We propose an EM-based framework for learning Plackett-Luce model and its mixtures from partial orders. The core of our framework is the efficient sampling of linear extensions of partial orders under Plackett-Luce model. We propose two Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) samplers: Gibbs sampler and the generalized repeated insertion method tuned by MCMC (GRIM-MCMC), and prove the efficiency of GRIM-MCMC for a large class of preferences.Experiments on synthetic data show that the algorithm with Gibbs sampler outperforms that with GRIM-MCMC. Experiments on real-world data show that the likelihood of test dataset increases when (i) partial orders provide more information; or (ii) the number of components in mixtures of PlackettLuce model increases.


Today, new ways of constructing and delivering complex wireless and mobile services require more elaborate and distributed prototyping, testing, and validation facilities. Testbeds are becoming an important tool for integrating technology components into the complex environment of the wireless world and end-users in their daily life. However technology in itself is no longer valid-benefits and usefulness for people in their daily life must be proven before the technology or service can be said to be a success. Living Labs is a user-centred real-life approach to wireless and mobility service and technology design and development (as well as other service areas). The user-centred approach places special emphasis on the need to develop mobile services that are usable, i.e. effective, efficient and satisfying to use, and has full end user integration in the creation and validation processes, which is necessary for gauging market acceptance of the developed prototypes and solutions


The SciFinance software synthesis system automates the programming task for financial risk management activities ranging from algorithms research to production pricing to risk control. Introduced commercially in late 1998, the system is currently licensed to a number of major investment banks. SciFinance's high-level, extensible specification language, ASPEN, enables quantitative analysts to generate code from concise model descriptions that are written in applicationspecific and mathematical terminology. From these specifications, typically one page or less, the system will produce a C program thousands of lines long. The specification language's abstractions help analysts focus on their primary tasks—model description, validation, and analysis—rather than on programming details. Compared with manual programming, automating the programming process produces codes that are more sophisticated, accurate, and consistent. Analysts can develop modeling codes within a day that previously took weeks or were not even attempted. SciFinance is an extension to a system that generates scientific computing codes in a variety of target languages including Fortran and C. The implementation integrates an object-oriented knowledge base, refinement and optimization rules, computer algebra, and a planning system. The same knowledge base is used by the specification checking, synthesis, and information portal subsystems.


Abstract The South Caspian Basin is believed to contain more than 20 km of Mesozoic and Tertiary sediments deposited on oceanic or thinned continental crust. Mesozoic, Palaeogene and Oligo-Miocene sediments have not been penetrated within the South Caspian Basin itself but are exposed onshore in the basin margins. The Pliocene–Recent sequence has been mapped on a regionally extensive grid of two-dimensional (2D) seismic data and penetrated by recently drilled exploration wells, and is over 7 km thick. Most of this sequence (6 km) is formed of fluvial–lacustrine deltaic sediments of the Pliocene Productive Series that are deposited unconformably above a marine Miocene shale sequence and form the principal hydrocarbon reservoirs in the basin. The Productive Series is overlain by about 1 km of Late Pliocene–Recent marine sediments The thickness of the Pliocene sedimentary sequence implies that relatively rapid, late Tertiary subsidence occurred in the South Caspian Basin; however, there is no geological evidence of a tectonic event capable of generating a major thermal subsidence event at this time. Modelling presented in this paper suggests that it is possible to account for the observed pattern of subsidence and sedimentation in the South Caspian Basin by a process of sediment loading and compaction on a thermally subsiding, late Mesozoic crust without the need for additional Tertiary subsidence mechanisms. Crucially, this model interprets the Pliocene Productive Series to have been deposited in a topographic depression, isolated from the global oceanic system, in which base level was controlled by local factors rather than by global sea level.


Many analysts argue that trade sanctions are ineffective because they generate incentives for evasion. Others object to them as hurting the population of the target country as much as its leaders. We argue that loan sanctions unlike trade sanctions may be self-enforcing, and that they help the population by protecting it from being saddled with "odious debt" run up by dictators to finance looting or repression. In particular, governments could impose sanctions by instituting legal changes that prevent seizure of a country's assets for non-repayment of debt, if the debt was incurred after the sanction was imposed. This would reduce creditors' incentive to extend loans to sanctioned regimes. However, decisions on whether assets can be seized to enforce debt repayment would be subject to bias if they were made ex post and the deciding body asymmetrically valued the welfare of debtor countries and their creditors. Restricting such decisions to cover only future lending would help avoid this time-consistency problem.


EEG single-trial analysis requires methods that are robust with respect to noise, artifacts and nonstationarity among other problems. This work contributes by developing a minimax approach to robustify the common spatial patterns (CSP) algorithm. By optimizing the worst-case objective function within a prefixed set of the covariance matrices , we can transform the respective complex mathematical program into a simple generalized eigenvalue problem and thus obtain robust spatial filters very efficiently. We test our minimax CSP method with real world brain-computer interface (BCI) data sets in which we expect substantial fluctuations caused by day-to-day or paradigm-to-paradigm variability or different forms of stimuli. The results clearly show that the proposed method significantly improves the classical CSP approach in multiple BCI scenarios.


Community-based organisations are increasingly considered a sustainable way to scale up the benefits of agricultural research and development from a few farmers in isolated pilot project areas to spread more widely across geographical and socio-economic gradients, and to do so quickly. This paper describes and highlights lessons learned from several research and development organisations in western Kenya using different community-based approaches to scale up agroforestry and other biological options to improve soil fertility among resourcepoor smallholders. The main benefits of such approaches are that the link between farmers, government extension, and other service providers is strengthened; information flow and awareness of the options available is rapid among farmers; and farmers' participation and innovation is enhanced. For effective service delivery, however, some higher level of association is necessary that goes beyond individual farmers or groups such as youth-, women-, or church-based organisations. Nevertheless, experience from a pilot project involving the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry and some key national research and development institutions shows that village, sublocation or location committees are often inactive without strong follow-up, which is best provided by such local institutions as government extension staff close to farmers or NGOs. Most of these institutions, however, have limited resources and information. To mitigate these problems and to better share experiences among individual organisations and projects in the region, a strategic consortium of the key institutions was formed. There are high hopes concerning the consortium, although it is too early to determine its effectiveness.


AIM
This paper is a report of a study to illuminate and interpret the meaning of residents' experiences of encounters with nurses in nursing homes. BACKGROUND; A large number of older people suffer from illness and become dependent on other people in their daily living. These people are often in need of care in nursing homes. It is assumed that encounters between nurses and residents are of importance in how residents experience care in nursing homes.

METHOD
Twelve residents from three nursing homes in Sweden were interviewed in 2004-2005 about their experiences in encounters with nurses. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim. A hermeneutic method was used to describe and interpret the meaning of residents' experiences.

FINDINGS
Three themes emerged: 'being somebody', 'being nobody' and 'being in a community'. The encounters had both positive and negative influences on residents, expressed as being somebody and belonging somewhere or being nobody and not being seen as a person or simply being left out of things. Encounters between residents and nurses have a mutual dependency where residents certainly have some influence on the relationship. The nurses have both an influence on the relationship and a professional responsibility for the outcome of encounters with residents.

CONCLUSION
The insights gained from the study can guide nurses in their encounters with residents in nursing homes so that they feel respected as unique human beings and part of a community.


Abstract. Recent ab initio calculations showed that amines can enhance atmospheric sulfuric acid-water nucleation more effectively than ammonia, and this prediction has been substantiated in laboratory measurements. Laboratory studies have also shown that amines can effectively displace ammonia in several types of ammonium clusters. However, the roles of amines in cluster formation and growth at a microscopic molecular scale (from molecular sizes up to 2 nm) have not yet been well understood. Processes that must be understood include the incorporation of amines into sulfuric acid clusters and the formation of organic salts in freshly nucleated particles, which contributes significantly to particle growth rates. We report the first laboratory and ambient measurements of neutral sulfuric acid-amine clusters using the Cluster CIMS, a recently-developed mass spectrometer designed for measuring neutral clusters formed in the atmosphere during nucleation. An experimental technique, which we refer to as Semi-Ambient Signal Amplification (SASA), was employed. Sulfuric acid was added to ambient air, and the concentrations and composition of clusters in this mixture were analyzed by the Cluster CIMS. This experimental approach led to significantly higher cluster concentrations than are normally found in ambient air, thereby increasing signal-to-noise levels and allowing us to study reactions between gas phase species in ambient air and sulfuric acid containing clusters. Mass peaks corresponding to clusters containing four H 2 SO 4 molecules and one amine molecule were clearly observed, with the most abundant sulfuric acid-amine clusters being those containing a C2- or C4-amine (i.e. amines with masses of 45 and 73 amu). Evidence for C3- and C5-amines (i.e. amines with masses of 59 and 87 amu) was also found, but their correlation with sulfuric acid tetramer was not as strong as was observed for the C2- and C4-amines. The formation mechanisms for those sulfuric acid-amine clusters were investigated by varying the residence time in the inlet. It was concluded that the amines react directly with neutral clusters and that ion-induced clustering of sulfuric acid cluster ions with amines was not a dominant process. Results from ambient measurements using the Cluster CIMS without addition of sulfuric acid have shown that the sulfuric acid-amine clusters were reasonably well correlated with sulfuric acid tetramer and consistent with the SASA experiments at the same Boulder sampling site. Also, clusters that contain C2- or C4-amines were more abundant and better correlated with sulfuric acid tetramer than other types of amine containing clusters. However, ambient measurements of sulfuric acid-amine clusters remain difficult and highly uncertain because their concentrations are only slightly above background levels, even during nucleation events.


The intention of this study was to establish the work related factors that contribute to stress and burn out among primary school teachers in Kasarani. To achieve this, the study sought to investigate the role played by overload in terms of lessons taught per week and class size. The study also explored whether school type (public or private) had any relationship with work stress. In addition the study sought to establish were years of teaching experience, gender and their relationship with work stress. Data were collected from 120 teachers through a paper based questionnaire. Majority of teacher reported work overload (50.83%) against 43.33% who reported mild overload while only 5.84% reported no overload. With regard to burn out, a high percentage of teachers 61.67 reported to have experienced burn out while 35.00% reported mild burn out and only 3.33% reported no burn out. Analysis of variance revealed statistical significance between role overload and burn out. The findings further revealed that teachers in public schools experienced higher work stress than their counterparts in the private secondary schools. Neither length of service nor gender was found to contribute to work stress. The study recommended that the ministry of education structures the teachers' job to make it more manageable by reducing class size and work load. This can be achieved though building additional classrooms and employing more teachers. The school administration should ensure put structures that give teachers support like employing teacher assistants to do a lot of the clerical work that teachers do. In addition the study recommended that teachers be trained how to cope with work related stress through application of time management skills, efficient communication of their needs and feelings. Lastly, the study recommended that teachers should be encouraged to seek for support from school administration and family.


EMDR is now considered as an elective treatment for PTSD and its efficacy is being proved in several other psychological conditions. Nevertheless, the EMDR underlying mechanisms of action have not yet been fully clarified. At the moment being, different theories have been proposed, such as the orienting response and the working memory hypothesis, which have been supported by various clinical and neurophysiological researches. This paper discusses a hypothesis which focuses on the similarity between the typical EMDR Eye Movements and delta and beta waves occurring during the Slow Wave Sleep. SWS appears to have a key role in memory consolidation and in the reorganization of distant functional networks, as well as Eye Movements seems to lead to a weakening of traumatic episodic memory and a reconsolidation of new associated information. SWS hypothesis may represent another important step toward the understanding on how


The estimation of motion in an image sequence is a fundamental task in image processing. Frequently, the image sequence is corrupted by noise and one simultaneously asks for the underlying motion field and a restored sequence. In smoothly shaded regions of the restored image sequence the brightness constancy assumption along motion paths leads to a pointwise differential condition on the motion field. At object boundaries which are edge discontinuities both for the image intensity and for the motion field this condition is no longer well defined. In this paper a total-variation type functional is discussed for joint image restoration and motion estimation. This functional turns out not to be lower semicontinuous, and in particular fine-scale oscillations may appear around edges. By the general theory of vector valued BV functionals its relaxation leads to the appearance of a singular part of the energy density, which can be determined by the solution of a local minimization problem at edges. Based on bounds for the singular part of the energy and under appropriate assumptions on the local intensity variation one can exclude the existence of microstructures and obtain a model well-suited for simultaneous image restoration and motion estimation. Indeed, the relaxed model incorporates a generalized variational formulation of the brightness constancy assumption. The analytical findings are related to ambiguity problems in motion estimation such as the proper distinction between foreground and background motion at object edges.


This presentation was given as part of the GIS Day@KU symposium on November 15, 2017. For more information about GIS Day@KU activities, please see http://gis.ku.edu/gisday/2017/


MORE THAN 40 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES, INcluding 10 million children, are without health insurance coverage despite the fact that the United States dedicates a higher proportion of its gross domestic product to health care than any other nation in the world, spending approximately $1.3 trillion in 2000. The current system, which has evolved through the past failures to provide universal insurance, now relies on the incremental advances that have created a patchwork of care in which many holes remain. Theodore Roosevelt included a social insurance as a major plank of the Progressive Party platform in 1912, making it the first major US political party to call for a national insurance plan. Since that time, the idea of health care for all Americans has been advocated by the Truman, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton administrations, although the proposals that were finally adopted cover only the elderly, the disabled, low-income children, and select low-income adults. The consistent failure of sweeping reforms, in conjunction with the success of more incremental measures like Medicare and Medicaid, has done much to shift the direction of health policy research in the last 10 years, and many current attempts to increase coverage depend on strategies of incremental change to existing programs. Probably the most common of these involves building on and expanding the previously created programs of Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance programs. Proponents of these plans claim that they have established administrative systems, mutually beneficial provider and managed care plan contracts, and reliable mechanisms for federal fund handling. In addition, these programs already provide comprehensive benefits with no or minimal costsharing, and neither has reached its full enrollment potential. Finally, because most working poor adults do not have access to employer-sponsored insurance, there is little chance that these programs would be replaced by commercial plans. Rather than questioning the basic organization of Medicare and Medicaid, then, the debate here is largely over standards for eligibility. For instance, it has been estimated that a modest change in current eligibility structure could allow these programs to reach more than 27 million additional low-income uninsured people. A second approach relies on the provision of tax credits for employers, deductions for employers and individuals delivered via the federal income tax system, thus allowing for the subsidization of private health insurance. Tax credits are advantageous because they would not require any changes in the current health care regulatory structure, delivery system organization, or current medical treatment philosophy. Depending on their level of use, tax credit or deduction policies might assist both the uninsured and those already purchasing individual coverage. The number of those receiving help would thus remain income-dependent and would be reestablished with each yearly tax filing. The third idea involves providing subsidies or vouchers to those with low incomes to use either toward the direct purchase of insurance or the supplementation of employersponsored coverage, their provision being independent of the federal income tax system. Some states, for example, use revenues fromtobaccoandalcohol taxes,hospital services, orother sources to create new insurance options for people who can contribute to premiums on a sliding scale based on income and family size. However, because research has shown that those with low and modest incomes are unlikely to take advantage of subsidies that do not cover the full costs of insurance, more generous subsidies would likely be required to effect any meaningful increase in coverage among poor people. In addition to the size of the subsidy, the structure of the private insurance market would also affect the number ultimately covered. Although all 3 approaches have undoubtedly helped increase coverage to some degree, none of them alone is sufficient to produce significant declines in the number of uninsured. The vast majority of recent federal plans combine one or more of these approaches with myriad other, smaller ideas. Such programs, however, risk becoming so complex that they fail to gain public support. Their variety and complexity also tend to complicate the delivery of health care services. Finally, by imposing arbitrary boundaries on eligibility and services, this incremental approach always runs the risk of marginalizing subgroups within the population.


This research compared the effects of two types of instruction: Processing Instruction (PI) and Meaning-based Output Instruction (MOI) on the interpretation and production of English passive structures.  Ninety EFL intermediate tertiary level female students (PI group= 30, MOI group= 30 and control group = 30) participated in this study. The instruments were a proficiency test, a test to assess English passive structures and two instructional materials (PI and MOI). The data were analyzed by running one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and mixed between-within ANOVA. The study indicated the effectiveness of PI and MOI on English passive structures. PI had considerable enhancement on interpretation tasks all the time. It supported the use of PI rather than the use of traditional instructions in which mechanical components were emphasized. Also, the PI and MOI had long term effects on the interpretation and production of English passive sentences.  This study supported the use of PI and MOI rather than the use of traditional instruction (TI) in EFL settings. The implication for particularly classroom teaching is that successful grammar instruction has to related to ultimate learning outcomes. Also, creating communicative tasks to offer opportunities for teaching grammar can lead to long-lasting learning effects.


Under the auspices of the ISS Project on Regulation of the Private Security Sector in Africa, this monograph represents the current debate around the subject of the private security industry in the form of private security companies (PSCs) and private military companies (PMCs) operating in Africa. This monograph lays the foundation for another forthcoming ISS monograph, which will focus on the elimination of mercenarism (the darker side of the private security industry) in Africa and is intended to be a feeder for the revision of the 1977 OAU / AU Convention on the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa. The importance of this monograph is the fact that it is focussed on Africa. This is critical for Africa because peace and security generally remains a pipe dream for the majority of African people.


OBJECTIVE There are many classification systems for injuries of the thoracolumbar spine. The recent Thoracolumbar Injury Classification and Severity Score (TLICS) has been shown to be a reliable tool for adult patients. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of the TLICS system in pediatric patients. The validity of the TLICS system is assessed in a companion paper. METHODS The medical records of pediatric patients with acute, traumatic thoracolumbar fractures at a single Level 1 trauma center were retrospectively reviewed. A TLICS was calculated for each patient using CT and MRI, along with the neurological examination recorded in the patient's medical record. TLICSs were compared with the type of treatment received. Five raters scored all patients separately to assess interrater reliability. RESULTS TLICS calculations were completed for 81 patients. The mean patient age was 10.9 years. Girls represented 51.8% of the study population, and 80% of the study patients were white. The most common mechanisms of injury were motor vehicle accidents (60.5%), falls (17.3%), and all-terrain vehicle accidents (8.6%). The mean TLICS was 3.7 ± 2.8. Surgery was the treatment of choice for 33.3% of patients. The agreement between the TLICS-suggested treatment and the actual treatment received was statistically significant (p < 0.0001). The interrater reliability of the TLICS system ranged from moderate to very good, with a Fleiss' generalized kappa (κ) value of 0.69 for the TLICS treatment suggestion among all patients; however, interrater reliability decreased when MRI was used to contribute to the TLICS. The κ value decreased from 0.73 to 0.57 for patients with CT only vs patients with CT/MRI or MRI only, respectively (p < 0.0001). Furthermore, the agreement between suggested treatment and actual treatment was worse when MRI was used as part of injury assessment. CONCLUSIONS The TLICS system demonstrates good interrater reliability among physicians assessing thoracolumbar fracture treatment in pediatric patients. Physicians should be cautious when using MRI to aid in the surgical decision-making process.


We focus on the problem of streaming recommender system and explore novel collaborative filtering algorithms to handle the data dynamicity and complexity in a streaming manner. Although deep neural networks have demonstrated the effectiveness of recommendation tasks, it is lack of explorations on integrating probabilistic models and deep architectures under streaming recommendation settings. Conjoining the complementary advantages of probabilistic models and deep neural networks could enhance both model effectiveness and the understanding of inference uncertainties. To bridge the gap, in this paper, we propose a Coupled Variational Recurrent Collaborative Filtering (CVRCF) framework based on the idea of Deep Bayesian Learning to handle the streaming recommendation problem. The framework jointly combines stochastic processes and deep factorization models under a Bayesian paradigm to model the generation and evolution of users' preferences and items' popularities. To ensure efficient optimization and streaming update, we further propose a sequential variational inference algorithm based on a cross variational recurrent neural network structure. Experimental results on three benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework performs favorably against the state-of-the-art methods in terms of both temporal dependency modeling and predictive accuracy. The learned latent variables also provide visualized interpretations for the evolution of temporal dynamics.


Quantum states are traditionally cognitively managed exclusively with algebra rather than geometry. One reason for emphasizing algebra is the high dimensionality of quantum mathematical systems; even spin-1/2 systems require a 2-d complex number space for describing their quantum states, which can be hard to visualize. Using "nested phasor diagrams," which use nesting to increase the dimensionality of graphic space, we taught undergraduate students to represent spin-1/2 states graphically as well as algebraically. In oral exams, students were asked to identify which spin-1/2 states, expressed arithmetically, would generate the same set of probabilities as each other (i.e., they are the same except for a different overall phase factor). Video records of oral exams (N=13) show that no student performed this task successfully using an algebraic method; instead, all successful students solved the problem graphically. Furthermore, most students who were successful used a certain gesture to solve the problem.


We consider a sequential decision making task where we are not allowed to evaluate parameters that violate an a priori unknown (safety) constraint. A common approach is to place a Gaussian process prior on the unknown constraint and allow evaluations only in regions that are safe with high probability. Most current methods rely on a discretization of the domain and cannot be directly extended to the continuous case. Moreover, the way in which they exploit regularity assumptions about the constraint introduces an additional critical hyperparameter. In this paper, we propose an information-theoretic safe exploration criterion that directly exploits the GP posterior to identify the most informative safe parameters to evaluate. Our approach is naturally applicable to continuous domains and does not require additional hyperparameters. We theoretically analyze the method and show that we do not violate the safety constraint with high probability and that we explore by learning about the constraint up to arbitrary precision. Empirical evaluations demonstrate improved data-efficiency and scalability.


The World Wide Web is transforming the way that information is distributed, received and acted upon. Global Literacies and the World Wide Web provides a critical examination of the new on line literacy practices and values, and how these are determined by national, cultural and educational contexts. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe have brought together scholars from around the world, including: Mexico, Hungary, Australia, Palau, Cuba, Scotland, Greece, Japan, Africa and the United States. Each represents and examines on line literacy practices in their specific culture. Global Literacies and the World Wide Web resists a romanticised and inaccurate vision of global oneness. Instead, this book celebrates the dynamic capacity of these new self defined literacy communities to challenge the global village myth with robust, hybrid redefintions of identity that honour ethnic, cultural, economic, historical, and ideological differences. This is a lively and original challenge to conventional notions of the relationship between literacy and technology.


The paper presents a coherent approach to solving the problems of computer system synthesis based on Ant Colony Optimization methods. We describe algorithm realizations aimed to optimize resource selection and task scheduling, as well as the adaptation of this algorithm for coherent co-synthesis realization. This is approach, which we called a par-synthesis [1]. We then present selected analytical experiments proving the correctness of the par-synthesis concept and indicate its practical motivations.


The purpose of this study is to examine a few teachers' opinion on the children's literature, what they base their choice of literature for their workplace on and what the consequences of their choices might be.The method used wastwo separate qualitative interviews held with two active pre-school teachers at different preschools in the same municipality. There were three main questions: What does the literature mean to the children? Which criteria are used as the base for choosing literature? What are the consequences of the choices of literature in the educational work?The results showed that the teachers thought that the literature was one of the most important tools in the pre-school as it is the main aid forhelping the children to read and write. The results also showed that these two educatorschose their literature based onthe interest of the children, but avoided books with strange or sad content. Furthermore the results indicated that books can have a profound effect on the well-being and actions of the children.


Investment is a multidisciplinary function that should not be left to investment consultants and private bankers without the investor taking a leading part in its course. The capital markets are for the better part channels through which wealth is created and destroyed depending on the investment policy and strategy adopted in its management. Retail investors have a duty to be able to decipher noise from information in their trading undertakings. Institutional investors on the other hand are better placed to purchase material information and involve fund managers in their investment process. ETFs as financial innovations developed to counter the shortcomings of mutual funds have been attracting massive pools of asset base from investors through their intra-day trading flexibility, tax advantages, low TER (Total expense ratio) and diversification purposes. The year 2013 witnessed growth from US markets, European markets and Asia Pacific region. The rest of the world including Middle East and Africa performed dismally. ETFs continue to grow both in asset base and cash flow prospects despite some of them focusing on niche markets.


Animals and humans encounter many tasks which permit ritualized behaviours, essentially fixed action sequences or "scripts", similar to options known from Reinforcement Learning, but proceeding without intermediate decisions. While running a script, they proceed in an open-loop fashion. However even when these are already known, an agent needs to decide whether to perform a basic action or to trigger a script regarding the particular task. Here we study if including such scripts (i.e. behaviour rituals) is advantageous from the point of view of the relevant information required to take the decision to start such a script depending on the tasks. To achieve this, we modify the relevant information framework including sequences of basic actions to the possible actions.


"Car Design America" is second in a series on world automotive history. From the streamliner to the show cars of the '50s and '60s, American car design's influence on international style is reflected in Cadillac's slogan, the standard of the world. The bombastic Harley Earl and the extravagant Raymond Loewy created iconic designs, and the mythical Corvette, Mustang, and Thunderbird were born. Without forgetting retro and the most recent designs, this book traces the evolution of American automobile culture through the decades - both all-time classics as well as unique models. This in-depth study shows creatively produced objects that are elevated from a bunch of metal parts to cultural goods.


While much of the focus on professional sport is divided between North America and Europe, there is a growing need to analyze sport leagues and organizations outside of these two regions. In this paper, the J-League, Japan's top flight professional soccer league, is the focus of examination through a seasonal attendance model which seeks to test the importance of region and competitive balance in determining demand for attendance. The results of this model indicate that fans are sensitive to competitive balance, confirming the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis. Furthermore, this paper attempts to look at the differences which occur in the demand for sport from one regional type to another.


This paper begins by sketching the current state of studies in the history, especially the contact history, of indigenous languages of the Americas. Most of the historical linguistic research to date has focused on North American languages of the United States and Canada: here the membership and development of most language families have received systematic attention, and there is also a large and growing number of investigations of contact phenomena in North American languages. The historical linguistics of the rest of the Americas is less well developed, but rapid progress is now being made, both in genetic classification and in contact phenomena. The second half of the paper places the chapters in this volume in the context of contact and change in the languages of the Americas.


A continuous column crystalliser has been designed and built using a Schildknecht-type Archimedean transportation screw within a stainless steel jacket. Problems concerned with the surface finish on the inner walls of the jacket which affect crystal transportation have been investigated, leading to effective operation of the apparatus. The process of column crystallisation may be considered as a multistage separation and purification technique; it is applicable to both aqueous and organic systems. In the present work the examination has been undertaken by firstly continuously crystallising a flow of feed solution in the column. Thesecrystals are transported along the screw, melted and some of the melt liquid allowed to flow countercurrently to the crystals thus washing them by reflux. The remainder of the melt liquid is removed as pure product, the impure product provided by the now impure reflux liquid being removed from the opposite extremity of the column. Separations in aqueous solutions which have been investigated include the desalination of brine, concentration of metal salts, the extraction of deuteriai.moxide from a heavy water/water mixture and the concentration of ethanol in water. The purification of organic solvents included the removal of cyclohexane from benzene and the extraction of para-xylene from 0-, m-, p-xylene and ethylbenzene. The unit operations involved in column crystallisation fall into the categories of heat transfer, mass transfer and mixing. In order to examine how dependent the efficient operation of the column is on these factors, the system has been optimised for organic, aqueous and mixed organic/aqueous cases. The variables studied including:- (a) the speed of rotation of the transportation screw (b) the length of the column (c) the attitude of the column (ie crystals transported upwards or downwards). (d) the position of the feed into the column (e) the ratio of the products removal rates (f) the rate of production of crystals Since the scale-up of equipment is an ultimate aim of the present investigation it is necessary to study the results mathematically. Where possible, this examination has been undertaken thus establishing the major factors involved in the separation and purification scheme. It should also be possible to determine whether absolute optimisation of operation is attainable - i.e. does separation increase as the crystal rate increases to infinity or is an optimum separation eventually attained?


Background: Resistance wheel running (RWR) can promote resistance-like training adaptations in mouse skeletal muscle (SkM), but its endurance-training effects are lesser known. Methods: Voluntary RWR was modulated as an exercise model to increase mouse hind-limb plantar-flexor torque and to promote endurance-training adaptations. Thirty male mice (cohort 1, n= 16; cohort 2, n= 14), were trained on a prototype RWR system that applied resistance relative to body mass (BM). Mice were sequentially, (1) screened for running ability (screening; 3-days); (2) trained with incremental adjustments to wheel loads (pre-training; 8-weeks); (3) grouped into cage-activity only (CA), and constant Low-0%, Med-15%, or High-25% BM resistance conditions (static training; 5-weeks); (4) trained with resistance adjusted in real-time (dynamic training; cohort 1, 7-weeks; cohort 2, 10-weeks); and (5) sacrificed for various assays. Plantarflexor torque was determined during each training phase. After dynamic training, resistance runners in each cohort were sub-grouped post-hoc by work tertiles. Results: Wheel running distance varied between cohorts (cohort 2 > 1). During dynamic training, wheel running (±added-resistance) improved plantar flexor torque normalized to BM by 19% only in cohort 2 (p= 0.007). Muscle mass and cross-sectional area were unchanged. Runners in both cohorts (±added-resistance) improved maximal running capacity vs. CA-controls (+69% and +115%; both p < 0.05), but metabolic training adaptations were less evident. Conclusions: Wheel running promoted SkM strength and endurance, but there was a greater increase in endurance capacity than strength. This outcome may be due to adaptive signaling interference.


The goal of this chapter is to analyze the spatial structure of Ecuador, that is, to find out if the economic activity in this country is clustered in or around several provinces and/or regions. In other words, we want to establish from a geographical economics perspective which provinces are considered belonging to the so-called core and which ones to the periphery. We will carry out the analysis by computing each region's market potentials. The methodological approach of this study is based on the well-known Harris, 1954, market potential concept of the regional economics literature. For each province and using as the time frame the period 2007–2014, we have computed its Harris, 1954, market potential, which takes into account the economic activity in the surrounding locations weighting them by the inverse of the distance. With regard to the weighting scheme, we will use two different proxies: on the one hand, the distance measured in kilometers between the capital of each province, and on the other hand, the distance measured in terms of the time needed to travel from the capital of one province to the other.


A fermentation system was designed to model the human colonic microflora in vitro . The system provided a framework of mucin beads to encourage the adhesion of bacteria, which was encased within a dialysis membrane. The void between the beads was inoculated with faeces from human donors. Water and metabolites were removed from the fermentation by osmosis using a solution of polyethylene glycol (PEG). The system was concomitantly inoculated alongside a conventional single-stage chemostat. Three fermentations were carried out using inocula from three healthy human donors. Bacterial populations from the chemostat and biofilm system were enumerated using fluorescence in situ hybridization. The culture fluid was also analysed for its short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) content. A higher cell density was achieved in the biofilm fermentation system (taking into account the contribution made by the bead-associated bacteria) as compared with the chemostat, owing to the removal of water and metabolites. Evaluation of the bacterial populations revealed that the biofilm system was able to support two distinct groups of bacteria: bacteria growing in association with the mucin beads and planktonic bacteria in the culture fluid. Furthermore, distinct differences were observed between populations in the biofilm fermenter system and the chemostat, with the former supporting higher populations of clostridia and Escherichia coli . SCFA levels were lower in the biofilm system than in the chemostat, as in the former they were removed via the osmotic effect of the PEG. These experiments demonstrated the potential usefulness of the biofilm system for investigating the complexity of the human colonic microflora and the contribution made by sessile bacterial populations.


This study was conducted at the coastal villages of Kamikazi, Matemwe and Nungi of Zanzibar Island to understand the influence of tourism on the income generating activities of the local fishers along the Coast of Zanzibar Island. The methodology mostly involved face-to-face interviews and structured questionnaires. Results indicate that increasing tourism has impacted fishers twofold: (1) Parts of their fishing grounds were lost through development of tourist infrastructure such as resorts and hotels along the beaches area; (2) Some of the fishing gears were destroyed by tourists during activities such as diving, snorkelling, swimming with dolphins, and boat riding over inshore waters where fishing is actively taking place. Over the past twenty years of tourism development along the coastal villages of Zanzibar Island, the living conditions of the local fishers have remained low. The fact that fishers are partly losing the access to their fishing grounds is more likely to increase poverty among the fishing communities and thereby creating conflicts among the stakeholders. Employment in the tourism sector (resorts/hotels) has not been an option for the fishers because of their low educational background, except for menial jobs. The rapid development of tourism along the coastal villages of Zanzibar Island, while concomitant with a general increase in GNP of the island, has thus not led to an improvement of income generation activities of the local fishers.

 Key words: Zanzibar Island, tourist, fishing.


A region of genomic DNA from Clostridium kluyveri was cloned in Escherichia coli by a screening strategy which was based on heterologous expression of the clostridial 4-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase gene. The gene region (6,575 bp) contained several open reading frames which encoded the coenzyme A (CoA)- and NADP+-dependent succinate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase (sucD), the 4-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase (4hbD), and a succinyl-CoA;CoA transferase (cat1), as analyzed by heterologous expression in E. coli. An open reading frame encoding a putative membrane protein (orfY) and the 5' region of a gene encoding a sigma 54-homologous sigma factor (sigL) were identified as well. Transcription was investigated by Northern (RNA) blot analysis. Protein sequence comparisons of SucD and 4HbD revealed similarities to the adhE (aad) gene products from E. coli and Clostridium acetobutylicum and to enzymes of the novel class (III) of alcohol dehydrogenases. A comparison of CoA-dependent aldehyde dehydrogenases is presented.


Today we tend to think about natural rights as non-positivist claims to limits on governmental authority — typically claims derived from religion, morality, or logic. These "rights," by their very definition, exist independent of governmental control. Indeed, that is what makes them "natural." This Essay, responding to Randy Barnett's Our Republican Constitution, sketches a different view of Founding-Era natural rights, their relationship to governmental authority, and their enforceability. With the exception of certain "rights of the mind," natural rights were not really "rights" at all, in the sense of being determinate legal privileges or immunities. Rather, embracing natural rights meant embracing a mode of reasoning. And the crux of the idea — in stark contrast to the modern notion of "natural rights" — was to create a representative government that best served the public good. The Founding-Era idea of "natural rights" thus called for judicial deference to legislative judgments, and it favored broader governmental power just as much as limits to that power. In short, natural rights called for good government, not necessarily less government.


Guanidinoacetate methyltransferase deficiency (GAMT‐D) is an autosomal recessively inherited disorder of creatine biosynthesis. Creatine deficiency on cranial proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and elevated guanidinoacetate levels in body fluids are the biomarkers of GAMT‐D. In 74 patients, 50 different mutations in the GAMT gene have been identified with missense variants being the most common. Clinical and biochemical features of the patients with missense variants were obtained from their physicians using a questionnaire. In 20 patients, 17 missense variants, 25% had a severe, 55% a moderate, and 20% a mild phenotype. The effect of these variants on GAMT enzyme activity was overexpressed using primary GAMT‐D fibroblasts: 17 variants retained no significant activity and are therefore considered pathogenic. Two additional variants, c.22C>A (p.Pro8Thr) and c.79T>C (p.Tyr27His) (the latter detected in control cohorts) are in fact not pathogenic as these alleles restored GAMT enzyme activity, although both were predicted to be possibly damaging by in silico analysis. We report 13 new patients with GAMT‐D, six novel mutations and functional analysis of 19 missense variants, all being included in our public LOVD database. Our functional assay is important for the confirmation of the pathogenicity of identified missense variants in the GAMT gene.


Fuzzy-PID controller is introduced and implemented based on FPGA which both have good static feature of fuzzy controller and high stable feature of PID controller, it overcomes the disadvantage of traditional Fuzzy-PID controller implemented by software which is poor at dynamic response in real-time processing, especially for Multi-channel control system. Basic idea to implement multi-channel Fuzzy-PID controller is presented in this paper. The Fuzzy-PID controller based on FPGA is proved to be effective by simulation result.


We demonstrate a novel synthetic route for molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) thin films using a bottom-up approach utilizing protein–ligand specific interactions. The ligand was anchored on a gold substrate and served to (i) orient the immobilized target protein for precise formation of homogeneous binding cavities and (ii) act as a binding site with high affinity and selectivity on the MIP thin films after release of the immobilized protein. The MIP thin films were synthesized by controlled/living radical polymerization (CLRP), which allowed for precise control of the film thickness to optimize binding performance. A mixed self-assembled monolayer comprising anchored maleimide groups and bromoisobutyryl groups was constructed on a gold substrate: the former oriented the immobilization of the target protein and the latter initiated CLRP. The chosen model target protein and ligand were glutathione-s-transferase-π (GST-π) and glutathione (GSH), a protein-specific ligand to GST-π. The obtained MIP thin films of precisely controlled film thickness exhibited high affinity toward the target protein compared to non-imprinted polymer (NIP) thin films. Protein binding selectivity was investigated using a selectivity parameter (α) calculated by surface plasmon resonance response with reference proteins, human serum albumin (HSA) and fibrinogen (FIB). The results indicated that the MIP film thickness affects the protein binding selectivity: a polymer thickness of approximately 15 nm gave more selective protein binding (selectivity parameter for α(HSA) = 0.09 and for α(FIB) = 0.30). Furthermore, we clarified that a more hydrophilic polymer matrix in the presence of NaCl gave more selective binding of GST-π. Our findings show that this bottom-up synthetic route has potential for facilitating the fabrication of highly specific MIPs as artificial protein recognition materials.


A major goal in epigenetics is understanding how cells differentiate into different cell types. Besides the increase
of individual data sets, the amount of replicated experiments generating a tremendous amount of data is ever
increasing. While biologists primarily analyze their data on the highest level using statistical correlations or on the
lowest level analyzing nucleotide sequences, determining the fate of histone modifications during cell specification
necessitates improved analysis capabilities on one or more intermediate levels. For this type of analysis, it proved to
be very useful to use tiled binned scatter plot matrices showing binary relationships or to use tiled binned 3D scatter
plots showing ternary relationships. Quarternary or general n-ary relationships are not easily analyzable using
visualization techniques like scatter plots, only. Therefore, we augmented existing clustering methods with the
tiling and binning idea enabling the analysis of n-ary relationships. Analyzing the changes of histone modifications
comparing two cell lines using tiled binned clustering, we found new, unknown relations in the data.


X-ray fluorescence holography (XFH) is a technique that can directly image the 3D arrangement of atoms around an element in a sample. The holograms contain both intensity and phase information, allowing atomic reconstruction without needing prior structural information or a tentative structural model. XFH has already been used to reveal the local structures of various inorganic samples, and recently, work has begun on XFH for soft matter. In this paper, we review the progress of XFH on soft materials. First, we review the fundamental principles of XFH. Second, we review inverse mode XFH on soft materials, and the results of the experiments on hemoglobin, myoglobin, and κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2]Br crystals. In the last section, we report the progress of the development of normal mode holography for soft materials. The new apparatus and scanning method is described, and results of the initial tests on the protein Photosystem II are discussed.


Objective:Recent interest has arisen in airway driving pressure (DPAW), the quotient of tidal volume (VT), and respiratory system compliance (CRS), which could serve as a direct and easily measured marker for ventilator-induced lung injury risk. We aimed to test the correspondence between DPAW and transpulmonary driving pressure (DPTP)—the quotient of VT and lung compliance (CL), in response to intra-abdominal hypertension and changes in positive end-expiratory pressure during different models of lung pathology. Design:Well-controlled experimental setting that allowed reversible modification of chest wall compliance (CCW) in a variety of models of lung pathology. Setting:Large animal laboratory of a university-affiliated hospital. Subjects:Ten deeply anesthetized swine. Interventions:Application of intra-abdominal pressures of 0 and 20 cm H2O at positive end-expiratory pressure of 1 and 10 cm H2O, under volume-controlled mechanical ventilation in the settings of normal lungs (baseline), unilateral whole-lung atelectasis, and unilateral and bilateral lung injuries caused by saline lavage. Measurements and Main Results:Pulmonary mechanics including esophageal pressure and calculations of DPAW, DPTP, CRS, CL, and CCW. When compared with normal intra-abdominal pressures, intra-abdominal hypertension increased DPAW, during both "normal lung conditions" (p < 0.0001) and "unilateral atelectasis" (p = 0.0026). In contrast, DPTP remained virtually unaffected by changes in positive end-expiratory pressure or intra-abdominal pressures in both conditions. During unilateral lung injury, both DPAW and DPTP were increased by the presence of intra-abdominal hypertension (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.0222, respectively). During bilateral lung injury, intra-abdominal hypertension increased both DPAW (at positive end-expiratory pressure of 1 cm H2O, p < 0.0001; and at positive end-expiratory pressure of 10 cm H2O, p = 0.0091) and DPTP (at positive end-expiratory pressure of 1 cm H2O, p = 0.0510; and at positive end-expiratory pressure of 10 cm H2O, p = 0.0335). Conclusions:Our data indicate that DPAW is influenced by reductions in chest wall compliance and by underlying lung properties. As with other measures of pulmonary mechanics that are based on unmodified PAW, caution is advised in attempting to attribute hazard or safety to any specific absolute value of DPAW.


This paper examines how (1) a crowdfunding campaign's prosociality (the production of a public versus private good), (2) the social network structure (embeddedness) among individuals advocating for the campaign on social media, and (3) the volume of social media activity around a campaign jointly determine fundraising from the crowd. Integrating the emerging literature on social media and crowdfunding with the literature on social networks and public goods, we theorize that prosocially, public-oriented crowdfunding campaigns will benefit disproportionately from social media activity when advocates' social media networks exhibit greater levels of embeddedness. Drawing on a panel dataset that combines campaign fundraising activity associated with more than 1,000 campaigns on Kickstarter with campaign-related social media activity on Twitter, we construct network-level measures of embeddedness between and amongst individuals initiating the latter, in terms of transitivity and topological overlap. We demonstrate that Twitter activity drives a disproportionate increase in fundraising for prosocially oriented crowdfunding campaigns when posting users' networks exhibit greater embeddedness. We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings, highlighting how our work extends prior research on the role of embeddedness in peer influence by demonstrating the joint roles of message features and network structure in the peer influence process. Our work suggests that when a transmitter's message is prosocial or cause-oriented, embeddedness will play a stronger role in determining influence. We also discuss the broader theoretical implications for the literatures on social media, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and private contributions to public goods. Finally, we highlight the practical implications for marketers, campaign organizers, and crowdfunding platform operators. 1


Introduction: To investigate the effect of video directly observed therapy (VDOT) on stigma levels in tuberculosis (TB) patients. Methods: Thirty TB patients (36.5%) receiving directly observed therapy (DOT) and 52 receiving VDOT (63.4%) between 15.08.2021 and 15.10.2021 in Samsun, Turkey, were included in this study (n = 82). All the participants completed the Stigma Scale in Patients with Tuberculosis (SSTB), and their demographic and disease characteristics were investigated. Results: The mean age of the participants was 50.0 6 17.8 years, 64 were married (78.8%), and 38 were women (46.3%) in the study group. Sixty patients had pulmonary TB (73.1%), and duration of disease was less than 6 months in 64 (82.9) patients. The mean SSTB score was 84.2 6 12.3, the DOT group exhibiting higher SSTB scores then the VDOT group (t = 2.524, P = .006 ). The VDOT group had lower mean SSTB subdimension mean scores (perceived stigma, self-perception internalized stigma, and family/friend relations) (P < .05 ). Linear regression models identified VDOT and male gender as independent factors for increased total SSTB scores (P < .05 ). VDOT was also identified as an independent factor for total SSTB subdimension scores in the linear regression models (P < .05 ). Conclusion: Our results confirm that TB patients who receive VDOT has less stigmata compared with homecare DOT. ( J Am Board Fam Med 2022;35:000–000.)


Detailed historical reconstructions require high-quality data. In the traditionally densely settled higher and drier Pleistocene sandy areas ('drylands') of the North European Plain (the European aeolian sand belt) and comparable regions elsewhere evidence-based reconstructions are hampered by poor preservation of archaeological remains and archaeologically relevant deposits. This problem can be partially solved by combining, on a microregional level, dryland data with data from nearby wetland pockets ('wetlands'),in particular stream valleys. This asks for an integrated and systematic inventory of all available data. For this purpose an instrument was developed: the Landscape-Land use Diagram (LLAND). Because data from dry and wet contexts are to some degree supplementary, integrated analysis is essential for obtaining information on the full range of economic and ritual practices. This is demonstrated by research carried out in the valley of the small river Regge (the Netherlands), the results of which are being treated as a stratified landscape-archaeological sample. This paper does not focus on cultural interpretation but on methodology, specifically the potential of data and the benefits of an integrated approach.


1. Subjects were asked to point toward visual targets without visual reafference from the moving hand in two conditions. In both conditions the pointing fingertip was viewed only before movement onset. 2. In one condition, the pointing fingertip was viewed through prisms that created a visual displacement without altering the view of the target. In another experimental condition, vision of the fingertip was not displaced. Comparison of these two conditions showed that virtually shifting finger position before movement through prisms induced a pointing bias in the direction opposite to the shift. The extent of this pointing bias was about one third of the prismatic shift applied to the fingertip. 3. Analysis of movement initial direction demonstrated that it was also less deviated than predicted from the prismatic shift. In addition, the reaction time and movement time of the reaching movement were increased. 4. This result is interpreted in the framework of the vectorial coding of reaching movement. Proprioception and vision provide two possible sources of information about initial hand position, i.e., the origin of the movement vector. The question remains as to how these two sources of information interact in specifying initial hand position when they are simultaneously available. 5. Our results are thus discussed with respect to a visual-to-visual movement vector hypothesis and a proprioceptive-to-visual vector hypothesis. It is argued that the origin of the putative movement vector is encoded by weighted fusion of the visual and the proprioceptive information about hand initial position.


The purpose of this study was to (1) study how students' questions contribute to the knowledge construction process, and (2) relate the nature of students' questions to their approaches to learning. Six Grade 8 students were observed during class activities, and interviewed before and after instruction about related science concepts. Students' questions included basic information questions which reflected a surface learning approach, and wonderment questions which characterized a deep approach. While wonderment questions stimulated the students themselves or their peers to hypothesize, predict, thought-experiment and generate explanations, basic information questions elicited little conceptual talk or deep cognitive processing. Although the students did not always ask wonderment questions spontaneously, they were able to generate such questions when prompted to do so. Some strategies related to student questioning that teachers can use to encourage deeper thinking in students are suggested.


Sundanese script is one revised regional Indonesia which is the work of the sundanese have orthographic peculiarities in terms of how the writing system by using a non-latin character as well as in terms of the unique pronunciation, therefore his presence should be conserved. One of its preservation efforts is to build an sundanese script recognition systems, which in the process is to identify a pattern of characters can make use of a technique of feature extraction and classification of characteristics, one of which was modified direction featured (MDF) which is the hallmark of the extraction method based on the shape of the patterns on the image, whereas the methods used for the process of classification of characteristics of an image is learning vector quntization (LVQ). This system will accept input in the image of sundanese script and image patterns revised its characteristics will be taken and entered into the database that will be used as training data, then done in the result of the extraction of characteristics are grouped into classes to the nearest value identified on a class derived from the test image, its function is to support the introduction of this aksara can be combined with text to speech. Text to speech system (TTS) is a system that can turn text into speech, so that the output can be showing the introduction of aksara sunda examples of their pronunciation. The level of accuracy of the test results of the 300 samples data of aksara sunda verified correctly between the suitability of image characters with names and their pronunciation is of 78.67%.


The pervasive use of technology has created a critical dependency on Information Technology (IT)
that requires IT Governance (ITG). ITG calls for the definition and implementation of formal mechanisms
at the highest level in the organization taking into account structures, processes and relational
mechanisms for the creation of business value from IT investments. However, determining the right
ITG mechanisms remains a complex endeavour. Previous studies have identified ITG mechanisms in
use in the financial and health care industries. While universities also increasingly depend on IT for
their success, ITG implementation in universities has not received much attention. As universities have
many unique characteristics, it is highly unlikely that ITG experiences from the financial and health
care industries can be directly applied to universities. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to
identify an ITG mechanisms' baseline for universities. Six case studies comprising of in-depth interviews
three international universities in Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands, led to the proposal of a
minimum ITG baseline for universities that is compared with the financial and health care industries.
This article concludes by presenting key contributions, limitations and future work.


The Clay Lane Water treatment works of Three Valleys Water, in the south east of England, is currently the world's largest ultrafiltration works with a capacity of 160 Ml/d. It utilises ultrafiltration membranes constructed as hollow fibres with a number of membrane elements in a pressure housing. The plant has been operating since spring 2001. The decision to install the system was made in anticipation of the introduction of tighter regulations on Cryptosporidium in water supplies in the UK. Once a decision was made to proceed with a membrane system the ability to monitor the integrity of the system and to repair problems became a crucial design parameter that was a critical part of membrane selection. The need to include a system affected the design of the filtration units offered by manufacturers. The available systems for integrity testing are reviewed and the reasons for selecting the system adopted are discussed. These include particle counting and the dosing of test particulate loads. The different forms of air passage integrity tests are discussed and the displaced air flow system used is described. Once a failure has been detected it must be traced so that the fault can be repaired. This procedure is described together with the techniques of pin repair of damaged fibres. At Clay Lane and other membrane filtration sites the backwash water from membrane cleaning is recovered using a secondary membrane system. Currently the secondary system operates in the same integrity testing regime as the primary system and the secondary filtrate is returned ahead of the primary membrane system. The relative merits of this system, or the alternative of adding the recovered water to the filtrate are discussed.


Arginine methylation of RAF determines the specificity of the biological response to growth factors that activate the same signaling cascade. This Podcast features a conversation with the senior author of a Research Article published in the 13 September 2011 issue of Science Signaling. Nerve growth factor (NGF) and epidermal growth factor (EGF) both activate signaling through the extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) cascade, but have different effects on PC12 neuroendocrine cells. Whereas NGF induces differentiaion, EGF stimulates proliferation. Juan Recio discusses his group's finding that the ability of these growth factors to elicit distinct biological responses despite activating the same intracellular signaling pathway depends upon methylation of RAF.


The information asymmetries between scenic area and tourists and between scenic area and tourism management department have made it more difficult to conduct pollution control in scenic area, and even made the scenic area to evade responsibilities of pollution control intentionally or unintentionally. On the basis of reputation model, this paper discusses the effective equilibrium conditions of reputation incentive mechanism under asymmetric information through analysing the generating process of reputation incentive effect during scenic area pollution control. And then based on the discussion, some policies to improve the initiative of pollution control in scenic area are suggested.


Based on absolute geostrophic velocity, which was calculated using repeated hydrographic data of 39 cruises from 2000 to 2009 and nitrate concentrations measured in the same areas from 1964 to 2009, we obtained the temporally averaged nitrate flux (the product of velocity and nitrate concentration) and nitrate transport (integration of flux over one section) of four sections across the Kuroshio from the East China Sea (sections PN and TK) to an area south of Japan (sections ASUKA and 137E). In addition, we examined section OK east of the Ryukyu Islands in order to understand how the Ryukyu Current contributes to the transport of nutrients by the Kuroshio south of Japan. The mean nitrate flux shows a subsurface maximum core with values of 9.6, 10.6, 11.2, 10.5, and 5.7 mol m −2 s −1 at sections PN, TK, ASUKA, 137E, and OK, respectively. The depth of the subsurface maximum core changes among these five sections and is approximately 400, 500, 500, 400, and 800 m at sections PN, TK, ASUKA, 137E, and OK, respectively. The mean downstream nitrate transport is 204.8, 165.8, 879.3, 1230.4, and 338.6 kmol s −1 at sections PN, TK, ASUKA, 137E, and OK, respectively. The transport of nutrients in these sections suggests the presence of the Kuroshio nutrient stream from its upstream to downstream regions. The deep current structure of the Ryukyu Current (section OK) contributes to the same order of nitrate transport as does the Kuroshio from the East China Sea (section TK) to the area south of Japan; however, the former only has one-fifth the volume transport of the latter. A budget calculation suggests that the downstream increase of transported nitrate along the Kuroshio is mainly caused by the recirculation of nitrate into the Kuroshio. This conclusion, however, depends on water depth. In the upper layers ( θ ), the downstream change of nitrate concentration along the Kuroshio and that from the recirculation of nitrate has a significant contribution to the downstream increase of nitrate transport along the Kuroshio. In the deep layers (> 26.5σ θ ), the change in nitrate concentration is small and the Kuroshio recirculation dominates the downstream increase of nitrate transport.


The air flow pattern and magnitude of air velocities in churches and other historic buildings are of interest since they influence the deposition rate of airborne particles on surfaces, and hence affect soiling of valuable artifacts of different kinds. Increased air movements might also cause enhanced sooting from candles and it has an influence on the thermal comfort of people. The type of installed indoor heating units is likely to be important here since these usually induce substantial air movements through natural or forced convection. In an experimental field study, two different heating systems were compared regarding their effect on room air velocities in a medieval stone church: air-to-air heat pumps with indoor fan convectors vs. a combination of bench heaters and radiators. Hot-sphere anemometers were used to record air velocities in the near-zone of the heat pumps and their surroundings, and 3-D sonic anemometers were used to measure downdraught air velocities at the surfaces of a wall and a window. Smoke was used to visualize air flow patterns. It was found that the heat pumps caused strong buoyant air jets that rose to the ceiling, but that the air velocities were rather low outside of these jets. The bench heaters caused buoyant plumes, which also seemed to attain rather high air velocities and reach the ceiling. As regards downdraught along wall and window, no significant difference between the two heating systems could be seen, although there was a tendency towards slightly higher air velocities at these surfaces when the heat pumps were in use. Since the air flow pattern at the surfaces appeared similar, also the particle deposition mechanisms and soiling rate can be expected to be similar.


The Muskingum flood routing model is a representative flood routing model. The field applicability of the Muskingum flood routing model is known to be good, and the structure of input data is simple. However, accurate flood routing cannot be conducted using current Muskingum flooding routing models due to the structural limitation of equations. The advanced nonlinear Muskingum flood routing model is suggested for improving accuracy, considering continuous flow using weighted inflow. Continuous flow means the past continuous inflows, including first and secondary inflow over time. Five flood data were selected for a comparison between the results of this study and previous ones. The sum of squares, root mean square errors, and Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency are applied in order to calculate the error values. The vision correction algorithm was used to estimate parameters in the new model. Generally, the new method yields better results than those described in previous studies, though it shows similar results with the most recent methods (NLMM-L) in some flood data. Finally, the new method and NLMM-L are applied for the prediction of Daechung flood data in Korea. The new method is useful in the prediction of outflows, because it shows better results than NLMM-L.


A thorough analysis of the dynamics in a deterministic optical rocking ratchet [introduced in A. V. Arzola et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 168104 (2011)] and a comparison with experimental results are presented. The studied system consists of a microscopic particle interacting with a periodic and asymmetric light pattern, which is driven away from equilibrium by means of an unbiased time-periodic external force. It is shown that the asymmetry of the effective optical potential depends on the relative size of the particle with respect to the spatial period, and this is analyzed as an effective mechanism for particle fractionation. The necessary conditions to obtain current reversals in the deterministic regime are discussed in detail.


The design and physical verification of contemporary integrated circuits is a challenging task due to their complexity. System-in-Package is an example of generally congested electronic components and interconnects which in the initial design process rely on computationally intensive electromagnetic simulations. Hence the available computer memory capacity and computational speed become meaningful limitations. An alternative method which allows the designer to overcome or reduce the limits is desired.

This work represents the first demonstration of the application of effective medium theory to the analysis of those segments of the entire integrated system where the interconnect networks are more dense. The presented approach takes advantage of the deep subwavelength characteristic of interconnect structures. In order to achieve the aim of defining the homogeneous equivalent for the interconnect grating structure a few steps were followed towards proving the homogenisation concept and finally presenting it by an analytical formulation. A set of parameters (metal fill factor, aspect ratio, dielectric background and period-to-wavelength ratio) with values related to typical design rules were considered. Relating these parameters allows the empirical models to be defined. In order to show the relationship between existing effective medium theories and those developed in this Thesis, the presented empirical models are defined in terms of the Maxwell-Garnett mixing rule with an additional scaling factor. The distribution of the scaling factor was analysed in terms of the calculated reflection and transmission coefficients of the homogenised structures that are equivalent to a given grating geometry. Finally the scaling factor, for each empirical model, was expressed by an analytical formula and the models validated by their application to the numerical analysis of grating structures.
The numerical validation was carried out by comparing the reflection and transmission coefficients obtained for the detailed and homogenised structures. In order to ensure the empirical models can be broadly employed, the performance of the model in the presence of non-normally incident plane wave was evaluated. For the range of angles ±30o the model is accurate to 5%. The impact of the shape of the grating, specifically the case of a tapered profile, typical of actual fabricated interconnects was also considered, with sidewall tapers of up to 5o giving the same error not higher than 5%.

Experimental validation of the application of the homogenisation concept to the analysis of interconnects is desired for two main applications: for the reflectivity estimation of a whole chip in a System-in-Package and for the performance estimation of interconnects on lower metal layers in an interconnect stack. For the first, free-space measurements are taken of a grating plate with copper rods aligned in parallel illuminated by a plane wave in the X-band (8.2-12.4 GHz). For the second, S-parameters are measured for microstrip waveguides with a number of metal rods embedded in the substrate between the signal line and ground plane. The good agreement with the simulations validates the homogenisation approach for the analysis of interconnects.


Development of proficient spoken language skills is disrupted by mutations of the FOXP2 transcription factor. A heterozygous missense mutation in the KE family causes speech apraxia, involving difficulty producing words with complex learned sequences of syllables. Manipulations in songbirds have helped to elucidate the role of this gene in vocal learning, but findings in non-human mammals have been limited or inconclusive. Here, we performed a systematic study of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of adult male mice carrying the KE family mutation. Using novel statistical tools, we found that Foxp2 heterozygous mice did not have detectable changes in USV syllable acoustic structure, but produced shorter sequences and did not shift to more complex syntax in social contexts where wildtype animals did. Heterozygous mice also displayed a shift in the position of their rudimentary laryngeal motor cortex (LMC) layer-5 neurons. Our findings indicate that although mouse USVs are mostly innate, the underlying contributions of FoxP2 to sequencing of vocalizations are conserved with humans.


If you have been wanting to learn Java, check out the newly revised fourth edition of the best-seller Sams Teach Yourself Programming with Java in 24 Hours. This step-by-step tutorial will teach you how to create simple Java programs and applets. Comprised of 24 one-hour lessons, this new edition focuses on key programming concepts and essential Java basics, has been improved by dozens of reader comments, and is reorganized to better cover the latest developments in Java. The book's coverage of core Java programming topics has also been expanded. A great starting point for learning Java, this book is also a great primer to reading sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days.


Since the Harvard Medical Practice Study was published in 1991 the growing mass of international literature has demonstrated that medical adverse events can cause iatrogenic illnesses, prolonged hospitalisations and increased costs. In 1999-2001, reports made by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the USA, the Department of Health (DoH) in the UK and the Australian Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) stressed the necessity for creating a safer environment and a reporting culture throughout healthcare systems. They also emphasized the need for researchers to investigate means of turning policies into practice. Since their publication a lot of effort has gone into collecting data on adverse events and near misses. As a result, in 2001, the AHRQ published a Health Technology Assessment report on best practices for patient safety. While in Australia national meetings have been dedicated to address important issues across the whole spectrum of healthcare. In the UK the Audit Commission has published a report that is also focused on medication safety: "A spoonful of sugar". In 2004 the World Health Organisation promoted a Patient Safety Alliance; while in April 2005the Standing Committee of European Doctors organised a Conference in Luxembourg called "Patient safety - Making it happen!". The issue of patient safety is therefore seen as a priority by EU institutional bodies and by many European health stakeholders.


In this article, we suggest a new interpretation of British constitutional history under which the Parliament Act 1911 is treated as a constitutional document enacted by 'We the British People.' The Act's process of enactment resulted from Britain's commitment at that time to popular sovereignty, with the 1911 Act receiving popular endorsement. In contrast, we argue, that the Parliament Act 1949, which purported to amend the earlier Act, was endorsed not by the People, but rather by merely the Lower House and the Crown. We thus assert that the Jackson Court could have legitimately decided to invalidate the Parliament Act 1949, as well as the Hunting Act, whose process of enactment derived from it. Since the 1911 Act amounts to a constitutional document enacted by 'We the British People,' it enjoys superior status and can only be amended by the People. This dualist constitutional theory is the one acted upon in the US. Thus, the Jackson decision by its nature presents a defining moment in British constitutionalism. By not invalidating the Act, the Court in Jackson joined Parliament in redefining Britain's ultimate rule of recognition as based on parliamentary sovereignty in its 'manner and form' variant. It did so, without even acknowledging the decision's effect on popular sovereignty. We further explain why the resort to 'manner and form' coupled with the abandonment of popular sovereignty required the Court to introduce in dicta its commitment to common-law constitutionalism, by suggesting that in extreme cases the court may rely on it.


We search for signals of magnetically-induced effects in the arrival directions of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory. We apply two different methods. One is a search for sets of events that show a correlation between their arrival direction and the inverse of their energy, which would be expected if they come from the same point-like source, they have the same electric charge and their deflection is relatively small and coherent. We refer to these sets of events as"multiplets". The second method, called"thrust", is a principal axis analysis aimed to detect the elongated patterns in a region of interest. We study the sensitivity of both methods using a benchmark simulation and we apply them to data in two different searches. The first search is done assuming as source candidates a list of nearby active galactic nuclei and starburst galaxies. The second is an all-sky blind search. We report the results and we find no statistically significant features. We discuss the compatibility of these results with the indications on the mass composition inferred from data of the Pierre Auger Observatory.


With a decrease in formal trade barriers, trade facilitation has come into prominence as a policy tool for promoting trade. In this paper, we use a gravity model to examine the relationship between bilateral trade flows and trade facilitation. We also estimate the gains in trade derived from improvements in trade facilitation for the Central Asian countries. Trade facilitation is measured through the World Bank's Logistic Performance Index (LPI). Our results show that there are significant gains in trade as a result of improving trade facilitation in these countries. These gains in trade vary from 28 percent in the case of Azerbaijan to as much as 63 percent in the case of Tajikistan. Furthermore, intraregional trade increases by 100 percent. Among the different components of LPI, we find that the greatest increase in total trade comes from improvement in infrastructure, followed by logistics and efficiency of customs and other border agencies. Also, our results show that the increase in bilateral trade, due to an improvement in the exporting country's LPI, in highly sophisticated, more differentiated, and high-technology products is greater than the increase in trade in less sophisticated, less differentiated, and low-technology products. This is particularly important for the Central Asian countries as they try to reduce their dependence on exports of natural resources and diversify their manufacturing base by shifting to more sophisticated goods. As they look for markets beyond their borders, trade facilitation will have an important role to play.


SUMMARY Pre-cooling in water tanks (pre-chiller and chiller) is an important step in preserving the quality of chicken meat. After pre-cooling, the carcasses are hung by the wing and neck for 5 min to allow excess water to drain. The weight of the carcasses is monitored before and after pre-cooling to ensure that weight gain due to water absorption does not exceed 8%. However, no information is available as to how hanging the carcass from other anatomical points might affect water retention of carcasses and water loss during dripping. The present study evaluated the effects of the anatomical point of hanging and hanging time on water retention of carcasses and water loss during dripping. One hundred and sixteen carcasses (mean weight 1,662 ± 13 g) were chilled by cold-water immersion systems in 2 steps (pre-chilling and chilling). The results showed that after chilling, the carcasses needed at least 3 min of dripping time (p 0.05). Data in this study clearly indicate that leg hanging is a practical alternative, and 5 min of dripping time is needed to maintain water absorption within the desired limit.


Aim: This study aimed to analyse the quantity and quality of paediatric research evidence contained in the OTseeker database and to compare the findings with surveys of paediatric occupational therapy practice. Methods: In June 2005, systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials contained in OTseeker were analysed according to year of publication and the client diagnostic groups and interventions addressed. The internal validity scores of the trials were determined (according to the PEDro scale (partitioned)) and the outcome measures used extracted. Results: Of 3294 papers contained in OTseeker, 372 (11.3%) were related to paediatrics. The mean internal validity score of the trials was 2.5/ 8. The five most frequently studied diagnostic groups were mental health/ psychosocial issues, neurology, learning disabilities, developmental delay and 'other'. There was much variation in the outcome measures used, with a large number of outcome measures used in only one or a few studies. The five most frequently studied interventions were behavioural interventions, consumer education, psychosocial techniques, interventions for carers/parents and developmental therapy. Conclusion: OTseeker contains a considerable amount of research relevant to paediatric occupational therapy practice. There was some congruence between the papers and practice surveys regarding client diagnostic groups and interventions, but little between the outcome measures used in research and those used in clinical practice. © 2007 The Authors Journal compilation © 2007 Australian Association of Occupational Therapists.


We study a broad class of asset pricing models in which the stochastic discount factor (SDF) can be factorized into an observable component and a potentially unobservable, model-speci…c, one. Exploiting this decomposition we derive new entropy bounds that restrict the admissible regions for the SDF and its components. Without using this decomposition, to a second order approximation, entropy bounds are equivalent to the canonical Hansen-Jagannathan bounds. However, bounds based on our decomposition have higher information content, are tighter, and exploit the restriction that the SDF is a positive random variable. Our information-theoretic framework also enables us to extract a non-parametric estimate of the unobservable component of the SDF. Empirically, we …nd it to have a business cycle pattern, and signi…cant correlations with both …nancial market crashes unrelated to economy-wide contractions, and the Fama-French factors. We apply our methodology to some leading consumption-based models, gaining new insights about their empirical performance.


Tomas Baležentis, Lithuanian Institute of Agrarian Economics, Vilnius, Lithuania, E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com ABSTRACT. Lithuanian agriculture has been receiving investment support under the Common Agricultural policy since 2004. Indeed, the most profitable farming types – cereal and dairy farms – saw a particularly strong increase in the investment amounts. The measure of dynamic efficiency allows one analyze the performance of businesses in regards of inter-temporal optimization of the investment behavior. This paper, therefore, looks into the trends of dynamic efficiency in Lithuanian cereal and dairy farms. The research is based on the data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network covering the period of 20042014. The analysis carried out for different farm sizes indicates that scale inefficiency is the main source of technical inefficiency for smaller farms, whether cereal, or dairy ones. Farms experienced investment spikes showed slightly lower inefficiency. These technical efficiency gains are due to improved pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. However, the latter source appeared as a more important one for the smallest farms (less than 30 ha). Received: December, 2016 1st Revision: April, 2017 Accepted: June, 2017


Abstract:This review considers the detection and management of early HIV infection (EHI), defined here as the first 6 months of infection. This phase is clinically important because a reservoir of infected cells formed in the individual renders HIV incurable, and the magnitude of viremia at the end of this period predicts the natural history of disease. Epidemiologically, it is critical because the very high viral load that typically accompanies early infection also makes infected individuals maximally contagious to their sexual partners. Future efforts to prevent HIV transmission with expanded testing and treatment may be compromised by elevated transmission risk earlier in the course of HIV infection, although the extent of this impact is yet unknown. Treatment as prevention efforts will nevertheless need to develop strategies to address testing, linkage to care, and treatment of EHI. Cost-effective and efficient identification of more persons with early HIV will depend on advancements in diagnostic technology and strengthened symptom-based screening strategies. Treatment for persons with EHI must balance individual health benefits and reduction of the risk of onward viral transmission. An increasing body of evidence supports the use of immediate antiretroviral therapy to treat EHI to maintain CD4 count and functionality, limit the size of the HIV reservoir, and reduce the risk of onward viral transmission. Although we can anticipate considerable challenges in identifying and linking to care persons in the earliest phases of HIV infection, there are many reasons to pursue this strategy.


The content of voices is often self-referent, and related to concerns or salient aspects of voice-hearers' lives. Based on a cybernetic theory of cognition and behaviour known as Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), this study examined whether the content of voices is thematically linked to the more fundamental construct of goals, i.e. internal representations of desired and undesired states. Twenty-two clinical and 18 non-clinical voice-hearers completed self-report measures of personal goals and clinical interviews to gather qualitative descriptions of voice content. Participants' interview transcripts were systematically contrasted with their reported goals to code instances of thematic correspondence between voice content and personal goals. The analysis revealed that 33 of the 40 participants (82.5%) reported voices that thematically matched at least one of their reported goals. This study provides preliminary evidence that the content of voices is frequently associated with voice-hearers' goals. It is proposed that personal goals receive further attention as a possible factor to understand the meaning of voices in both research and clinical contexts.


There is increasing evidence that action and perception interact in the processing of magnitudes such as duration and numerosity. Sustained physical exercise (such as running or cycling) increases the apparent duration of visual stimuli presented during the activity. However, the effect of exercise on numerosity perception has not yet been investigated. Here, we asked participants to make either a temporal or a numerical judgment by comparing the duration or numerosity of standard stimuli displayed at rest with those presented while running. The results support previous reports in showing that physical activity significantly expands perceived duration; however, it had no effect on perceived numerosity. Furthermore, the distortions of the perceived durations vanished soon after the running session, making it unlikely that physiological factors such as heart rate underlie the temporal distortion. Taken together, these results suggest a domain-selective influence of the motor system on the perception of time, rather than a general effect on magnitude.


A custom spherical light-field camera used as a polydioptricsystem where imagers are distributed over a spherical geometry, each having its own vision of the surrounding and distinct focal plane. The spherical light-field camera is also an omnidirectional camera which records light information fro many direction around its center. A novel linear blending technique is presented for vision reconstruction of a virtual observer located inside the spherical geometry of this camera. This blending technique improves the output quality of the reconstructed vision with respect to the ordinary stitching technique. A novel pixel gridding scheme is presented for rectangular displaying of the reconstructed vision induced from the spherical light field camera. This gridding technique preserve the correct size of objects when mapped on the spherical geometry of the Panoptic system. A hardware architecture based on FPGAs with the real-time implementation of the linear blending algorithm and the new pixel gridding scheme of the spherical light-field camera are presented along with imaging results.


In partnership with state Democratic parties and the Obama campaign, the authors surveyed staffers from nearly 200 electoral campaigns in 2012, asking about the expected vote share in their races. Political operatives' perceptions of closeness can affect how they campaign and represent citizens, but their perceptions may be wildly inaccurate: campaigns may irrationally fear close contests or be unrealistically optimistic. Findings indicate that political operatives are more optimistic than fearful, and that incumbent and higher-office campaigns are more accurate at assessing their chances. While the public may be better served by politicians fearing defeat, campaigns are typically staffed by workers who are over-confident, which may limit the purported benefits of electoral competition.


In research on sea ducks, winter age and sex ratios provide valuable demographic data that are difficult to obtain by other means. Our objectives were to determine spatial, temporal, and density-related variability in (1) age and sex ratios for five sea duck species and (2) proportions of adult males for eight species that winter in the Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, Canada. Kilometre-long shoreline sections (n = 49–62) were surveyed in early February in three years: 2003, 2004, and 2014. Annual estimates for male age ratio (first year:adult male) varied significantly for Black Scoter Melanitta americana (0.071 to 0.170), Surf Scoter M. perspicillata (0.064 to 0.101) and Harlequin Duck Histrionicus histrionicus (0.068 to 0.138). Regional differences in male age ratio were found for Barrow's Goldeneye Bucephala islandica (0.034 to 0.197) and Common Goldeneye B. clangula (0.033 to 0.165), and more complex interactions were found between regions by year for Surf Scoter. Sex ratios were less variable than age ratios and varied consistently by year and region only for Common Goldeneye. Adult male proportions were correlated with but varied more than sex ratios and showed significant differences by year for Surf Scoter, Common Goldeneye and Bufflehead B. albeola and by region for Surf Scoter, Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead and Red-breasted Merganser Mergus serrator. Based on previous research that calculated expected confidence limits from different numbers of occupied survey sections, the sampling intensity for each species obtained in this study provided age ratio estimates with 95% confidence limits likely within ± 5% for Surf Scoters and ± 3% for Harlequin Ducks. Regional and density-related differences in age ratios, sex ratios and adult male proportions indicated segregation and emphasize the need for broad-scale sampling to achieve representativeness. Inter-annual differences may indicate demographic changes, but few comparative data exist, and several consecutive years of surveys are needed to provide baseline data.


Public participation in decision-making has in the last decades become a common refrain in political and scientific discourse, yet it does not often truly come to fruition. The present study focuses on the underlying issue, that of the construction of the difference between scientific and public knowledge and its consequences. Through discourse analysis of scientific texts on sustainable development three distinct groups of Slovenian social scientists were discerned that differed in their views on the relationship between scientific and public knowledge and consequently the role and nature of public participation in decision-making processes. With a rise in participatory practices the preponderance of the deficit model found in this study remains problematic.