achieved at subsequent modification cycles.


Feminist theorists of color (Lorde, hooks, Collins) have provided a framework for addressing how rage can serve as a tool of empowerment. These authors focus explicitly on expressed rage. Instead, in this article, I ask, what happens to that silent rage—rage that remains unspoken? I define silent rage as a space . . . that inside space in which women of color define the self . . . a place in which we make ourselves subject, determining who we are spiritually, emotionally . . . a space in which rage can work to decolonize ourselves . . . a space in which we refuse to concede to White dominance. By addressing the use of how silent rage serves as a path to empowerment for women of color, I envision this work to be an intervention in much of the educational discourse that valorizes speech as the primary means of empowerment. It is my goal to reinscribe the potential of silence as a strategy of resistance, particularly for women of color in the academy. Through narrative, I complicate rage in a modest way, by conducting a self-excavation of sorts. I address how silent rage has served the following purposes for me: as a possible road to empowerment/transformation; it has helped me gain clarity as to making sense of racism; and has served as a reminder of the need to re(politicize) self, essentially being a catalyst for social change. However, I also warn that while silence may serve as a source of empowerment, there are also several dangers of remaining silent, which may occur when being seduced by whiteness, and hegemonic ideology overall.


This thesis presents the results of a research that examines technology appropriation
(TA) awareness and identification in digital services start-up companies. Technology
appropriation refers to the unexpected ways in which people adopt and adapt
technology to make it serve their personal needs and motives.
The research questions(Chapter 1) are:
(1) How to identify TA within the development of digital services in the context of start-ups?
(2) How aware are service providers of the phenomenon of TA?
(3)What are the enablers for the appropriation of services by users?

To address these questions, the thesis presents in chapter 2 a literature review that
illustrates the context of the research, and explains its key concepts: digital services,
user involvement in the development of digital services, technology appropriation, and
levels of user engagement. Specific research methodological choices as well as specially
designed research data collection and analysis tools are subsequently explained in
chapter 3. An exploratory study is then introduced in chapter 4 to demonstrate how
users can be involved in the development of digital services, evidencing the need for
further research in TA. This initial work is concluded in chapter 5 by the introduction
of a theoretical framework for TA (TF TA).

Chapter 6 outlines the design and planning of the main study consisting of five case
studies which provide empirical data for the core findings of this research. A first set of
findings deriving from a comparison of TA examples found in the case studies based on
the TA three levels proposed framework (TF TA) is presented in chapter 7. A second set
of findings presented in chapter 8 helps to respond to the questions: (1) how aware are
service providers of the phenomenon of TA, and (2) what are the enablers for the
appropriation of services by users? These findings establish the level of TA awareness of
each case study, outline the taxonomy of TA service types, and introduce emerging
themes resulting from a thematic analysis, which also serves to propose enablers for TA
within digital start-ups.

Chapter 9 and 10 identifies and presents a third set of findings and contributions to
knowledge. Main contributions are: a new tested and revised TA Level Framework
created by examining the empirical findings against the TA Theoretical Framework (TA
TF). And a new TA Identification Method within the development of digital services in
the context of start-ups, underpinned by the tools previously developed in the research.

Minor contributions explained in chapter 10 are: A taxonomy of TA services (pro-active
/ re-active / inactive), an account of the Key Aspects of TA Awareness, a Typology of TA
Outcomes (Soft TA, Hard TA, and Hard & Soft), and a revised classification of TA Impact
and TA levels. It also comprises an explanation of the relationship of TA Levels & TA
Impact, a revised model of the user involvement approach, a new categorisation of TA
User Actions (Expected/ Engage/ TA savvy), and an identification of TA Enablers (User
Lead & Service Control).

This research has found that the Key Aspects of TA Awareness are TA Concept,
Systematic Programme of User Involvement, Mode of User Involvement, Identifying TA
Actions, and the TA Enablers (User Lead & Service Control). The research has also found
that the users actions and outcomes related to the adoption and adaption the technology,
can be classified in High (when the users lead parts of the service), Medium (when the
users customised and personalised the service) and Low levels (when the users used the
service as intended, but give feedback to the service providers about its used).

Additionally, this work has determined that the services and service providers TA Level
Awareness is determined by how much they understand and know about TA. This
awareness can be classified as proactive (when the service provider understands,
identifies, and knowingly foster TA within the service), reactive (when the service
provider understands TA in other services but cannot identify TA and reacts to users
feedback and TA) and inactive (when the service provider does not recognised and
cannot identify TA within the service). This investigation also has established that the
aspects of the TA Level Framework can be integrated and employed as a method for TA
identification within the services.

This study has recognised that TA impact, the extent to which services are employed in
the process of appropriation, can be classified as high, medium and low depending on
how the service providers change and further develop their service because of their
understanding and identification of TA. The enquiry also found that the level of TA
impact is different from the TA Level, that the knowledge and awareness of TA impact
are underpinned by the user actions and outcomes, as well as by their change and
development.

Another finding of this research is that the users TA outcomes (this is the tangible
consequence of the user adoption and adaptation of technology) can be classified as Soft
TA, Hard TA and Soft & Hard TA. Soft TA corresponds to the changes made by users
related to the social practices evolution of the service, Hard TA refers to the changes
made by the users in the API of the service. Soft & Hard TA relates to the combination of
user changes in social aspects and the manipulation of the service s API. The study found
that the service providers main approaches to user involvement are: listening to and
collaborating, testing and experimenting and active observation. Last, this investigation
determined that users actions concerning TA can be expected (users do nothing else
other than the expected use of the service), engaged (where users are involved in the
development of the service for personal motives) and TA savvy (where users are involved
in in the development of the service for personal motives, but they have software and
programming skills).

The conclusions section summarises the research and explains its limitations. It also
presents a personal reflection and indicates avenues for future research.

Liliana Rodriguez
Doctoral Candidate
Loughborough University 2017


The relationship between French and British women's domestic circumstances, their employment patterns and their occupational achievement is the subject of this thesis. Using secondary analysis of large nationally representative survey data, the Labour Force Survey 1984 and the Enquete Emploi 1985, case studies of two contrasted occupations, office working and teaching, are developed. The work is based on the premise that an examination of women's employment needs to take into account the different historical and structural aspects of particular occupations, as well as the socio-cultural context which gives rise to particular policies. This combination of social, cultural, structural and policy elements is referred to as the 'occupational situation'. The analyses show that the effects of domestic circumstances vary in each occupation. Yet, in a country such as France where day care is widely available, and in occupations whose structure is likely to minimise the effect of domestic responsibilities, the effect of marriage and children on employment patterns and occupational achievement persists. An added finding relates to the effect of part-time working on occupational achievement: in French office working, part- time working does not significantly decrease chances of occupational achievement. This indicates the importance of French employment protection legislation, particularly that which allows for continuity of employment during the period of family formation and which protects part-time working. Yet, although such policies can affect employment patterns, they may not have a marked effect on occupational achievement. Policy and structural elements of particular occupations can lessen the effect of domestic circumstances on employment patterns and occupational achievement. However, the unequal relations of power between women and men in the home and in the workplace act as a constant variable in each of these case studies, and inequalities persist between women and men in employment.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate time-resolved dosimetry for verifying arc intensity modulated radiation therapy (arcIMRT) delivery, utilizing the continuous image acquisition of an electronic portal imaging device (EPID).

METHODS
An arcIMRT field was made of sliding, multi-leaf collimator (MLC) motion of X1 leaves traveling from -5 cm to +5 cm and back, while Y opening was kept at 10 cm. For this field, this travel was repeated three times during the gantry rotation of 180°. The images were continuously acquired while the EPID was irradiated with 240 MU at a constant dose rate of 300 MU/min. By summing 10 frames, and thus reducing the temporal resolution to 1 second, a longitudinal non-uniformity in the images was reduced to less than 3%. Dose images in EPID were also calculated by the XVMC code for MLC positions at 1 mm interval using the EPID model developed in our previous study. The calculated images at 1 sec resolution were then correlated to and compared with the images, validating the time-resolved dosimetry.

RESULTS
Over the period of 48 seconds, 481 EPID images were acquired. The MLCs traveled at 1.25 cm/sec. Thus, 10 images were assigned to 1.25 cm of MLC travel for the correlation and for dose evaluation. For all gantry angles, the agreement of the gamma tests was above 90%, given 3 mm distance to agreement and 3% dose difference, when MLCs moved forwardly to the X2 side. However, when they travel back, the pass rates were below 90% due to MLC lagging which was detected in time-resolved EPID dose imaging.

CONCLUSION
Time-resolved, four-dimensional dose validation of arcIMRT was demonstrated, showing the temporal information of dynamic radiation delivery. This can be used for the validation of 4D treatment delivery techniques.


This paper analyzes the potential advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of the common European currency for the German labor market. First, experiences of the German currency union of 1990 cannot be transferred to the European case. Second, the loss of the instrument of nominal exchange rates per se should not be exaggerated, since, empirically, volatility among the European currencies is relatively low already and is mostly due to speculative capital flows which destroyed jobs in the past. Decreased transaction costs might have a positive effect on employment. On the other hand, the Euro will not create additional pressure on national market structres to adapt to increased competition. This is done by the persistent relevance of real exchange rates and the European Single Market. While higher mobility of labor might not be a desirable substitute for the buffer function of national monetary policy, there will be an increased need for wage flexibility in order to avoid negative impacts of asymmetric shocks. Increased intra-European transfers are no alternative due to their negative incentives for economic reform. Excessive wages, however, were not alimentated by the German Bundesbank either, and wage setting cannot be solely held responsible for high unemployment in situations of recession and mismatch in the labor market. Assessing these aspects of EMU, one should not expect massive positive employment effects of the Euro.


Contracts require consent, yet no one reads form contracts. So what do we consent to when we consent to form contracts? Scholarly answers to this question range from "we consent to everything but the radically unexpected�? to "we consent to nothing but the specifically negotiated.�? This essay offers a new answer: when we consent to form contracts we consent to pay market price. Part I of this essay discusses Randy Barnett's argument that consent to form contracts is consent to be legally bound, which raises the question of whether there are any limits on what can be consented to via form contract. Part II discusses Carnival Cruise Lines v. Shute as illustrative of Barnett's theory and argues that Carnival's approach should be rejected. Part III of this essay argues that consent to form contracts should be construed as consent to pay market price.


This case study focuses on Ontario higher education policy and the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs). A sequence of policy shifts occurred during the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the new millennium. By 2002, the Government of Ontario had reviewed its position with regard to baccalaureate degree credentials being the exclusive domain of publicly supported universities. Governance arrangements for the CAATs had also changed. The new policy framework was set with two pieces of legislation, the Postsecondary Education Choice and Excellence Act, 2000, and the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Act, 2002. The purpose of this case study is to explain why these policy changes occurred.To facilitate inquiry, John W. Kingdon's Multiple Streams Model was used as a platform and lens to guide data collection and organize the findings. For Kingdon, policy is the outcome of a complex pre-decision process that requires the 'coupling' of the problem, policy, and political streams at the time of an open policy window. A qualitative approach was adopted, and primary and secondary documents covering the period 1990 to 2002 were collected. In addition, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with key policy actors and policy entrepreneurs. The study found evidence to support the Multiple Streams Model's contention of streams of processes. However, with respect to this study, two types of policy problems were found flowing in the problem stream: macro-structural policy problems shaped conditions and the scope of options available with respect to policy goals and policy solutions; and micro-specific policy problems were localized, actor identified, constructed, and linked to specific interests. The study also found that historical institutional structures, and intermediate institutions, had a significant impact on policy development. The policy changes occurred as the result of two open policy windows, and in both instances, policy entrepreneurs were able to couple the policy streams to effect change. In view of the findings, a Structured Dynamics Model of Policy Development is offered as an explanation of the policy changes and for consideration in future inquiry.


This paper utilizes an open-economy New Keynesian overlapping generations model to assess the extent to which fiscal policy, along side an inflation-forecast-based monetary policy, could enhance macroeconomic stability in Colombia. The model simulations indicate that, in addition to stabilizing output and inflation, a stronger response of the fiscal balance to excess tax revenue would reduce the burden on the central bank of adjusting interest rates, lessen the associated degree of exchange rate volatility, and contribute to a more stable external current account balance. The analysis also assesses how the success of fiscal policy in enhancing macroeconomic stability depends on the type of shock, the response of monetary policy, and the length of fiscal policy implementation lags.


Pulse propagation and shaping are investigated in photorefractive self-pumped phase conjugators in both transmission- and reflection-grating regimes. The dispersion properties of self-pumped phase conjugators are analyzed by taking into account both the grating dispersion and the angular dispersion. The complex transfer functions are obtained by treating the crystal as a linear dispersive medium. We show that the pulse width as a result of the self-pumped phase conjugation is much wider in the reflection regime than in the transmission regime. The experimental results are consistent with the results calculated for the transmission-grating regime, indicating that this type grating is the dominant mechanism in the case of a femtosecond self-pumped phase conjugator.


This paper evaluates the health impacts of a signature initiative of the War on Poverty: the introduction of the modern Food Stamp Program (FSP). Using variation in the month FSP began operating in each U.S. county, we find that pregnancies exposed to FSP three months prior to birth yielded deliveries with increased birth weight, with the largest gains at the lowest birth weights. We also find small but statistically insignificant improvements in neonatal mortality. We conclude that the sizable increase in income from FSP improved birth outcomes for both whites and African Americans, with larger impacts for African American mothers.


This paper investigates the links between the market capability of top corporate R&D investors (EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboards), as captured by trademark data and their economic performance in terms of net sales growth. It provides empirical evidence to better understand the extent to which companies, operating in different industrial sectors, combine technological capabilities with commercialization efforts to generate and appropriate the economic returns of their R&D investments. This paper shows how different dimensions of firms' market capabilities can be captured through trademark indicators. The results suggest that complementing R&D efforts and patenting activities with strong and specific market capabilities can indeed yield significant growth premiums. Moreover, offering services seems to pay off depending on the intensity of R&D investments. Yet, a quantile regression approach and a series of robustness checks indicate that such effects differ across the quantiles of the conditional sales growth distribution.


As Manuel de Sola-Morales noted, urbanity relies on the variety and quality of relations between things, materials and human beings. Considered as such, how are we to achieve an underground urbanity? This paper seeks to address this question through a focussed reading of a number of European urban projects from the 20th century; all of which put special care into ensuring the quality of their subterranean passageways. We begin with the carrefour a giration, which was designed by Eugene Henard in 1906, in order to identify four fundamental attributes of this kind of urbanity: legibility, spatiality, accessibility and activity. We then continue with a qualitative analysis of the 1933 Bla Bodarna passageway designed by Tage William-Olsson and Holger Blom in Slussen (Stockholm). Looking ahead some decades later, the sequence of passages under the Vienna Ring, built during the mayoralty of Franz J. Jonas, provides a good example of how fundamental the connectivity to the underground public transport system was to the success of these spaces. Finally, the article closes with a review of those underground places found in Santiago Calatrava's Stadelhofen Station and the Stationsplein by Manuel de Sola-Morales: from the carrefour a etages multiples to the 'inner street'.


Micro-enterprise development (MED) has been recognised as an important strategy for employment generation and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Holistic approach (providing integrated services) is identified as an important approach to help poor in establishing their own enterprise. The present study is about critically analysing and assessing the workings of this approach. The major objectives of the study are: 1) to critically understand the approach, design and process of implementation of holistic approach as a MED interventions; 2) to analyse the performance of MED interventions in terms of their outreach, financial viability and enterprise development; 3) to identify the factors influencing the performance of MED interventions. Using primarily the case study method of research, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected including carrying out a limited survey of micro-entrepreneurs with these interventions. The study has adopted a descriptive analysis method. Intra and inter case analysis has been carried out. The study concludes that this approach has been useful in helping poor people in establishing their microenterprise but failed to help them in expansion of the activity due to lack of economies. Subsidy-based model was also a major constraint in expansion of enterprise.


This paper reports the successful computational determination of structural detail in a simple transparent object through holographic measurement of scattered monochromatic light. The complex disturbance of the scattered light is measured in amplitude and phase, along a line transverse to the illumination in the Fresnel zone of the object. The scattering potential of the object is then calculated along a parallel line using the field data and a new inverse scattering theory. The results agree well with the known parameters of the two test objects, a high-quality and a low-quality right parallelepiped aligned with two faces normal to the illumination. This experiment is believed to be the first which includes the quantitative reconstruction of structure in a physical object from measurement of scattered light. The technique is somewhat similar to that employed in connection with reconstruction of crystal structures from x-ray diffraction experiments.


This article suggests that the Supreme Court's decision in Kyllo v. United States may not be as protective of the home as it first appears. Kyllo held that use of a thermal imager to detect heat sources inside the home is a fourth amendment search, requiring a warrant and probable cause. But it also held that use of technology that is in "general public use" or that only discovers what a naked eye observer could see from a public vantage point is not a search, even when the location viewed is the interior of the home. This article shows that both the general public use and "naked eye" exceptions are inscrutable, conceptually incoherent, and normatively objectionable. In making the normative argument in favor of eliminating both exceptions, it looks at historical material, current Peeping Tom legislation and empirical findings. It then argues that technological surveillance of the home should be regulated either through a proportionality approach, which varies the level of cause the government must have to search with the search's intrusiveness, or through a legislative approach, using Title III's regulation of communications surveillance as the model.


Little is known about how individual abilities and food security determinants at the scale of everyday life connect to formal and informal value chains, and broader urban structural systems in which daily processes are embedded. Structural inequalities in urban systems make it difficult to translate economic development into improved food security at different city, household or individual scales. Exploring current a-scalar and anti-urban food security policies and practice in Southern Africa, the paper argues that everyday food security strategies which enable food access and sharing in food communities are enmeshed in local food system structures. Everyday food strategies are a critical source of livelihoods and are also deeply relational processes, tied to power, identity and agency. The paper also looks at how contextualised food security outcomes are affected by place, space and negotiations of everyday life. The aim is to challenge narrow value chain theories that do not recognise the 'other' currently invisible networks and interactions in and between local food value chains, such as what and who constitutes value, and who holds the power to assign value in local food networks. The paper draws on a wide literature review and in-depth qualitative work conducted in Lusaka, Zambia. The paper concludes arguing that deeper nuances affect everyday food security outcomes, and this paper purposefully furthers the current (limited) conversation and empirical understanding of food security within value chains analysis.


Introduction. The need for welding hard alloys with steel occurs in the tool industry and in other engineering industries while manufacturing carbide blanks that cannot be produced by conventional methods of powder metallurgy because of their size or configuration. Problem Statement. The ripper teeth manufacturing from the hard alloys of the tungsten-cobalt group VK8 and steel 40X is an important and urgent task for improving of the bar chain operational reliability. In world practice, the soldering technology is used in an inductor or a gas flame with silver-based solders for manufacturing the teeth. However, this process is characterized by a low productivity and a high cost. Purpose. Development of highly effective and relatively cheap technology to produce the bar chain ripper teeth and equipment for its implementation. Materials and Methods. The research has been carried out on industrial samples of VK-8 hard alloy and 40X steel. The welded joint microstructure has been studied by optical and electron microscopy. Results. The resistance welding technology of carbide bar chain ripper teeth from material VK-8 and steel 40X with the use of an intermediate composite layer has been developed. Experimental equipment based on resistant welding machine and computer control system has been created. Metallographic studies of weld joints have shown that the joints have no defects. The tests of the welded bar chain ripper teeth have proved that they provide the required service life. Conclusions. The developed technology and equipment enable to reduce the cost and to increase the productivity of the welding process in comparison with the existing technologies. It has enabled to replace the imported bar chain ripper teeth with domestic products.